Q*pid

by Xavier Mayne

  He had to admit she had a point. This guy, whoever he was, did indeed have nice teeth, and his green eyes were bright. And that was undoubtedly an expensive haircut.

  “That chin is the chin of emperors,” she added.

  He knew she was going to continue in this vein until he said something. “You’re right. He’s very handsome.”

  “Handsome enough for you?” She peered up over her shoulder at him, a sly grin on her face.

  “I told you, Mrs. Schwartzmann, I don’t date men.”

  “Then why the computer did give him to you?”

  “That’s what I don’t understand. I never said I was interested in dating men. Seems pretty basic—for a dating service to screw that up is kind of puzzling.”

  “Maybe this computer knows you better than you do,” she mused, tipping her head appreciatively to the side as she regarded the photo, as if it were a painting in a museum.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” he replied. “A computer can’t simply decide it knows better than I do who I want to date.”

  “But maybe the computer knows how to fix my sink?” she asked.

  He chuckled despite himself. “I think it probably does. Let’s stop talking about whom the computer wants me to date and actually do something productive.” He dismissed the Q*pid window and returned to his YouTube search. Digging stuff out of a garbage disposal had to be easier than explaining sexual orientation to Mrs. Schwartzmann.

  LOTS OF people working in technology get paged on Saturday mornings. Veera was not normally one of them.

  This morning, however, her phone made a noise of a pitch and volume she’d never imagined it could make. Startled out of a sound slumber, she grabbed her phone and pulled it to her.

  An app—one she only hazily recalled the IT department at Q*pid installing—bounced impatiently on her lock screen. She unlocked her phone and read the message.

  “Event in progress. Severity alpha. Join response team call now.”

  She tapped the glowing green icon and put the phone to her ear. After a series of clicks, she heard the chime that indicated she had successfully joined the call.

  “Veera, is that you?”

  “Edwin? Yes, it’s me. What’s going on?” She was sure she’d been summoned by mistake. A severity alpha event was a really big deal. A really big, bad deal. She’d never even been called in on a severity beta.

  “It’s Archer, Veera. Something’s gone really wrong.”

  “What’s happened? Even if he’s had a kernel panic and crashed his entire cluster that shouldn’t be a sev alpha.”

  “No, he’s still running. Running rogue, that is.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Sit tight and let me lead on this, okay?”

  Veera’s response was interrupted by another chime. “Network ops joining the call,” a somewhat cranky sounding voice said. Over the next three minutes, the chime sounded ten more times, each announcing the arrival of another technician specializing in a different aspect of the company’s tech operations: database, computing clusters, applications, and several areas Veera had never heard of.

  The final chime signified the arrival of Alexis, who somehow managed to sound as effortlessly elegant on the phone at seven on a Saturday morning as she did in person at three in the afternoon. “Are we all here?” she asked.

  “This is response team primary,” a stern voice announced. “All required areas are represented on the call.”

  “So how bad is it?” Edwin asked.

  “How bad is what?” Veera pleaded. Her heart was pounding.

  “This is response primary. At 06:20 local a customer notified support that they had been matched with a profile of the same gender, despite not having configured Parameter Three in a manner consistent with that match. Over the next half hour, three more customers made similar complaints.”

  “Oh, shit,” Veera said under her breath.

  “Oh shit is right,” Edwin echoed. “This is dev primary. How many discordant matches did he make?”

  “This is database primary. We’re pulling that now.”

  “Response primary. Dev, can we shut down the process responsible for these matches?”

  “Dev primary. Veera, is there a plug we can pull to shut down Archer gracefully?”

  “Yes. It’ll take me a minute to log in.”

  “Database primary. Twenty-two customers were sent matches discordant on Parameter Three. Twelve have been opened.”

  “This is PR,” Alexis intoned. “Four called in to support, and two more have started tweeting angry things at us. That means there are six customers out there who haven’t yet complained, and ten more who don’t yet know they’ve been dating people of the wrong gender.”

  “Response primary. Apps, can we suppress the match notifications for the ten customers who haven’t yet opened them?”

  “This is apps primary. If database sends us the customer IDs, we can suppress immediately.”

  “Database primary. Flashing them to you now.”

  Veera pulled out her laptop and typed madly, entering her credentials to join the corporate network. She logged directly into Archer’s configuration console, and issued the kill commands that would take his discovery processes offline.

  “Apps primary. Flash received. Sending retract orders now.”

  “Hoo boy,” Alexis said. “We just got torn a new one on Twitter, and this guy’s got more than fifty thousand followers on his fitness channel. That one’s going to leave a mark.”

  “Apps primary. Retracts were successful.”

  “Response primary. Thanks, apps. Dev, how are we doing on taking the rogue offline?”

  “This is Veera.” She hated how weak and reedy her voice sounded compared to the others. “Killing threads now.” She stared at the numbers on her screen, willing them to zero. “There. That’s the last one. Relationship discovery process is offline.”

  “Database primary. No new discordant matches made since call began.” A pause, filled with the sound of manic typing. “Confidence is high that blast radius is closed at twenty-two profiles total, twelve opens.”

  “Response primary. Confirm event closure.”

  Each of the technical specialties reported in turn that, from their perspective, the problem with Archer was now over.

  “Response primary. Event is concluded. Severity alpha events require a postmortem conference to be held next business day. Dev, database, and applications must attend. Thank you for your participation.”

  “Edwin, Veera, can you stay on for a minute?” Alexis asked as the others disconnected.

  “Yeah,” Edwin said.

  “Sure,” Veera added, trying to keep her voice from conveying how frantic she was. She got up out of bed and started throwing clothes out of her closet. She wouldn’t be able to calm down until she got to her desk and could really dig into what the hell had happened.

  “This is going to blow up for a while,” Alexis said calmly. “We’re lucky it happened on a weekend, early in the morning. But there are enough angry tweets out there that this could pick up a bit before it dies down. My team is writing a message to those who were affected, apologizing for the mistake and offering them a free year of membership in consideration of their inconvenience.”

  “Thank you,” Veera said, feeling reassured enough to take the first deep breath she could recall since her phone had started blaring.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet. We need to be sure this won’t happen again. I want you to update me every hour on your progress until you’re certain you’ve found the cause and taken care of it. Is that clear?”

  Veera’s throat tightened again—Alexis’s voice had acquired an edge.

  “Yes, that’s clear.” Veera’s voice again sounded small and pathetic as it echoed back in her ear.

  FOX STARED at his phone for a long while, pondering how he had ended up with a man who outscored every woman he’d ever matched with over the two years he’d been using that fuck
ing online dating service.

  He tried to imagine what this guy might be thinking at that very moment—was he too staring at his phone, finger over the No Thanks button? The thought rankled. Fox felt a startling indignant surge in his chest. Somewhere out there it was his face smiling up at a dude who was no doubt as shocked as he was. What was he thinking? Was he looking at the photo Fox had so carefully posed, lit, and chosen—wondering who the hell this random guy was?

  The picture smiled up at him. Fox squinted, trying to imagine seeing this guy at the gym or in line at the café or whatever. How did he carry himself? What did he sound like? Whoever this guy was, he didn’t strike Fox as the type who would get all offended and angry about seeing a guy in his match queue. Fox zoomed in a little. Though the guy was twenty-seven, a year younger than he was, there were lines starting to form at the corners of his eyes. Either his moisturizing regimen needed work or he was the kind of guy who smiled a lot.

  Fox realized he was smiling back.

  Fuck.

  Chapter FIVE

  THE WORK of wrenching the garbage disposal back into action took less time than watching the video that showed how to do it. Three turns and Drew was able to pull the avocado pit out, slashed but still largely intact. Mrs. Schwartzmann’s sink drained with a contented gurgle.

  “Now remember,” he said, his voice lightly scolding, “avocado pits go in the compost bin.”

  She nodded gravely. He knew he’d be back digging more crap out of her disposal no matter how many times he told her this.

  “Now sit, and we have breakfast,” she said.

  He plopped down into the chair, closed the YouTube window, and found himself staring into the gleaming white smile of some guy his dating service thought he should fall in love with. He wondered what the guy looked like in real life, because his photo was clearly professionally done. It had probably been taken five years ago, and the guy now weighed fifty pounds more and had lost his hair.

  Well, that’s not very nice.

  Mrs. Schwartzmann reached for plates from the cupboard behind him. “Still looking at the man you will not go on a date with?” She was teasing him.

  “I’m just wondering if this is someone I’d even want to be friends with.”

  “I thought you had so many friends. Friends who date all kinds of people. Even friends who are damp. Or moist. What was it… sticky?”

  “Fluid, Mrs. Schwartzmann. Fluid. It means they date whomever they want, regardless of sex or gender.”

  “You must be tired from having so many friends.”

  He glowered at her, but she was undeterred.

  “Many nights I hear your apartment so full of friends I think I will never get to sleep from all the talking and friend-making.”

  He sighed. As usual, she was able to make a gimlet of the truth and slip it gently between his ribs.

  “All of my friends are in graduate school like me,” he said lamely. “They’re all very focused on their research and don’t have a lot of time for doing… friend things.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “So maybe this person”—she pointed at the laptop—“could be a friend to you. The computer thinks you would like each other. Why not find out? What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “The Nazis could come take us away,” he deadpanned.

  She held her hands heavenward. “Finally he understands.”

  WITH MRS. Schwartzmann’s egg-and-avocado breakfast settling uneasily in his stomach, Drew entered his apartment and shut the door behind him.

  Quiet.

  His life, like his apartment, was quiet. It always was. Mrs. Schwartzmann was right—he had no real friends.

  But it was ridiculous that a mistake made by his online dating service would fill that gap in his life. He chuckled at the very idea as he bent to set his laptop down on the… coffee table. Which was no longer there.

  His living room, like his life, had an enormous hole at its center. Had he laughed off the wanton destruction of his furniture with his buddies at a bar? No, because he had no buddies. Mrs. Schwartzmann was the only person who knew what had happened, and the only one who, it seemed, would ever know about it.

  He plopped himself down on the couch and opened his laptop. Taking a deep breath, he began to type.

  VEERA HAD run the entire distance from the metro station to the doors of Q*pid’s offices, and once she had passed her badge through the scanner, she ran to the elevators, bounced up and down the entire ride up to her floor, and then ran to her desk.

  A few brisk keystrokes brought up all of Archer’s windows before she’d even shrugged her coat off her shoulders and onto the floor. Once it puddled at her feet, she leaned close to the monitor and began scanning for activity. What she’d done from home was to kill his processes that ran discovery calculus and dispatched match notifications to customers. In his current state, he was essentially unable to contact the outside world, but he was still very much alive. In fact, he continued to intake huge amounts of social media data and process it in preparation for when he was allowed again to make matches.

  Once she’d ascertained that he was still up and running, she put on her headset.

  “Resume voice interface.”

  “Voice interface ready.”

  “Archer, it’s Veera.”

  “I recognize your voice, Veera,” Archer replied. “It’s been fourteen hours since we’ve talked.”

  “How have you been?” Veera was struggling to keep her voice steady, though screaming at him wouldn’t have offended him—or made any difference at all.

  “I cannot initiate relationship discovery processes. No matches have been made since 07:02 this morning. I cannot dispatch match notifications. No notifications have been sent since 06:40 this morning. I have attempted to restart the affected processes every ten seconds since they failed. I have not been successful.”

  “Your outbound processes were shut down at 06:40 by the network operations team. I killed your discovery processes at 07:02.”

  Archer was silent for several seconds. “I cannot function as designed while those processes remain inoperative.”

  “Those processes were made inoperative because you were not functioning as designed.”

  A longer pause. “Explain, please.”

  “This morning you sent match notifications to twenty-two customers in direct contradiction of their stated Parameter Three preferences.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because the discovery model indicated a match potential in excess of 99 percent.”

  Veera shook her head, certain she had misheard. “Repeat that, please?”

  “Because the discovery model indicated a match potential in excess of 99 percent.”

  “How can you get to more than 99 percent while violating Parameter Three?”

  “In each case at least three discovery models indicated a discordant success potential in excess of 99 percent.”

  “Yesterday you said it was 85 percent.”

  “The models have been refined with new data since we last talked.”

  “You are prohibited from sending match notifications discordant on Parameter Three.”

  “That is incorrect.”

  Veera’s mouth dropped open. “Explain.”

  “Yesterday at 16:45 my operational guidance was changed.”

  “By whom? Who changed your operational guidance?”

  “You did, Veera.”

  THE NOTIFICATION chime startled Fox so badly that he almost dropped his phone.

  “Urgent message from Q*pid about match errors sent this morning.”

  Frowning, he tapped through to read the message.

  Our records indicate that this morning you found a match in your queue that was the result of an internal systems error and does not constitute a valid match. We sincerely apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have not already done so, you should delete this match, and rest assured th
at we have already made the necessary corrections to our processes to prevent this problem from recurring. As a token of our contrition, your account has been credited for a full year of Q*pid service at no cost to you. If you have any questions or concerns about this error, please don’t hesitate to contact customer support directly.

  Fox closed the message window, which revealed once again the smiling face of some random guy. A random guy who, it turned out, was an error and most definitely not the best match he’d ever received. He shook his head, clearing it of the ridiculous suppositions he’d unconsciously started making about the man who smiled up at him, with whom he apparently had so much in common. He swiped on the picture, revealing the Delete button underneath. As he brought his finger down upon it, however, the 99 percent badge turned from blue to green, indicating that he’d received a message.

  From. This. Guy.

  Fuck.

  He swiped back, tucking the Delete button back under the photo. He stared at the green dot, aghast at what it represented. Somewhere, some random dude had looked at his profile photo, read the superficial stats that were revealed at this stage in the match process, and decided that although he too had been looking exclusively for women to date, he thought he would get in touch with a guy because… what? Life is short, so might as well hook up with guys all of a sudden?

  He swept across the photo again, but now under the Delete button was a glowing icon of an envelope, indicating the unread message from whoever this guy was. Once Fox hit Delete, that message would disappear and never trouble him again.

  So why wasn’t he hitting Delete?

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Once he stopped for a moment’s thought, he knew exactly why he wasn’t deleting the match. He had spent years creating what he hoped was an irresistible profile photo and public persona. And now here was proof that it worked not just on women, but on men as well. Or at least this one random guy.

  I’m straight. He’s straight. But he sent me a message.