Chapter 2

Everyone in the office stared.

Brenda clung to my sleeve, sobbing, tears and snot streaming down her face.

"You gotta go back and see, Richard, that old geezer, he's lost his mind!"

"He won't even let me eat at the table anymore, just makes me eat leftovers every day!"

"He's hoarding all our household money, going to the gas station to buy that robot 98-octane oil to 'drink'!"

My colleagues' gazes swung over, filled with curiosity and shock.

I pushed her hand away, stepped back, and adjusted my cuff.

"Brenda, we have absolutely no connection anymore. You're making quite a scene."

I looked at her calmly.

"If it's that bad, why don't you get an AI companion for yourself?"

"You were the one who shelled out big bucks to buy him in the first place, and you even forced me out of the master bedroom to make space for his charging station."

"Now he's exactly as you wished, taking care of the Richardsons perfectly. What more could you possibly be unsatisfied with?"

Brenda's face turned ashen, her lips trembling, utterly speechless.

"He's a sly fox! A monster!"

She started pounding the floor.

"Richard upgraded him, turned him into a gender-fluid android, and locks himself in with it every night doing those disgusting things."

"Even my daughter, Chloe, calls that robot her husband!"

"My daughter, who I carried for nine months, is now threatening to disown me for a machine!"

She cried hysterically, as if she'd suffered the greatest injustice imaginable.

I just found it amusing.

What was this, magic against magic?

Just then, Brenda's phone buzzed in her purse.

It was Chloe calling.

She scrambled to answer on speaker, as if grasping at a lifeline.

"Chloe, you finally answered your mom's call! Tell him..."

But it wasn't Chloe's voice from the other end. It was that deliberately lowered, mechanical male voice.

"Chloe, our baby's due in three months. I'm still waiting for you to buy oil to nourish our little one."

"Why isn't Brenda home to cook yet? I'm hungry, and my baby's hungry too."

A collective gasp rippled through the office.

Brenda's face went white.

As if stripped of all her tricks, she slapped herself twice, hard.

"What a sin! What have I brought upon myself!"

She crawled over, trying to grab my pant leg, her voice dripping with self-righteous blame.

"Did you hear that? That machine is even 'having' a baby!"

"You're Chloe's husband! Come back with me, show that sly fox who the real man is, and smash him!"

"Just come back, and I'll never make you do chores again!"

"I'll never stir up trouble again!"

Faced with such an utterly absurd scene, I felt nothing.

I simply walked around her, picked up the desk phone, and dialed security downstairs.

"Hello, security? Seventh floor, R&D department. There's an unauthorized person causing a disturbance here. Please come escort them out."