How to Build a Boyfriend from Scratch. Sarah Archer

programming Ethan to dispose of his own masticated food waste in the bathroom, and so far, everything was looking peachy. She crunched a Cheez-It with glee. “There’s nothing on this Earth I love more than Cheez-Its and Nutella,” she mused.

      Kelly had an extra bounce in her step as she got ready for work, singing that annoyingly catchy new Taylor Swift song in the shower, flipping her hair back like a mermaid when she was done blow-drying it. When she walked back into the bedroom, she jumped again. There Ethan was, sitting at her computer, his face aglow with a sort of bright-eyed shyness. He leaped from the chair. “I hope you don’t mind me using your computer, Kelly,” he said. “I wanted to give you a little something.”

      Peering at the monitor, Kelly saw that he had found his way to her design program. And on the screen was a bouquet of digital flowers, exquisitely drawn in a rainbow of pixels, yellow gladiolus flaring above a shimmer of violets, the colors more real than life. The image rotated slowly, showing fifty or more unique flowers bundled into the arrangement.

      “Why did you do this?” Kelly asked, utterly baffled. She hadn’t commanded him to give her flowers, hadn’t programmed in anything of the sort. Immediately she was intrigued to understand this unforeseen behavior of her creation.

      “I know that they’re not as nice as real ones,” Ethan responded anxiously. “But since I have no means to buy anything, I determined a drawing to be my best alternative—”

      “But why flowers? Why give me anything at all?”

      “To make you happy, of course. Do you not like them?”

      Kelly stared at the bright image sweeping softly around the screen. She realized that she’d never been given flowers. “I do,” she said after a moment. “Thank you.”