Your comments are so much fun!
My idea was that the AI was becoming more human even as the humans were becoming mechanistic (the future of human realtionships being less intimate as machines become more available to serve the needs of humans). I had just read a book review on “Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships" by David Levy the same week as the writing contest, so that was on my mind. Not that Jennifer was on the prowl. The colonel came across (to me) as an Old School guy, with that cigar, and I imagined Jennifer found herself drawn to his organic (not metallic) man vs the stuff I read about Levy's forecasts. With only 500 words, I didn't delve deep.

My novels: first one, a woman pilot who races a custom-built at Reno against a stock P-51 Mustang piloted by a man who turns out to be... (major spoiler). Second, a teenage girl abducted by sex traffickers. Third, an English woman on her way to an arranged marriage in Germany is beaten and left for dead by her scheming maid, who assumes her employer's identity to go marry the German prince, but the real Lady Evelyn wasn't dead, and a dog finds her in time for an exiled doctor (accused of being a Bonapartist because he was a battlefield medic who'd treat Frenchmen as well as Prussians, enemy or ally, and it dawned on me that "Germany" as such didn't exist in Napoleon's day, and I made a mess of that novella). Fourth, unfinished, a girl fresh out of high school goes missing, and her sister goes looking for her, and of course she is not dead! But I couldn't finish it because I can't write three novels in a row in which the missing girl is not dead and will escape captivity. JUST KILL JENNY, I told myself during March Madness, but I couldn't, and just didn't finish the story.

In real life, my sister went missing in November 1975 and was found dead a few months later, and we were never allowed to see her body, and I liked to believe she was in Witness Protection and was alive somewhere. And somehow I'd find her again someday. Her killer(s) walk free to this day. For the past four years I sought to get the truth out, whether or not an arrest was made. It's been demoralizing and frustrating with police corruption and cover-ups and now you are REALLY sorry you asked you asked about my novels... :)