Love Minus Eighty by McIntosh Will

Author:McIntosh, Will [McIntosh, Will]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / Dystopian, Fiction / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction, Fiction / Literary
ISBN: 9780316217774
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-06-11T07:00:00+00:00

He stared at his feet, his expression flat, controlled, as he crossed the wide expanse of the main foyer.

Veronika rose tentatively when he approached her in the waiting room. “You okay?”

“Skintight,” he answered. “Let’s get the fuck out of this place.” He was numb; he knew that what he’d lost hadn’t fully registered yet, and when it did, the pain of that loss would cut him into cubes.

They rode the tube in silence, waited for Veronika’s Scamp to rotate into view, then rode the vehicle elevator up into the sunlight.

Veronika pulled onto Ashburton Avenue. “Do you feel like you got some closure?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it right now.” Rob tried to mask the impatience he felt, but the words came out clipped, almost angry. “I appreciate you coming with me, but I can’t think about this right now. Can we talk about something mundane?”

“Of course.”

“Anything. The weather. The best pizza place in the city. Boloball.”

They passed a man with catatonia standing on the corner of Ashburton and Nepperhan, his hand in the air as if he was waving good-bye to someone, his eyes staring off beyond the horizon.

“If you want something mundane, I could tell you about this client I was just helping.”

“Perfect. Just keep talking.”

“So she’s been in a twenty-two-year PCR—”

“PCR?” Just what he needed—to feel both dejected and stupid.

“Sorry. ‘Platonic-companion relationship,’ with another straight woman.”

“Got it.”

“So they break up, because my client has realized she wants to find true romantic love. She has no clue how modern dating works, so she hires me. She pays me four thousand dollars to set up her profile… and a week later wants me to help her get her PCR back.”

Rob laughed in what he hoped was an appreciative manner, though he was so distracted by flashbacks from his fourteen minutes with Winter that he was having trouble following Veronika’s story. “People pay you four thousand dollars to create their profiles?” That much he’d heard, because he couldn’t believe Veronika made four thousand dollars for a couple of hours’ work.

“Oh yeah. Minimum. The profile’s the key, the absolute key to modern dating. If you can get quality people to look at your profile, it becomes a numbers game. The more views, the more hits. The more hits, the more the odds climb that you’ll meet a compatible mate. Go on fifty face-to-faces, if you can stand it, and odds are ninety-two percent that one of them will result in a relationship of at least five years. Assuming you don’t get sidetracked going out a second and third time with people who clearly are not compatible—”

Veronika went on, talking rapid-fire about PCRs, compatibility scores, intangibles, but Rob’s mind was stuck on what she’d said about dating. If you can get enough people interested in you, it becomes a numbers game. Winter was going to be buried. He would never see her again, ever, because not enough rich guys had been interested in her. It had been a numbers game, much like the game Veronika was talking about, only the stakes were higher.

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