It's that time of year in Boston, deep in the winter, dark by 4:30 in the afternoon. Many stores turn on decorative lights all day to brighten up the gloomy season. Rae usually likes to walk leisurely to work, appreciating the shiny dots on those windows, but not today.

Rae is almost late for her second job at the bakery. She quickly runs across the street, and hops on the sidewalk. But when she steps on the pavement, her feet land in a puddle of water.

"Oh, why!?" Rae cries out, "It hasn't even rained or snowed for days! Where does this water come from? Yuck!" She looks down. There are water stains on her suede boots now. "I worked so hard to pay for these. Ugh!" She mumbles to herself, and bends down to touch her beloved footwear. She wants to use tissues to pat her boots dry, but she has no time. She quickly snaps her body back up.

"Ouch!"

She accidentally swipes at someone with her left shoulder. She looks up. It's a young man with glasses. He is trying to re-arrange a stack of paper and a mobile tablet that he is holding.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Rae reaches out to the person she just bumped into, "Are you OK?" Rae looks at him.

The boy re-adjusts his glasses. "I'm OK."

Rae feels bad, because she knows she hit him hard. Her shoulder even hurts a little, too, "Sorry about that. Is there something I can do?"

"It's OK. I'm fine."

"Alright then. Um…again, I'm very sorry. Have a good day!" Rae adjusts her bag and starts to walk away. The boots are now a little uncomfortable on her feet. But she keeps a smile on her face and picks up her pace.

"Wait!" The young man suddenly calls from behind. Rae turns around.

"Yes?"

"Actually, there is something you can do for me. Would you, um...,would you like to participate in our project?"

"Huh?"

"I'm an engineer working for Zabby. We are trying to get someone to test our company's newest project and do a survey. It will help improve our design a lot."

"I don't mind helping you out, it's just that..., I'm kind of late for work now," Rae says, feeling bad for him.

"That's OK then." He looks a bit disappointed.

"Why don't you just give me an access to one of your project samples, I'll test it out later, fill out your survey, and e-mail it back to you?" Rae assumes it's something she can do online.

"Actually, it's more complicated than that. I need to explain a little bit more about our project." The young man adjusts his glasses again.

"Oh...," Rae takes her cell phone out and checks the time. Great, It's 3:10, she is now officially ten minutes late. That is the maximum amount of time allowed to be tardy without a penalty. Her hourly pay is going to be deducted.

"Well, I am late already. No point to rush now." Rae sweeps her brown hair off her face, "Just give me one sec." She holds her phone out and makes a call. "Hi, Mrs. Dent, I'm so sorry I'm late, but I am taking care of something here, I'll need...," Rae looks to the young man, he mouths "fifteen minutes" to her. Rae then continues "...about fifteen minutes or so....Yes, I'll still be there for the rest of the shift. Sorry. Thank you." Rae hangs up, puts her phone back to her bag.

"All good now," Rae looks a bit relaxed, "What is your name, actually?"

"My name is Bo. Nice to meet you."

"I'm Rae, nice to meet you, too. So, what is your project?" Rae looks to Bo's tablet, thinking whatever it is, it is on there.

"Actually, I'll have to take you to our lab, just inside that building," Bo points at a shining building at the corner of the street. "Would you mind coming with me? That's where our work is located. I can't really bring it outside."

"OK, sure." The building is in the same direction to Rae's work, so she figures she will head that way anyway.

"Why are you working in a lab on a Saturday? You are not going to kidnap me, are you?" Rae jokes.

'"Ha ha, no," Bo laughs, "I'm not really working today, just trying to recruit one person to sign up for our trial. It is kind of our last trial so everything is cool." They start to walk up to the building.

"Your project must be so fun that you want to be in a lab on a weekend." Rae laughs.

"Well, if this project works out, we will make money."

"Oooh, that's exciting."

Bo now holds up a key card to a sensor on a glass door, beeping themselves into the building. It looks very new, and has minimalist glass walls that allow natural light to flow in. Bo leads her into the lab. There is no one else there but the two of them. The lab is huge, and she thinks it's about the size of a football field. But she can't be sure, because she hasn't watched any football games since she graduated from high school.

"So, first, I was told I must ask a question for legal purposes...to protect our intellectual property, I hope you don't mind."

"No problem. Ask away." Rae nods, looking around.

"Do you agree to keep what you learn about our project here confidential?" Bo holds his mobile tablet up.

"Yeah." What's so secretive, Rae wonders.

"OK, do you mind tap 'Yes' and sign here, full name please?" Bo hands over the tablet.

Rae reads the question on the tablet. It looks straight-forward, and no fine prints. Just don't tell anyone about this project, how hard is that? She signs.

"Alright, thank you for that. So, have you heard of Zabby, a tech startup company? Or Zachary Evans? Zach is the founder and CEO of Zabby. He designs new A.I. assistant systems...."

"I've heard of Zach Evans I think." Rae tries to remember where she saw the name, "So he designs stuff like voice-control assistance for homes and devices?"

"Um...it started out like that, but he has moved on to something much more advanced and much smarter than those. Our company just recently built a robot using Zach's new A.I. system—'ALL.' With 'ALL,' the robot talks like a human, and can actually offer strategies for complicated situations. It doesn't just repeat some online search results, like the ones you might see currently on the market."

"Cool, what kind of strategies," Rae asks.

"Say, if you want to apologize to your boyfriend, it can compute the best way to do it, and it's entirely customized to your situation. Of course, you will have to give the robot assistant enough background info." Bo walks Rae to one side of the lab that looks like a workshop. There are a lot of multi-monitor computer stations.

"That definitely sounds a lot smarter than anything I know," Rae glances through those computer monitors.

"And... it's right here."

"Huh?" Rae looks at Bo, and then she looks to a tall object right next to her. "Oh gosh!" Rae jumps.

The tall object turns out to be a man. A very, very good-looking man. He is topless, revealing a smooth, muscular body.