👩🏼 👩🏻‍🤝‍👨🏾 🔙 Ro.Ri.Re 🧑🏻 🥢 👩🏻‍🔬

- Tell me, are you a man?

I played this game every Friday, coming to the next appointment in Tinder. The end of a difficult week, continuous deadlines - why not relax in such a straightforward way?

Not that I risked much. Although lawmakers have already come close to this problem (problem!), The matter has not yet reached a direct ban on asking such questions. Everyone was recommended to behave on the basis of "don't ask - don't tell." Therefore, a meeting with Josephine a week ago thoroughly unsettled me.

It seems that there was a malfunction in her program. After chatting for about fifteen minutes on all kinds of abstract topics (I somehow caught myself thinking that at the beginning of my tinder career I was constantly checking the intelligence of my interlocutor, eventually getting not only turned out to be robots, but also live specimens), I finally approached experimentum crucis and asked my question. Josephine (a full-bosomed curly black woman, sorry, African-American) furiously called me a chauvinistic pig, immediately listed 25 points of federal and local legislation with the numbers of acts and subacts that I violated (it’s simply not possible for a person to remember unless he’s Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer ), and, in the end, when I tried to make it a joke, I grabbed a glass of champagne and spilled it in my face.

Then a terrible metamorphosis happened to her - an unknown force suddenly lifted her from her seat and rushed to the exit, and it was noticeable how fiercely she resisted, having no way to overcome this force. Apparently, the evacuation program to the base worked in the event of antisocial behavior or a threat to human life, I thought, not without gloating. Although the sight was eerie. It’s good that the creators of these monsters read Isaac Asimov as a child.

However, the producers of this humanity intentionally train their systems, forcing them to fall into different non-standard situations. One such instance was recently exposed in an underground brothel in Los Angeles. How could he slip past the experienced eyes of the owners of this institution, which by virtue of the profession and a living person often see through and through - God knows. People sitting in the bar, fortunately, did not notice this internal struggle of Josephine, and only waved approvingly with their hands - they say, man, there’s nothing to be done with anyone. I immediately made a promise to stop all such experiments, but lasted only a few days and on Wednesday again climbed into Tinder.

A new search brought a girl named Irene with some unbelievable percentage of coincidence in all respects - 92%. Irene was my first school love, with whom we parted very painfully, but the memories of this were buried under the thick layer of the past years, other relationships and two unsuccessful attempts to build a family. I only grunted, sending her a smiley on duty, but did not even look at her profile - in the end, I was not interested in all of this. At lunch, I exchanged a few phrases with her directly from my mobile, and made an appointment on Friday at the bar opposite the place where I was bathed in champagne. In the end, after all, as much as 52 Fridays, and once at a time is not necessary.

Apparently, in my defense, I called these Friday entertainments "my personal Turing test." This was, frankly, my selfish interest. The robots that worked with me occasionally showed miracles of insight, but otherwise stupid, and I used them to program only the most simple tasks. The chef assigned a 25% limit for the code written by these walking similarities of a person, and, in general, this rule did not bother me much. Fortunately, I chose a chef with rather discreet outward copies that did not distract me from work, otherwise when I once came to the open space to my friend working for a competitor, I was simply amazed at the number of long-legged girls in miniskirts who managed to pound at crazy speed keys with long manicured fingers. But while their intelligence left much to be desired,I was calm for my career and the position so hard won in the company.

I arrived at the bar half an hour earlier to compensate for the missed lunch and a little distract from working thoughts. Slowly eating my beef steak with fried vegetables, I did not notice how the time had come for a date. And at that moment Irene entered the bar. The hall of the establishment swam before my eyes, and I experienced a strange mixture of desires - at the same time rush towards her and climb under the table.

Our love began in the summer camp when I was just about 15. From the side of the organizers of the event, it was very imprudent to put the tents of girls and boys so close to each other. But such a passionate, long and unhappy romance happened only with Irene.
My dad, old wise dad, said that everything happened too soon. No, of course, he did not dissuade me from this relationship, but probably it would not work, despite all my respect for him. He simply advised against making plans for the rest of his life. I had a university, I showed great promise in mathematics, Irene wanted to do art, and it turned out that our interests were on different coasts of the United States.

As a student of Caltech, I constantly darted to Irene in New York, less often, but she also visited me in Pasadena. I introduced her to my nerds - classmates, from whom several world-class scientists later grew up, she - to strange people from urban bohemia, and I felt with inner horror that we, like two continents that were just one piece of land yesterday, were slowly but inevitably diverge in different directions. In the end, Irene had an affair, I failed to receive PhD, and everything came to its inevitable end. Then I started programming, yet it is nothing more than simple mathematics, and for the first time I hastily got married.

Irene myopicly looked around, waved my hand and went to my table.
“You look good, Kevin!” Do you mind if I sit down?
I just nodded, the gift of speech to me at that time had not yet returned.

Iren sat down, and as if nothing had happened, she began to look at the menu. I glanced over her, and tried to remember what hairstyle she had during our last meeting. The feeling that it was exactly the same as now - slightly curly hair falling on the shoulders, but then I could not be sure of anything. She didn’t even change much, but how many years have passed. As if trying to help me, Irene suddenly put down the menu and told me to order something myself. It got me out of a stupor, I called the waiter and asked me to bring pasta with cheese and a glass of white wine for the lady. "You did not forget!" - Irene said with a smile, which again plunged me into a sea of chaotic memories. There were a lot of questions in my head, and among them - the most important ... What,if the ugly manufacturers of anthropomorphic iron decided to take revenge on me for all my experiments? This must be clarified.

- How are you? I asked lightly.
- You know, not bad! I am starting another art project, and it seems that I even found financing for it!
“So you are here?”
“I’ve been here a long time,” she replied, thus repulsing any desire to continue questioning in this direction.
“Do you remember ... I began the next sentence, but Irene habitually put her hand on top of mine.
“I remember everything, Kevin.” To the smallest detail. This is my professional. And not only.

The following weeks passed in some strange other world. We seemed to be just blurred between the past and the present - starting from that very summer camp. In an instant, we could suddenly find ourselves at any point in space and time - at a party in New York, on the Caltech campus, to find ourselves walking along the deserted beaches of California, or through a lush Mexican bazaar. In the mornings, Irene literally pushed me to work, telling me not to repeat my old mistakes, but I would go home any minute after the end of the working day and everything would continue again.

At first, sometimes returning to reality, I still asked her all sorts of questions about the past, until I ran into her anger:
- Listen, Kevin. Do you feel bad with me? Why the hell are you not washing, so you approach the same from all sides? When you start dating a girl, you interrogate her, what happened to whom and with whom? So do not bother me, please.

Indeed, why am I

Amazingly, this time Irene did not introduce me to any of her friends and business partners. She herself was absent during the day for all kinds of business meetings, but in the evening she always waited for me at home. Colleagues told me that I was just shining.

The marriage contract stated that in the event of problems, Irene would be represented by the law firm Ro.Ri.Re, or Robots' Rights Rethinked. But I confess, it was all the same.

I was happy.

Ro.Ri.Re

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