Page 72 of Forty, Flirty & Fake-ly Yours

"Like falling for someone who represents everything your company is trying to replace?"

"Like realizing maybe you built that company because you were afraid of exactly this kind of mess." She stands, heading for the kitchen. "Want some soup?"

"I'm not actually sick."

"No, just lovesick." She ignores my glare. "Which is worse, because you can't algorithm your way out of it."

My phone buzzes. Douglas Franklin:Wedding shower tomorrow. Press already asking about SecureMatch's power couple. Keep up the good work.

Then Connor:Also, Grams says to remind you that avoiding feelings is statistically correlated with dying alone surrounded by malfunctioning AIs.

“My friends are actual menaces. It’s past being a joke at this point,” I inform Natasha as she returns with actual soup.

“And your AI is a snitch." She hands me a bowl. "But neither of them are wrong."

Through her windows, Seattle's eternal grey has taken on that particular late afternoon quality that makes everything feel slightly surreal. Like maybe the world really can't be fully codified in ones and zeros.

My phone lights up with another message. This time from Rosalind:Wedding shower details confirmed.

"You know what your problem is?" Natasha asks, reading over my shoulder.

"Besides having a sister who doesn't respect privacy protocols?"

"You're trying to categorized something that's meant to be messy." She takes my phone, dropping it on the cushion. “Love isn't efficient. It's not logical or predictable or safe. It's showing up with soup. It's terrible jokes and worse timing and taking chances even when all the algorithms say it's a bad idea."

"That's a very statistically unsound approach to?—"

"Gray."

"Yes?"

"Shut up and eat your soup."

I eat my soup.

"Now," she says once I've finished, "want to tell me what really happened at the cabin?"

"Not particularly."

"Let me rephrase: Tell me what happened at the cabin that has you creating new algorithms at 3 AM while Roz pretends everything's fine."

I think about snow-covered windows and firelight on auburn hair. About careful distance and perfect fit and the way some figures just don't add up.

"I think," I say slowly, "I might have found a bug in my code."

"The matchmaking algorithm?"

"My whole system." I show her the error Kevin found. "All this time, I've been trying to account for harmony, for perfect compatibility... But what if that's wrong? What if the best matches aren't the ones that make perfect sense?"

"Like a tech CEO who calculates everything falling for a matchmaker who trusts intuition?"

"Something like that."

She reads through the code, smiling slightly. "You know what this reminds me of?"

"Please don't say soup."

"Your robot-themed bar mitzvah."

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