media blogs
photo blogs
Rose & Olive
Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other’s lives.
Scanner
Your daily cup of WTF?
The Modern Materialist
Almost everything you want.
Autumn Sonnichsen
A fashionable L.A. photo editor exploring all manner of hyper-sexual
girls down south.
ScreenGrab
The Nerve Film Blog
Chase
The creator of Supercult.com poses his pretty posse.
The Remote Island
Nerve's TV blog.
61 Frames Per Second
Smarter gaming.
ScreenGrab
The Nerve Film Blog
Slice
Each month a new artist; each image a new angle.
Paper Airplane Crush
A San Francisco photographer on the eternal search for the girls of summer.
|
 |
|
My mom left a book-chip — you know, one of those self-help-for-singles book-chips — on my unmade rejuvenation platform this morning, while I was in the air cleanser. It's bad enough that the New Reform Alien Government has declared single people a threat to planetary security, now my own mother wants me to find a man for all the wrong reasons. "You can grow to love someone," she's always saying. "But for now, just keep a low profile, and get off the New Reform's watch list."
I scanned the chip into my Magno-Electric Information Pad. I was going to have to delete a few more books-on-chip that I never listened to so I could make room for her latest, How to Marry the Man of Your Choice — And Get Off the New Reform's Watch List!
I sighed. Humanity has attained world peace, but people who were romantically unaccounted-for were considered a security threat. I wished I'd lived before 2008, before other species stepped in to teach us how to live in harmony. I sort of understood their philosophy — that if you spend too much time alone and in your head, it can lead to selfishness and greed, or just sexual frustration, which, in turn, can lead to the desire for world domination — but I refused to believe that someone was a more peaceful person just because they'd found someone to live to be two hundred with. And I thought it wasn't fair that people had to live with their parents until they found a partner.
My mom poked her head into my pod, holding her morning cell-replacement syringe, and immediately started to pry. "You didn't stay late at the Data Dock last night."
"Mother, I'm twenty-one years old," I said. "I'm practically old enough to begin fighting disease with my mind. You don't have to keep harping on my dating life."
"Dating?" she smirked. "That's what we said in my generation."
"Okay, okay. Stop harping on my progress to find another human to cohabitate with for the preservation of world peace."
"Just remember," she replied, "If you don't find love, evil wins."
That night, the last place I wanted to go was Speed-Data Referencing. I'd never believed that romance can be found in a warehouse, albeit one that's sterile and completely eco-friendly. I hated
The last time I was at the Data Dock, I saw a guy who was different. |
walking by other people, holding up my pocket-sized Personal Data Identifier to theirs to "check them out." I always walked away immediately to read the results on the screen in private. It was usually the same story. He wants kids but not until we can procreate with aliens. He loves conspiracy theories — what if the government is in our minds? Or he's almost perfect — he believes in love, conversation and long walks where the beaches used to be — but he frequently travels to the outer surface of the sun on the Global Warming Reversal project and will likely be burnt to a crisp before he reaches his first midlife crisis.
But sometimes, my PDI will beep, signifying that a match has been made: Please proceed to the nearest cube corner and begin filling out paperwork. The New Reform Government will contact you both shortly with your first-date assignment, based on your mutual likes and dislikes.
The last time I was at the Data Dock, I saw a guy who was different. He wore jeans, not some kind of hypoallergenic rubber pant like most other men. He wasn't swiping his PDI with anyone else's, which is no small thing. If the New World senses inactivity, a lack of saying "yes" to life and willingness to date, that's grounds for a visit to an internment camp.
I tried to move my PDI in his general vicinity, to swipe him casually, as if by accident, hoping our compatibility would elicit beeping so wild that the whole warehouse would take notice. But I couldn't get near him. He slinked away expertly, just observing the crowd. We made eye contact a few times, but eventually I lost sight of him. I named him Jack.
My first dates are usually at the restaurant just outside earth's atmosphere. The view is nice, and with shuttle rates being so cheap, you really can just make a night of it. The conversations are always so seamless it's actually awkward. The guy can usually finish my sentences for me; our compatibility, based on our yearly, government-issued personality tests, is so high we're almost psychically linked. It usually turns out that we work for the same company, Eternal Life, which specializes in defeating human death. Because thousands of people work at this company, it's quite feasible we've never met. But the conversation is always the same.
|
|
|
|
