Warm Porcelain Skin

He calculated at the speed of light; he had the strength to crush her without even meaning to. It was like playing with fire when you're made of paper. Sleeping with a god who pretends to be asleep. Any human with a survival instinct would say, 'No, thanks.'

And yet... that was exactly what he liked.

Because asymmetry was the only thing that made his head spin. He calculated the rain before it fell. He knew her heartbeat. He predicted her next word. He was bored of always being right.

She had no choice, in the face of a marriage orchestrated by her parents, in a repressive society where a "good woman" is one who is a wife and mother; the only path she could take was that of survival. To fight for her own humanity in a world that dehumanized people by humanizing machines-the Machine that ruled from the shadows.

What if love were an engineering problem? What if the purest form of love were to design an entire system, so as not to fail someone?

Because, in the end, the question isn't "Can a machine love?" The question is, "Can a machine be so afraid of hurting you that it COUNTS as love?"

Exactly 0.3 Newtons-one miscalculation and you're dead. With no margin for error, would you sleep with him?