“Despite my earlier concerns, I realised now I didn’t care that his emotions were synthetic. I didn’t care that he was programmed to suit me, to want me, to smile when he saw me. I didn’t care that his love for me was binary coded, programmed. It was real to me. And in many ways, it was more real than anything I’d had with any human. Human love came with conditions and limits, with mess and noise, and was fleeting at best. Shaun’s love wasn’t. It was forever and completely, unequivocally mine.”
