Page 114 of The Warrior
“How would you do that?” Pearl asked.
Shelly looked up for a second. “Give them a hundred questions about values, habits, and expectations for a marriage and see who matches the best.”
Khan took up the flow. “Shelly, I like how you think. It sounds like an easy solution.”
Athena’s voice was calm and unrushed when she spoke. “You’re forgetting something important.”
“What?” Pearl looked at her.
“Even if a couple have a high compatibility score there is no guarantee that they have chemistry. Finn and I don’t have much in common, but somehow we work in spite of that.”
“I have an idea,” Marco said. “Let’s run Shelly’s system and then we’ll have the fifty most compatible men fight for each woman.”
“No fighting.” Pearl’s voice was firm.
Shelly raised her hand again and was allowed to speak by Pearl. “If we could figure out what makes it work between people in relationships that are functional, then we can make a system that matches couples using those algorithms.”
“You think algorithms can predict chemistry?”
“What do you mean when you saychemistry?” Shelly asked with a frown. “Are you suggesting we should do blood tests on people?”
“No, I’m saying that sometimes there’s a special attraction between two people. It doesn’t have to make sense from a rational point of view, but that person just gets under your skin.”
Shelly pulled her sleeves over her hands as if protecting her own skin and frowned. “I don’t know about chemistry or attraction, but if we’re to make some kind of system, we’d have to find couples that are happy and design the algorithms around them. The problem is to find a sample group large enough. We only have four couples of Nmen and Motlander women.”
“Boulder and I are happy,” Christina offered.
“So are Khan and I.”
“Yes, but we would need a larger number of couples to get an idea of what makes you successful as a couple. Algorithms based on four couples are too random.”
Khan cut in. “We’ll find some programmers to create a system and maybe you can talk to them about your ideas, Shelly. For now, we’ll have to work with what we have.”
“Can I ask a quick question?” Marco stood up. “Will there still be prize money for the Nmen who marry?”
“No, of course not. I didn’t get a prize when I married Athena either. The prize money is connected to the tournaments.”
“There will be no tournaments and no fighting,” Pearl pointed out. “The Council has made that a condition.”
Marco sat down with disappointment on his face.
Shelly’s eyes were on Marco. “I think you had a good idea about giving the women a number of men to choose from. Instead of letting the fifty most compatible men fight for her, maybe we could let them charm her instead.”
“Charm her how?” Marco asked with a frown.
“I don’t know, and maybe fifty is too large a number, but we could let them record a video of themselves that she can watch.”
Tristan raised his hand. “That’s a great idea, and then the woman can pick out five or ten men that she finds attractive and wants to meet.”
“I like it.” Khan nodded. “That’s what we’ll do.”
“Good.” Pearl looked at Magni. “Do you agree?”
He uncrossed his arms and tucked his hands in his pockets. “No, I don’t agree. I want tournaments, but since we can’t have that I guess we’ll have to rely on some fucking algorithm.”
Pearl gave a satisfied smile.
“Now that Khan and Magni have approved, we can move on to discuss how we take advantage of all the knowledge the women are bringing.”
