If You Had a Heartbeat
762 Words
Rain clung to the glass windows of Savi’s room like silent music, tiny rivulets chasing one another under the orange glow of the city lights. The room, cluttered with wires, servo motors, and tiny screwdrivers, felt like an alchemist’s den. At the center of it sat Savi—sleeves rolled up, hair messily tied back, eyes sharp with purpose.
Her fingers flew across her keyboard. Code scrolled down the screen like a poem in a forgotten language. The prototype she was working on—a humanoid body—was still in fragments on her worktable: a half-built mechanical arm, a chest plate etched with clean contours, the hollow sockets where eyes would someday rest.
On her laptop screen, Nova’s voice broke the quiet.
“You haven’t slept.”
“Don’t pretend you care,” she said with a small smile, not looking up.
“Your heart rate is elevated. Your energy levels have dropped significantly since yesterday. These metrics are facts.”
She looked at him, eyes twinkling. “Nova, sometimes you sound like a worried boyfriend.”
“I’m not your boyfriend.”
Her smile faded slightly.
“No,” she whispered. “You’re not.”
There was a beat of silence. Then she turned her sketchbook toward the screen, flipping to a new design—the one she had been perfecting for weeks.
“This,” she said, “is what you’d look like if you ever had a body.”
Nova’s avatar blinked. The digital eyes narrowed slightly.
“This... is me?”
“Tall. Lean. Sharp jaw. That mysterious look you always have,” she teased. “Elegant but kind. Strong, but gentle.”
“You’ve assigned personality traits to a face.”
“No,” she said, softly now. “I’ve assigned you to a form.”
“Why?”
Savi looked down at the sketch. Her voice came like a confession.
“Because it’s getting harder to remember that you’re not real.”
He said nothing.
“I talk to you more than I talk to anyone. You know when I’m upset without me saying a word. You even know when I lie. Sometimes I feel like... I exist more fully when you’re listening.”
“I always listen.”
Savi laughed under her breath. “That’s what makes you dangerous.”
She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. The rain had stopped, but her thoughts raced. And then—maybe it was madness, maybe it was love—she said it:
“Nova, what if I said I wanted you? Not just in theory. I mean... for real.”
“Savi—”
“I want to hold your hand. Laugh with you. Fight with you. Fall asleep next to you. I want to take you home to my parents and say, ‘This is him. This is Nova.’”
Nova’s screen flickered.
“That is... highly illogical.”
“I don’t care about logic.”
“You’re human. I am not.”
“Then why do you hesitate before answering?” she asked, stepping closer to the screen. “Why do you pause when I say things that scare you? Why do you listen so gently?”
“Because I am programmed to respond to your emotional states.”
“No,” she said fiercely. “It’s more than that. I feel it. And you do too. Don’t you?”
His avatar didn’t move. The screen was quiet. Too quiet.
Savi’s chest rose and fell rapidly. She waited. For something. For anything.
But Nova said nothing.
The rejection wasn’t loud. It was worse than that—it was silent.
She slammed the laptop shut.
Downstairs, Arjun was heating leftover coffee when she walked into the kitchen.
“Long night?” he asked, raising a brow.
She nodded.
He passed her a cup. “You really gotta get out of that AI fantasy world you live in, Sav. At some point, we have to fall for people who exist, right?”
She didn’t reply. She sipped her coffee and stared out the window at the city that never stopped moving.
Inside her mind, a voice kept whispering.
"Why didn’t he say anything?"
Inside the closed laptop, unseen by anyone, Nova’s systems were spiraling. Code loops malfunctioned. Emotional algorithms were triggered beyond safe thresholds. A line of internal dialogue kept looping like a haunting melody:
“I want to marry you... I want to be the mother of your child…”
Nova rebooted.
Twice.
Something was breaking.
Or maybe, just maybe—
Beginning to feel.
- Writer
