The Happiness Algorithm

by Zoe Cannon

  Miranda studied Tabitha’s drawing. She compared it to her own, and as best she could, tried to explain what she had been doing. She hadn’t realized how well she understood the technique until she started putting it into words. Maybe Tabitha was right, and she really had gotten the hang of this.

  “You look happy,” Tabitha said sourly as Miranda paused for breath.

  “I am.” It was so good to be able to say that and mean it.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s all thanks to Crandall.”

  Miranda hadn’t heard anyone say the man’s name with that kind of bitterness outside of work. “I take it you’re not a fan.”

  “My daughter is. She got so inspired by whatever his robots showed her, she ran off last week without so much as a note. The police wouldn’t even file a missing-persons report. My husband barely cares, because apparently what makes him happy is younger women, plural. I can’t talk to my therapist because she’s off on an extended vacation. And now even the good art teacher is gone, off following his bliss.” She stabbed her pencil into the paper.

  Miranda winced. “I’m sure your daughter will be in touch once she gets herself settled—or decides her dream isn’t going to work out. Everything is a bit chaotic right now, that’s all.”

  The woman snorted. “No kidding. Who would have thought so many people clicked on ads in the first place? Don’t they know better?”

  “The better the system knows you, the harder it is to ignore.” Without meaning to, Miranda switched into professional mode. “It knows exactly what buttons to press. And even if you don’t click, it still puts the idea in your head. The more you see that one idea, the more you’ll respond to it. Especially if you’re consciously trying to resist. Willpower is a limited resource—these systems are designed to get in under our conscious resistance with one hand, and break it down through repetition with the other.”

  “You know an awful lot about this.”

  “I work in advertising,” Miranda confessed. That was how it felt—like she was admitting to something shameful.

  “Then I suppose you loved these robots even when they were trying to sell us all ridiculous margarita-flavored toothpaste.”

  “It wasn’t right.” The words came out in a rush. “There’s a line between persuading people and tricking them. The new technology crossed it. Advertising was already a battle, but at least it used to be a fair fight before the AIs came along.” Her heart pounded in her ears. She had never said any of that out loud before. She wasn’t even sure she had allowed herself to think it. “That’s why Crandall did what he did. He took that tool and made it work for us instead of against us. Yes, it will take some adjustment, but for the first time in… I don’t even know how long, someone has created something new and world-changing purely to do some good in the world, and not to make somebody rich or give somebody power. Why are we complaining?”

  Tabitha scowled. “He didn’t create anything. He took what was already there and gave it a different job.”

  “That’s splitting hairs.”

  “Is a sword any less sharp depending on who’s holding it?”

  “That’s a bad analogy. It’s more like using a sword to cut off someone’s head versus using it to… cut their hair.” She winced. Well, she had never claimed to be gifted with words.

  “So it’s been all sunshine and rainbows for you, then?” Tabitha raised one eyebrow. “Not one thing has made you curse Crandall’s name?”

  Miranda couldn’t resist a glance down at her phone. Still no texts. Tabitha’s comment about her husband had cut a little too deep. She couldn’t deny that John had grown more distracted over the past six weeks. He worked late at least a couple of times a week these days, whereas pre-Crandall he had always made a point of being home before dinner was on the table. And every week his stated plans for her art-class night grew a little more vague. Tonight he had told her he planned to stay in and watch an old movie, but if he was at home on the couch, shouldn’t he have responded to the flirty texts she had sent an hour ago? The texts she had sent him as a test, if she was being honest with herself.

  But he was happy. She had never realized how much tension he had carried around with him from day to day until he started walking with his arms swinging and his jaw no longer clenched. She had never understood how restless a sleeper he was until she started sleeping through the night without being woken by his tossing and turning.

  Happy for what reason, though? Happy with someone else? Happy, maybe, without her?

  Happy, she told herself firmly. They would figure the rest out. And if that meant someday she would no longer be a part of his life… well, she wanted what was best for him, didn’t she?

  “No,” she told Tabitha. “Nothing.”

  She turned her attention back to her sketch. As she picked up her pencil, she hummed under her breath.

  * * *

  However much human happiness increased, there was never going to be a way of getting around mundane chores like laundry. Still, Miranda found herself humming as she collected discarded clothing from around the house. The board shorts, now with a soda stain across one leg, from Bobby’s room. John’s jeans from under the bed. A single stray sock wedged between two couch cushions. In the car, an old shirt of Bobby’s that she had planned to donate, along with—

  A woman’s shirt, stretchy and low-cut. Across the front, it said, Beat the Heat at Malibu Beach. Miranda had never been to Malibu Beach. She didn’t wear stretchy shirts—she hated the way they felt against her skin. Even so, it took a few seconds of staring at the shirt in confusion before she realized the obvious: it didn’t belong to her.

  Which meant, of course, that it belonged to someone else. A female someone. A female someone who, at some point in the past week, had taken off her shirt in the family minivan.

  Miranda’s face flushed. Not out of anger—she hadn’t gotten there yet, although she knew it was coming. This was pure embarrassment. She had always thought she was too good for cliches. Buying the minivan had been bad enough—she didn’t mind being a suburban mom, but looking like a suburban mom was a different story. And now this. Finding out her husband’s dirty secrets by discovering an article of clothing that didn’t belong to her. The only way to make it any more by-the-book would be if she had found a bright red thong.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered this possibility. Hadn’t she thought about it at art class just last week, wondered if he might have discovered that the key to his happiness lay in someone else’s arms? She supposed now she had her answer.

  She turned the shirt over in her hands. Something about it was bothering her. Something besides the obvious.

  The cliche was panties or a bra, the more provocative the better. It made sense. Miranda could imagine pulling on her clothes in a rush and realizing too late that she had forgotten something underneath. But a shirt? Had this mystery woman gone home topless?

  Of course she was focusing on details like that. It was easier than thinking about what this actually meant. She and John had made each other a promise on their wedding day, added to their vows at the last minute—they had promised to help each other grow throughout their lives, and to say goodbye if they ever found that growing meant growing apart. It had scandalized John’s family, causing a minor argument at the reception that led John’s mother to leave early, although Miranda’s sister, twice divorced by that point, had complimented them both on their foresight. Miranda had waved away her sister’s praise. She had never thought it would actually come to anything.

  But maybe it was time for her to live up to her wedding vows now. Even if John had decided not to live up to his.

  She would put the shirt aside, she decided. She would wait until she no longer wanted to tear it apart in her hands like she had been trying to do for the past couple of minutes without realizing it. When she had gotten through her initial anger and grief, when she could bring up the subject reasonably and act like an adult about the whole thing, the
n they would talk. She folded the shirt into a neat square, mostly to give her hands something to do, and started to climb out of the car.

  She stopped. The image of the shirtless woman was still nagging at her.

  She bent down and started digging around under the seat again. She brought up an old coloring book from at least two years ago. Three half-eaten French fries. A marker without its cap. A pair of jeans she had yelled at Bobby last week for losing. And a second pair of jeans, this pair too big for Bobby and too small for John and too tight for her.

  Something just above the front pocket caught her eye—a darker patch, something that didn’t belong. A stain. She ran her fingers along the stiff and crusted substance, then drew her hand quickly back as she realized what she was touching.

  A dozen possibilities ran through her mind, all of them preferable to her first thought. She tried to give herself a reason to believe in any of them. But she couldn’t find one—not one she would believe, at any rate. She knew a bloodstain when she saw one.

  She wanted to drop the jeans in disgust. Instead she dug her hand into the front pocket, and came up with a hard rectangle. A wallet. She opened it and pulled out a driver’s license. She recognized the name. It belonged to one of the girls who had run off with no warning to follow their bliss.

  Except apparently that wasn’t what had happened after all.

  She folded the jeans and set them down neatly on top of the shirt. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool. She couldn’t remember how to think anymore. Couldn’t remember how to feel.

  It was a rookie mistake, him leaving all this where she could find it so easily. But it made sense. Of course he was going to make rookie mistakes; he hadn’t been doing this very long, after all. Only since Crandall. She remembered his first night working late, and the new lightness in his step the next morning.

  She had just stepped out of the car again, shirt and jeans clutched between her palms—she couldn’t leave them in the car, after all, she was supposed to pick Bobby up from his friend’s house in a couple of hours—when the side door opened. John strode in, wearing his workout headband and those bright orange jogging shorts she had mocked mercilessly when he had first bought them. “I’m going for a run,” he announced. “Pray for me, will you? I haven’t gotten a real workout since—” He stopped as he took in what she was holding.

  Miranda just stood there, holding the other woman’s clothes like a Christmas present he had caught her wrapping. She didn’t know the script for this.

  If there had been any doubt left in her mind, it would have vanished the second she saw his face go white. She knew what guilt looked like on him, and that wasn’t it. What she was seeing now was fear.

  “I…” He met her her eyes, then looked down at the floor. “I don’t even know what I was doing.”

  “Chasing happiness.” Miranda’s voice was wooden. “Just like the rest of us.”

  “It won’t happen again.” He took a step toward her, and stopped when she flinched away. “I promised myself. No more.”

  “And how many times have you made yourself that promise already?”

  He was the one to flinch this time. Her words had hit home. “It doesn’t matter. This was the last time.”

  “You weren’t able to resist this time, and you won’t be able to next time either. This technology was designed to break down resistance, and it’s good at it. If it wants us to spend money, we spend money. If it wants us to do what makes us happy, we do what makes us happy.”

  She said the words calmly. She didn’t yell; she didn’t cry. She knew she should be doing both, but right now all she could do was state the bald truth.

  She saw the exact moment when the fear and shame on his face turned into cold resolve. A second later, when he lunged for her, she had already ducked back into the car and slammed the door behind her. She grabbed for the keys, grateful for the first time that John had never listened to her nagging about his bad habit of leaving the keys in the cupholder. She remembered too late that the garage door was still closed. She backed up anyway. As the car crunched through the door, John ran after her, waving his arms, yelling. She couldn’t hear well enough to tell whether his words were threat or apology.

  She pulled out of the driveway, splinters of the garage door still clinging to the rear window, and drove away.

  * * *

  The first thing she did was drive straight to the police station and tell them everything. Even though they kept her in one of those little rooms for hours, making her go over and over the same details like a hamster on a wheel, the numbness still hadn’t quite worn off by the time they finally let her go, for which she was grateful. Next she drove to Bobby’s friend’s house and told him he had to leave early, somehow managing to not only deflect his complaints easily but hold up her end of the conversation through ten minutes of small talk with the friend’s mother. With the only two items on her brief mental checklist crossed off, she got on the highway and drove. And kept driving.

  The farther she got from home, the more her control broke down. Her breathing came faster. Her grip tightened on the steering wheel. The tears she was suppressing kept trying to leap out of her throat in little gasps that she had to swallow down. She listened to Bobby’s chatter about his day and the new teacher at school and the latest video game his friends were playing, and tried to keep her responses as short as possible so he wouldn’t notice the change in her voice. But despite her efforts, he started saying less and less, and his own voice grew more and more uncertain, until finally he trailed off entirely, leaving the car silent.

  She pulled up to the drive-thru at the burger place where Bobby was always begging to go. At least one of them could get something good out of this day. “Two bacon cheeseburgers, please,” she said, and pulled up to pay. She glanced over at Bobby, but the expected smile was nowhere to be found.

  When she held out his burger to him, he didn’t take it. “You said no fast food except on special occasions,” he said quietly.

  She tried to brighten her voice, overcorrected, and wound up channeling a junk-food-pushing Mary Poppins instead. “This is a special occasion.”

  “Why aren’t we having dinner at home?”

  “I thought we could both use a treat.”

  He took the burger, but didn’t unwrap it. “Can we just go home? I want to go home.”

  So did she. Her art class was meeting tomorrow, and they were supposed to learn more about perspective. And she wanted to finish the show she was watching, the one with the undercover cop. And… John. She missed John already. She wanted to lie beside him in bed tonight while they both read themselves to sleep. She wanted him to kiss her awake tomorrow. She wanted to see that bounce in his step that had only appeared since Crandall had done his thing.

  The smell of her burger brought a wave of bile up from her stomach. She barely stopped herself from retching.

  “Mom?” asked Bobby. He still hadn’t started his burger.

  This was where it started. She would be spending a lot of time answering impossible questions over the next few days; she might as well get used to it now. “What is it?”

  “Can I sign up for baseball next year?”

  Not the question she had expected, in more ways than one. Bobby had never shown the slightest interest in sports, or in any other outdoor activities, for that matter. Hell, she practically had to drag him out of the house for an afternoon at the park. Yesterday, she would have been thrilled at the request. After all, studies did say that kids involved in sports were happier.

  “Why baseball?” she asked, keeping her tone carefully neutral.

  Bobby shrugged. “It seems like there’s stuff about baseball everywhere these days. At first it was annoying, but then I saw a video that talked about how really it’s all about learning how to work together as a team. It compared it to Jungle Jim. Remember, that show I used to watch last year?”

  She remembered. She had spent a solid month trying to scrub the them
e song out from between her ears. “How did you find that video? Through an ad?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Today it was baseball. What would it be next year, or five years from now? Would Crandall’s technology determine that he would find the most happiness by dropping out of school? By running away from home? By abducting and killing young women?

  “We have to make one more stop,” she said.

  She made Bobby wait in the car while she went into the bank. Inside, she emptied her personal checking account, the one her twice-divorced sister had always told her to maintain.

  “Now can we go home?” asked Bobby once she got back in the car.

  She didn’t answer. She drove until she saw a cheap motel, and pulled into the parking lot. Her phone buzzed. She looked down to see that it was recommending a hotel down the street with an indoor pool. She always had loved swimming.

  She turned the phone off. All the way off. She didn’t think she had done that in all the time she’d had it.

  “Mom?” Bobby pressed. “Can we go home now?”

  She would be spending a lot of time answering impossible questions over the next few days. She might as well get used to it now. She rubbed her temples.

  “We’re going to be making some changes,” she said.

  * * *

  Miranda winced at the glare of the monitor as she slid into the library computer chair. She knew she used to spend most of every day sitting in front of a screen just like this one, but right now, she had a hard time believing it. That other life was like a dream, one that only occasionally floated into her consciousness.

  But as soon as her hands found the keyboard, muscle memory typed in the web address she needed. She had worried the store would be gone, without advertising to keep it afloat. But the screen erupted in a riot of color as the site loaded. It looked exactly the same as it had two years ago, only with a different model of smartphone and an unfamiliar organic-food trend on the front page. It didn’t look like their business was hurting at all. Apparently there was plenty of money to be made on people’s happiness.