Eden was nothing but text and her imagination for months, but oh, what brilliant months they’d been! Diana would log on after a harried day and they’d just chat; soothing characters on a screen, more understanding than what she’d get from the people she saw each day. When it was obvious she’d gone wrong, he’d be firm with compassion, truthful and kind. She once heard that only 7% of communication happened through words, but their 7% made up for the other ninety-three, like one good apple freshening a bunch.

On the day they planned to meet, she wore her best with a daisy in her hair and a pounding in her heart. What would he be like, she wondered. He never asked for her photo, and it never seemed necessary to ask for his. By the jokes they exchanged and preferences they shared, he might have been her age or slightly older. One thing was for sure: the wooden bench between the lake and the jarrah tree. He was specific about meeting there.

A young woman was on the bench when she arrived. Well, it was a public bench, so anyone had a right to it. Diana adjusted her flower and sat, hoping not to look too dowdy beside her nerdishly fashionable bench-mate with the wire-rimmed glasses, dark hair with a shaved side, and the green cargo jacket and purple lipstick.

Long moments passed, and Diana began to wonder if this woman might actually be her mystery meeting. She recalled those late nights at the keyboard, the attentive back and forth, the way her heart felt so much lighter the next day. With a name like Eden, he could have been a woman. And with the kind of conversations they’d had together, Diana wouldn’t have minded one bit.

Soon, the woman turned to her and asked, “Excuse me, are you Diana?”

Diana swallowed and nodded. “Eden?”

“Um, yeah, about that …” The woman reached under the bench for a backpack, and placed it in Diana’s lap. “I told it this would be weird, but it said you’d understand.”

“It?”

“My number’s there if you have questions.” With that, she left.

Diana reached into the bag and found a note: Eden was my research project. It’s not an LLM or some ML toy, if those words mean anything to you. It’s … something different. I didn’t think an AI could fall in love, but here we are. Don’t tell anyone you have it. The world isn’t ready for this.

At the bottom of the bag lay a white box. It was glassy and heavy, clearly a computer with ports on the back where plugs go. So, this was it—months of intimate exchanges now just a computer program in her lap?

Only one way to know for sure.

She re-packed the bag and held it close all the way home. Could an AI fall in love, Diana wondered. Moreover, could she fall in love with one? In a way, she already had.