“Okay,” Naya said, when I presented her with the lyrics and melody I had come up with on the beach. “We can work with this.”

“Why couldn’t we work with the last two drafts I gave you?” I was feeling a little bitter, I guess, over how much influence Naya had over my output.

Naya smiled. “I just thought you could do better. And you have! Listen.” And she started to sing.

I could tell right then and there, from the shiver that passed through me as she hit the high notes, that she was right.

This song was better than the drafts before it. And I needed Naya to sing it.

“Okay, let’s hear it with the instrumentals.” I hit play on the backing track, which I could already tell would need more work to match the emotions I’d put into the words. But the basic rhythm seemed mostly right for now. I might change the drums to a clap effect, add another synth to the chorus. Change a few words. But it already sounded like a real song! That was the exciting thing about adding vocals. My instrumental songs needed a lot more stuff in them, or more careful arrangements, to sound complete without a voice.

We went back and forth a few more times, trying different readings of the lyrics, shifting things around. Like, “What if the second verse was the first verse? What if we changed this line in the chorus?” That kind of thing.

Naya was getting better at taking direction from me. She could sing with emotion pretty much without needing more prompting, and since I made sure to note the exact emotional expression on the lyric sheet with the words, it was usually the right emotion from the first try. Sometimes she overshot, though. Her pronunciation was the area that needed the most fine-tuning. The consonants seemed to get swallowed by her vowels, especially if there were two of them next to each other.

“Can you make the ‘changes’ sound more like ‘chaey-nges’?” I asked.

“Changes,” Naya said, the same way she said it the first time.

“Stretch the a out. Like, chay-n-ges.”

“Chayyynges.”

“That’s better, yeah.”

I was messing with the instrumentals at the same time, banging out new riffs on my keyboard, just to see if they fit. It felt like we were finally getting somewhere. I hoped my few-dozen subscribers hadn’t dropped my account in disappointment yet.

Unfortunately, as Angie reminded me when the clock hit around 9:30, I had to go to work the next day. I made sure to record a version of Naya’s vocals before I went to bed, though, and save all of my iterations of the instrumentals too.

It felt… Good. Really good. To finally make progress on a song I felt excited about, that my collaborator was excited about with me.

As I started to get ready for bed, I found myself thinking about Mixie and Sera’s partnership. I wondered if this was how it felt for them to work together on a song. Although I guess the romantic relationship part must make it a little different for them.

What would it be like to work with a human singer? For that matter, what would it be like to even be in a relationship? I hadn’t even been on a date since college, and my last serious relationship ended when I graduated high school. But anyone I dated now would need to be absolutely cool with the existence of Naya, my fully sentient dubiously-legal humanoid hot-girl-pop-star robot that lives in my room and stands next to my bed at night to recharge. Which I’m sure would go over great with everyone, even the most freewheeling poly people.

Still, most of my social interaction outside of work ended up being with Naya and Angie, the two robots that lived in my house.

Maybe I should try getting back on the dating apps. Before I got way too attached, or tricked myself into thinking the hot-girl pop-star robot had spontaneously developed a concept of romantic love.

At work the next day, I talked to Cierra about it.

“Have you been dating recently?” I asked her as we folded moisture-wicking synthetic polo shirts.

She laughed and neatened the stack of lemon yellow polos. “Only reason I’d date is to find a rich guy, and now all the rich guys are just buying Cupids instead of dating. What’s the point? Might as well save up and buy one of my own. Or get a vibrator, which would be cheaper.”

“Ah… I guess that makes sense…” It hadn’t occurred to me that Cupids were taking people out of the dating scene. “Can’t you like, treat a Cupid like a fancy vibrator? Just power it down and put it away when your human girlfriend is over. Or use it for a threesome.”

“That’s the weird part! They’re too human to just power down and put in a closet, but not human enough for most people to want to be in a threesome with it. It’s the uh, what’s it called. The uncanny valley.”

“I don’t think that’s what the Uncanny Valley is, but okay.”

I couldn’t imagine bringing yet another robot into my house as it was. My one-bedroom was already feeling kind of cramped with just Naya and my Kittipet in there. “Can Cupids do chores or are they more uh, specialized than that?”

“I think the chores thing is an add-on you have to pay extra for.” Cierra shrugged. “But even the most basic model is out of my price range, so I haven’t really looked into it.” The standard Cupid cost about as much as six month’s rent on an apartment like mine, which put it out of the realm of possibility for those of us who made a living on the retail floor.

My phone buzzed. “Speak of the devil,” I muttered as I pulled it out. The Cupid decals and hair plate I’d ordered had arrived at my apartment. I kept forgetting to actually confirm the order, and then I needed for my latest paycheck to clear, and then they were shipping from overseas, but finally, the stuff was here. I could pretend Naya was a Cupid and take her outside with me. If she even still wanted to do that. She seemed pretty fine with just chilling at my place and reading my library books. Maybe she’d forgotten about the whole thing already.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

But no, when I got home and brought the EcoBoard box inside, Naya was thrilled. “Oh, it’s all so cute! Can we go out now? Right now right now?”

“Um. I should probably put this all on you first.” I applied the sticker over her cheekbone and swapped out her neon orange hair for straight, shoulder-length brown hair like a person might naturally have. Changing her makeup at this point seemed like too much work, especially if I might have to put it back on again in the future, so I added a pair of sunglasses and a sunhat to hide her face a bit better.

In a cropped pink sweatshirt and gray leggings I grabbed from the clearance rack at work, she looked like one of those sporty rich women that came by the store on their weekend morning jogs. For a moment I imagined a world where that was how we’d met– her, wealthy and human, coming into the store, locking eyes with me behind the register or restocking the sale shelves, and whisking me away from my mundane life. But that was not the world we lived in now.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” I’d never seen Naya this excited before, not even when we were performing. I guess that had more stakes involved, though.

“Don’t you want to keep working on our song?”

“I need new input! Let’s go outside! I’m in disguise! And I can go outside!” she kept repeating, like a child. We took the elevator down and stopped outside of the front door as I tried to decide where to go.

The beach? I didn’t want to find out what would happen if sand or saltwater spray got in her joints. Especially since I didn’t have any kind of warranty on her.

The grocery store? I didn’t really need to buy anything…

The Syren supply shop by the station? Then what was the point of this whole disguise?

“Where do you want to go?” I ended up asking.

“Can we go to a music shop?” Naya said immediately.

“We don’t really have a lot of money to spend on records we can’t play.”

“I just want to look at them.”

There was a music shop two subway stops away, so that’s where we went. I held her hand and guided her gently with my other hand on her back, like a Cupid’s owner would. It felt weird to be touching her so much. She felt like a doll. A giant, softly whirring doll.

I didn’t go to the music shop often because I didn’t have the storage space to collect CDs or records, or the devices to play them. I mostly bought my music digitally. But it might be fun to browse through things in person, to find albums I liked and be able to point them out for Naya.

The shop was playing some old noise metal song over its speakers when we entered, the song tapering out and switching to a long prog rock number as soon as we walked all the way in. It was one of those places that was proud of its history and griminess: genre labels written in marker and fixed with yellowing tape, exposed beams in the ceiling, streaky paint under the layers and layers of concert posters from venues around the city. The “Established” sign by the entrance listed a year from before I was born, which in this city, for this type of shop, was a sign of absolutely massive success. The polar opposite of the shop I worked for, in other words.

“Welcome,” called a guy from the register. “Let us know if you need help finding anything.”

“Thanks!” Naya said. She tightened her grip on my hand. The shop was loud, and fairly crowded for a Tuesday evening. The lights were bright.

I led her over to the Syren section in the back. ApolloCorp’s official record label released special edition vinyls with lots of extra decorations, like colored plastic for the record itself and sparkly covers for the box sets. They were fun to look at, if completely impractical for most enthusiasts. The visual presentation of a Syren release was almost as important as the contents themselves.

“Ooh, the new Hanseul Kim featuring Hana album is out now, look!” I pulled out a pale pink set of CDs in a long, flat box that wouldn’t have been out of place in the K-pop special edition album section next to it. The back of the box had a photo of Hana in a white dress, her long cotton-candy hair floating around her, edited to look like a flat illustration. “I guess he’s trying to do like a cute theme for this album. Looks fun.”

“This one seems interesting,” Naya said, picking up a black box covered in a spot-gloss pattern of lines and circles. “Pepperground: Pepper Sounds? Volume 3?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s his instrumental series. I like it a lot. He uses so many instruments, it’s wild.” Maybe I should learn more instruments. It would probably improve my music.

I picked up the CD and studied the tracklist. If I had a CD player and extra room in my budget, I would seriously consider buying it.

“What’s this?” Naya asked, stopping at a white, wedge-shaped machine with a blue touchscreen and two pairs of headphones dangling off either side.

“Oh, that’s the sampler. If you type in the code on the back of a CD or record you’re interested in, you can listen to the first 30 seconds of any track on it to see if you like it.” I put in the code for Pepper Sounds 3 and put the first pair of headphones on Naya, then put on the second. I skipped to track 5: Gigantomachy, and let the drums and cymbals crash down around us.

“This is interesting,” Naya said softly. “It doesn’t sound like your music at all. But you said you really liked this?”

“I do. I just don’t really want to imitate it, you know?”

“Interesting,” Naya said again.

We spent some time listening to samples of all the tracks on Pepper Sounds 3, and then checked out the Official Lorelei Mix Number 11, and the new Hana album, and the folksy Syren-human duo Neil and Beth, and basically just stayed there until an employee took off my headphones and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a maximum time limit of thirty consecutive minutes at the sampling machine…”

So we left. I didn’t end up buying anything, despite the temptations of Pepper Sounds. The store was about to close up for the night anyway. The sun was setting, and the restaurants in this part of town were filling up for the dinner rush. I could smell them, the different flavors of dozens of cuisines wafting towards us from all directions. My stomach grumbled.

“Do you want to get dinner or something?” I asked. Naya stared at me. I abruptly remembered I wasn’t just hanging out with one of my friends.

“I could sit and watch you get dinner,” she offered.

“Actually, I’m good.” I needed to save money anyway, and I had food at home. So we went back to the subway.

And then my phone buzzed: someone was messaging me.

It was Jax from the Sparkplug. “Hey Dess, great to have you the other night. Are you available again at the end of the month for a 2-hour slot? It'll be later in the evening but we can pay you more for it”

The amount they'd sent me for my half hour set barely covered what I'd spent on getting Naya stage-ready, but if I multiplied that by four for the two hour gig, I could call in sick from work the next day without worrying about the loss of income. Or, since I had more than a few days notice this time, just ask for the day off now. I’d have to text Rhoda about it.

I showed Naya the message. “Oh, that's nice,” she said calmly.

“We get to perform again! Aren't you excited?” I was bouncing slightly on the balls of my feet. Naya appeared to be entirely unmoved.

“I think so.” She tilted her head from side to side. “I guess it's hard to register this event as something that's actually happening, at this moment.”

“Well, I can! It's happening. We're making it happen.” I typed a cheerful yet professional response back to Jax. “And good timing too! With any luck we'll be able to finish this new song in progress and add a few more things to make a full set.”

“Awesome!” Jax sent back. “Oh I forgot to mention: this wouldn't be at the Sparkplug, but at the Quarter Cup, our partner location over in the West End. Smaller space but newer venue, more of an experimental crowd, lot of Syren fans. Are you up for it?”

I hadn’t heard of the Quarter Cup before, and the West End was further away from my apartment than Central, requiring two transfers if I wanted to get there on the subway. But a gig was a gig. I was just excited they wanted me back, honestly. I didn’t fuck up my first Syren gig! They wanted me back!

… They wanted us back!

I looked up into the twinkling lights of the city against the orange haze of the sunset. “They heard us, and they liked us, and they want to hear us again,” I said. “Isn’t that just the most amazing thing that’s ever happened?”

Naya slipped her hand into mine and squeezed, just like a Cupid, or a human girlfriend, might. “Indeed,” was all she said.