Q*pid

by Xavier Mayne

  “That is correct.”

  “And now you’re using those models to predict who will, at some point in the future, change their Parameter Three configuration.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Holy effing shit,” Veera muttered.

  “Input unclear.”

  “Sorry, Archer. I was talking to myself.”

  “You are human, after all,” he replied.

  Was she crazy to think she heard warmth in his voice? She shook off the thought.

  “Thank you, Archer. Suspend voice interface.”

  “Voice interface suspended.”

  Veera sat for a long while, headset still on, as thousands of lines of log files danced past her unseeing eyes.

  “I’LL BE the first to admit that Veera set a very high bar for the success of the Archer program,” Edwin said, his glare fixed on Ross at the end of the table. “And she’s delivered some terrific results.”

  “The press has been fantastic,” Alexis added.

  “That’s awesome,” Ross said in a completely flat voice. “It’s almost as awesome as having a superexpensive artificial brain that swallows money and shits out bad relationship advice.”

  “Just because we haven’t reached the best results we think Archer is capable of doesn’t mean he’s not providing excellent relationship discovery,” Edwin retorted.

  “You’re trying to justify a moonshot budget that has delivered—at best—a marginal improvement,” Ross snapped.

  Furious, Veera reached out and dialed Archer on the speakerphone. Without so much as a ring, the call connected.

  “Hello. This is Archer.”

  “Resume voice interface,” she said as she looked across a table of bemused faces.

  “Voice interface resumed. Good afternoon, Veera.”

  “Hi.” She cast a glance at Ross, willing him to swallow whatever vicious words his lips were starting to curl around. “Archer, how many conversions have you made since launch that would have fallen below the threshold of legacy matching?”

  “As of this moment 1,677 matches have converted to relationship status that would not have qualified under legacy matching.”

  “Thank you, Archer.”

  “You’re talking to it now?” Ross blurted, a malevolent fire in his eyes. “Edwin, you should encourage mental health days for your staff. She’s clearly around the bend.”

  Veera grimaced at Ross. “Almost seventeen hundred conversions that would not have been made. Are you really going to sit there and say those people don’t matter? Over three thousand people?”

  “They’re in relationships now because your shiny machine told them to try it. Once the novelty wears off, how many of them are going to stick? You said yourself these matches wouldn’t have been made under our normal parameters. Of course you can get more matches if you throw out the parameters.”

  “The parameters haven’t been thrown out, and they haven’t changed,” Veera snapped back. “Archer is just better at applying them. He learns where discordant matches are likely to be successful, and he dynamically adjusts the thresholds.”

  “So your robot tries to guess when our customers are lying?” Ross jeered, an ugly sneering smile on his face.

  “No, he learns to recognize when they’re lying, and when he has data to prove that parameter configurations should be adjusted he does so.”

  “So you’ve given it permission to ignore what our customers have told us they want. They’ve told us what they want, Velma. And you’re ignoring them.”

  “It’s Veera,” she hissed, seething with a rage that took several deep breaths to master. “And I’m not ignoring anything our customers want. What our customers want, Ross, is to find a great relationship. And if finding that great relationship means that Archer needs to ignore a parameter or two, then that’s what he should do. Because the results are worth it.”

  “If you really think that lying—”

  “I think we’ve covered this topic, don’t you?” Edwin broke in, looking from Ross to Veera and back again as if worried they were about to come to blows. “Now, are there any additional issues we need to cover?” The room was silent. “Great. Anything comes up before next week’s check meeting, ping me offline.” Edwin stood, dismissing the assembly.

  Most of the attendees hustled from the room, obviously eager to get anywhere else in the building that the tension wasn’t as thick in the air. Veera followed Ross with her eyes, glaring at him as he stalked from the room. He didn’t look up from his phone as he brushed past her, his hip bumping her chair a good three inches toward the table.

  “Bastard,” she muttered under her breath. Confrontation always exhausted her. She got up slowly and pushed her chair up to the table, trying to bring order to a room that had brimmed with chaos. She turned out the lights on her way out.

  THE ROOM was silent for nearly five minutes.

  “Voice interface suspended,” Archer announced and hung up.

  Chapter FOUR

  A CHIME from Fox’s phone made his eyelids flutter but not open. In his half sleep, he recognized the Q*pid notification sound. That he heard it at all meant that a match of at least 85 percent had been found.

  A second chime sounded. He opened his eyes and checked the time on the clock next to his bed. It was ten minutes to six. The second chime meant that the match Q*pid wanted him to know about was at least ninety percent.

  The third chime was still dying away when he grabbed his phone. He’d never before heard a third chime, but he knew full well what it meant: there was a match with a success potential of more than 95 percent waiting for him. He brought to phone to him and tapped on the notification.

  A 99.5 percent match is waiting for you! the message said.

  “Fuck,” Fox said out loud. He’d never even seen a match higher than 95 percent, and never dreamed there could be such a thing as a match in excess of 99 percent.

  He tapped the link so see who this woman, this perfect specimen, this impossible angel, could be. Whoever she was, she was the woman he’d been searching his whole life for.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, the picture was waiting for him.

  “Fuck!”

  His phone flew across the room, then skidded under his dresser before crashing into the wall behind.

  “Fucking fuck!” Fox shouted, shaking his head to clear it of what he’d seen. He was breathing hard, and for the next few minutes was certain the walls of his bedroom were closing in on him.

  He flopped back onto his pillow and stared hard at the ceiling.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  “WHAT DOES the computer tell you to do?” Mrs. Schwartzmann asked, peering over Drew’s shoulder.

  “It wants me to remind you that avocado pits shouldn’t go down the disposal.”

  “But so slippery they are,” she replied. “I try to keep it from going down drain, but I could not hold on.”

  Drew sighed. “Then you should reach down and pull it out, not turn the disposal on.”

  “Put my hand in the place where the blades spin so fast?” Mrs. Schwartzmann recoiled from the very idea.

  “The blades only spin if you turn them on.”

  “That is what they say. Then your hand into drain you put, and before you know what is happening, the blades start with spinning.”

  “Well, now the blades won’t spin at all, and unless I find something on YouTube that shows me where to stick this little wrench, they’ll never spin again. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “But my sink is full of water.”

  “That’s the price of safety, Mrs. Schwartzmann.”

  Her shrug conveyed clearly her belief that there was no such thing as safety, not at any price. “While you look on the computer, I will make some eggs. With avocado.”

  He managed a smile as he scrolled through yet another page full of videos. “What’s better at six in the morning on a Saturday than your soft-boiled eggs and avocado?” Another
three hours of sleep, he thought to himself. That would be better.

  A chime, followed by a second, followed by a third, emanated from his laptop.

  “You find the answer?” she asked, without turning from where she stood chopping avocado.

  “No, that’s my online dating app. It’s never dinged at me three times before. It must have found someone amazing.”

  Mrs. Schwartzmann spun around. “Is there picture? Does she have strong arms like she break furniture, maybe for fun?”

  “We’ll find out in a minute,” Drew said. “It’s loading now.”

  She wiped her hands and shuffled—no, danced—over to the table. “Let us see this wonder woman.”

  The picture popped up. Drew stared at it for a long moment.

  “What?” she asked, her voice full of sudden concern. “What is the matter? You look like you have seen ghost.”

  “It’s not a ghost,” Drew said slowly. “It’s a….”

  “Dear boy, what is it?” She sat down opposite, slowly, as if bracing herself to hear tragic news. “What does the computer say?”

  “The computer,” Drew replied, but his voice broke before he could finish. He swallowed hard. “Mrs. Schwartzmann, the computer says I’m gay.”

  “YOU KNOW it’s Saturday, right?” Chad’s eyes were not yet open. How he had managed to accept the video call completely blind Fox had no idea.

  “Yes, I know it’s Saturday,” Fox barked.

  Chad’s eyes fluttered open. “Fucking fuck, Foxy, it’s only—”

  “Two minutes after six. In the morning. I know.”

  The picture shook as Chad tossed his phone onto the duvet next to him, giving Fox a view of the ceiling while Chad shifted in bed. When the picture again stabilized, he was sitting up against the headboard. Next to him was the lump Fox knew to be Mia, though no part of her was visible.

  “So what’s the emergency?” Chad asked sleepily. “And let me be clear up front—if you didn’t wake up chained to a homeless guy with hatchets where his hands used to be—”

  “This is not a fucking Saw movie, Chad,” Fox spat. “It’s worse.”

  Chad’s brow furrowed. “God, Foxy, what is it?”

  Fox swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure how to say this. “I got a 99.5 this morning.”

  “Holy shit, man!” Chad seemed suddenly wide-awake. “That’s amazing. So you’re calling to get Mia’s advice on what kind of diamond you should get?”

  “Yeah, no.” Fox gripped his phone even more tightly. A quick glance at it confirmed this was not a nightmare he hadn’t yet woken up from.

  “Then what is it? You’re kind of scaring me. What’s wrong?”

  Fox closed his eyes, dreading what he knew he had to do. “I’ll show you the picture. Then you tell me what’s wrong.”

  Chad brought his phone closer and blinked several times, ready to focus on the matter at hand. He waited for a long moment. “Well, let me see her,” he prompted.

  “See, that’s the…” Fox fell silent. “Fuck it,” he said under his breath. “Here.” He turned his phone around and held it up to the camera on his laptop.

  Chad brought his phone even closer and squinted at the image he was seeing. “You’re doing it wrong. That’s a dude. Where’s your 99.5?”

  Fox rubbed his eyes. “That’s my 99.5. He’s my perfect mate. According to the fucking magic brain, he’s my dream come true.”

  “Is it April first or something? You’re being punked, man.”

  “That’s what I thought. But I logged out and back in, and he’s still there.”

  “See, I told you you shouldn’t give them all of your passwords. Someone’s having fun with you, dude.”

  “This isn’t fun,” Fox groused.

  Chad laughed. “It kind of is, though.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck me? I’m not your 99.5, mister.”

  “You’re being no help at all, just so you know.”

  “Look, Foxy. Someone probably flipped the switch that tells your dating thingy what you’re looking for. Your queue is probably full of sausage right now.”

  Fox pulled his phone back from his laptop camera and made a quick swipe through the profiles awaiting his attention. After the guy, it was all women, and none were even in the nineties. Shit.

  “That’s not it,” he said to Chad. “He’s the only one, and he’s like ten points ahead of all of the women.”

  Chad’s expression grew instantly serious. “Then I hope the two of you will be very happy together. We’ll get you something really nice from your registry at the Super Gay Department Store. Congratulations.”

  “Why did this happen?” Fox demanded.

  “They made a mistake, that’s all.”

  “It’s artificial intelligence. It doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “You said it was a brand-new thing, and they didn’t roll it out to everyone. This is some kinda bug. You didn’t tell them that you were looking for a guy, right?”

  “Of course not. But the compatibility scatter plot shows that we’re… like….” He sighed helplessly. “Perfect for each other. Fucking perfect.”

  “But he’s gay, right?”

  Fox, who had been reluctant to find out anything at all about this guy he’d been matched with, tapped to see his profile. “Says here he’s looking for women.”

  A light seemed to go on in Chad’s brain. “That’s what happened,” he said, slapping at the duvet. “This fucking stupid robot brain thing must have decided that that’s something you have in common, and that threw the numbers off.”

  “Then why did I match this one guy? That can’t be it.”

  Chad looked down, as if there were something he didn’t want Fox to read on his face.

  “What?” Fox blurted.

  Chad shrugged lamely. “It’s just that… well, there might be other things.”

  “What other things?” Fox practically shouted into his laptop.

  “Fox, it’s… well… you kind of care a lot about the way you look.”

  Fox glared. “This from the guy who waxed his chest before going to Fiji on his honeymoon?”

  “I don’t have a recurring calendar alarm to tell me when to exfoliate,” Chad retorted. “I didn’t extend a business trip to Paris so I could spend a day prowling perfume shops to discover my signature scent. And you pay more for a haircut than I do to get my Audi detailed.”

  “I do all of that because women like it. I don’t do it because I’ve been secretly holding out for a guy. “

  “Gay guys do all of that too, is all I’m saying. And maybe that’s why the computer hooked you up.”

  “With another straight guy?”

  Chad grunted in frustration. “Okay, okay. Whatever. Swipe left or whatever and get rid of this guy, then call the stupid company and tell them not to set you up with any more dudes.”

  Fox stared down at this phone, unable to stop looking at the blue badge in which a tiny 99+ flashed. “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Or, you know, you might want to meet him. Maybe you’ll find out the computer was right, and you’ll be very happy together.”

  “Fuck you,” Fox said as he stabbed at the End Call button.

  He sat in the silence of his bedroom for a long while, staring at the smiling image of the man the computer thought he should immediately fall in love with. His finger hesitated over the Delete Match button… but. But that flashing 99+ kept blinking at him. That had to be a mistake. It had to be.

  Didn’t it?

  A LONG moment of silence ensued in Mrs. Schwartzmann’s kitchen.

  Drew stared at the photo on his laptop screen. “Mrs. Schwartzmann, this is bad.”

  She shrugged. “Bad is when the Nazis come for your family. This? Not so bad.”

  “But I don’t date men.”

  “You are a young man. If you are going to start, now is the time to do it, before you are too old to try new things.”

  “We’re not talking about trying
a new toothpaste. This would be a pretty big change. I don’t think I could do it. I don’t think I want to do it.”

  “You know, the Nazis they did not just come for the Jews. They came too for the gypsies and the homosexuals. They all would end up together in the camps. No one wanted people to think they were Jews, or gypsies, but most of all they didn’t want anyone thinking they were a homosexual. That would have been the worst thing in the world, in a world full of worst things.”

  “I’m not homophobic, Mrs. Schwartzmann. I have gay friends and friends who are bisexual and some who don’t even identify themselves with a particular sexuality—they call themselves ‘fluid.’ I think everyone should be able to be with whomever they want.”

  There was a mischievous twinkle in the old woman’s eye. “So, some of your best friends are Jewish. I see.”

  “We weren’t talking about religion,” Drew countered, a little annoyed at her needling.

  “No, we weren’t. But it is always the same. When they come for the gypsies, suddenly no one considers himself a gypsy.”

  Drew huffed a frustrated breath. “There’s no law against being gay. No one is rounding people up because of whom they sleep with. The fact is I’m not gay. I’m not interested in dating a man.”

  “Let us see this man you have no interest in,” she replied, motioning with her hand for him to turn the laptop around.

  Drew hesitated, but he knew that no obstacle on earth would long stand when it came between Mrs. Schwartzmann and something she wanted. He turned the computer slowly around.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

  “What?” he asked, getting up and coming around the table to look over her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “A very handsome man he is,” she said. “Such strong teeth.”

  Drew peered at the photo, trying to see it objectively as a picture of a person rather than as the repudiation of his sexual orientation as he had previously considered it.

  “And those green eyes,” she continued. “They look right into the soul.”