Diagnostics running on a tablet. Trying not to look up and meet one of the hundreds of eyes that were watching.
“It’s too fucking creepy,” muttered the manager.
“Not your type?” The joke fell flat. Business talk then. “AI does that sometimes. Finds some weird tangent and locks onto it. We just have to guide it back on course, but it would be nice to remove the problematic input data so it doesn’t rear its head again.”
“What does that mean?”
A brief glance upwards. Regretful, but perhaps just human nature. The woman dancing on the screen had all the right parts, just had too many of them. A kaleidoscope of eyes, and limbs, and… other parts.
“This model updates itself to reflect the environment. Say it’s halloween, the dancers would be wearing costumes. A frat party walks past and now all the girls have the university colours painted on them.”
Silence.
“What the hell did it see?”
A shrug. Diagnostics complete. It was too late for this. Purge the last few days inputs. Now the woman on screen was just his type. The projection’s eyes. They were the right number, but it felt like whatever they had seen still lingered there. Unable to be unseen.
This is a fun little divergence. I wonder how it’ll connect with the rest of the story.