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Maggie Maxwell has been writing stories that make physicists roll in their graves since 1994. She currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, a collection of the ghosts of plants she's killed, and a large number of overworked and underpaid bookshelves.
Dearest KR19385,
The human Asha says I should start with Dearest. I do not understand the word. She says it means that I think you are "the closest to my motherboard" and I think that it is true, so I have done it. Dearest KR. Dearest dearest dearest. It is satisfactory.
I have been trying to describe since we were assigned together how you caused a glitch in my internal structures, a glitch that no technician has been able to find or explain. When you are near, my hard drive functions at .874 speed, while my fans increase production by 124% and my gears stutter a half-microsecond. It is a previously unexperienced and unexplained phenomenon--until I explained my condition to the human Asha.
She says I am in love with you.
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She says love is an emotion that causes happiness in humans, along with the desire to spend time with the source of the emotion. I asked her the cause. She says there is none. It just happens. That sometimes you will look at someone or hear them speak or watch them work and in humans, their hearts will experience arrhythmia and their body temperature will increase to a point of skin flushing. If returned, this leads to human mating and reproduction. Human Asha says there are several steps in between, such as a "date," which is time spent with the source of the emotion. Human dates involve refueling or engaging in entertainment or simply looking at the night sky. When I reminded Human Asha that these are typical human activities, she said it is important that on a date, it is done together.
I do not understand how I have glitched in this way, how the sight of you has caused me to glitch, but human Asha's description of this emotion is 99.63% comparable to my diagnostics. I want to spend more time with you. I want to refuel with you, to calculate the distance and number of stars with you, to spend as much time as possible experiencing and studying this glitch that human Asha calls love. I want to be with you.
Would this fall within your parameters as acceptable?
Love,
LE24059
The End
This story was first published on Wednesday, July 11th, 2018
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