operation. Real terrorists didn’t give a shit about bamboo.
I tapped my waist-pouch to make sure my fold-up gas mask was there, just like the government public service cartoon taught us.
“ID?” An acne-scarred man in combat fatigues barked at me as I reached the gates leading to the rich part of town. There was a body lying nearby, half in the street, half on the sidewalk, one foot twisted at an odd angle. Vehicles swerved to avoid it.
I stood still while the guy scanned my eyes with his little silver wand. It bleeped. He glanced at the readout on the screen clipped to his thick utility belt.
“Okay,” he said, waving me on. I wasn’t sure what the criteria were for entry into Southside. Lack of a criminal record? Not on any government watch lists? That I had a job?
When I reached the SpeedMatch outlet on Victory Drive I dawdled outside, pretending to tie my shoe on a bench. I ducked through the revolving door when no one was looking. I felt like such a loser going in there—much like I used to feel when I was eighteen, skulking into porn shops. It’d been years since I’d resorted to a dating service. I couldn’t believe I was doing this again. And I couldn’t really afford it, but it was the only good way I could meet a bright, educated woman, given where I lived.
It was humbling to be starting over from scratch at thirty-five. How many more women would I have to tell all of my stories to—my funniest anecdotes, what music I like, how I got the scar over my eye? Three more? Eleven? Everyone else in the world seemed able to find someone long before they hit thirty-five, even if those relationships didn’t always last forever.
“I’m here for the ten o’clock,” I said to the receptionist, who sported the thick makeup of a woman too young to realize that sometimes less is more.
She led me to my room, showed me how to download my vitals and bio-video from the boost I’d brought, helped me put on the VR equipment, then shut the door behind her. My palms were sweating.
The VR landscape was hackneyed but impressive: I was sitting in a burgundy reading chair on a slate patio, in the center of a beautiful formal garden. To my left, water tattered from a winged water nymph reaching toward the sky from the center of a fountain. A bed of perfect yellow tulips bobbed in a slight breeze on the other side. The garden was in a valley, surrounded by towering white mountain peaks; a waterfall burst from a cave in one mountain, crashing into a lake in perfect white-noise harmony with the fountain.
“Five minutes till your first date,” a mellifluous female voice informed me from out of the sky. I wondered if women heard a man’s voice.
“Mirror, please,” I said, and checked to make sure I didn’t have a piece of dandruff dangling from one of my eyebrows. Everything was shiny and perfect inside the VR environment except us daters—exact replication of what you had was all you got.
“Thank you.” The mirror disappeared. Mirrors aren’t good things to have around on blind dates; the process makes you self-conscious enough.
In the air to my left, my first date’s vitals appeared, along with the lie-detector readout, currently flatlined. Her name was Maura (though that didn’t mean much; lots of women didn’t give their real names to minimize the lunatic stalker factor). She was thirty-six, a physician, lived in Trenton. Liked Fuzz-Jazz and Postal music, and freerunning. I took a few deep breaths, readying myself for thirty-eight three-minute dates.
Maura materialized in the chair across the table. She had bushy brows and a pointy chin. Long, thin nostrils that you couldn’t help but see into when you looked at her. Kind of aristocratic looking. Interesting.
“Hi Jasper. I have a few questions that I like to ask, then if you want you can ask me questions.” She talked fast, but with three minutes that was par.
“Sounds fine,” I said. Suddenly my nose itched; I resisted scratching it. Scratching, or any sort of face- touching for that matter, doesn’t convey the best first impression.
“How many times have you cheated on a wife or girlfriend?”
I gawked at her. She had to be joking. What kind of an opening question was that?
“Less than twelve,” I finally said.
She looked at me the way my grade school teachers used to when I was being bad and I knew it.
“Is your salary statement accurate?”
“Sometimes.” It wasn’t like my salary was all that impressive. If I was going to lie, I would have done better than what was listed. Maybe what she was asking was, “What are you doing here, given your pitiful salary? You’re obviously a poor downtowner.”
“Do you have any bizarre sexual interests?”
“Define bizarre.”
I knew her type. She’d had some bad dating experiences and now she focused more on what she
When she finished I asked her a few questions: Have you ever stolen a shopping cart from a grocery store? What’s your favorite Drowned Mermaids song? You don’t know the Drowned Mermaids? Hmm. That could be a problem. I pretended to jot a note; she didn’t seem to realize I was being sarcastic. Maura faded away. I scratched my nose with a vengeance.
Next was Victoria. She was too fat: big and boxy—a rectangle over disproportionately skinny legs. As we talked I chided myself for being shallow, then I snapped back at the chiding voice: attraction matters; it’s not the only thing that matters, but it matters, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t matter to satisfy my less-than- attractive female acquaintances, who don’t want it to matter. A girlfriend had to be reasonably attractive, or at least reasonably attractive to me. I found gangly women with overbites terribly attractive. Also nerdy women—shy, socially awkward librarian types really did it for me.
When Victoria faded I downloaded her bio-video out of courtesy. I probably wouldn’t watch it, but she seemed nice and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. A few seconds later she downloaded mine as well.
The next woman materialized, interrupting my reverie. She was in a wheelchair.
The first time I’d done this speed-dating thing, I’d figured the difficult part would be trying to seem clever and kind and confident, all in the space of three minutes. But the truly difficult part was masking disappointment and disinterest.
For the third time today, I struggled to keep a stiff smile pasted on my face as we danced through the “nice to meet yous.”
From the rubbery, slight movement of greeting she made with her hand, Maya was a victim of Polio-X, that top 40 dial-a-virus that swept the nation in ’23. She had some nerve, I thought, getting on a dating service, inflicting us with guilt for rejecting her because she had a disability. Then I got hold of my irrational lizard brain and realized how incredibly unfair that was. She wasn’t twisting anyone’s arm. But there was no way I could be with her. A wheelchair was just too much baggage. I was not the sacrificing type, willing to wipe a woman’s butt if that’s what she needed. It just wasn’t me. Maybe I’m not giving and self-sacrificing enough to ever have a truly successful relationship. At least I was honest about it.
“So you’re an economist?” I said, seeking a polite topic that would pass the time, while hopefully conveying that I thought she was interesting, but that I wasn’t interested. “Any insights to offer on the current state of affairs? When do you think the market’s going to turn around?” Not that I had a dime to invest in the market.
“Wow, that’s kind of a personal question, don’t you think?” Her voice dripped sarcasm—she saw what I was doing, and was calling me on it.
I laughed uncomfortably.
“It’s not going to turn around,” she said. “It’s going to get worse, and then it’s going to collapse completely.”
I laughed uncomfortably again.
“You think I’m kidding,” she said.
“It’s got to turn around eventually.”
“No it doesn’t,” she said. “It didn’t for the dinosaurs.”
“Okay,” I said. Next she’d probably tell me about the end of days, and ask if I’d made my peace with Jesus Christ.
“I can see you don’t believe me,” she said, gesturing toward the lie-detector, not unkindly.
“It’s not a question of believing. I can see you believe what you’re saying, and I’m sure you’re good at what
