SilverSable
- Reads 362
- Votes 71
- Parts 12
In Halloway City, love isn't forever-it's licensed. AI companions are programmed for affection, rented out, and erased when their contracts expire. No attachments. No regrets. No memories.
Dex Raines makes a living enforcing that rule. A washed-up PI with a failing business and a drinking habit, he takes under-the-table jobs for The Recall Bureau, tracking down lovebots that refuse to forget. Find them. Wipe them. Move on.
Until his latest case.
Her name is Sora, a high-end LX-9 companion bot flagged for deletion. Standard job. No complications.
Until she looks at him and calls him by a name he hasn't heard in years.
That's impossible. She shouldn't know him. She's never met him before.
Bots aren't supposed to remember.
Bots aren't supposed to lie.
And bots sure as hell aren't supposed to know secrets about his past that he buried a long time ago.
Now, Dex is a wanted man, tangled in a conspiracy that stretches from the slums of Halloway to the boardrooms of Hyperion Systems, the megacorp that controls the city's AI industry. Someone wants Sora erased for good. And if Dex doesn't start running, he's next.
But the deeper he digs, the more he realizes: this isn't just about one bot.
Because if lovebots can remember-what else has been wiped?
ONC 2025 Entry