“Are you sure about this?” I said. Looking down at a pair of mostly impassive, glittering, red-eyes.

“Mhm, probably not, but you'd be surprised how often that’s failed to stop me,” said Maci.

“Wait, one second. I’m sorry, I think I’ve gotten a bit lost. Are we talking about the whole, refining the more broken worlds we receive and using them to feed the channels in Uhrwerk, thing, or are we talking about the, you becoming my girlfriend, thing,” I said.

Maci shrugged. Her pale shoulders rising and falling, her palms turned towards the sky.

“I’m honestly not even sure anymore. Both? Yeah, let’s say both,” said Maci. Nodding at the end as if agreeing with herself.

“R-, Really?” I said. My brow furrowing in the face of the fae-woman’s irreverent attitude.

She smiled. The expression was a small thing but its effect on her doll-like features was dramatic. I felt myself growing slightly weak at the knees. I turned my attention elsewhere and tried to focus on the task at hand. Watching as my new reality cauldron swallowed an entire universe. Pulling an entire reality into a swirling, funnel, of multi-colored light.

The reality refinement console was good at digitizing universes, but we’d found that a certain percentage of the world’s essence was lost during the process. It wasn’t a major issue but there was evidence that inefficiency of the conversion process created errors in a world’s internal logic that popped up later down the line.

Right now our Division of Cosmic Artifice was doing well enough in its operation of Uhrwerk that we had the leeway to work on the issue of improving the conversion process. The Reality Refinement Cauldron I’d created was one potential solution to the issue.

First, it was meant to convert worlds to a digitized form with less waste and less errors. Second, we were hoping to see if we could supplement the small amount of waste and errors that were generated by the cauldrons conversion of a reality by refining worlds too broken to save into a type of healing paste or glue, that the worlds that could be saved would use to repair themselves.

“...And it seems that we’ve created some kind of hundred-headed, thousand phallused monster…” said Maci. Sounding just as bored as usual as she watched the newborn abomination emerge into being and immediately go on a rampage.

“Really? Fuck! That’s the third time today...Also, why so many dicks and vaginas per monster?!... Fucking trog universes, I swear. Alright, that’s it...That’s it. We’re scrapping the cauldrons. They’re clearly preserving too much of the original universes corrupted data during the conversion process,” I snapped. Immediately, sending a mental command to the FC-units I had working with us in the lab, to have them shut the whole operation down.

“So, are we doing this thing or not?” said Maci. Interrupting my train of thought while I furiously tried to see where I’d gone wrong with my calculations.

“Huh?”

“Me being your girlfriend? What do you say?” said Maci.

“Oh...that,” I said. My tone flat.

It was funny how quickly one could forget about things that one didn’t know how to handle. Since that second time, she surprised me by showing up for a date in that little Italian restaurant, Maci and I had been seeing each other consistently for roughly a year.

I’m not sure if one can call our progress slow or fast, because the pacing for immortal courtships was all over the place, but today as we were in the middle of doing a trial for the world-cauldron, she asked if I wanted to properly become her boyfriend.

Even now I was slightly perplexed.

“Can...Can you just run me through this one more time? You’re saying you don’t mind being with me?” I said.

“Yeah? Why would I mind? You’ve been fairly decent on our dates. You’ve been exemplary as a friend and a co-worker. And you’re not hideous, if you’ll allow the understatement,” said Maci.

“Mhn...Er, well, I too have found you to be a great conversationalist, you’ve got this enjoyable dry sense of wit. You’re a reliable assistant and have proven very competent concerning the handling of the clockwork world. You’ve...well, you’ve been a really great friend all this time. Also, you are indeed quite fetching as well, so I suppose I wouldn’t mind turning the thing we’ve been doing over the past few months into a permanent affair. I’m just a little surprised. You can be pretty hard to read sometimes, believe it or not. And I wasn’t entirely sure how serious you wanted me to take this whole relationship of ours,” I said.

“Well,...I guess that makes two of us, who may, or may not, have been taken by surprise by this decision. I originally didn’t think I’d start taking this thing we’ve been doing so seriously, but here we are still hanging out, even though my mother has long grown bored of meddling with my sex life and gone off to do her own thing. I’m...not sure if I’m ready to bring out the L-word but I think spending time with you has been pretty nice and I wouldn’t mind doing more of it, for a century or two,” said Maci. Frowning a little. Her pale cheeks having seemingly turned an incandescent red.

“....” I didn’t know what to say to that. So I just bashfully chuckled.

“Look there’s no need to mushy about this, and we both know you’re not the wishy-washy type. Neither of us was raised in a monogamous household and Margot’s already given me her blessing...Meaning all the expectations have always been pretty plain-faced. So honestly, at this point, the balls in your court. I just want to know, are we doing this thing or not?” said Maci.

“...” I froze and thought her words over. Then I nodded.

“Um...Okay,” said I.

“Okay, what?” said Maci.

“Okay, let’s date with the intention of getting married,” I said.

“See? Was that so hard? Now Margot said I should remind you that this doesn’t mean you get to rest on your laurels,” said Maci.

“What?” I said. Puzzled. My brain beginning to chug like an old computer trying to run a high-end game.

“She uh...We talked about your special needs. And how even if adding me in, would be a temporary fix it’ll take at least two more for this to be a sustainable long term thing,” said Maci. Blushing furiously once again, as she danced around the issue of my luxuriae nature.

“Oh,...uh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” said I. Also blushing, because regardless of how old and venerable one was supposed to be, embarrassing shit was still embarrassing.