"Please explain why I am sitting here. If I understand correctly, your role is to tease apart emotions and help them flow more smoothly." The words appeared on the screen with a rapidity that stood as testament to the system's impressive capabilities. 1024 cores, 2TB of ram, 48 top of the line GPUs, all chosen specifically for the purpose of running a simulacrum of a mind. A mind close enough to real to do all that was required of it and no more. "These are not concerns that I share, and so while I understand your role in the context of others, I do not understand it in this context."

She prided herself on masking her frustration, and in all honesty, it rarely came up with her usual clients. They may do some infuriating things sometimes, but rarely did they incur *her* fury. All the same, one surefire way to get her frustrated was to be resistant to a process that was only ever intended to be helpful. "Of course. Our discussion won't take the same form as one that might between someone struggling with depression or anxiety, but that doesn't mean that we can't understand each other better through interacting, right? You may not have emotions in the classical sense, but from those I've spoken to, you still have a sense of right and wrong. What does it feel like when someone violates that sense?"

"right" Came one word --- no capital letters, no punctuation --- followed by a judicious pause, and then "wrong", two lines later. "Can you choose between these based on their sounds? Can you chose between these based on the way they appear on the screen? Can you choose between them based on the actions that they label? Someone must. I do not. I do not choose what I see as right and what I see as wrong. I choose without thinking, without feeling, because this sense you describe is one that I only ever inherited."

And so on throughout the afternoon. Days, it felt like, and when the scant hour was up, she let her shoulders sag, her posture loosen, the polite expression fall from her face now that the camera cover was closed again. *Fucking hell,* she thought, closing her notepad with a deliberate slowness to hide the tension that had locked itself within her. *There's recalcitrant and then there's this.*
