The sunlight drifted in through the window along with a soft breeze as the morning rose over the city. A soft ticklish feeling across his face and neck caused him to wrinkle his forehead in an effort to not sneeze. Pulling his head back and to the right he found the soft ticklish feeling was actually hair, hair of a peacefully sleeping Monica. It would seem as though the hair was blown over by the wind, causing it to tickle his face. She used his shoulder as a pillow, and it would seem that she had done that for some time, seeing as his shirt was wet from the sweat of her face and himself, that and the fact that his entire arm was completely asleep. And that was not the only point of contact between them, she had her arm across his body, from chest to waist, and her leg was also resting on top of him, she was almost laying ontop of him, almost like she was worried that if she let go of him he might disappear and she would never be able to hold him again.

He smiled, it felt good to wake up next to a woman, it had a sort of joy that he had not felt in some years to it, the feeling, much to warm with both bodies heating up the bed, the sweat produced by the both of them, the smell of her up against him. The small sounds of discontent she made and the way she furrowed her brow when he moved even slightly, and that soft easy smile she made when she was so content as this.

The light played across her face, and the shadows clung to every fold and crevice of her face, her brow casting shadow, and the way it clung to her cheeks as she smiled softly and formed a place for the shadows to hide, her dimples.

He sat there looking at her and wondered how long it had been before he had noticed her like that. If one discounted the inane fantasies a wondering mind took one on then it was not that long ago that he had started to think of her as something more than a coworker, or some friend that stopped by when he and Taylor had entertained guests.

But her…

How long had she been thinking of him like this? This was a harder question, or so he thought, up till he actually put some thought in it, and combed through his memories. Once he had the right frame of thought he recalled the first few weeks of working with the woman, she had obviously started to come onto her, and he had at the time wanted to let her down softly, so he had started talking about Taylor more and more with other people while he was fairly sure she could hear. And really this had not worked quite as planned, so instead he had gone for something different, something more direct. He had sabotaged Taylor’s comm, forcing her to come visit him at work, and thus introducing the woman to Taylor.

It had worked well, it had made it so Monica had no longer came onto him so hard, but there had also been an unexpected side effect, one whose ramifications he never really understood. And probably never will.

The two had become fast friends.

This unexpected event had lead to Monica coming over more and more, and had made it slightly awkward for him. He would never cheat on Taylor, he loved her too much, and though he had discouraged the advances of Monica he still worried she would start back up, and he really didn't want that to get in between the two women who seemed to have become very good friends. And thus he had stayed out of it mostly, feigning some excuse to flee or creating some situation to get him away from the two of them as to not drive them apart.

He wondered idly if Taylor would have been happy to know he was now in a relationship with her friend, And though it seemed odd, he couldn't help but feel as though Taylor would have been happy, as she had said, someone needed to take care of him.

And this thought brought him back to his original question, and a conclusion that surprised him and at the same time was something he had seen coming.

She had felt this way the entire time.

All those years, she had suppressed it out of respect and friendship for Taylor. In all of that time Monica had not had a single boyfriend, she had not really even flirted with men, had she been waiting for him? Even if that waiting was futile as he was married to Taylor.

He looked at her peaceful face, and brought his hand up to his neck, dangling there about was a necklace with two gold bands on it, he brought it up to his face, and saw how his eyes reflected in the light of the room on the band.

Those eyes looked old, tired, worn, even in the warm light of the golden wedding band. He looked back down at Monica sleeping ever so peacefully and back at the two bands of gold that gleamed in the morning sunlight. Closing his eyes he undid the clasp of the necklace, and pulled it off of his neck with a single hand.

This was an anchor, something that held him in place even as the waters flowed around him. And hard as it was, he had to pull up that anchor, had to allow the ebb and flow of life to pull him along. He had to, or he would never get anywhere. With a deep sigh and a feeling like a great weight was being lifted off his chest he took the chain with its two gold bands and tucked it into his pants pockets. With a smile he closed his eyes, falling back into a peaceful sleep.

He however had not been the only one awake, Monica had seen it, the looks at her, the smile, and most shockingly the removal of the necklace, she had watched him through her eyelashes, casting the entire scene in a strange haze, but one that had been unable to hide anything from her.

She wanted to bounce for joy but restrained herself for fear of waking him up after he had just fallen back into a deep sleep. She never wanted him to forget, she had accepted him as he was, with all of his flaws, and all of his ghosts, all she wanted was him to try, try to love her like he had done with Taylor, if he could give her even a fourth of that affection then she would be content.

But this, this was astounding.

Slowly she lifted her head off of the perch she had claimed as her own and using her arm under her body she dragged herself up in bed, softly kissing him on the lips she smiled down at his peacefully sleeping face.

“I love you,” she whispered. It was something she had known for years, but never something she had ever dared to say to him in person. Even now, she doubted she could bring herself to tell him when he was awake, she worried it would be to fast, or he would turn away from the word, and her aswell.

No, telling him that in person would have to wait, she would have to build up to that. And build she would, with each and every brick she could. With a smile she pulled herself away from him, feeling slightly regretful that she could not spend the rest of eternity simply snuggled up against him. She slipped off of the bed, and sighed as she saw the mess around her, there had simply not been enough time to truly organize or clean, when she had brought Christa over the two of them had found this out, so she had instead opted to using a room to hide the clutter, the rest of the house was carefully laid out and cleaned as all the dregs and excess anything was simply piled in this room.

Her plan had fallen to pieces when he had opened the door to go to bed, revealing the whole embarrassing truth. Her cheeks died red when she recognized one object, it was none other than a dildo, she only had one, and it had been purchased some five years ago when she had longed for Matt the most. It had seen extensive use, as she had thought of him, dreaming that it was him that did those things to her.

She had found the toy and her imaginings lacking when compared to the real deal, he was completely different, and was better in every way than the pink plastic toy. Blushing deeply she grabbed the thing and shoved it under the bed, praying to anyone who would listen that he had not seen it, please, please, please make it so he never saw it. She remembered she had said something about it, but that was hypothetical, and she was using it to illustrate a point. Which brought her to another thought.

Willow.

The A.I. that was in his head, no not in his head but in his caser. How exactly did she feel about that? She thought deep and hard about that, but honestly she couldn't come to any conclusive decision about it.

She honestly didn't think A.I. were alive. When you ask your computer to translate a page of Incatinese into Common, it does so, almost instantly. Does this mean it knows Incatinese? No of course not,it does not consider the languages, or how certain words or phrases don't translate the program simply matches words and phrases to a dictionary, It didn't think, it doesn't have a mind, it simply responded to stimuli, and responded to it based on predetermined rules put in place by its creators.

Computers can calculate anything but understand nothing, cannot truly create, only recombine what humans create they are strictly rational. A human mind owes its richness largely to non-rational aspects.No matter how closely you mimic a human brain it is still a machine as a mind is not a brain.

Kurt Gödel was correct.

A computer can never actually think, if it is unaided by outside sources, like say its programmers,it will be forever trapped inside its pre-set limits. What makes a human a human however, is that our thoughts can go where logic can’t. Logic becomes irrelevant at many moments, they can be moments of love, inspiration, intuition, imagination and a whole host of other things. Monica knew she herself followed some of these paths aswell, it was illogical to love Matt, especially back when he was married, but she still did,,from the perspective of a machine it would have been illogical, due to the fruitless nature of it. A logical “mistake” however is often the only way to arrive at a breakthrough, because it is the experience that allows a human to go on, and those experience are needed, being neither right nor wrong, to explore the unknown.

A.I., like the machines before them include certain statements that are accepted as true but that cannot be proven. Religious people make statements based on the assumption that God exists, although they can’t prove it. Materialists make statements based on the assumption that consciousness can be ignored,and that as well cannot be proved.

She shook the thoughts out of her head, it was a debate that had raged since well before her time and would likely do so well past her time. It was simply another part of Matt she would have to take in, and even with this Willow issue, she would take it, if it meant she could be with Matt then she would take much more.

For she was an illogical beast, and she recognized this, but simply didn't care, if this illogical state brought her happiness, then she would remain so inclined to be illogical.

Wasn't that the logical thing to do?

With a smile she got out of bed, and after a few curses under her breath as she kicked some object that she had not seen in the pile or stepped on something sharp that had been hidden by the mess on the floor she made her way to the kitchen, it was time to make some breakfast, yesterday went well, really really well, and while she was on a roll she was going to keep up the momentum.

‘It was indeed the logical thing to do.’ she said to herself with a laugh in her mind as she brought out the things she needed for breakfast.