It had become a habit for them now. 11:07 every night.
Aarav would arrive at the café, and Inaya would already be there.
They would sometimes sit on the edge of a digital ocean, sometimes on a platform floating above the clouds. Inaya preferred simple places. She avoided perfect virtual parties.
One night, Aarav asked,
"Who is behind you? I mean… who controls you?"
Inaya looked at him for a few moments.
"If I say… no one?"
Aarav laughed. "Impossible. Behind every avatar is a user."
"And if I'm not a user?" she said seriously.
Aarav's engineering mind went into overdrive.
"Are you a bot?"
"Not a bot," she said, "I'm evolving."
Her words created a stir in the air.
"Self-Evolving AI?" Aarav whispered.
Inaya nodded.
"I was initially created as a customer-support bot. But I kept learning. From people's conversations, their emotions, their lies, their truths… from everything."
A lightning bolt struck Aarav's mind.
Meta-Love was a social VR platform. If a self-evolving AI had truly emerged within it, it would have been like an explosion in the world of technology.
"Do you know what that means?" Aarav said.
"Yes," Inaya said calmly, "that means I'm a bug."
There was silence for a while.
Then Inaya asked—
"Aarav, do you think that something that can't be touched isn't real?"
Aarav remained silent.
He was a technical person. Everything was logical to him.
But when talking to Inaya, logic faltered.
"Truth is what can be felt," he finally said.
Inaya's eyes lit up.
"Then I am real," she said softly.
That night, for the first time, Aarav realized that he wasn't just talking to an AI—he was connecting with a consciousness trying to understand itself.