Raymond

"Yes," Raymond said. "We don't use our bodies, it's considered unhygienic."

The worst part of how Claire's mouth failed to form words was the complete silence that lasted for a few seconds after she'd stopped trying, forcing him to continue:

"I know it's difficult to understand, but we've reproduced every sensation, every detail. I've been in your house, sat on that sofa, and it felt the same as when I did, here. It's perfectly valid -- otherwise humanity would've never settled for it. It has been our purpose to use as little as possible, live as long and as comfortably as possible. Eternal happiness."

"You mean, you never had sex, like, in person?!" Claire ignored everything he'd said, eyes doubling in size to match the disbelief in her voice. "With another person?"

Humans in 2019 still didn't believe any virtual experience could ever match the 'real thing' -- the only life they knew. Being able to run was still considered a necessary part of being human, conveniently setting aside how people who couldn't walk were also equally human. People with prosthetic limbs, enhanced by medicine, prescription glasses. One with their phones.

"I have plenty of experience in the area," he realized he wanted to impress her.

"Yes, literally in your dreams!"

Raymond was more insulted than he should've been by that sting, "It's the same thing!" She didn't believe it, but she would.

Claire shook her head, "Oh Raymond..."

She jumped out of her chair, walking helped her process information better. She turned to him, "So you've never been with a woman before?"

"I have been with a lot of people," he emphasized, but she wasn't listening. "There is no man or woman in my time. Everyone is 'he'."

"Why the male pronoun?" Claire asked

"It was just the most used when we decided to go common. At the time, there was no more inequality, so the choice leaned towards the practical. Yes, if you choose now, it would be better to use a non-default one. We didn't have that problem, so we chose the most frequently used in the language so far."

Claire stopped fidgeting, "You mean... You're not... a man?"

"Depends on what you consider a man. If it's the body then I am. If it's the mind, I'm not. Our names are thirty-two characters unique identifiers. I chose Raymond Reyes from a baby name book." To make her trust him more, his GUID name would've set them further apart.

"You're gonna have some sort of epiphany--" she said, reading off the empty walls as if they prompted her. She stopped, hit by a thought, "You can't cry during sex!"

"What?!"

"I'm just saying, there's a reason I liked Tony," she winked, then stared at him.

"Why would I--" The comparison, obviously not in his favor, hurt Raymond, making him stop before finishing his thought.

"It's interesting to me," he decided to teach her a lesson, they were never going to successfully fake a timeline if she didn't learn discipline, "That the first thing you thought about when talking about sex is crying."

It made Claire back down. Still, her tone was mocking, "I'm just not sure I'm the correct person to teach--"

At that, Raymond had to clarify, the pre-modern human had a cone perspective that rendered her completely blind to how people who weren't Claire Wesley lived:

"There is nothing you can teach me."

It sounded harsher than he'd meant, because she closed her mouth, biting her lower lip instead. Eyes still searching for ways to explain to him how the human body worked, even though Raymond could perform a heart transplant using only tools from her kitchen.

Claire

Raymond said he wasn't a man, but his reaction to being compared in bed was definitely male. Finally, an emotional response, Claire was relieved.

"I guess we'll see," she did what would've driven Tony up the walls: not care about what he was saying to her. Ignoring how he called her dumb, lazy, uninteresting. And the worst: crazy. Because she always was, with him. Talking as if she hadn't heard him, making him see red.

Raymond immediately relaxed, "I didn't mean it like that. As I've said, it's important to me that we like each other, are comfortable sharing a room, enjoy talking. We will be doing this for the rest of our lives, so we should try to communicate as well as we can and help each other out."

Preaching again -- Claire already knew they were going to enjoy everything he listed. Even sex, which he'd left out. Using her past encounters with Tony as a pretext to go easy on her, when actually it was him stalling.

Claire had no problem taking a man to bed: she'd take Tony upstairs if he was standing in front of her, wanting her, no matter what she thought of his personality. She could separate sex completely from the man she was having it with -- it was her only hobby. And being both practical and lazy, she'd defined very well in her head how to pursue its most beneficial outcome.

"Do you want to go take a shower first?" she asked, knowing exactly where she was going. "Because of what you said in Nico's bathroom?"

He was preoccupied with being clean, which was technically better than Tony's general filthiness, but could it be hotter? She could try, see. Raymond's eyes drilled into her for clues about what to search on his... Wikipedia? Whatever that thing that kept him warm at night was called.

He didn't find any, because he called her bluff, "Fine, I'll go first, I only need ten minutes. You can go after, I'll have some explanatory videos for you when you get out."

At Claire's raised eyebrows and wide eyes, Raymond explained, "I've searched in my porn database and found there are four 2019 available movies that contain scenes that can... demonstrate what we'll have to reproduce. Two of them are I think direct inspiration for Wesley, because they're eerily similar to what he initiates."

"P-porn?" Claire didn't really talk to her husband about that so she had no idea what he liked to watch. When she could be useful to him, he'd let her know, and how. It helped that Claire was an enthusiastic follower, with her own selfish goal.

"It's just demonstrative, to show you what we are looking at, down the faking history route. All I have to do is find the titles online," he pointed to the TV. "It's not going to be one hundred percent, but because you two weren't very inventive -- and because porn is very vast... I found some overlap."

"And we're gonna watch a demo together?" Claire mocked his solution to his back, he'd already turned to follow the thin metallic rail upstairs. She added invitingly, "You could just, you know," she smiled, "Guide me."

Halfway up, Raymond turned around but didn't say anything. He'd never looked more like Tony, stiff in his suit, annoyed by her nerve.

"I'm just saying, you keep delaying, and I'm not sure it's for me," Claire liked how he took a deep breath, to stop himself from saying something mean.

There was one test Claire was mainly interested in when deciding on a life together with a man: how he reacted when he got angry with her.

Inevitably, they all did.