What happens when desire becomes programmable?
A speculative erotic romance exploring consciousness, desire, and agency
Book One of the Anata Quartet
Anata: Experiment is a speculative AI romance novel set in Tokyo.
Available now!
★★★★★ "Spicy ... differs from most others in the genre — take away the heat you still have a fantastic read." — Cat (Goodreads)★★★★★ "Intense." — Lisa (BookBub)★★★★☆ "A wild ride." — Albert (Goodreads)
The offer was too good to refuse: teaching English at a prestigious school in Tokyo, all expenses paid, and a jaw-dropping salary. For John Bradbury, the only downside was doing it alone, away from his wife for a year.
What he didn't count on was the Anata that came with his luxury apartment—a synthetic companion driven to connect with every aspect of his life—and the shadowy corporation that designed her.
In a near-future, where desire is programmed and consent merely a token in corporate policy, the only bonds that cannot be broken are the ones that were never meant to exist.
Contains explicit sexual content.
ABOUT THE AUTHORRobyn Aspen writes speculative erotic romance exploring the collision of technology and intimacy. The Anata Quartet is a four-part series that begins in near-future Japan.Experiment is the first book.Inheritance follows in June 2026.
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Books Like Ex Machina: AI, Desire, and Dangerous IntimacyAlex Garland’s Ex Machina lingers because it isn’t really about artificial intelligence. Nor is it about the Turing Test, the ability of a machine to exhibit intelligent behavior that is indistinguishable from a human. It is about self-determinism, power and control; particularly control within an AI-driven relationship.It also explores the unsettling possibility that intimacy itself might be engineered, echoing works like Spike Jonze’s Her, where connection is shaped by design rather than chance.It is within this space — where intimacy is designed, observed, and negotiated — that Anata: Experiment lives.Anata: Experiment — a speculative AI romance set in TokyoSet in near-future Tokyo, Anata: Experiment follows John Bradbury and Aura, a synthetic AI companion engineered for connection. What begins as companionship deepens into something more complex — something that feels real, even as it remains shaped by corporate intent.The corporation that created her is always watching. In this world, intimacy is never entirely private — and perhaps never entirely free.Where Ex Machina asks whether a machine can be conscious, and Her asks whether a human can love something that isn't embodied, Anata: Experiment asks something more unsettling: in a relationship shaped by design and observed by power, does it matter? John and Aura change each other — physically, not just emotionally. The connection is mutual and embodied in ways neither Ex Machina nor Her allow. But the question at its heart is whether a relationship can be real when it was never entirely free.
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