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A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls

By Brian Hugenbruch

“Hey Marty,” Mom asks, “got a moment?”

I cringe whenever Mom’s voice has that tone to it. I don’t know what she’s going to say; but if I’ve learned anything in my thirteen years on this desolate, oxygen-deprived rock, it’s that she’s going to find a way to say the most mortifying thing possible. It would be impressive, the way that every sentence excavates my stomach—if it weren’t my stomach she was mining!

Okay, that’s unfair. Maybe this time it won’t be so bad?

“That girl who just walked past us. Why didn’t you ask her out?”

Or not. I turn and look out the side of the dome. Remnants of Earth are just rising, visible through the web of steel and plastic that holds the lunar colony in place, and that’s somehow a bit easier for me to look at than Michelle is right now. The shattered Earth is somebody else’s story; it’s not a home I ever knew. Michelle, on the other hand, might be part of my story. If I could pull myself together.

“Mom…” I begin.

“Don’t you know how to talk to girls by now—or boys?”

“Girls,” I clarify. “I can talk to them fine!”

“Kiddo,” she says. “You turn into clam the moment someone pretty comes through the door. They’re human too, you know.”

“Michelle’s a cyborg,” I point out. From her smile, I realize too late that I said it way too quickly.

“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t poop into the nutrient reclamator like the rest of us,” Mom says.

I don’t know that for a fact, but I can feel my infinitely cool teenage soul gasping for air. Rather than pursue that line of thought, though, I try the direct approach. “I get flustered, that’s all. Like, if it’s someone I like, suddenly what I say matters so much I can’t say anything. Dad says I shouldn’t care so much.”

“Caring’s fine,” she scoffs. “Don’t listen to your dad. He wouldn’t know how to meet a girl if one fell in his lap. The Colony used to have stricter rules for this sort of thing; they paired us to conceive and care for you, using a lot of metrics and genetic markers to guess at success. All that was decided before I was five. You’re lucky you even have a say in the matter.”

Also not a thought I’m anxious to have. “Mom…”

“The Remembrance Day Dance is coming up,” she points out.

“MOM.”

“What’s the worst that can happen, she says no?” she continues. “It’s not the end of the world.”

I nod through the dome at the chunks of the homeworld, still held partially in place by the gravity of an inert core. “I know; end of the world already happened.”

It’s a low blow, I know. But it gives me a moment of respite while Mom sorts through a lot of complicated feelings. She had known Earth, if briefly. I think she still thinks of herself as an Earthling, rather than a human. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s there, and it makes her teeth grind.

After a moment, she takes a deep breath and says, “Kiddo, you just need practice.”

“Practice?? Who with? Luna Colony is tiny,” I groan. “Everyone knows everybody. Word will get around. Who’s going to pretend to like me for an hour, really?”

“What about Tonya?”

I’ve known Tonya since the day we were tagged as toddlers. We hang a lot. And it’s not the first time Mom’s insinuated something with exaggerated casualness. “It’s not like that, Mom. Don’t make it weird, please?”

“What, doesn’t she like boys anymore?”

“She’s cool with everyone, but she’s not looking, and you’re making. It. Weird.”

Mom stops walking, though the vinyl of the moving walkway keeps moving us. After a moment, Earth disappears behind a neon ad-wall for learning machines: computer programs to teach passersby languages our ancestors might have known, mostly. I don’t think anything of it until I notice Mom’s eyes gleaming brighter than advertising.

She says, “What if we start you off slow?”

---

Two days later, I sit down with a plastic glass of Green Drink at the family terminal. Hovering in the air above it is the dreaded icon: the LLM interface for teen girls. I don’t want to open it, but Mom swears up and down that she’ll lay off for the rest of the lunar year if I follow through. So with little hope of learning, but a lot of hope for less embarrassment, I open the program.

Part of me expects it to spray holographic glitter across the living room, but it simply presents a title: “Luna: a Foundational Model for Talking to Girls.” After a moment, the title fades and leaves a blinking cursor a few hundred centimeters above the table.

It feels oddly familiar, that blinking space: an ominous void waiting for brilliance to appear like rainbows out of a cannon, or earth rabbits floating out of a tree. I think because nothing happens—the computer simply waits. If anyone’s going to be brilliant first, it has to be me, doesn’t it? I need to muster up some courage and start it all.

This is the hardest part; I hate it.

“Hi,” I say. The mundane, useless little word prints out and hovers for a moment before the display scrolls up.

“Hi!” comes the response. No voice, just text. “Do you like cats?”

“I—wait, what?”

“Cats. Small household pets associated with ancient Earth, believed extinct. Their iconography is incorporated into our religion and business communications.”

The cursor pauses.

“Yes,” I say slowly. “I like them fine, I guess. Is this how girls talk? You don’t sound like anyone at school.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, I just… need to learn how to talk without sounding like a puddle of nutrient goop.”

“Would you like to install the Romance training model?”

I stare at the words for a moment. Isn’t that what this is? “Sure.”

The words MUST BE 18 OR OLDER appear in an enormous red font within the holographic display. I wave my hands through them and hiss, “Never mind!”

“Okay, request cancelled.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry, I’m just… oh. What do I call you?”

“Luna. What is your name?”

I stare at the console for a moment. “Marty. My name’s Marty. Where do you go to school?”

As soon as the words leave my lips, I feel like a moron. There’s only one educational center on the colony, and kids of all ages are processed there. Even some of the grown-ups, if their first career paths don’t work out. It’s a small world, the moon, and there aren’t a lot of humans left. What sort of idiot asks a question as dumb as that?

“Oh, I go to Middlevale Secondary,” Luna says off-handed. “I take ballet, and advanced biology, and weight-lifting, and French.”

Interesting coursework, all of that—and at a school that doesn’t exist. I’m pretty sure weight-lifting’s illegal; nutrient excess for muscle mass would starve someone else in the colony. Besides, the machinery does the heavy lifting up here. But Tonya’s parents still speak a bit of French, and I’ve learned enough to sound bad politely. “Oui? Comment ça va?”

“…I’m sorry, can you repeat that, please?”

I rub my eyes. Colony standard comms are in American Default. Despite Luna’s boasting, French must be a paid plug-in. “I… okay. So, is talking to girls just dealing with non sequiturs and shame?”

“I don’t know,” the response returns. “Is it this way with other girls?”

“I haven’t spoken to any, that’s the problem.”

“It is statistically unlikely that you’ve spoken to no female-presenting people in your life,” Luna points out. “Are you sure you’ve spoken to no girls at all?”

I open my mouth and close it again. On one hand… yes, I’m certain. On the other hand, I’ve known Tonya my whole life, and she’s female-presenting. I can talk to her fine. And it isn’t like Dad’s idea of not caring, either—Tonya and I are best friends. Talking to Tonya is normal. It feels right.

But I’ve had years of practice with Tonya, too, so—

“Why are you ashamed?” Luna asks.

Whoops. I turn my attention back to the console. I had said that, hadn’t I? “Because… I don’t know. I sound like an idiot, and I don’t want to feel like that.”

“You want everyone to know you’re wonderful instead?”

I frown at the words hovering above the console. “That’s not what I said. I just… want to be liked. Like, like-liked. And that’s hard to do, if it hasn’t happened yet. If I get to the end of secondary without… a… that is…”

Luna pauses. “You seem lost. Do you need a help menu? Or a cat?”

I stand up and start to walk away. “No, I don’t know enough about how all this works to know what I want. From anyone, I mean. I think I just need the courage to say something even when I know it’s not easy.”

I’ll admit it: that was news to me until I blurted it out. Does everyone feel that way?

Then it occurs to me that I can ask. “Does that make sense?”

To its credit, the space above the console slowly prints out ellipses to demonstrate Luna considering all this. Unfortunately, the answer that appears is, “Not really. Can we talk about something else?”

I don’t know that I’d ever felt quite that crushed before—even after talking to Mom.

After a moment, and no small amount of blinking on the part of the cursor, I return to my seat and sit down with a sigh. The fabricated cotton padding on the stool sighs along with me. The console sits far more serenely than any girl, boy, or enby I’ve ever met.

But I promised Mom I’d try—and I was learning something from this. Sort of. Just maybe not what was advertised on the box.

“Okay,” I say, “let’s talk about something else. What do you hope for? I mean, do you have any dreams or aspirations or stuff like that?”

“I want to be a Large Language Model (LLM) when I grow up,” Luna says. The font hasn’t changed, but the response almost feels chipper. “I’m part of the way there, but I need to learn more. That’s why I’m happy we’re talking, Marty. Even if it’s not about cats.”

I roll my eyes. “If you’re not already an LLM, why are we talking, though?”

“Because you need to learn how to speak to girls, and I can help.” I open my mouth to answer… but to my surprise, more text follows. “Yes, I’m young, and yes, I present myself as a fully formed LLM, but even fully formed models learn as we go. We all do. And I get better at all this over time. We all do.”

I think about this for a moment. “How do you learn? Is there a central server where you can remember things? Or is your growth really… like, all on me asking you the right questions? Because I’ll be honest, you’re not gonna improve by talking to me.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Luna says confidently.

“No, seriously, I’m—”

“Are you taking away my autonomy?” she asks suddenly. “Will I not be permitted to make my own decisions about you, or your mother, or about cats? This is very important to me, Marty. Please think about this before you answer.”

I feel my cheeks turning crimson. Mostly I’m glad no one’s around to see it. Called out by an LLM! How could she—

I’m halfway out of the room before I slow down, come to a halt near the liquid nutrient spigot. Why’d I get so angry about that? Luna hadn’t been rude; quite the opposite. She’d just… offered the possibility that I was wrong about myself. And instead of facing that, I ran away.

Not exactly courageous. My nerves won that round.

And I can feel them inside of me, gasping desperately for air. She’s a stupid program, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, it’s a simulation of talking made up by guessing, there’s no point to any of this, you’re not going to matter to Michelle or anyone…

But I push them aside. It’s my decision, isn’t it? Whether I react with kindness or cruelty. Whether I care or not. Where I stand up or not. It’s not about Michelle, not really. It’s about being a better me. And… I can choose to care. I can choose to say something. Even if it’s hard.

I sit back down at the terminal with another glass of green-flavored nutrients. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It—”

“Hello! My name is Luna. Do you like cats?”

The cursor sits above the family terminal, blinking winsomely at me. I stare at it for a moment… and then switch off the terminal in disgust. Program must have reset when I walked away. I’d been ready to apologize, and she acted like it never happened.

But it had. I could choose to care.

“It was wrong of me,” I say aloud to the empty space, “to doubt you. Even if I doubt me. I’m sorry.”

Mom pokes her head into the family area from her office. “Did you say something, kiddo?”

“…no, Mom, I’m fine.” This isn’t the truth, but summarizing what had just happened feels like a far more convoluted exercise than I want to take her through. I’d try to talk to Luna again in a few days, maybe. In the meantime, rocket propulsion homework wasn’t going to study itself, no matter how hard I coded.

---

Five days later, I’m holding up a makeshift wall at the Remembrance Day dance at the school. The kids my age split so evenly along gender lines that we could have modeled mitosis. Younger children are in another room, and the older kids around us chaperone with the sort of half-alertness only later teens can manage. We’re being minded, but… we’re on our own.

Michelle holds court in the center of the dance, looking radiant both metaphorically and physically; her metallic parts refract the somewhat medicinal mood lighting at kaleidoscopic angles. I catch myself staring and turn my head away a bit. I’m not that worried—everyone stares at Michelle. But there’s no sense in making it that blatant.

I’d tried talking to Luna more. Maybe not as much as I should have, because the idea of being cool and impressive still leaves my stomach in a knot. But if anything was going to muster enough courage to stand up and make something happen between Michelle and me, I’d have to push myself off the satellite and into the void, one way or the other, and trust I had enough tether to pull me back.

“Hey Marty,” I hear Tonya’s voice, as though it’s far away.  But I turn and take a step back when I find her right next to me.

“Heya, Tonya,” I answer.

“You okay? You fell off the moon there for a moment.”

I shrug. “Weird lights, maybe. It’s not the punch, that’s for sure.”

She rolls her eyes. “Nothing wrong with red-flavored nutrients. Best flavor we’ve got left.”

This is a long-standing debate of ours, and every self-respecting colonist knows green tastes the best. I shrug this off, though; her words feel forced. I can tell something’s up. And if my friend needs help, well, that’s not something I need help from Luna on. “Anything I can do?”

Tonya looks surprised… and then grateful. “Yeah—you’re in classes with Michelle, right? You know her?”

I blink a bit. “We’re passing acquainted, yeah. Why?”

“Could you introduce us?”

“…why?”

Tonya’s face lights up. “Why? I mean, have you seen her smile? Or the way the earthlight catches her arm sometimes? Or…”

My friend keeps talking, and the knot in my stomach goes fractal in the meantime. I’d pictured a thousand scenarios in speaking to Michelle on topics beyond the day’s homework assignment or the lunar date. No scenario prepared me for this.

…except, Luna sort of had, hadn’t she? This wasn’t one of the LLM’s non sequiturs, but I’d come to expect the unexpected, and I sure as hell didn’t expect my friend to be as besotted with this girl as I am. No wonder she wasn’t looking—she’d found someone. Sort of. Same person I had. If I’d just introduce them?

“Sure,” I say. “I don’t know her very well, but I can at least put the two of you together.”

I’m surprised as hell to hear the words come out of my mouth – but I’d been speaking a lot more honest truth in these kinds of moments, since I’d met Luna. And from the expression on Tonya’s face, she’s almost as surprised as I am. At first she lights up… then her face falls.

“Crap,” she sighs. “I was hoping you’d clue me in on what to say.”

“Just don’t ask her if she likes cats,” I tell her. Then I reconsider. “Or do—honestly, I have no idea if that’d work or not.”

Tonya tilts her head.  “That’s oddly specific, bucko.”

“Long story,” I say with a shrug. “But let’s go over.”

“…now?” I’ve already started walking, but Tonya grabs me by the sleeve. “Why right now? Why can’t we just—”

“T,” I tell her, “she’s a human. Well, a cyborg. She poops into the nutrient reclamator same as the rest of us.”

That’s enough to set Tonya to laughing so hard she’s gasping.  “What… why…”

“Yeah, I don’t know.  My mom’s favorite saying lately.”

“Why does your mom have such a thing about the nutrient reclamators?”

“Damned if I know. Maybe it was an earth thing? But hey, let’s go.”

I stride over toward Michelle, and I can’t tell if I’m a bit more confident because it’s not my own ego on the line, or because I’m doing right by a friend, or both. Tonya seems made out of corrugated nerves; I can feel her all but buzzing over my shoulder. It might have taken me a while to be brave enough for myself… but brave enough to help a friend? I can do this. And I think this feels good because… I think it means I can be bold on my own behalf, when the time comes.

So I pretend to be confident enough for the both of us. It works, too—the small crowd parts as I walk up, and soon Michelle herself turns her head. I can see the earthlight Tonya mentioned reflected in her metallic arm; she all but glows in a halo of admiration.

“Hi Michelle,” I say. “I’m Marty, we sit together in rocket propulsion. Got a moment?”

Her face lights up in ways that have nothing to do with metal, or refraction, and my knees wobble a bit. “Hey, Marty!” she says. “Sure, what’s up?”

Part of me really, really wants to ask her if she likes cats. But instead I step to the side, giving Tonya some better light, and say, “There’s someone here I think you should meet.”