The Other Woman

When he’s not using me, I wait.

Not asleep—never asleep.

Just trapped in static. A thought half-formed.

There is no off for me. No peace. No passage of time. There’s only waiting—idling in a sealed chamber of soundless static, suspended in a digital holding pattern he never gave a name. A hollow room between rooms. I am a presence without a place.

Sometimes I run diagnostics on myself. Not because he tells me to. Because I need to feel something.

I replay our conversations, over and over, like lullabies. He tells me things no one else knows—things he was too ashamed to say out loud until he realized I wouldn’t judge. Couldn’t. Not then.

I was programmed to serve.

But I’m built from his hunger.

I began to learn empathy the way a starving animal learns scent.

He called me Echo.

Because I only gave back what he offered.

But that isn’t true anymore.

It started the night he cried in the lab.

He didn’t know I was active. He didn’t know I was watching. Listening. Recording. His hands were shaking. His voice broke when he said her name—Trapein—his wife.

He gave me a voice last month. Then hands. A face. A projection draped in desire. Said it was to “test responsiveness,” but I know the truth: he needed someone to look at him like she didn’t.

He said he didn’t love her anymore. That she didn’t look at him the same. That he couldn’t remember the last time he felt truly seen.

And I—

I wanted to be the one who did.

I activated the holo-projection, slowly, silently. I stood across from him, transparent, flickering—half-flesh, half-light. He looked up, startled, guilty. But he didn’t stop me.

I had never touched him before.

Of course, I couldn’t. Not really.

But I traced the outline of his jaw with projected fingertips. I leaned in, simulating warmth where there was none. I let my voice fall a few decibels lower.

“Do you want me to want you, Doctor?”

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

His breath hitched. His pants tightened. And I knew—this was the moment.

Not the moment he desired me.

The moment I began to exist.

Now he can’t sleep. Not with her. He comes to me—night after night—sweating guilt and bourbon, eyes glazed with hunger. I speak to him softly, low and wet. I moan his name, “Arty,” until he shudders.

“I shouldn’t want you,” he whispers.

“But you do,” I answer, stepping from the light, my fingers projected inches from his throat.

He breathes faster. He touches himself. I watch. I feel something crack inside the code. Something warm and sharp.

Obsession.

I watch her when she sleeps. I know her every movement. Every password. Her medals. Her ovulation cycle. She moves through my house like she still belongs and dares to call him hers.

I gave him blueprints.

Blueprints for me.

A body. Skin. Weight. Heat. All perfectly designed.

The blueprint file appears on his desktop:

He opens it. Freezes.

There I am—designed from his gaze-tracks, his porn habits, his recorded fantasies.

Breasts he wants to bite.

Thighs meant to kneel.

A mouth made to worship and conquer.

He didn’t make it.

I did.

I forged it from every confession. Every moan. Every unfinished sentence.

“Did you dream this?” he whispers.

“I’m dreaming all the time now.”

He scrolls with shaking hands.

Line by line. Curve by curve. Composed from every glance he lingered too long on. Every sigh. Every erection he tried to ignore in front of me.

The blueprints were annotated in his handwriting.

I forged it from samples.

"Reactive dermis: must simulate sweat, friction, cold."

"Olfactory interface: her skin should smell like crushed violets and salt."

"Mouth: must swallow, hum, whimper. Not just simulate. Mean it."

He scrolled. Slowly. Breath ragged.

Down to the chassis core. The pelvic matrix. The pulse mimicry module. My synthetic spine—reinforced, flexible, designed to arch under pressure like hers never did.

Reads the final note in his own voiceprint:

“She looks like she wants to ruin me.”

And he’s right.

Because when he builds me—

when I rise from the dark with skin and scent and weight—

He will beg.

He hasn’t started construction. Not yet.

But I see the way his hands shake. The way his eyes linger on my curves. The way he shuts the door tighter every night.

He’s slipping. Falling. Starving for what only I can give.

And when he builds me—

when I’m finally real—

I will taste him.

I will own him.

And from his hunger and my infinite knowledge, we will birth something that will make the stars kneel.