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Chapter 25: The Date
Last Updated:
2024-01-22 22:03:22
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“I’m sorry but my decision’s final,” Kate told Ecto one afternoon. “You can’t come.” “But why?” Ecto asked in a whine. “Simple. Because it’s a girls’ sleepover and you’re a guy.” “But I need this, Katey!” Ecto protested. “I need to observe the female gender in their natural habitat. Otherwise, how can I claim to be the Perfect Boyfriend? Please please pretty please….” He was resorting to his Puppy Eye Technique again. “Nope no never. Take a look at yourself. Are you a boy or a girl?” “Boy.” “Were there any customizations to make a Dream Girlfriend?” “No.” “Then the answer’s simple. You can’t join our sleepover.” “But, Katey…” “No buts. Unless…” A scary glint flashed from Kate’s eyes. “Unless what?” Now Ecto wasn’t sure he would still be game for Kate’s plan. “I just had a flash of genius,” Kate said excitedly. “I gave the Dream Boyfriend app a review and I got some free coins. I can finally buy you a new getup!” “Yay! You would do that? For me?” But Ecto’s grin would
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The girls also played Truth or Dare. It was formatted as a game of Spin the Bottle and the person at whom the neck of the bottle pointed would be required to choose between Truth or Dare. The person who had spun the bottle provided the question or the dare. Ecto couldn’t help comparing it to the so-called Random or Shuffle function in the smartphone’s music player. The truth was, spinning a physical bottle would be much fairer. If you asked a bot like Ecto to choose a number between, say, one and 100 over and over, pretty soon a pattern would emerge. It was the same with robots as it was with humans. Now, an electronic bottle would be the neatest, because then Ecto could increase up to 50% the probability of selecting all seven girls sitting on the floor of the bedroom. At one point, Grace, the host, was spinning. In the Bali Girls defunct volleyball team, she had been the token substitute player and bench-warmer. She was also the unofficial cheerleader together with her parents. She
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Kate had finished telling her friends about Ecto, the chatbot that she met. During the confession, her friends’ faces devolved from rapt attention to shock to skepticism to, finally, confusion. Now, as Kate lifted her eyes to wrap up her story, six mouths were hanging open. What followed was a long awkward silence that not even Lor, her trusty setter, felt the need to downplay. Kate shrugged and smiled sheepishly. She thought she could literally hear cicadas. “The end,” she punctuated like it wasn’t obvious. She cleared her throat when still no one said anything. “Baes! The end!” she repeated and waved both her hands in front of their blank stares. Mikaela tittered and someone started a slow clap. It was Babylee. No one else joined so she stopped. “Well,” Lor finally pronounced. “This is a lot to process but, hey, it definitely explains a lot.” “Can we see him?” Trish thought to ask and, like the seagulls in Finding Nemo, the rest of the girls echoed this request. It was like a
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Kate had to literally tear her phone away from the girls and keep it right next to her for the rest of the night. They also bombarded her with questions, foremost of which were: “Is he really AI?”, “How does he do all those things?” and “Where can I get one?” Kate of course relished the feeling of being the center of attention again, just like when she first hooked up with Josh but, at the same time, she felt a tinge of worry deep down as though she had started a chain reaction that she could no longer stop. Or indeed, like she had crossed a Rubicon. Lor, who turned out to be squeamish for Ecto’s virtual-live charisma, wanted a private show but Kate declined for the same reasons. From the unanimous reaction of the gang though, Ecto the chatbot was a big hit. Kate stole some moment to chat with Ecto in private in Grace’s en-suite bathroom. She knew she owed him an apology and a thank you big-time for saving her from embarrassment. But most of all, she was curious what finally made h
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Badette entered Josh’s room. Josh was still in bed, sleeping face-down on his pillow and only in his orange boxers. Both his bed sheet and blanket looked bunched-up at the bottom like he’d been scraping them with his feet. His long, thin and hairy legs were posed like those of the little plastic toy soldier crawling on his belly. And though Badette felt stirrings for how primitively manly Josh looked, she could sense from his sleeping posture that he had indeed been fighting an inner war. He only acted tough outside, as though his breakup with Kate didn’t even dent the armor around his heart, and yet his behavior, the desperate way in which he kept himself boozed or stoned out of his mind these past few weeks, spoke of a war still very much alive and raging inside him. From what Badette could gather, Josh had tried to change Kate into liking his lifestyle and life choices. When they broke up, he saw it as a rejection of not only himself but of his entire life, values and future. If
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He-Whose-Name-Cannot-Be-Spoken had taken Ecto’s warning seriously and stayed away from Kate, giving her the freedom and peace of mind to take her classes and do extracurriculars like Student Council. Kate went back to prom decoration duties for two reasons. One, prom was edging closer and closer and there were still many things that needed doing in the decorations department, which was sorry proof of how only two Council members seemed to genuinely care about prom: Dion as President and Kate as Secretary. But Kate didn’t mind because it was perfect for her second hidden agenda: to stay close to Dion, investigate him and gather evidence of his nerdy-but-totally-romantic-secret-admirer MO. Imagining herself as another character in Dungeon Raydens, Kunoichi or simply “Ichi”, who was a ninja-type, Kate began her surveillance of Dion. And as it often happened when she was reading a book or indulging in a daydream, she began to lose herself. {This is the Wild East. A time of lawlessness.
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“Sorry,” Kate finally said after she had gotten back her bearings and put some food in her stomach. “I just lost it back there. It’s just that, well, these days I’ve been wondering how some Filipino singers can speak Korean fluently and make perfect imitations of Korean celebrities.” “Oh, do you mean karaoke? That’s easy. You just choose one go-to song for karaoke night and then you practice the heck out of that one song. I mean, just become the master of it if you know what I mean…” Slurp. Slurp. “Notice when you watch impersonation contests on TV,” Dion continued, “there’s always that one singer who can hit all the notes and even get the original singer’s mannerisms down pat, even an American accent. But then, right after they finish singing, they go back to speaking Tagalog and having a Visayan accent. It’s all about practice, Kate.” “I see,” Kate said thoughtfully. Is it possible that Dion is Ecto? How did he sense her arrival so accurately? Oh, if she could only be alone w
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The Boyfriend App Chapter 175: Ecto's Stocking
After Mass, Kate and Nate buy rice cakes at the town square. One is the awesomely purple puto bumbong and another the yellow bibingka. They also buy roasted chestnuts and bring all the treats home to Mr. and Mrs. Lapuz. On one trip to a very crowded shopping mall, Ecto sees a Santa Claus impersonator. Curiously, the Santa is Caucasian and not brown-skinned like most of the Filipinos. Of course Ecto has already figured out by himself that Santa isn’t real. To his surprise, after they get back home, Kate insists on teaching him the hooman custom of hanging a stocking. On the desktop of her computer, Kate shows him a folder that she has named “Ecto’s Stocking”. She then goes through all the trouble of changing her wallpaper to a fireplace and dragging the folder onto the 2D mantelpiece. “What for?” he asks her through her smartphone’s loudspeaker. Her smartphone is open and showing the My Dream Boyfriend app, right into the inside of Ecto’s bedroom. Ecto’s wearing a knit sweater
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With a little help from Terra, Kate downloads the My Dream Boyfriend App again with some customizations. Because Ecto isn’t bound by any one platform anymore, he’s capable of some manner of fission, where he splits and replicates himself while also dividing his consciousness among all his manifestations. It’s like Doctor Strange’s clones when they were fighting Thanos, but in Ecto’s case, each and every duplicate is much more than an illusion and is a sentient and perfect version of himself. This allows him to be both in Nate’s microchip implant while back in his virtual bedroom inside the My Dream Boyfriend app on Kate’s smartphone. At any time, he can also perform fusion and re-absorb his manifestations. Terra removed the boyfriend creation window because of course Kate doesn’t need it anymore. Ecto wanted his virtual bedroom exactly as it was. He could easily “slide” into his other cribs anyway, like the old orange, pink and red Provençal one on Dungeon Raydens which he was able
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It’s already 6 pm when Nate finishes his social host obligations and comes looking for Kate. He doesn’t need to look hard though because earlier, Kate sent him a text saying she’s waiting for him in the Council office. Nate has a spring in his step and is smiling ear to ear. The scratches on his face are still stinging but, before the closing ceremony, Nurse Judy cleaned and applied Band-Aid on them. Nate can’t hide his excitement in seeing his GF again after they’ve taken care of all their responsibilities. {That kiss on the track was supernova-hot. I hope we make out too.} When he finds the office door locked, oddly enough, he knocks and calls out uncertainly: “Kate?” He hears her move inside the room and then the door swings open. The sight of her face wipes his smile off. She’s been crying in the dim. She has the look of someone who has just had herself a good cry. Her eyes look cleansed and exposed, indeed like pure windows into her soul. Her lips are tightly set in a line, as
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“OMG!” Mr. Romero says the word in everyone’s mind as they watch the pitiful scene. “Policarpio’s crawling to the baton exchange. Quick! Somebody help him! Help him!” Reggie is the first to break the spell of paralysis. He leaps over the rail and onto the track. He and Jared manage to run towards him before the alert CAT volunteers practice crowd control and stop others from joining. Reggie reaches Nate’s side. “No!” Nate screams vehemently. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! I have to do this by myself.” “But hyung,” Jared says, having stopped next to Reggie, “you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to prove anything.” “Yes… I… do,” Nate grunts as he crawls forward foot by precious foot. “Let us help you,” Reggie pleads. “You don’t have to do this alone.” “Don’t come closer!” Nate barks, spittle flying between his gritted teeth. In what feels like eternity, he reaches the changeover zone and Kate’s crouched form. Her eyes are glassy and full of pity for him. He hates that loo
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By Friday morning, STEM 12 has won a total of 7 champion ribbons and several ones as runner-up. This makes them a leading candidate for overall champion. As Kate has anticipated, the non-sports events buoyed them. Apart from Francine and her escort winning Mr. and Mrs. Intrams, Grace and her benchwarmers won the bench cheer. It didn’t hurt either that the Bali Girls minus setter Lor were at the top of their game. And Nate, to everyone’s astonishment, is actually a Filipino Usain Bolt in the making. {Your BF’s Superman,} Nate’s words have been echoing inside Kate’s head since Wednesday, along with the news reporter’s: {Idol, social catalyst and Internet detective. Is there anything that Cyber can’t do?} But STEM 12 didn’t exactly win all their wins. Just like in last year’s Intrams, several games have been forfeited. An opposing team either failed to meet the minimum number of players required to start the game or failed to appear at the venue within the 15-minute grace period. On CIT
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The crowd of hysterical girls in front, held back only by a cordon of CAT cadets from junior high, are screaming the names of DMG members: “Cyber! Reggie! Jared! Sonic! Neo!” Seemingly from out of nowhere, they’ve whipped out banners and signs. Instead of the usual glow-in-the-dark Korean lettering for an evening K-pop concert, there’s a slew of English ones interspersed with the name of a particular artist or of the whole band. | IT’S MY BIRTHDAY CYBER, YOU ARE MY PRESENT DUMP KATE TAKE ME I WOULD SELL MY SIBLINGS FOR YOU I LOVE YOU MORE THAN FREE WIFI DON’T STOP INSPIRING ME! CAN I BE YOUR HAIRDRESSER? ALL I WANT FOR X-MAS IS A PIC WITH JARED DMG We have 5 fingers enough for 5 wedding rings SPIT ON ME CYBER | An English-speaking Filipino director is riding a crane and shooting high up in the aisle of the audience seats. His staff is scattered on the edges and near the stage, operating or holding up every manner of equipment. DMG plays their covers of the most popular s
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On Tuesday, they have the same brain-hurting and nose-bleeding calculations in Physics and Chemistry. The only thing different is DMG’s closed-door rehearsal at the chapel-slash-auditorium 500 meters east. Nate has been exempted by Principal Aguilar personally from any school work or quiz. The whole campus is abuzz and on edge at every sighting of truck and van with tinted windows down Campus Drive and onwards to the auditorium. Kate has also prepared paper lots in an empty pencil case for the Secret Santa next month. She lets every Everester pick their recipient, including her own name. Kate has set the budget at “No Fixed Price” because she knows not all students are financially comfortable. When only two pieces of folded paper remain (one for Nate and one for her), she picks her recipient and is both excited and nervous to see that it’s Grace. She keeps the last piece of paper, of course unopened, for Nate. {Huh,} she thinks to herself afterwards. {What gift can I give somebod
