Darcy leaned back, locked his phone, and exhaled sharply through his nose.
Ridiculous.
He wasn’t going to get distracted by fine eyes and a sharp tongue. He had no time for that, he told himself. Love wasn’t meant to be some fever sparked by a glance or ridiculously fine eyes. It was a process, measurable and methodical. Or at least, that was what he promised with TrueNorth.
His thoughts shifted to the test run. He sat up, reopened his phone, and launched the TrueNorth app. His account, Mr. F, had no photo. It was just a wry caricature. Sparse details. A near-perfect control group.
It was time to meet whoever the algorithm believed was the best match for him.
***
Elizabeth chuckled wickedly, the kind of sound reserved for cartoon villains who were about to prove a point. It was half past ten and her laptop sat forgotten on the coffee table as she stared at her phone, grin spreading slowly.
“What a joke,” she muttered.
The almighty algorithm, the same one Darcy had waxed lyrical about at the gala, had just matched her with a profile that didn’t even have a proper photo. Just a cartoonish caricature with exaggerated eyebrows and a suspiciously smug smirk.
“If anything,” she said aloud, “it matched the fact that we both can’t be bothered to use a real picture.”
The name was bland.Mr. F.It could have belonged to any of the million men whose names began with F.Fictitiouscame to Elizabeth’s mind instantly.Mr. Fictitious.She liked the sound of it; it had that particular charm of something she might have once read in a dog-eared paperback, tucked away on a rainy afternoon.
And then there was the bio. It read like something from a retro social media page, the kind people wrote before filters and hashtags ruled the world:
“Likes long walks through logical conclusions. Fond of caffeine, detests small talk. Ambivert by trade, realist by design.”
She tilted her head.
“Cute,” she said, dragging the word like it owed her rent. Then laughed again. “This’ll make a beautiful article. Matched by a machine to a faceless introvert. How poetic.”
She tapped the message icon before she could overthink it and typed:
“You’re either my soulmate or a bored serial killer. Let’s find out which.”
A pause. Three little dots appeared, announcing someone was typing. Then, the reply:
Mr. F:“That depends. Are you fluent in sarcasm and iced coffee?”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Allegedly.”
Mr. F:“Then this might be the beginning of something promising.
Elizabeth laughed again, softer this time. She set her phone down for a moment and stared at the ceiling, her heart lighter than it had been all week.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
And yes, it would make for a very beautiful article indeed.
***
Darcy typed quickly on his KPI sheet.Similarity, check.Shared interests, check. No red flags, no typos, no excessive emoji use. His match had come through just an hour ago, and now he found himself checking the profile again as if it might reveal more the second time.
Bazile. That was the name on the account. A curious choice. Perhaps a lover of Brazil? Or maybe some obscure literaryreference he had missed. Either way, it was better than half the usernames he had seen in the past week.
The profile had no photo, just a flower for a display image. The bio read:Fluent in sarcasm and iced coffee.Books > bios.Swipe left if your profile pic is you with a tiger.
Darcy had smirked when he first saw it. At least she had a sense of humour. If her claims of bookishness were genuine, then he had to admit the algorithm had done well.
