“I have no idea what I’m doing. It didn’t really give me a choice. We were one hundred percent matches, so I just went for it.”
“What?” Ren asked in total shock.
“I went for it. I mean I don’t know how the app decides the percentage, but the option was to play the game or lose the match, so I’m playing the game. I certainly didn’t want to lose a match as perfect as this one.”
Ren looked totally panicked as he furiously started typing into his phone and completely ignored me. I watched as he messaged back and forth with someone and seemed to urgently need a response from them. He wasn’t interested in looking at me or responding to me at all. I looked at the rest of the guys who were all staring at Ren with me as we waited for him to tell us what the heck was going on.
“You started the game?” Ren asked with a concerned look on his face.
“Yes, like I said, the only option was to start the game or unmatch with her, so I started the game. You are looking a little sketchy right now. What’s going on?”
“Listen, I need you to throw your phone away. I’ll pay for a new one. We need to take the battery pack out and the tracking chip. We’ll need to crush them both.”
I laughed, and so did everyone else. Ren looked more paranoid than I had ever seen him. Normally, he was a fairly relaxed guy who enjoyed talking about his computers but never had I heard him act so strangely as he was at that moment. Computer guys got worked up about the weirdest things, but then I supposed that computer guys would think that investors got worked up about weird things too.
“Why would I do that?”
“Just deleting the app won’t fix this. It already has your information. You need to destroy the phone.”
Ren looked serious. He was more serious looking than I could remember seeing him, and it was actually starting to make me concerned.
“You’re scaring me, Ren. What’s going on here?”
“Yeah, what’s going on? This is weird even for you,” Merrick said.
Ren was sweating. He didn’t look well at all. I was pretty sure he was going to pass out at any moment. Something was very wrong. Although Ren was normally a little neurotic, he certainly hadn’t been acting anything close to what we were seeing at the moment.
“Um,” Ren said as he ran his hand through his hair and looked nervously at me. “The app is not designed ever to have a one hundred percent match.”
He said this like it was going to make sense to me. But it didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe this woman and I were just a really good match. It didn’t seem like a big enough issue for me to have to worry about it.
“Okay, well they are a good match. What’s the big deal?” Luke asked.
“It happened when we were designing it. It is a form of artificial intelligence, and our coding only works up to ninety-nine percent. At one hundred percent, our coding is ineffective, and the game plays itself. I know it’s hard to understand, but basically, at one hundred percent the game is now playing all by itself.”
“What’s wrong with that? I guess I don’t understand the issue.”
“The game will do whatever it wants. I have no way of ensuring this is going to turn out well for you, and the app now has all your personal information. Your home, work, family, friends; it has everything.”
“Like what could it do that would be bad?”
Ren paused as he looked at me and then at the rest of the guys. I felt like there was a big secret he was about to tell us. He drew in a long breath and then let it out as he resigned himself to giving in and telling his secret to us. Ren was definitely making me nervous by how scared he looked. Nothing about his behavior was instilling confidence in how this app was going to match me up with the perfect woman.
“I didn’t disclose the problem when I sold the app because I thought it was a fluke. I thought it was an error that I had fixed in the final stages,” Ren started to say. “The app, it will start telling you what to do. It will tell you where to go and where not to go; this part is the normal game. Sometimes it says these things to help you meet this woman; sometimes it’s testing you, but the game becomes very aggressive at one hundred percent. The testing of you and follow through with the games commands are required, and the app sort of gets angry if you don’t listen to it.”
“So if I don’t listen to what it’s telling me, what is going to happen?”
“You have to listen.”
I laughed out loud and looked at the other guys too. I didn’t have to listen to a stupid app on my phone. I could simply delete the app and be done with it if I wanted to. When I stopped laughing, I managed to talk again.
“I’ll just delete it if I don’t like what’s happening. Okay, can we get going to the dance club now?”
Ren reached over and grabbed my arm. His fingers dug deep into my skin and actually hurt. His eyes looked afraid. Scared of something that he knew, and he wasn’t telling me. There was more; I saw it in his eyes. He looked like he was going to talk a couple of times before he actually managed to find the right words for what he was trying to say. It seemed very important to him, so I listened.
“You have to listen. Or destroy the phone. The app is fantastic up to a ninety-nine percent match. It has helped thousands of people find the loves of their life. But this error that happens at one hundred percent, I just can’t explain it. The program becomes obsessed with the idea of making this perfect match.”
“Obsessed?” I asked.
“Yes, in my test it ended up freezing all my bank accounts after I refused to follow a direction one day.”
“What!” Luke yelled from behind us. “What kind of crap program is that, Ren?”
I tried to stay calm, but I was freaking out a little bit about the whole thing. How on earth had I gotten myself mixed up with this deranged dating app that had the ability to help me find the love of my life or freeze all my money and prevent me from living day to day? This was crazy.
“It did other things too,” Ren reluctantly added. “My Facebook account was hacked. I think it was from the app, and all the females I was friends with were blocked.”
“Come on, Ren. How the hell did you sell this program for so much money if it had all these issues?” Merrick asked.
“The odds of getting a one hundred percent match are nearly non-existent. And I had started to think some of it was just in my head. I had worked for a year straight on the coding for the program. I went through and fixed what I could, but I never found the code that would have allowed for the things that happened to me.”
“So if I destroy my phone, it won’t happen?”
“I’m not sure. I destroyed the computer I had used for the test case and my phone, but only after my bank accounts were mysteriously frozen. I had to set up all new accounts. I guess I can’t guarantee the game won’t keep playing without you. It took me a week to get my accounts unfrozen and to get access to all my money again. It was a very scary ordeal.”
“I’m going to play devil’s advocate here,” Dean added. “Why not just follow the game and meet this girl of your dreams? What would be the reason for not following it?”
“It told me to go to this club tonight,” I said reluctantly to Ren.
“I don’t know what would happen if you just followed all the demands. I was tired one evening and didn’t follow them. That was when the system went haywire.”
“Let’s drop all this crap and stop worrying about it for now. Wyatt, do what you want with that stupid app. Ren, you’re a horrible person for selling that thing with a bug like that in it, but I want to meet some women, and you all are bringing me down,” Merrick announced as we pulled in front of the dance club.
Merrick, Luke, and Dean went ahead of us, and Ren and I continued to talk as we walked slowly into the club. His eyes avoided looking at me as he answered my questions about the app and the problems he had. To be honest, he sounded really paranoid, and I wasn’t sure the app had done the things Ren thought. From what Ren told me, it was j
ust as possible that he had locked his own bank accounts after he followed the app’s demands and took a flight to Hong Kong at the last minute.
Whenever I traveled, I had to notify my bank of my plans or they would lock my accounts because they assumed it was fraud. Ren could have easily had something harmless like that happen, and it wasn’t his app at all. Anyways, it seemed really farfetched that his app could have such advanced coding that it was basically thinking all on its own. I was sure that Ren was good at what he did, but artificial intelligence was something much farther into the future, or at least from the research I did on it for a client and their investing portfolio.
I wasn’t willing to give up the possibility of a perfect match all because Ren was paranoid. I needed much more information than I had so far. For the time being, I was going to continue with the dating app in hopes of meeting this perfect match of mine.
Chapter 8
Dakota
“You’re actually going to wear that out?” I asked Emma as she came out of her office in a dress with a slit almost up to her belly button.
“What? It’s the style.”
“I can see your vagina.”
“Oh, sorry, the slit is supposed to be on the hip,” she said as she twisted her skirt to her hip.
“So it’s supposed to show your entire leg? Are you sure about this?”
It wasn’t that I was a prude. I enjoyed dressing sexy when we went out dancing too. But I was much more demure in my clothing choices. On that night, I had chosen a brilliant green sweater that was at least two sizes too small for me. It accentuated my eyes and made my tits look two sizes larger than they were. But to counteract my sexy top, I was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and some black heels. My hair was pulled up and I had on some die hard high heels that would probably end up breaking my ankle at some point during the evening. For me, it was important not to overdue the sex appeal. Instead, I wanted to be sophisticated and sexy all at the same time.
“Yes, I’m sure. Now are we going to get to the club or sit around her and share fashion advice all night long?”
“Dancing for sure,” I said.
Emma and I gave each other a hard time about a lot of things in our lives, but we both knew that the other’s style just wasn’t our cup of tea. I would never pair the crazy combinations of colors and styles together like Emma did, and she would never wear a piece of conservative clothing in an attempt to fit in.
I liked fitting in, though. Most people were always trying to stand out, but I enjoyed slipping into the backdrop and being totally invisible from judgment. The only time I enjoyed being in front of people and having them watch me was when I was dancing. Sin Dan Club wasn’t like other clubs, though; I felt at home there. I felt like I owned the dance floor, and when Emma and I were there, I didn’t worry about people watching or judging me.
When their eyes were on me at Sin, it felt exciting. I was invigorated by that place, and as much as we tried out other bars and clubs, inevitably we ended up back at Sin. The bouncer knew us, the bartenders knew us, and even the waitresses knew who we were. It was our home away from home, and we both spent hundreds of dollars there each month on drinks.
Sure, we could get drinks for free if we flirted with guys. Any woman in New York could get herself some free drinks if she wanted to. It was the truth; you didn’t have to be beautiful, and you didn’t have to be thin or even funny. If you were a woman in New York City, you simply had to sit at a counter alone for about five minutes, and some man would buy you a drink.
So when Emma and I arrived at Sin that Friday night, we went straight to the bar, handed them our credit card to scan, and opened our tab for a night of fun. Not many people could actually have a tab in this day and age, but people knew us there, and they knew we always paid up at the end of the night. Our drinking and dancing fun at Sin was way too important to us for us to sneak out and not pay for our drinks on any night.
“It’s super busy tonight, Bruce,” I said as we arrived. “What’s up?” I asked when he let us skip the line and go straight to the door.
“A few wealthy bigwigs are in there and Dean Morrison. You know the ladies aren’t leaving if he’s in there. We don’t have any turnover, so I can’t let many people in.”
“Oh, he’s handsome,” Emma said as she pushed past Bruce and into the club. “I’ve got to find him.”
“Thanks Bruce. Good luck with all the wild ladies.”
When we got inside, it was even busier than it had been outside. The dance floor was packed, and we weren’t going to be able to take it over like we normally did. But we had seen this type of thing before. As soon as the celebrity left, all the girls would give up and go home too.
“Drinks?”
“Yep.”
We stood at the bar and sipped on our Vodkas while we watched the crowd. Dean Morrison was swarmed by women and seemed to have a few other guys with him, although we couldn’t see them through all the ladies. The women of New York loved themselves a hot celebrity man to fawn over.
It made me laugh that those women thought they actually had a chance with any of those guys. They might get an invitation to the bedroom for the night, but that wasn’t going to win the men over. It baffled me how women still thought they could land their dream guy even after having a one-night stand with him. Even I knew that men didn’t marry women like that; not that I necessarily wanted to get married. But I at least knew the rules of dating better than half the women in the club that night.
“One more, and then we are dancing. These lame-os are just going to have to deal with it. I need to get my dancing energy out.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed.
When the dance floor was packed, it was a lot harder to dance, but we had our ways of getting people out of our way. No one was more dedicated to a good night of dancing than the two of us were. The energy in the room pulsed from all the bodies moving with the music, it was nearly orgasmic.
One more drink turned into four more drinks, and Emma and I were sufficiently intoxicated by the time we pushed people off the dance floor. Emma started wildly dancing around and flailing her arms as she moved to the beat. People quickly moved away from her, and just like that, we had our dancing space cleared out and ready for us to take over.
It was exceptionally hot in the club that night. With a full-capacity crowd, I was sweating after only five minutes on the dance floor. The beat of the music radiated through my body, and I closed my eyes as I moved with it. The music felt like home to me. I loved how loud it was and how it made me feel like I was in my own little world. But I had clearly had too much to drink and felt dizzy when I closed my eyes.
I stumbled a little bit and opened my eyes when I felt someone’s hands on my hips offering me a little stability. There were so many people in the club that when I turned around to see who had stabilized me, I couldn’t figure out who it was. I went back to dancing, but again as I closed my eyes, I felt wobbly.
My hips suddenly felt the hands of a stranger on them, again. It wasn’t unusual, though because that’s what guys did when they came out on the dance floor; they found a pretty woman to dance with. Sometimes I’d keep dancing with the guy when he was close to me like that; sometimes I’d pull away. It all depended on what vibe I got from him when I turned around to look at him.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and turned to look at the man who had so boldly put his hands on my hips. I pulled on Emma’s hand to pull her away from the man she was dancing with and so I could use her as my decoy if I decided not to keep dancing with this man.
As we both turned around, I looked into the man’s face and instantly recognized him. He was the guy who had been hitting on Emma when we were at Uber Elite a week prior[M1]. His hands stayed on my hips, but I was pretty sure they were there as support only and not because the guy was actually hitting on me. He looked like a man with money, the kind who didn’t bother to dress up because he had no need to show off. His jeans and button up shirt seemed more fit for
the office than a dance club.
“You!” Emma yelled out.
I pulled away from the man as I registered what was going on. Emma moved close to him as she built up her energy for what I knew was going to be a very outrageous scene if the guy didn’t back off this time.
“It’s nice to see you again,” he said to Emma. “Dance with me?”
He held his hand out to her, and I watched in total disbelief as she took it and started to dance with him. She was such a total contradiction. I watched the two of them for a moment and then moved off the dance floor toward the bar to get some water.
“I have a feeling he’s won her over,” a man said to me as he watched me walk toward him at the bar.
“Who?”
“Your friend. She’s the one who yelled at my friend the other day. I think she likes him.” He laughed. “He obviously has a thing for her.”
My eyes locked in with his and for a moment I thought I might wobble to the ground as my ankles gave out. His boyish grin and rugged jaw line mesmerized me.
His laugh was contagious, and I found myself instantly smiling with him. I also looked down and saw that I had unconsciously placed my hand on his forearm as I had laughed and smiled with him. It was as if my body had been drawn to him, but I also needed a little support since my head was spinning. I quickly pulled away from him so I wouldn’t give him the wrong idea.
“Wait, I know you,” I said as I looked up at him again.
“You do?” He smiled slyly at me.
“Yes, I grabbed onto you at a bar outside of the subway when a guy was chasing after me.”
It was like a light was switched on in my brain as I flashed back to that moment and remembered the electricity that had been between us. His sharp jaw line and tanned skin was what finally triggered my memory. I hadn’t really talked to him or even looked at his face longer than a few seconds, but it was definitely the same guy who I had thrust myself next to after the scary subway incident.
His Huge Rock Page 8