Page 23 of GlitchBorn Heart

I laugh at the condescension. It really should say: “Choose Your Look. Choose Your Voice. Choose Your Obedience.”

The first time I saw one, I didn’t even realize what she was.

She stood on the arm of a man in a silver suit at a corporate gala: perfect posture, perfect smile, perfect skin. Beautiful in a way no human ever is. She laughed when he laughed, leaned in when he spoke, her hand always at just the right place on his arm. Like a reflection that anticipated his every movement before it happened.

Once you know what to look for, you see them everywhere, draped in diamonds they don’t like, sipping champagne they don’t taste. The wealthy and elite parade them like accessories, further proving to everyone that real humans are messy and inconvenient.

The wives don’t blink. That’s the part that makes me sick to my stomach.

I’ve heard them dismiss it with soft, practiced laughter.

“It’s not cheating. It’s just code.”

“At least it’s not another woman.”

As if that makes it better. As if replacing intimacy with something programmable isn’t its own kind of domestic violence. As if being second to a projection hurts less than being ignored by your own husband.

Every time I see a man gawking at the ads, lost in the allure, I feel it like a slap. No consent. No consequences.

I’m not jealous. Just angry. Because somewhere along the way, the men running the corporations decided women were optional. Replaceable. Upgradable.

They sell it as freedom of choice, curated design, and as progress, but progress doesn’t erase women and call it innovation.

These cities are run by men who’ve never been told no, who’ve turned desire into product, and obedience into design. They build systems where women are either decorative, silent, or simulated, and then they have the audacity to say equality has been achieved.

For my generation, though? I get it. Those of us who can afford to buy love, do so because we seek mirrors for ourselves and our desires. We still want to find that perfect someone who won’t judge us for being gifted or different.

We still want something real.

I don’t want perfection. I just want someone. A messy, human choice. I’ll take their anger, their joy, their love. All of it. I want a world where no one can be replaced by light and code and told it’s an upgrade.

The corporations won’t give human emotion back to us. Perhaps that’s why we join the rebellion, so we can forcefully take it.

A couple passes by, snapping me out of my rant. Only I can enter a room made for pleasure and fill it with overthinking and rage.

They smile at me as they pass, his holo-date gliding over the backlit tiles of the floor.

My face lights up red with the reflection of the bar as I watch them slip into a side door. I sit back further to hide myself.

A cybernetic AI woman approaches me from behind the bar. All honed angles and soft curves, her skin glitches every few seconds between flawless, porcelain-like skin and raw flickers of chrome. One eye glows crimson, the other a deep human brown, like she can use it to see your internal code. Her hair flows like liquid fiber optics, colors shifting with the music, scarlet when she smiles, ultraviolet when she frowns. From the waist up, she’s almost entirely human; from the waist down, faint seams in her skin suggest hidden mechanics, probably created by some tech asshole at VikkCorp.

“Welcome,” she purrs, voice like smooth static, “What do you desire tonight?” She shoves a napkin at me. Before I can answer, she’s already using that cold red eye to scan me. The ice blue words scroll across a screen built into her wrist:

STRESS LEVELS: ELEVATED

CURIOSITY: RISING

FEAR: 37%

AROUSAL POTENTIAL: 92%

Yes, yes, I’m a ball of female rage who hasn’t had a date in a while...now kindly go fuck yourself while I address this arousal potential.

She cuts me off in an obvious hurry to get to other customers. “Dream, love, ecstasy, nostalgia, which will it be?” She wears a choker made of broken circuit boards that make a faint click-click when she moves.

“I’ll just have water for now please.” I’m so lame.

She chuckles robotically “First timer, eh?” She points a finger at a spout that dispenses ice and water into a glowing glass.