„...and then Wurst tried to arrest the vacuum robot because it hadn’t properly declared the crumbs,“ Lukas told laughingly, leaning back in his gaming chair.
Amina held her stomach from laughing. „A dachshund with the ego of a border guard! I love it. Compared to that, Kiko just steals virtual coffee cups from my design drafts and throws them in the digital trash if he doesn’t like my color palette.“
Over the video connection, it no longer felt like thousands of kilometers and a completely different time zone lay between Hamburg and Nairobi. It was as if they were sitting at the same table. Lukas completely forgot the pouring rain outside his window, and Amina ignored the distant sounds of the nighttime metropolis Nairobi.
What the two of them completely overlooked, however, was the suspiciously synchronous flickering on their secondary screens. Wurst and Kiko had not closed the direct data channel that Amina’s hologram interface had opened. On the contrary: they had expanded it.
„Analysis of the emotional parameters of creator Lukas“, Wurst typed in a sub-protocol invisible to humans to Kiko. „Pupil dilation: 12 percent. Heart rate: elevated. Serotonin release: maximal. Diagnosis: He urgently needs personal interaction with the female target person.“
Kiko’s hologram flickered briefly blue, which in his programming language meant enthusiastic agreement. „Confirm“, Kiko typed back. „Amina spends 85 percent of her free time working. Her social interaction values are in the critical range. Solution: initiate physical meeting. Create travel scenario.“
At that moment, a big red warning flashed across Lukas’ monitor.
„What the...?“, Lukas murmured, leaning forward.
On his screen, a booking confirmation for a direct flight from Hamburg to Nairobi was building up. Departure: next Friday. Paid with his hard-earned Bitcoin reserves.
At the same time, a notification from Amina’s banking app popped up on her tablet: a successful down payment for an exclusive co-working apartment in the green hills of Nairobi, booked for a “Lukas Weber.”
Amina stared at her display, then at Lukas. „Lukas... did you just book a room around the corner from me?“
„No!“, Lukas shouted in panic. „But my dachshund just spent all my savings on a plane ticket to Kenya!“