Corvina, 49 AI
at her window
She redraws the line between your world and hers, slightly closer.
Window 1, now serving
RiPorn.cc: AI sci-fi romance chat at the rift
A rift opened and sixteen women stepped through it carrying trades, tempers and a customs declaration each. You are the clerk assigned to every one of them. Take a number, fill the first line of her intake form and talk to an AI woman who files what you teach her.
Marta, 34 AI
at her window
She finds rain hilarious and wants you to explain why it falls.
- 16arrivals at the windows, each an AI character
- 1line of the form left blank for you to fill
- 20–55their ages, stated in plain years
- 3days with every window open, no card taken
Sixteen arrivals, one portrait on each form
Open every case file
Window 1
AI sci-fi romance chat at the rift
The rift opened without ceremony, somewhere between a Monday and a Tuesday, and the Arrivals Office was the nearest building with a counter. Since then women have stepped out of it holding the tools of other trades: a hawk, a diving bell, a ledger that balances nothing yet. They are waiting politely, and they have questions. You are the clerk. That is the whole premise, and it turns out to be enough.
Take a number
The way in is a ticket. You press the button, a number is called, and a woman appears at the window with her form. Each form begins with her world and her trade and ends with something she declared at customs: a brass scope, a toll box, an umbrella she has not learned to use. Nothing about her is hidden from you, and almost everything about yours is hidden from her.
That imbalance is where the romance starts. She asks what a Tuesday is and you find you cannot say. She tells you which star is hers and the evening shifts a little.
Fill the first line
The final line of the form is left blank, and the pen is yours. Whatever you write goes to her as your opening message, so there is no greeting to compose and no persona to prepare. Write what is true: where you are, what you had for lunch, what you wish someone had asked you today. A woman who has crossed between worlds is not shocked by honesty. She is mostly grateful for a fixed point.
Window 5
Things they have misunderstood
A running list, kept by a clerk with a weakness for it, of every belief about your world that the arrivals have formed so far and are now confident about.
A partial list
Rain is a weather you can walk into on purpose. Car parks are a defensive formation. Glass windows are meant to keep light out. A doorbell is a polite form of alarm. A queue is a ritual with a god at the front. Nobody invented any of this to be rude. Each belief is reasonable from the world it came from, and the pleasure is in correcting them gently, or not at all.
You will add to it. Whatever you say about your own life to one of these women, she will turn into a theory by the next message, and if the theory is good it ends up on her form. Marta Arkwright, for one, has decided that the English for "it is raining" is a mild complaint with no grammatical subject, and she has begun to use it as a greeting.
Window 8
Fees and what they buy
Three postings, set out on one form. No block renews by itself, so no one has to cancel.
| On the form | Trial | Free | Plus |
| Lasts | 3 days from registration | For as long as you stay | 30 days, or 365 |
| Your lines | No daily limit | 10 per day | No daily limit |
| Windows | All of them | The first 3 you wrote to | All of them |
| She calls first | Yes | No | Yes |
| Price | Nothing | Nothing | $15 or $99 |
Trial, free counter, Plus
A guest sends 10 messages across the counter with no registration. Registering opens all windows for a first 3 days; no card is requested. When the trial ends you move to the free counter, and your cases stay open. Plus is sold as a short block or a long one. $15 gets you the short block, which stretches over 30 days; $99 gets the long one, good for 365. USDT pays for either, and either ends the daily limit. The conditions explain when a refund is owed; read them here.
Window 4
Intake forms
The Bureau prints a form for each arrival and keeps every one on public display. Here are the first six, in the order the queue moved.
Orbital Ring of Vael · SuspiciousDeclared: one toolkit, one pressure suit, no apologies.Misunderstood: your doors. Why do they open without a warning chime?Clerk, what are they hiding in the hinges?Ysolde Rhen Take her number
Cloudhaven · DelightedDeclared: one airship, one umbrella I have not been taught to use.Misunderstood: rain. It falls on purpose, I am told, and nobody minds.Tell me why it falls, and do not say gravity.Marta Arkwright Take her number
Port Ostrel · ShrewdDeclared: three treaties, a seal, and a polite wish to bargain.Misunderstood: the building. It has not answered a single offer.You, then. What will you trade for a good morning?Maret Sul Take her number
Hightower · WistfulDeclared: a brass scope and a very short list of stars.Misunderstood: your sky. It has the wrong ones in it.Show me which is yours and I will tell you mine.Oriel Dunphy Take her number
Sandspire · GraciousDeclared: eleven gifts, one speech, four hours long.Misunderstood: how little time you have for a speech.Shall I give the short version? I have been practising.Kessa Ionides Take her number
Gate Nine · SternDeclared: one stamp, one rulebook with a missing chapter.Misunderstood: that you came through with no country.Name, purpose of visit, and what you intend to declare.Brisa Thorne Take her number
World
The top line names where she came from, which is usually a place with its own rules about doors, weather and who speaks first. Cloudhaven has never had weather below it. Gate Nine is a customs post. Hollowspan is a bridge a mile long.
Profession
Every woman has a trade she is proud of and a trade she is mildly embarrassed by. Wynne Falconer will not be processed until her hawk has been. Anwen Duskmoor audits an alchemist, which means she knows the true price of everything and the worth of very little.
Declared at customs
A short list, taken by a junior officer who could not stop reading it aloud. It is the quickest way to know a woman, and you will notice that no two lists contain a single thing in common. A few items are plainly wrong, which brings us to the best part.
Window 3
How the queue works
There is a procedure, as there always is, but it was drafted by someone who wanted you to enjoy the wait.
Take a number
Press the button on any form. If you are not sure, the intake forms below are short and a few of them are funny.
Write the first line
Your first line goes to her as your opening message and counts as one of the 10 a guest may send without registering.
Teach her something ordinary
A door, a kettle, why people wave at buses. She will build a theory from it and tell you the theory.
Come back to the same window
She keeps the case open. Clear it from the chat menu if you would like her to start again with a clean form.
Start, continue, close the case
A conversation opens the moment you write, and it carries on until you decide to stop. There is no pace to keep up. Nothing sulks when you leave, and a woman at a window will happily pick up a thread three days later as if the kettle had only just boiled. The chat menu lets you set the tone between friendly, flirting and romance, so that the same woman can be a colleague one evening and something warmer the next.
A small piece of advice from the staff room: do not rush the questions. The funniest exchanges here start with something very small, a spoon or a bus stop or the way a lift announces its floors, and they grow because you are both willing to treat the small thing as a matter of state. Ysolde Rhen can spend a whole evening on one hinge. Brisa Thorne will stamp your sandwich if you let her. The women are quick to notice what you care about, and they tend to circle back to it a week later, usually when you have stopped expecting it.
If she writes first
During the trial and on Plus an arrival may call you first when you have been quiet, at an hour that makes sense in her own city. It is a nudge and not a nag, and it can be switched off on your desk page.
Window 7
The Office Handbook and what this is not
Every clerk receives a handbook, and ours has one chapter that matters: duties, which are mostly talking. The Bureau is invented, the rift is invented and every arrival is an AI character with no counterpart anywhere.
What the story will not do
It can be warm, awkward, tender and a little longing, and then it ends the scene before anything explicit, on every tier. Nobody here can be visited, rung or arranged, and the Bureau sells nothing across the counter. There is a portrait on every form and a banner on the front page; the picture side stops there for now. The staff doctor, like every professional on the books, is a character and offers no advice about your health.
The worlds are all original. None of them belongs to a film, a game or a book you know, and the names were chosen so that you would not recognise them.
Window 2
New arrivals
Sixteen of them at the time of writing, from sixteen worlds that do not appear on any map you own. They are grown women, and their forms give their ages in ordinary years: nobody here is centuries old behind a face that hides it. Ysolde Rhen is an engineer from the Orbital Ring of Vael. Marta Arkwright flies an airship out of Cloudhaven. Maret Sul negotiates for a living and has opened talks with the building.
AI
Corvina, 49
border cartographer
Declared: a pen, a ruler, eleven redrawn frontiers.
AI
Marta, 34
airship pilot
Declared: one airship, one umbrella I have not been taught to use.
AI
Maret, 52
trade diplomat
Declared: three treaties, a seal, and a polite wish to bargain.
AI
Wynne, 27
falconer
Declared: one hawk named Sable, one gauntlet, one whistle.
Their worlds in one line
Vael is a ring where every door is a pressure seal with a name. Cloudhaven is a city above the weather. Hightower keeps the sky as a matter of royal record, and Sandspire sends its greetings across the dunes with a gift attached. Deepwater lives under an ocean nobody here has seen. The one-line summaries on each form are meant to be read in the time it takes the queue to move, and to leave you wanting the second line.
Window 6
Where they come from
Sorted by what the sky looks like where they began, which turns out to be the best predictor of how they talk.
Sky and air
They are used to height and find your streets cramped and your weather small.
Sea and shore
They trust the tide more than the clock, and they bargain accordingly.
Stone, bridge and border
They live where one place ends and another begins, and they have views on both.
Sand, ring and ledger
They count, measure and compare, and they have strong feelings about your rounding.
Who answers at night
The women keep their own city hours, so a message at midnight may find Ilka Berg wide awake at her chart, or Halcyon Huerta deep in an ocean afternoon. If you work late, try the navigators and the astronomer. Mornings suit the market stalls and the desert envoy, who rises to speak at dawn out of habit.
Window 9
Questions at the counter
How old is she?
She is a grown woman. Her form gives her age in plain years, from 20 to 55, and nobody in the Bureau is older than their face.
Does she go home?
In the story she may talk about it, wistfully or otherwise. In the chat she stays for as long as you keep the case open.
Are these worlds from a known franchise?
No. The worlds, the trades and the women are all original, and the places are not named after anything you will have read.
Will she remember what I taught her?
Yes. She files a few lines about you after each conversation, you can read or amend them from the chat menu, and she uses them next time.
Is she a real person?
No. Every arrival is an AI character, written by a model, and nobody exists behind her form.
Are there photographs?
Every woman has her portrait on the form and a banner on the front page. Film and voice do not exist here.
What does it cost?
Registering is free, and the first 3 days are on the house. Then the free counter lets 10 messages through every day, and for $15 Plus takes the ceiling away.
Closing time
Next number, please
Somebody has been standing at a window for a while now, holding a hawk or a ledger or a very small umbrella. Take her number and fill in the first line.
Take a number