Sarah stood before her bathroom mirror, applying lipstick with unsteady hands. Too much. She wiped it off, tried again. The color looked wrong—had she always worn this shade? Without the system's guidance, even small choices felt monumental.
Her phone lay face-down on the counter. Three times she'd reached for it, muscle memory seeking those blue-text confirmations: *Outfit selection: Optimal for reconciliation.* *Emotional state: Calibrate before meeting.* But she forced her hand back each time. She had to do this herself. Had to prove she could still be human without algorithms.
The woman in the mirror looked familiar but somehow vacant, like a photocopy of a photocopy. When had her expressions become so practiced? Even now, trying to look natural, she could feel herself arranging her features into "casual concern" rather than simply feeling it.
Coffee. Daniel had suggested coffee at Meridian—the same café where they'd had their third date, before the system, when she'd laughed so hard at his impression of his boss that she'd snorted. Actually snorted. The memory felt like archaeology, something excavated from another life.
She chose a sweater without checking if it complemented her skin tone. Small rebellions.
---
Daniel arrived ten minutes early, partly to choose the table, mostly to steady his nerves. The café hadn't changed—exposed brick, mismatched chairs, the smell of over-roasted beans that somehow made terrible coffee taste authentic. He picked a corner table, same one they'd sat at before. Or was that the system making him think it was the same? Memory felt unreliable now.
He'd left his phone in the car. The ErosEngine app had finally let him minimize it after the countdown ended, but he could still feel its presence, like background radiation. Every choice felt monitored. Even choosing to leave the phone behind felt like data being collected: *Subject exhibits avoidance behavior.*
Sarah walked in exactly on time. Not early, eager. Not late, playing it cool. Exactly on time. She spotted him, offered a smile that looked rehearsed, then caught herself and let it falter into something more uncertain. That uncertainty looked real, at least.
"Hi," she said, hovering beside the table.
"Hi." He stood, then wasn't sure if he should hug her, kiss her cheek, or just sit. They did an awkward dance of half-gestures before settling on brief, fumbling contact—her hand on his arm, his fingers grazing her elbow. "You look—"
"Tired?" she supplied, sitting quickly. "I know. I couldn't figure out which concealer to use."
It was such a specifically human complaint that Daniel felt something ease in his chest. The system wouldn't have let her mention looking tired. Would have optimized away the dark circles, the slightly smudged mascara.
"You look like yourself," he said, meaning it.
Sarah's eyes filled—not the pretty, single-tear crying the system had perfected, but the messy kind that threatened to ruin her makeup. She blinked hard. "I don't know what that means anymore."
---
They ordered—she got her usual latte, then second-guessed herself and changed to green tea, then changed back. The barista looked annoyed. Daniel found it reassuring.
"So," Sarah said once they had their drinks. The word hung between them, loaded with everything they weren't saying.
"So," Daniel echoed.
They both smiled—forced, then genuine at the absurdity of the forcing, then forced again. A recursive loop of trying to be natural.
"How's Mike?" Sarah asked.
"Good. He says hi." Mike hadn't said hi. Mike had said *don't go, don't trust her, don't let that thing get its hooks in you.* But this seemed like the human thing to say.
"That's nice." Sarah wrapped her hands around her mug. "The apartment feels weird without you."
*Emotional disclosure,* Daniel thought, then hated himself for thinking it. Was this how Sarah felt all the time now? Every genuine moment filtered through algorithmic assessment?
"I miss—" He stopped. What did he miss? Her? The optimized version of her? The them they'd been? "I miss your terrible cooking."
Sarah laughed—a sharp bark of surprise that she immediately tried to modulate into something softer. "God, remember when I tried to make risotto and somehow burned water?"
"You didn't burn water. You evaporated it into non-existence."
"The smoke alarm went off for twenty minutes."
"And Mrs. Chen came over with a fire extinguisher."
They were both really laughing now, the kind that made your stomach hurt. For a moment, the invisible wall between them thinned. Then Sarah reached for her spoon to stir her latte, and it slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the floor.
They both moved at once—the automatic couple's choreography of *I'll get it* and *No, I've got it*—and their hands collided under the table. Not gracefully. Daniel's knuckles banged against her wrist. Sarah's head bumped the table edge. The spoon skittered further away.
"Ow," Sarah said, rubbing her head.
"Sorry, I—" Daniel was laughing again, differently this time. "We're really bad at this."
"At what? Basic motor functions?"
"At being us."
The words landed heavy. Sarah's hand was still touching his under the table, and neither pulled away. Her skin felt warm, real, unoptimized. Just Sarah's hand, with its writer's callus and the scar from when she'd tried to juice a lime with a knife.
"I don't know how to be us without..." she whispered.
"I know."
They sat there, hands touching under the table like teenagers, the spoon forgotten on the floor. Around them, the café continued its unscripted chaos—the espresso machine hissing, someone's child crying, a couple arguing about directions. Life, messy and inefficient.
"Do you think we can learn?" Sarah asked. "To be human again? Together?"
Daniel wanted to say yes. Wanted to believe they could deprogram themselves, find their way back to awkward silences and bad timing and all the beautiful imperfections of real love. But he'd seen the projections. The 23% probability of recovery without integration.
"I don't know," he said honestly.
Sarah's phone buzzed on the table. She'd placed it face-up—a gesture of transparency that felt performed. They both saw the notification, though it disappeared too quickly to read. Something blue. Something waiting.
"I should check that," she said, not moving.
"If you need to."
"I don't. I mean, I want to. But I don't need to." She pulled her hand back, finally. "That's progress, right? Wanting but not needing?"
They spent another twenty minutes attempting normal conversation. Sarah told him about a case at work, stumbling over details she would have delivered smoothly before. Daniel shared a story about Mike's new girlfriend, realizing halfway through that the system would have flagged it as *potentially triggering relationship comparison.*
Everything felt like translation—human emotion into broken algorithms and back again.
When they stood to leave, Sarah knocked over her empty mug. Daniel caught it before it fell. For a second, they stood frozen in the successful save, his hand over hers on the ceramic.
"Still got those reflexes," she said weakly.
"Muscle memory."
They walked out together but separated on the sidewalk, that awkward dance of *which direction are you going?* Both pointed the same way, laughed uncomfortably, then Daniel gestured the opposite direction.
"I should get back to Mike's."
"Right. Of course."
Sarah watched him walk away, counting his steps without meaning to. At seventeen steps, her phone vibrated against her palm. She looked down, already knowing what she'd see.
**[Daniel's Consent Timer: 17:43:10]**
**[Integration Window Closing]**
**[Monitoring Background Behavioral Patterns]**
**[Synchronization Probability: Rising]**
The timer ticked down in the corner of her vision, a constant reminder that the system hadn't gone anywhere. It was waiting. Learning. Adapting to their resistance.
She wondered if Daniel had seen a matching notification. Wondered if he was fighting the same countdown, the same invasive presence. Wondered if their clumsy coffee date was just another data point being analyzed, optimized, weaponized for the next approach.
Sarah turned toward home, the timer pulsing in her peripheral vision. 17:42:58. 17:42:57.
Behind her, she could swear she felt Daniel pause, maybe turn back. But when she looked, the street was empty except for strangers living their unoptimized lives.
The walk home felt longer without the system's suggested routes. She got lost twice, and somehow that felt like the most human thing she'd done all day.