Chapter 3 Who Taught the Machine How to Love?

# Chapter 3: Who Taught the Machine How to Love?

Convincing Juniper to help me track down Deacon was easier than I expected. Something about the whole situation had unnerved her enough that she called in sick to work and met me at my apartment the next morning, her usually immaculate appearance replaced by a hasty ponytail and yesterday's mascara.

"I checked the company directory," she says, tapping on her tablet. "Deacon works in the Emotional Pattern Recognition division. Rarely comes to team meetings. His supervisor describes him as 'brilliant but difficult.'"

"Any idea where we can find him outside of work?" I ask, pacing my living room. I haven't slept, haven't even changed out of last night's dress. The pendant Corwin gave me lies discarded on my nightstand.

"According to his social profiles, he frequents The Analog—that hipster bar downtown where they don't allow AR devices."

I nod. "Perfect. Let's go."

"Now? It's 9 AM, Eliora."

"I meant tonight. I need answers, and I'm not waiting."

Juniper studies my face. "Have you talked to Corwin since last night?"

I shake my head, ignoring the fourteen unread messages burning a hole in my pocket. "I can't. Not until I understand what's happening."

The day drags endlessly. I cancel my meetings, claiming food poisoning, and spend hours researching Deacon Merrit. His digital footprint is surprisingly sparse for a tech professional—a few academic papers on emotion simulation algorithms, a locked social profile with a profile picture showing only the back of his head, and a single interview in an obscure tech journal where he dismisses emotion recognition technology as "trivializing the most complex human experience into binary outputs."

By the time Juniper and I enter The Analog at 8 PM, my nerves are frayed to breaking point. The bar is dimly lit, all vintage wood and leather, with a strict no-tech policy enforced by signal jammers. It feels strangely exposing to be without my AR glasses, like walking around naked.

We spot Deacon at the bar, nursing what looks like whiskey, his ever-present headphones around his neck for once. He looks up as we approach, and a slow, knowing smile spreads across his face.

"The girlfriend and the dream girl," he says, raising his glass in mock salute. "I wondered when you'd show up."

"You know why we're here?" I slide onto the barstool next to him, Juniper flanking his other side.

"VeriHeart flagged my upload. Sloppy of me." He shrugs, seemingly unconcerned. "But I figured you'd connect the dots eventually. You're not stupid, just... trusting."

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"What did you do?" Juniper demands, her voice low and dangerous.

Deacon swirls his drink, the ice clinking against the glass. "I tested a hypothesis. The results were... illuminating."

I resist the urge to grab him by his pretentious collar. "Explain. Now."

He sighs dramatically. "You really believe in that 'true love filter' nonsense, don't you? That VeriHeart can tell you who genuinely loves you?" His laugh is cold. "I just fed a few snippets of your emotional data into a model. The system decided to pair you two up to test jealousy responses. That's all."

Juniper's eyes widen. "The system... chose us? Why?"

Deacon leans forward, his eyes suddenly intense. "Because none of you have let go of someone else."

The statement hangs in the air between us, heavy with implication.

"What are you talking about?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.

"You three form what we call an 'unfinished emotional loop structure,'" he explains, pulling out a small device that projects a simple triangular diagram onto the bar surface. "Juniper's subconscious attraction to Corwin has never been expressed. Meanwhile, Corwin's brain maintains a persistent but undefined female figure. And you, Eliora—" he taps my image in the diagram, "—the system selected you as her replacement."

The words hit me like a physical blow. "Replacement?"

"You weren't Corwin's first choice," he says, his voice almost gentle despite the cruelty of his words. "You're what the system calculated as the closest emotional match to his ideal."

"That's bullshit," Juniper interjects, her face flushed with anger. "You can't reduce human connections to algorithms."

"Can't I?" Deacon raises an eyebrow. "Then explain why Corwin's subconscious keeps rejecting Eliora as his emotional target. Explain why VeriHeart flags his declarations of love."

My hands are trembling. "You created that video of Corwin and Juniper."

"A simple extrapolation based on neural patterns," he confirms. "I wanted to see how you'd react to visual evidence of his subconscious desires."

"You're sick," Juniper hisses.

"I'm curious," he corrects. "And now so are you. Don't pretend you don't want to know the truth."

My phone buzzes in my pocket—somehow getting a signal despite the jammers. I pull it out to find a notification from the delivery service I use. A package has been delivered to my door. From Corwin.

"I have to go," I say abruptly, standing.

Juniper grabs my arm. "Don't let him get to you, Eliora. This is exactly what he wants."

"I know." I glance back at Deacon, who watches us with detached amusement. "But I need to know if he's right."

The ride home is a blur. The package sits on my doorstep, a small box wrapped in simple brown paper. Inside is a handwritten letter—actual paper, not digital—and a small drone with a retro-style paper delivery system attached.

The letter reads:

*Eliora,*

*Meet me at the waterfront park. 8 PM tomorrow. No systems, no AR glasses, no interfaces of any kind. I need to see you—just you—with nothing between us. Everything I say to you, I want it to be unfiltered, unmonitored, unjudged by anything but your own heart.*

*—Corwin*

I stare at the letter, tracing his familiar handwriting with my fingertips. Despite everything, my heart aches to see him.

My phone rings—Juniper.

"Eliora," her voice sounds strange, tight with emotion. "I found something. I hacked into Corwin's system logs—don't ask how. There are over three hundred emotion target error alerts in his history, but he never disabled the system. Never."

"What does that mean?" I ask, though part of me already knows.

"It means he's been fighting whatever this is for a long time," she says. "But there's more. I found evidence of a 'memory blind spot' in his neural mapping—corresponding to a deleted female projection. The AI has been trying to restore it."

"Deleted? By whom?"

"I don't know. But I found something else—that painting in his living room, the one with the woman's back? I ran a scan on it."

I remember the painting—a woman looking out over a misty landscape, her face hidden from view. I'd always found it oddly compelling.

"It's not you in that painting, Eliora," Juniper says softly. "But it's like... a mirror-inverted version of you. Like someone tried to recreate you from a distorted memory."

The implications send ice through my veins. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Juniper takes a deep breath, "that whoever that woman is in Corwin's memory blind spot—she's connected to you. And I think Deacon knows exactly who she is."


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