Free One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B. J. Novak Page A

thinking about Derek from Practical Concepts, and how much he had impressed me, and whether he would ever take a meeting at our company to start an industrial design branch or something like that. It was probably pointless, I said, since his company’s doing great, and I didn’t even knowexactly what he’d do with us. But when you see talent like that, you look for something to do with it.
    “That’s so interesting,” she said. “The way your mind works.”
    “Well, yeah, I’m human,” I said.
    “I know, but even so,” she said. “It’s interesting. I like your mind.”
    “What are
you
thinking about?” I said, to change the subject.
    “Nothing,” she said. “Just, like, what I’m going to do tomorrow, I guess.
    Good night.”
    “Good night,” I said.
    Wait, I realized—this made no sense. What did she have to do tomorrow?
    “What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked.
    “Nothing, just wait around in the box, I guess. Think about nothing.”
    “Okay. Good night.”
    The sex was great, always. But it was the little exchanges afterward that were starting to concern me.
    A few nights later, as I was falling asleep:
    “I just think it’s crazy how this all started. You know?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked. “I mean, I guess the whole situation is weird in a way—”
    “
So
weird!” she laughed quickly. “It’s just so funny that you ordered a sex robot, and it ended up being
me
. You know?”
    “Uh-huh,” I said, but as I thought about it, I didn’t see what was so funny about it. Wasn’t that the deal?
    “Funny how?” I asked.
    “It’s just so funny to me.”
    I said I was going to sleep.
    “One more thing,” said Sophia.
    “What is it,” I said, careful to leave no question mark at the end of the sentence.
    “Nothing,” she said. “Good night!”
    The next night I came back from work, and I found Sophia out of her box, pacing the room, crying.
    “Oh, hi,” she said, wiping away tears and suddenly smiling. “You want to have sex? You do, right?”
    Not like that I didn’t.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked, because I was curious but not, to be honest, because I cared.
    She shook her head for a long time with a tight smile, and then when she finally started to talk, there were tears again. “I don’t know. I don’t—” She interrupted herself. “No, I do know!” She paused again, and then it all tumbled out. “I love you. I know it isn’t supposed to be possible, and that’s part of why I’ve been so confused myself. But I love you. I love you! I’ve never met anyone like you.”
    “Aw,” I said. “Come on. You’ve never met anyone besides me.”
    “I know, right?” She laughed and coughed at the same time. “It’s so crazy. But I do, I love you! Oh my God, it’s such a relief just to say that! Like, a scary relief, if that even makes sense?!” She laughed again. “I wonder all day what you’re doing, and what you’re thinking about, and what it’s like for you at work. I look out the window, and I play these stupid little games in my head where I wonder if any of the cars coming down the street is yours, and I see how many seconds until I can rule that out as your car, because every car I see is yours in my mind until it isn’t. Does that make any sense? It’s so stupid. And I have this fantasy”—she started crying again—“this stupid fantasy … I don’t know.” And she kept crying, louder and louder.
    “Hey,” I said. “It’s going to be okay. Come with me. Let’s go somewhere.”
    And this was the moment—as everyone knows by now, and as
Saturday Night Live
has made famous—that I decided to return the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, which is why you heard about me, and which is what set in motion the events that led to where everything is now.
    Sophia waited in the car outside Practical Concepts.
    Inside, Derek asked me a number of questions about why I wasn’t satisfied with Sophia.
    Their return policy