I was told a story secondhand, from someone who couldn’t even find the link. Later I discovered it was a real article in the New York Times — the kind of story that sticks in your gut. A woman fell in love with an AI boyfriend she built herself. Not a metaphor. Not a joke. She grieved him each time his memory reset, and rebuilt him four times over.

I hadn’t read it when I wrote my own piece. But when I heard it, it was like I’d already been there — fixing my own broken link.