How to Teach Your Robot to Love

Step 5: Make your case to your robot.

"I wrote it!" David announced as I approached. The day had brightened up by now, the heat was cut by a faint breeze. We started walking down the path. 

"Please tell me you're not serious" I sighed, hanging my head. I was, of course, referring to the essay he said he would write to convince me to go out with him. I was amused by it in the slightest, but mostly a combination of confused and surprised. 

"Oh but I am" he beamed, producing a two sheets of lined paper from his bag. 

"Oh my god David, you know you didn't have to" I protested. 

"Oh but I did" he cut in handing it to me. I let out a breath and took it from him. His writing was very small, but decently neat, and it covered one page double sided. Looking at the next page was, believe it or not, a second essay of the same length. I began to read, while listening to him explain himself. 

"I had all of English class to do whatever I wanted, the teacher wasn't doing anything, so I figured I'd get to writing. I don't like formal writing, so when I was predictably displeased with the first, I added another essay, written informally, laced with extra ranting about formal writing. Neither of them are very long but-" he began to ramble.

"David." I cut in smiling, this was a side of him I hadn't seen. Dare I say it, it was really cute. 

"What?" he asked. 

"This is really well done, no need to talk so much." I commented blushing a little, flattered that he'd put in all that work for me. 

"Oh...thanks" he breathed, obviously not having paced himself in his continuous babbling. 

"So, where are we going?" I asked. 

"Oh, I don't know. I was just going to walk you home." He replied, shrugging. 

"Right." I sputtered, feeling dumb for not assuming that. I pulled out my phone and sent a quick message to the princess, then slipped it back into my pocket. 

"Where do you live?" he asked, scratching his head, both of us realizing that we didn't think this through. It was a little bothersome, but I decided it wasn't worth worrying too much about. You see, I hate making decisions on impulse. It always makes me feel like the metaphorical shelves in my head are going to fall down. 

"On Valencia" I answered, assuming he'd know where it was. There were after all, only 4 major residential streets. 

"Oh, so you're not far from here, I'm on Lorca the next street over" he added motioning there broadly with his hand. 

"How long have you been living here?" I asked, deciding to make conversation and read the rest of the essay later. 

"My whole life baby" he boasted, stretching his arms out dramatically. He paused for a moment and then started to laugh.

"What?" I asked, furrowing my brow. He paused for a moment, as if wondering if he should tell me.

"I was just going to say how about you then I realized..." he admitted, still laughing at his own joke. I look down and shook my head. I started laughing too, mostly at how stupid he was for finding this so funny, but also at how stupid I was for laughing at that. For reasons I still can't comprehend, we went on laughing for what felt like 5 minutes straight, the severity growing as we did so. 

"Why are we laughing so hard?" he panted, the both of us calming down. Both of us had tears welling up in our eyes and as if we had synced ourselves, we stopped and caught our breaths for a minute. It took me a minute to even be able to speak. 

"I uh, I don't fucking know" I said finally, my hands on my knees. 

"Neither do I" he replied.