Subject: You have a match!

I wanted to share some exciting news with you – we’ve found a match I think you’ll find intriguing. He’s a disciplined and driven entrepreneur with a wonderful sense of humor. He has many interesting ideas and is an excellent conversationalist. Our AI models suggest this is a great match for you. The next steps are simple…

My eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. They’d found someone.

Like most young women, I have been through my fair share of dating ― lots of fun, but lots of frustration. So three months ago, I’d decided to begin working with a matchmaking service that claimed to leverage AI models to find your perfect match.

The AI model allegedly would be able to digest my questionnaire answers and interpret all my desires in a deeper, more science-based way than any simple dating site ever could. Lisa, my matchmaker, would partner with the model to provide a human touch, using her expert judgment to validate its findings. With an “all your boxes checked” guarantee, the service seemed foolproof.

The process was rigorous and far more in-depth than any dating app I’ve ever used. I worked through the seemingly endless, mostly invasive questions about my life ― what I valued, my relationship with my family, whether I was willing to leave New York. I submitted everything from my philosophies on the afterlife to personality test results, stopping just short of giving them my blood type and mother’s maiden name.

I thought I had answered it all until I reached a line that stopped me in my tracks: “Please upload photos of your ex.” I racked my brain, sifting through all the frogs I’d kissed. Did that one guy I’d met on a whirlwind night in London and then never spoken to again count as an “ex”? The memory of his deep-set eyes convinced me that yes, he totally did.

There was something that felt revolutionary about inputting all my fantasies into Lisa’s “build-a-man” factory. I didn’t have to just wander Fifth Avenue blindly, hoping to bump into whoever was out there. Here, I could “Weird Science” a man: give him Andrew Garfield’s eyes, Chris Evans’ arms and Chace Crawford’s glistening smile. So long as my dream man existed, AI would connect the dots and bring him to me.

Somewhere between listing out dealbreakers and sending in photos of celebrity crushes for AI analytics, I thought to myself, Maybe this is the future.

And if it wasn’t the future, well, maybe it was mine.

“OK guys, just close your eyes and tell everyone where you see yourself in five years,” my friend Lexi gushed to the rest of “the council” — the four of us girlfriends who had been joined at the hip since college. Lex closed her eyes and saw California, gentle coasts touched by the waters she grew up in. So, she packed up her entire life, a full decade spent learning in the heart of New York City, and headed home.

I’ll never forget closing my own eyes against the salt air at the pier. Perhaps I was looking for a place, like she was. But it wasn’t what came to me. I sat in the dark behind my eyelids and was overwhelmed with the bittersweet loneliness that comes from living in a place like New York. It is a place built on comings and goings, on the guaranteed peace in the knowledge that nothing is permanent and the sadness over the same.

When my eyes closed, I did not see a place. I saw a home. A sense of belonging, not with a specific skyline to anchor me, but a person. That sense of homecoming people talk about when they find the person they want to build a world with.

I opened my eyes against the sun.

Dylan had messy hair. It wasn’t the kind that said he’d just rolled out of bed; it was the kind that said he’d spent time in front of the mirror to make it look that way. A little scar over his eyebrow made him look tougher than he really was. His dark brown and sharply intelligent eyes sparkled with wit, enthusiasm and passion.

Two of my previous matches hadn’t materialised, either due to distance or lack of interest, but this one had snagged something in my chest the moment I’d looked at his profile. Our values matched everywhere that mattered, our interests overlapped when they needed to and diverged just enough to give us space to teach each other new things. He seemed, as the digital model had promised, built for me.

Walking up to the quaint little wine bar he’d picked, right in the heart of West Village, I was insanely nervous – something about science and a matchmaker telling you they’d found you “the one” laid the pressure on thicker than Hinge ever did. And in person, he did not disappoint.

I’d thought the foreknowledge would make things easier. We could sweep aside little nothings like, “So, what do you do for a living?” and dive right into each other’s hopes and dreams and fears. But my hands were slick with the immediate worry and thrill of intimacy that I’d never known could exist between two people who hadn’t had so much as a conversation.

I could look into his eyes and know what no one else in this bar knew. I knew he studied film and loved the outdoors; I knew his childhood pet’s name, his low preference for pizza (or gluten in general). I knew what kind of parenting style he planned to use one day and for how many kids.

That little twinkle people have, when they’ve been together for years? The kind that has them communicating secrets across a crowded room? We had it. We knew everything. I spent half the date trying to determine whether I was supposed to go all in or pretend I didn’t know anything about him. But he knew I knew. It was unclear what rulebook we were supposed to be playing by.

Regardless, I remembered: Somewhere, some digital force of omniscience had rubber stamped the date, guided by a human hand. We were supposed to be here, meeting each other. It was green flags all the way down.

It turned out, of course, that there was more to learn. A person is more than a collection of ideas on a profile. Dylan had grown up in New York, the eldest of three kids. He was well spoken in a way that pointed to his privileged background, with the wild spirit (and resources) that meant that he could — and did — try out every single hobby that had ever piqued his interest. Still, he was impossibly down to earth.

Not enough glasses of wine into the date to be tipsy, he looked at me with an arched eyebrow and confessed, “I actually scored really high on my SATs. I know it’s been over a decade, but sometimes, I still try to work it into first date conversations.”

A laugh bubbled out of me. A man coming out on the first date with the exact size of his SAT score was something that, if I didn’t like him already, I might have been put off by. But I did like him, so the dorky flex was endearing. So much about him was, and as the first date jitters wore off little by little, we started to relax into each other.

Date one turned into date two. Which turned into three, and, well, you know the story.

“You’re colour blind? How did you find out?”

“Well, the fluorescent pink pants I brought home from the mall in middle school were hint number one.”

“If you were to be stuck in a time loop and had to pick one person to tell about it, who would it be?”

“My sister. We’ve always been close; she’s incredible. I can just trust her with anything. She’d drop anything to … uh … help me out of a time warp. Honestly, I also think she’s my best shot at getting back to reality.”

He was everything I had asked for, everything I believed a man should be ― kind, smart, funny, thoughtful and protective … all handed to me by an algorithm.

I’d started dreaming already — not of electric sheep, but of digitally borne boyfriends.

On our last date before I left the country to spend a couple weeks in Asia, we went bowling. I am not a great bowler, but I’m never afraid to fail. This one, I wanted to win, because we’d decided to make it interesting. If I won, he’d write me the story of how we met from his point of view. If he won, I simply had to plan our next date.

I got one strike. The love letter was not to be.

But I’d started planning the date the second I’d seen the final numbers. After all, what’s the point of loving if you are afraid to dive in with gifts and plans that say, “I listen, I care, and I want you to feel special.”

He kissed me.

I dreamt about tomorrow.

I got on the plane.

The photo dumps came as we’d planned them — vibrant and fun and full of everything I’d started falling for Dylan over. This was a man who loved life and didn’t say no to new experiences. I responded in kind, with snapshots with friends, family, tasting exotic dishes and walking along the coast. Sets of images sent back and forth that reminded us of who we were and that we were in this.

I’m not sure exactly when the pictures started coming less often. Texts got sparse, fewer snapshots were traded from phone to phone, questions about the aforementioned special date went uncommitted to. The maybe embarrassingly detailed dreams I’d started having about tomorrows with him began to blur.

Things with Dylan died slowly, quietly, without fanfare or the need for hauntings. The modern solution I’d thought was going to revolutionise dating ― AI ― was eclipsed by another modern epidemic: ghosting. In the end, we were left with the substance of most ghost stories: unfinished business. But not the kind that needs to be tended to before each party can move on.

The connection with Dylan was gorgeous and real and temporary, like some things are. I suppose, when it comes to dating, when you’re not so worried about running into a match in a neighbourhood coffee shop or at a mutual friend’s party, it’s easy to just … log off. You don’t bid a website a lengthy farewell when you decide to stop playing; you simply don’t come back.

These days, it seems everywhere you turn, someone claims they have finally cracked the code, uncovered the hidden formula to our heart’s desire. The certainty is so contagious that for a fleeting moment, it feels like you can join them at the edge of some great revelation. But reality is their certainty is something we rent, not own, giving us a falsely fleeting sense of control in a world that remains stubbornly unpredictable.

I wonder, sometimes, if I’m wrong. Maybe my future won’t come to me generated by an all-knowing digital system. Maybe it will come via a chance meeting on the street, in line behind a stranger. Is it sillier to trust an algorithm or a fortune teller who claims they know the secrets of a chaotic universe? Or to trust the chaotic universe itself?

The tall man in front of me, with the lopsided grin, heather gray T-shirt, and worn paperback falling out of his bag, steps to the front of the line to order his coffee. He orders it the way I do.

My phone begs for my attention.

I look away from him and give it what it asks.

There’s an email in my inbox.

You’ve got a match!