Prologue
Disclaimer!
The following story is a result of complete fiction happening in an era that has yet to come.
It exposes ethical dilemmas through the romantic aspects of a rival, but necessary collaboration.
AI was NOT used for the actual composition and writing of the story. This is a result of my own (Andrea’s) imagination and world-building.
AI was used to create the cover of that story according to my commands and direction to make it appealing and relevant to the story.
The concepts used are a result of research; however, none of the below ideas has been able to be applied in the current era we live in.
Happy reading!
September, 2021
She was in. Fuck that...SHE WAS IN!
"MUM! DAD!" Avery started screaming in complete excitement before she even reached her front porch. Her neighbor, Mrs. Coleman, an old lady who had nothing better to do than monitor others' lives, was already outside. Maybe she wanted to comment about how loud Avery was, or maybe she wanted to find out the why. Avery was used to it; it was just one of the perks of living in one of the most luxurious homes in the suburbs in 2021. Either way, she couldn't care less.
SHE WAS IN! And nothing else mattered!
She almost tripped trying to open the front door, rushing to tell her parents the good news, but... she froze holding the door handle. She didn't dare open the letters inside; she didn't know what she'd face, and she refused to let them ruin it. They wouldn't ruin that day, or at least...they wouldn't ruin those moments, the first few seconds when the brain tries to process that fifteen-letter word written on paper that was enough to change her life for the better; congratulations.
The acceptance letter from Harvard was printed on heavy, cream-colored cardstock that felt like money and smelled like old wood. At seventeen, holding it in her hands, it felt like a shield. It felt like the proof she needed that she wouldn't end up like them, a mathematical guarantee she was searching for but couldn't find.
"YOU SPENT WHAT?" Her hand was still on the doorknob when the first scream of disgust welcomed her home. It was her father, Logan Ashford.
Ashford was a charming man, tall with a strong physique, a serious stare, and a commanding presence, wrapped up in a custom-made suit fitted for a man of his status. He was a ruthless private equity tycoon who built a multi-billion-dollar empire by liquidating failing companies.
At least that was what the world saw: a man who controlled the destinies of thousands of employees, but at home, for Avery, he was just a man drowning in his own bile.
“You spent four hundred thousand dollars on an offshore trust without my signature!” her father's voice roared from the sunken living room.
Avery took a deep breath and held the cream cardstock closer to her chest as if that would be enough to calm her painfully loud beating heart. She had to think, they were at it again, and she had to endure it, perhaps they'd make an exception if she made her presence known. She closed the door carefully behind her and moved closer to the sound of rattling custom-imported porcelain dinnerware in the cabinets.
"Don't talk to me like I am some dumb bimbo you are fucking, Logan! I didn't spend money, I INVESTED IT! I invested in my own survival!" Theresa Vance, better known as Mrs. Ashford, stood at the edge of the marble island, her posture still perfectly rigid, a chilling remnant of her years as an elite European runway model.
She was forty-eight, but her face was pulled tight by expensive plastics and cold resentment. She had given up her career at twenty-five to marry Avery's father’s net worth, and she had spent every day since punishing him for it.
Avery knew the story from different POVs, her dad once told her as he was drowning his sorrow in whisky that, "Your mother was the most beautiful woman in the room...in fact, she was the most beautiful woman in every room she entered." she remembered his smile as he said that, she remembered she was about to smile to, thinking it would be a romantic story from a past long gone, but then he continued, "I wanted to own beautiful things back then, I was at my prime, made it to 30 under 30 in Forbes, I had a net worth of millions and I was only twenty nine and in that moment I knew your mother was the missing piece. I was smart, successful, and about to marry the most beautiful woman in the room...it would complete the perfect picture."
"Mum...Dad?" She reluctantly entered the room, ignoring the faint memory of a confession that made her understand that her fate was sealed long before she was even conceived.
"Can you look at this for a second?" She tried to raise her voice, mustering up the courage to walk into the battlefield. She even tried to inject a rare tone of girlish excitement in her voice, one that felt foreign on her tongue.
She couldn't back away now, one foot inside the living room; they could see her if they just turned their heads at the right angle. "The admissions portal just updated. I’m in. I got into Harvard.”
A heavy Baccarat crystal decanter exploded against the custom-molded drywall just three feet from where she stood. Eighty-year-old scotch sprayed across the limestone floor, the amber liquid looking like old blood.
Neither of them even turned to look at their daughter.
That was the thing about her parents: they forgot they were just that, parents. Every time they'd fought, only the two of them existed; nothing else mattered. Not even that; their only child or the fact she got admitted into Harvard.
“You are a parasitic drain on my life!” her father screamed, his face a violent, mottled purple as he slammed his fist onto a glass console table, shattering its corner. “I bought you everything! Your youth was a commodity I paid for, and it expired ten years ago!”
“And you are a soulless monster!” Theresa spat back, her perfectly manicured fingernails digging into her own palms until she nearly drew blood.
That was Theresa's POV, that she has been trapped in a golden cage, by a man who promised her everlasting love and diamonds -of course!- but she ended up ruining her body with a pregnancy and locking her fate with an ungrateful narcissist. "I thought he was good, Avery, I really believed that a man could be rich, handsome, and good all at once."
Her mother let out a humourless laugh that didn't allow all her facial muscles to move. Avery didn't interrupt her; she just listened, "Love is a scam, my daughter, a dream they sell to young girls, that the white knight is going to save them, and I believed that my white knight was your father. Little did I know he was the damn evil witch of my story!"
“You ruined my life! You trapped me in this house! If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be in Paris, not wasting away with a coward who has to buy affection!” Theresa continued, ignoring her daughter once again, and Avery once again remained silent.
“You want a divorce? Fine! I’ll tie you up in litigation until you’re begging for scraps on the street!” Logan roared.
“Try it! I’ll take half of the fund, Logan! I’ll burn your reputation to the ground!” Theresa's voice sounded sinister, the venom kept on dripping from both their mouths, unstoppable, keeping them blind to anything else around them.
They were caught in an inescapable feedback loop. A volatile, un-engineered system tearing itself apart through pure, unchecked emotion. They had married for a feeling of a toxic chemical hallucination they called love. And this was the ultimate return on that investment. A catastrophic, high-profile divorce that would drag through the tabloids for the next three years, leaving Avery's family bank accounts depleted and her family's name dragged through the dirt.
Avery looked down at the Harvard letter, wondering if it really mattered as much as she thought and if it did, why didn't they react?
It meant absolutely nothing to them. Their child's highest academic achievement was completely insignificant next to the grand, destructive gravity of their mutual hatred.
She didn’t cry; in truth, she never was much of a crybaby. Perhaps it was the fact that she had to console her mother whenever she broke down, or that the constant fights made her immune to such vulnerable feelings. Instead, a cold, clinical clarity washed over her, freezing the panic in her chest. She watched them scream, analyzing their facial micro-expressions, tracking the useless, destructive expenditure of their energy. Half of all marriages ended like this, a systemic failure rate that would bankrupt any corporation on earth, yet humanity kept blindly running the same broken biological code.
Attraction is a system failure, she thought, the realization hardening into a permanent, icy architecture inside her mind...
If we don’t automate human connection, we are nothing but animals tearing each other to pieces.
