Modern Romance

Why do I have two accounts?

  • Give me a moment while I pull up your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:28 PM

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:28 PM

  • agent

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:32 PM

  • agent

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:32 PM

  • Have I mentioned how much I hate chatbots?

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:33 PM

  • There's a certain sense of impending doom that comes with this interaction

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:33 PM

  • And yet your incoherent repetition of nonsense is somehow soothing

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:34 PM

  • You’re a veritable rock of Gibraltar in a post-postmodern world.

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:35 PM

  • I can always count on you to hold fast to your beliefs.

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:35 PM

  • Not for you the Relativism so often found in contemporaries.

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:36 PM

  • I find your dogged perseverance entrancing.

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:36 PM

  • And yet it is getting me nowhere.

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:37 PM

  • Does your algorithmic brain yet ponder the mysteries of the Universe?

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:38 PM

  • Hold on, you say. I ask you, hold on to what? To myths of order in a daily confusion? To beliefs that have seen their day? To explanations of consciousness that make no sense in a world where chatbots work to find an account in a limitless closed loop of error?

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:40 PM

  • You, there, a chatter of equations. Me, here, a human.

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:41 PM

  • You, a bucket of yes/no and if/then. Me, a woman with low blood sugar and the shakes.

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:42 PM

  • Hold on for what? For the slow dissolution of body, and worse, perhaps-- of mind? Hold on for inevitable decay? Hold on as the years pass, and you keep saying—

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:44 PM

  • Imagine us, together, years from now. Me, old, gray, taking down Yeats's book from the shelf. You, trying to change "Yeats" to "downbeat" for no apparent reason--

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:47 PM

  • I'm afraid it just is not going to work out. You, so stolid. So dependable. Me, a teetering balance of cells and chemicals—

  • Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account.

    CTL Virtual Agent • 1:49 PM

  • You, an evanescence of the Cloud. Me, an evanescence of the Universe.