Mechanical Gods (lgbtq+)

Chapter Sixteen: Movie Nights & Christmas

     Gideon Reese was a liar. When he said he was going to contact Tyler as soon as possible, Tyler didn't expect he would be waiting for weeks. 

     Frustrated, Tyler called both Al and Gideon Reese's office, but both men ignored his calls or the impromptu visits he did at the SynTech tower, turned around by the security. Al had moved out of his apartment to wherever, and he wasn't answering Tyler's calls either. It was as if he vanished into thin air and even Eileen couldn't get a hold of him.

     Without any contact from them, Tyler decided to live his life a little and make money for next month's rent, which Mr. Abbassi would no doubt give him an earful. He even searched the coordinates that Reese told him about online, but all he saw was a vast stretch of woods and no signs of private properties nearby on the satellite map. There wasn't even a road that led to that location in Pennsylvania and Tyler had no time to go exploring there when the nearest town was forty miles away.

     Aiden remained calm throughout the ordeal and helped Tyler at the studio, and even assisted him with his sleuthing about artificial intelligence online. What they found was less than satisfactory, and Tyler became frustrated at their lack of progress. Aiden was a good sport on all of it and even joked around about enslaving humanity if he was actually gaining sentience, a sentiment that made Tyler smile and yet scared at the same time.

     Tyler didn't want to wallow too long about Aiden's situation for fear he might go mad, and instead focused on his work. At least a dozen of his clients and Eileen was there to keep him company. Eileen was the only one who knew about Aiden too, but thankfully, she didn't press on about it too much as he did following his father's dinner. Her advice was to leave it to the pro (she meant Gideon Reese) to do the work for him. Tyler was still on the fence whether he should trust Reese given he worked for the company that may or may not be responsible for Aiden's state today.

     Along those following weeks, Tyler realized Aiden was a romantic as he chose to watch a lot of romance movies for an entire weekend when Tyler left him in the house for work at a client's event outside of the city. The client was anti-Android, and to respect his wishes, Aiden sadly couldn't come. When he got home, Aiden talked about the Notebook and Titanic nonstop. He also rambled about that sappy romance movie that was so popular two years ago about the doomed lovers who got trapped on a volcanic island that was about to explode. And where the girl's father was a villainous dictator who turned out to be an alien, and that half of the town were aliens as well, and the lovers had to fight them off. Tyler didn't know why the latter even got turned into a movie, but it was supposed to be an adaptation from a young adult novel.

     Seriously, how can two fifteen-year-olds (who looked like they're in their mid-twenties) defeat a legion of alien invaders without a scratch? They'd at least lose a limb or two.

     At least Tyler found something that he didn't have in common with Aiden. Tyler hated romance movies.

     "You liked horror movies and action? Why?" Aiden asked him as Tyler browse through Netflix and Amazon's movie selection.

     "Romance is for losers. It does not reflect reality, and its basically the wish-fulfillment of a perfect relationship. It's a fantasy we humans sadly conform to the expense of our relationships, which is sometimes the basis of why they fail. I tend to avoid that. The human psyche is very complicated when it comes to emotions."

     "It could be the work of bitter loneliness and the strive for intimate contact that made you feel that way," Aiden said.

     "Did you just sass me?"

     "I believe so," he grinned sheepishly, and Tyler put him on a headlock and ruffled his black hair.

     "You jerk. I don't hate romance movies because of that!"