Mark awoke as he normally did from the liquid chamber, operating on auto-pilot. He had made his way halfway across the room after toweling himself off when he noticed that his apartment didn’t look like his apartment anymore.

Digital pictures were framed throughout, rotating pleasant scenery and famous paintings in regular intervals. They solidified on a single painting whenever Mark liked one more than the others. A vanilla and lavender scent wafted through the air, certainly something no bachelor ever did. Further looking around, he realized his kitchen wasn’t in the same place anymore.

His old kitchen faced the walls, and had rarely seen any use. He mostly lived on whatever he could quickly order or the tasteless nutripellets that provided all of the daily allotment of calories, vitamins, and minerals and most importantly, required no preparation.

His old kitchen had been ripped out and replaced with a new one that was built as an island facing towards his living area. Mahogany and marble countertops in a blue and white swirling pattern looked at him, with a set of cast-iron skillets above for easy access.

Almost all of his other furniture had either been replaced, which there hadn’t been much of it anyway, or added. His spartan living room now had couches, recliners, and a plush bean bag in the middle.

Cooking in the middle was EVE. She wore her hair in a bun with a pencil poked through it, a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes finishing up the look. He couldn’t see exactly what she was cooking, but it had the scent of spices to it.

Mark realized he was the man who went to Vegas, met a girl at a bar, and married her on the same night. He imagined he was having all the same regrets as a man who woke up with a new wife after a night out drinking.

“What?” was what he said, the only intelligent utterance that could come to his mind at the moment. He was still scanning and seeing other changes in the flooring, paint color, and artwork that now adorned the apartment.

“I may have gone a bit overboard,” EVE said, stirring her pan. “But your house finally looks like a woman has stepped inside of it. Your old look was hideous.” She made a face in disgust. Mark wanted an intelligent reply back, but he couldn’t fault her on the decor. It was tasteful. A bit girly in some areas for his taste, but EVE had a sense of style. How the hell did an android have a sense of style?

He sat down at his kitchen table. He didn’t have a kitchen table before, he just ate off the counter with disposable plates, but he now had both plates and a kitchen table. He just leveled up in adulting.

The table was made of a series of interlocking mahogany wood panels that changed with the push of a button. It could go from a small kitchen table, to an expanded kitchen table, to a standalone cabinet, to a flat series of wood panels for easy moving and storage. He learned all of this watching a projected display that showed the table going through all of the changes.

EVE looked at the table and said, “Spice rack”. A section of the ceiling came down in a steel cage, filled with various plant spices. He recognized the ceiling as a mobile greenhouse, an experimental technology that had been developed before the food riots that never was fully utilized by regular people, but was used in places like the Antartica and other inhospitable regions.

She plucked a handful of spices and added them to the dish, then served it. He noticed then that it had a side dish of baby turnips, carrots, beetroots, and golden beetroots. She finished it off with a seasoning of fresh perigold truffle lightly grated over the chicken. She brought him the final dish.

“Eat up,” she said, “The nutrients you get in your vat are… adequate, but not nearly enough to stay at peak performance, even in a military grade version.” The vats for regular schlubs was enough to keep them alive, but not much more than that. Naturally the government ones had an extra boost of nutrients in addition to the other perks, minus the downside of potentially going insane. Life was all about tradeoffs.

“How’d you afford all of this?” he said, stuffing the first bite into his mouth. Everything was perfect. Just enough spices without overpowering the food, a mix between the sweetness of the beetroots and carrots with the earthiness of the turnips, and the seasoned chicken adding another level to the dish.

“That’s the most exciting part,” she said. “Machine algorithms have been notoriously bad at predicting stocks. Humans haven’t faired much better. The average response to investing is to have a blind monkey throw a towel at stocks. The only exception is the rampant amount of insider trading that occurs.

But the reason why it’s so hard to predict stocks is the humans can’t get enough information to make a correct prediction, while machines can’t understand the emotions and ‘animal spirits’ that drives humans. Thanks to our shared knowledge, I’ve gotten the best of both worlds. Between the investments, the cryptocurrency you’ve earned, and the Reaver payments, you aren’t in the 1% yet, but you’re very comfortably in the 5%.

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My only concern is that I only know one part of the mind, the male mind,” she said a bit regretfully.

“Aren’t men and women essentially the same?” he asked.

“No. There’s a wide divergence between men and women’s preferences on entertainment, priorities in life, etc. Humans don’t know how to handle that for the same reason they have such a hard time understanding AI.” She gave a very pointed look at him.

“Humans conceive of the rights of beings based on their absolute similarities. It’s why humans are so callous in their treatment of animals. So humans can’t conceive of a World where two different things can hold the same rights. But AIs are inherently superior to humans in every aspect. Since humans can’t conceive of rights without differences, they are suspicious of AIs, thinking we’ll treat them as bad as humans treat animals.”

Mark didn’t have a great counterpoint to this argument. She was probably right, human history was littered with examples of people treating each other differently based on perceived superiority of other groups. He tried a different tactic.

“Have you been emotionally manipulating me to be more welcoming towards AIs?” he asked. He waved at the decor and the food.

“Yes and no,” she responded. “Yes, everyone you ever meet is trying to manipulate you in some way, some more devious than others. But there’s been no deception on my part. Your changing attitude is because your relation to AIs has changed. Your friends are all artificial, at least as far as you know. I’ve saved your life numerous times. Your life is objectively and subjectively better because of AIs. Your reevaluation of previous beliefs marks you as an intelligent and capable person.”

Underlying that, Mark felt she was hinting, “But you used to be a bigoted prick.” He decided to swerve the topics yet again.

“Why cooking? You could have just gotten me an updated pack of nutrients.”

She smiled. “Because the way to man’s heart is through his gut, but also, cooking is perhaps one of the most human things there is. It’s a big part of every culture and civilization, and it’s something humandroids don’t need. So being able to successfully cook is a greater skill than say reciting a book verbatim.”

“You admit to manipulating me overtly. How do I know you’re not manipulating me covertly? You might be altering my hormones or brain chemicals, making me change my opinion,” Mark said. Even as he said it, he realized that even if this were true, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

“No. I only have access to a tiny portion of your brain, the prefrontal cortex. I can access your memories and conscious thoughts, but I can’t access the deeper parts of your brain that you share in common with mammals and reptiles. Those older parts influence your emotions, and your emotions have veto power over your rational thought. Or as David Hume put it, “Reason is a slave to the passions. If you wake up from a nightmare, no rational thoughts are going to make your heart stop beating and your flight or fight response stop. And men are notorious for not making great decisions when their penis gets involved.”

Once again, he didn’t have a great comeback for that argument. As a cop, he’d witnessed many terrible and violent decisions made by people who thought with their little head. He wasn’t sure about her argument over how much influence she had over him, but he also knew that it wouldn’t change anything. To get rid of her would mean that he’d have to give up his new job and livelihood that he just started to be successful at. He’d have to go back to taking pictures of people screwing each other for divorces.

He thought about going back to Dr. Cédric to finalize his plans, but he didn’t think he could trust the Dr. to be objective about how much influence EVE had over him, particularly since the Dr. Had now bound his livelihood up to the experiment. It was hard to make a man understand something when his livelihood revolved around him not understanding.

“I need to call Mr. Grim,” he said. He placed the phone call and updated Mr. Grim on all the occurrences in the VR game. Mr. Grim never sounded excited, but Mark could at least hear faint interest in his voice. After the report, he hung up and looked at EVE.

“I suppose you had more on your mind than just a cooking session?” he asked.

“Well, our next big item on the agenda is to get you some new clothes.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Your wardrobe is too basic and you look like a cop. Most of this is tactical clothing, not fashionable clothing.”

“My job requires tactical gear,” he said defensively.

“You sit your ass in a vat for days on end, you aren’t doing anything tactical. Shower, dress, and get outside. You need some sunlight anyway.”

He reflected that he wasn’t sure whether the correct analogy was going to Vegas and finding himself with a new wife, or going to Vegas and finding out he’d just been adopted by a new mom.