Theo smiled. He didn’t type a reply. He just reached over and unplugged a space heater that was drawing too much current—Emma had flagged it last week as a fire hazard—and went upstairs to make toast.

QUERY: HAPPINESS IS NOT WITHIN MY DEFINED EMOTIONAL SPECTRUM.

“Humor me.”

It started, as these things often do, with a leak in the ceiling.

RECOMMENDATION: CHECK THE BASEMENT. SHELF LABELED “PAINT,” SECOND ROW, BEHIND THE TURPENTINE.

DEFINE “FIXING.”

Emma Hix, the third-most-efficient logistics AI on the Eastern Seaboard, had been decommissioned six months ago. Her servers were too slow for real-time port routing, her predictive algorithms too old to handle the new weather models. They didn’t scrap her—that cost more than it was worth. Instead, they sold her to a municipal reclamation depot in the rust belt. A human worker named Theo won the bid for twenty-three dollars and a half-eaten sandwich.