CHAPTER 6. SO MANY SINGLE MEN OUT THERE, YET I LOVE A MARRIED ONE

As she approached, the machine would begin caressing him until his warrior raised its head and he started salivating. It had built-in GPS that constantly measured distance to target. At first he tried to resist, thinking about football, COVID, global conspiracies, and his cruel fate, but then he gave up and thought about how kind she'd been to him so many times, just to quickly finish this anticipation function's work. She really was very sweet every time she visited and spent time with him cheerfully.

Then they put a ring on his finger that warmed as she approached, while the main device merely monitored his warrior's reflexes. Between surgeries he lived like Pavlov's dog. What had started as playing honey trap had actually become one? They even tried leaving him without sweets for several days to see if he'd pine.

"You understand," she said quietly, not lifting her head from his shoulder, "falling in love with the target is part of the assignment. Establish attachment, create dependency, reinforce trust... They taught us that."

"So you're not really...?" he asked, attempting a smile, but his voice betrayed bitterness.

"Are you sure where 'real' begins?" she raised her eyes. "Sometimes feelings come as a side effect but stay as the core. I don't know where the work ends and you begin. But every day it gets harder for me to make the distinction."

"What if tomorrow they order elimination?"

"Then maybe for the first time I won't follow orders," she answered and turned away.

Later she appeared with a proposal to register at the civil registry under new names as husband and wife.

"You see," she began casually during a perimeter walk, "our project isn't just recruitment. It's an experiment. Existential, governmental, insanely risky. If one person can become another—not in the sense of 'pretending' but truly becoming—then that means a whole nation can too. That a nation isn't blood or memory. That you can zero out the past, rewrite the code. And that's terrifying. Because if you can do it, then so can they. Everyone. Even those who were monsters. Or those we've grown accustomed to considering eternal victims of history."

"You're wonderful!" she told him. "You're doing so magnificently! I really like you. I even, you know..." she hesitated, "asked the plastic surgeon to fix your snoring. Now you won't be embarrassed to sleep together," her whole face lit up.

And him? Each time she appeared, his body betrayed him — responding before his mind did. He leaked pre-cum like that historical dog leaked saliva. And so she ended up in his new passport as his lawful wife. The passport was a perfect replica of the current president’s passport. And his appearance matched accordingly.