The A.I

Chapter 1

A loud buzzing breaks through Taehyung's concentration, startling him enough to visibly jolt in his chair. Mumbling out a soft curse he sends a small glare at the offending device, still vibrating loudly in the quiet. He stares at the phone until the room is once again peacefully quiet before returning his attention to the newest program update he's creating, only to huff in annoyance when he sees his most recent line of code is deleted. He must have hit delete in surprise. Taking a deep breath he retypes the last line, letting the soft clicks of the keyboard calm his heart rate. He's almost at the end, a few more strokes until angry buzzing startles him again into accidently inputting the incorrect phrase. Irritation sparks and he bites his cheek to stop the urge to throw something. Unfortunately, he really likes his phone and would hate to lose it. Roughly ruffling his hair and throwing his glasses on the desk he quickly fixes his error before saving everything before something else goes wrong. He has six missed calls and numerous texts from Chris, barely a minute apart and the irritated spark starts to expand. With a sigh, he listens to the numerous voicemails, leaning back in his chair with a soft smile that slowly fades as he deletes each message.

Hey babe, just calling to see how you're doing? I sent a text, message me back!

Deleted.

Babe? Did you see my text? Come pick me up for lunch! I miss you and today's a shitty day.

Deleted.

Taehyung. Seriously, why are you ignoring me? I know you have your phone on you. Seriously, I know you're not in a meeting until later so you can't be that busy-

Deleted. He doesn't bother listening to the rest, knowing they'll be the same. He has a meeting to prepare for and just cannot spare the brain power to deal with his boyfriend's current mood. He loves Chris. He truly does. The two of them met in his final year of University when he was completing the management course he left until the last minute to graduate. Chris was his TA and Taehyung was immediately smitten. After months of flirting, Taehyung finally manned up and asked him out and now here they are, almost five years later. Maybe their long lasting honeymoon phase is wearing off but things have been so tense between them lately that it's exhausting. It's been a couple years since Chris asked them to move in together and Taehyung agreed wholeheartedly. It felt like the right next step in their relationship. Chris didn't want them to move into his place, claiming it was two small for the two on them on his B class salary. Instead, he wanted to move in with Taehyung. He didn't think much of it, instead, looked around until he found a place close by KRL for them both. Taehyung wanted to rent a small apartment, not seeing the point in spending tons of money of their first place together when they would probably want something different in a few years again but Chris insisted, so eventually he relented and bought the penthouse in one of the company's high rise buildings. Money wasn't an issue. It never has been for Taehyung.

Taehyung's family comes from old money, his father, Namjoon Kim, being one of the top 10% SS class citizens in Chicago. The SS class consist of the owners of major monolithic corporations controlling the various industrial sectors that employ all lower classes. Namjoon actually is the owner and Director of KRJ, the leading company in A.I. technology, also with hotel chains nationally. In the last 100 years, A.I technology has reached amazing advancements and have been incorporated into daily life in electronics, vehicles, security, even with the creation of the D class. The D class consists of the humanoid A.I's owned by the SS class alone as only the wealthy can afford them. The original goal of their creation was to increase equality among humans but as time went on, the new age of industrialization after a century of war had the opposite effect. Rather than equality, the lack of available natural resources and the industrialization has increased the economic disparity, with A.I's at the bottom of the food chain.