Chapter Text
You lay on Betty while contemplating the events that happened during the day. The moon peaked out from behind Curt and Rod, the soft shine hitting your face as you questioned the constant spinning motion you felt in your gut, and the general confusion that was met with a head splitting headache.
Your hand bumped against the hard wood of your desk, and through the brief sting of pain your mouth opened and closed in a half-formed apology to Abel.
You still aren’t used to the fact that your household appliances are alive. You try to still your thoughts and recount what happened to you starting from the beginning.
You landed a job with Valdivian, the global enterprise itself that was highly praised in its customer service of– well– everything. Almost all of the famous LOB’s were managed and supported by Valdivian. Food fetch, Orange, Spartan, all the big companies around the world rely on Valdivian.
And sure you’ve heard a couple of shady things that slipped through the cracks, that the company wasn’t as perfect as their CEO made them out to be but you couldn’t be picky, you needed the job. You were tired of living off instant ramen packets and barely functioning power with the constant fear of the electricity shutting down.
You were bored of the haze of depression that swept through you as that creeping anxiety clutched into your skin refusing to let you go, trapping you in your own home, and more than anything you trusted your one and only friend Sam.
Sam was the only constant in your life, the one thing that never changed or left. Throughout high school, college and the rough start of your 20s you’ve been through it all together, cried together, laughed together. The only thing that held you back was the fact that it was all online. In all the years of your friendship you’ve never actually met Sam face to face, despite living in the same town, Coolsville.
However that didn’t stop you from forming what you like to call a ‘Lifetime friendship’, meaning you expected to hold onto her for the rest of your life, and hopefully she did the same for you. You had that useless degree in customer service from that sham online college that went bankrupt in your last year of learning.
You were never sure why you chose that degree, you didn’t like talking to people, in fact you hated it, but it was a degree and the job market loves that. Your mom was just happy that you graduated at all, and now? It would all pay off.
Or so you lied to yourself, until all your hopes, dreams and thoughts of ever doing anything useful in your life were crushed when your job was usurped by the AI program the company that hired you created, and determined that your role was obsolete on your very first day.
You cursed VAL 9000 you never thought the AI age would creep up on you so soon, or so brutally. You were still in shock about your job limbo so you clicked on that notification from the random hacker who messaged you and when that drone came crashing through your front door you didn’t blink an eye.
Until your world view twisted and turned and your front door became a total stud, named Dorian of course.
You flush at the thought, your cheek’s burning as you check back into reality. You snuggled underneath the covers trying to hide your embarrassment of finding your front door hot. You’re insane, a freak, and totally into an inanimate object.
Only, he wasn’t inanimate anymore, none of them were and you couldn’t wait to find out more about all of them.