THE DATING APP

It’s been a long time coming. For years I’ve wondered, is this all there is to life? At the age of five, an algorithm told me I was going to be a Datastore technician, and it’s been a very fulfilling career, I think. But I’ve never stopped waiting for the next big thing to happen. Like some momentous event would occur and finally give me the opportunity to be the hero I knew I was. 

Today, for the first time, I know what my true purpose is. I’m going to delete The Dating App.

The Dating App is a vile virus, which seems to have escaped everyone’s notice. The world is under constant distraction from the latest SARS outbreaks, which has allowed other viruses to spread unchecked. Viruses like Perceived Choice. It’s not a protein, but an electrical impulse, generated by The Dating App and beamed into your brain, where it moves between neurons and makes you think that Love is just around the corner, when really, you’re wandering around the wrong city, in the wrong country, alone.

The Dating App’s electrical impulses are protected in cold storage here on the ExF Datastore, where I’m paid more than I want to admit to maintain their infrastructure. I’ve been on rotation at the ExF for five months, orbiting the earth at an undisclosed distance. Actually, it’s more accurate to say we are orbiting the sun than the earth, which should give you some indication of how far from home we are. My rotation ends in less than a week, which means today is the perfect day to put my master plan into action.

I get ready as though it were any other day. Flash my teeth, pull on my jumpsuit, check my phone. There are 238 potential matches on The Dating App, waiting in a queue for me to judge them. I have four dates set up for when I return to earth, all new suitors. It's a shame we’ll never meet, because I was genuinely looking forward to some of those dates. But that is the sickness caused by Perceived Choice. I’ve genuinely looked forward to more than two-hundred dates before, yet here I am, making my bed alone, on a barge floating through the void of space.

Love is not a virus, it is a mental illness. When you are in Love, you see shadows that aren’t there, and completely miss signals that are. When you are in Love, you think the world is ending, or that you’re finally living for the first time. I’ve had recurring bouts of Love my entire life. I was first afflicted with it when I was six years old, and it made me obsessed with a boy named Jamal. I had two siblings and had never willingly shared a thing in my short life, but to him, I gave my favorite toy — a black bear filled with tiny silica beads. 

 He and his family moved away a week later. While my mother and I drove to ballet practice, I said to her, “I didn’t know Love was supposed to hurt.” I wish that she had slammed on the brakes, grabbed me hard by the shoulders and screamed into my ears, “It always hurts! It will cause you more pain in your life than any person should have to bear! It will make you wish you were dead. Never fall in Love again. Never.” 

Maybe my six-year-old brain was young and impressionable enough that her warning would have worked. Maybe fear would have gripped me tightly enough to keep me from ever falling in Love again. Because now, I am afraid, when I find someone new on The App and begin to feel the warm fuzziness and imagine the perfect endings, but not nearly afraid enough to stop. ….. [CONTINUE READING]