Soulmail, Days 2–4:
The fallout, the in-between, the consequence. I became a guest in my new life. At first, while the details of my new contract were being worked out, while I stepped into wardrobe and sat in chairs reserved for stars, I flitted between Natalie’s guest cove and a corner office normally reserved for—well, guests. Every night Natalie was out, over takeout or stray granola bars, I mulled. Why did people need this modicum of chance taken from them? Why did people need to be told who their molecules would orbit when they either already were or hadn’t yet had the chance to meet them on their own?
I unpacked. I scrolled through apartments that I either couldn’t afford or wouldn’t feel comfortable living in, with no viable in-between. I met with Chuck Wheeler and both disliked him and trusted him immediately. I failed to brainstorm ways to make myself useful enough to the network that canceling the wedding special would become no problem.
Throughout this in-between time, I wondered what it would be like to still be a sister. If Sabrina was here, would I have leaned on her? One trailing, nagging thought, as my Soulmail sat starred in my inbox: Had Sabrina been my soulmate and I’d had no idea? The thought gave me some measure of comfort. A tiny handshake from the universe.
Soulmail, Days 5–7:
As for Soulmail, stories broke like a worldwide dam, pouring in until they were part of the fabric of everyone’s lives. Instead of pitching story suggestions to Samantha, notecards were shoved in my hands, first as a guest correspondent, then, as soon as the digital ink dried on my interim contract—something Chuck Wheeler insisted on as he navigated negotiations on my real one—as a special correspondent.
The standard number of skeptics simmered on the internet and around dinner tables, but market research indicated that most people believed in the validity of Soulmail. There were too many coincidences, too many feelings, too many knowns that came from unknowns. Over a period of a few days, Soulmail became a new thing about the way the world worked, the waycovidwas not colloquial lexicon before 2020.
And there I was, exponentially becoming someone who people were aware of. Thanks to my story on influencers and the internet and then topped with my brand-new media training, I understood in small doses the facts of how this was happening to me. It started before Soulmail, during a slow January when I was in love, as a bite of the internet’s time during a textbook American engagement. Since then, as these things go, one stair stacked upon the other: my social media post of Dola and Trent finding one another, the alignment of stars that led me to report on this worldwide happening, leading to a misguided belief that I was an expert on anything specific as opposed to someone who just liked to arrange stories for other peoples’ consumption. It was, in one phrase, my connection tohuman interest: the aspect of a story that hooks people because it describes the experiences or emotions of individuals. Because it could be them, shilling products on social media, airing the shock of one of the firstSoulmail connections. Stir in a romantic link to a wealthy family, and there it was: my semi-fame, both unearned and sudden.
And though the network numbers had somewhat stabilized while people returned to their trusted news anchors, I didn’t fade into obscurity. Requests came pouring in forme, and Per Diem capitalized on my relevance.
That was how I found myself interviewing billionaire Solara Rio, who had graced the cover of nearly every magazine Condé Nast had ever touched. Despite her history of having four husbands and one mistress, Solara’s Soulmail paired her to an unhoused musician living in Miami. Their first meeting was filmed by Per Diem and aired live on all social platforms. “The Lord’s honest truth,” Solara said one week after meeting her soulmate, her face nearly makeup-free and her skin glowing, “is I’ve never felt this way in my life. I would rather leave the public eye forever than leave that man for one day.”
“C’mon,” the cameraman said from the background.
“I’m serious.” Solara’s famous eyes flashed. “I need nothing other than love. To prove my word, I’m donating my entire fortune to those in need.”
This was mega. A bombshell. Even more startling, she made good on her promise, sending billions to land conservation, mental wellness programs, and inner-city food banks. When the headlines were topped with the AP news’s picture of us together, I posted a before-and-after picture of me getting ready for the interview. I was praised once again for authenticity because I didn’t photoshop out my Spanx.are you opening yourSoulmail?one of the commenters asked, and my answer—probably never, keeping the mysteryalive!—received a ridiculous ten thousand likes. My social following doubled again.
Soulmail, Week 2:
The stories kept going. I interviewed a hotelier from Johannesburg who had opened his Soulmail to find the name of the actor who played Marvel’s newest superhero. He had flown to Hollywood with the intention of hopefully meeting the celebrity, only to bump into him at SoulCycle in Studio City before he had even begun the process of tracking him down. (SoulCycle started running soulmate specials the second day of Soulmail week, the name too marketable to ignore.)
Boundless coincidences, in the interest of humans. Human interest. Love matches between members of the Malaysian and Cambodian royalty crossed political lines. People loved the one with the ruler of Thailand and his son, whose Soulmail ensured the heir to the throne.
When I wasn’t officially working, I was unofficially reading everything I could about Soulmail, albeit without opening my own. Information consumption helped me anticipate what might come next. The organization was soothing, reassuring. Bit by bit, as I reported the news, I created a new folder in my Notes app to collect all the facts I could about Soulmail.
Like everyone else, I wondered: Where did they come from? How did they exist? The prevailing hypothesis behind their creation became something to do with algorithms, but that excluded those who don’t use the internet; begrudgingly, algorithms became more of a “likely factor” in some AI-generated study of human behavior across the world. The government brought in tech giants from Silicon Valley, Google, Apple, and every pharmaceutical company still in existence to try and address the source, but every lead was full of dead ends.
While I wondered whose name was in mine, I stored Soulmail headlines like:
JEALOUSY REIGNS: DERANGED MAN KILLS HUSBAND’S TWIN BROTHER
HR TEAMS FORCED TO REEVALUATE WORKPLACE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP POLICIES
REAL-LIFE WIFE SWAP: NEIGHBORHOOD WIVES TRADE HOMES, PARTNERS
TWINS ARE 84% MORE LIKELY TO BE ONE ANOTHER’S SOULMATES
THE FORGOTTEN ONES: “I’M LEFT OUT,” SAYS MINOR-AGED TIKTOKERS: NO NEW SOULMAILS SENT TO THOSE WHO AGE INTO MAJORITY
I interviewed Alanna Sorensonn, one of Per Diem’s government experts. Alanna was a woman I’d always privately thought of as so conventionally beautiful she seemed like she’d inspired theGot Milk?campaign from the early nineties. She listed several reasons why Soulmail could lead to the always-coveted world peace: increased stability, cohesive families, a reduction in social and economic issues, heightened productivity. Above all, satisfaction. “People in happy relationships are less likely to commit crimes,” she said. “It’s anyone’s guess as to who might be behind this. Whodoesn’twant a stable world? More importantly, I think it’s the phenomenon of how this happened. How, exactly, was every person who was of the age of majority on earth able to be assessed in this way, and subsequently, informed all at once?”
Irving and Micah Kimiko, an HGTV power couple famous for transforming ranch houses in rural America to look like they were part of the Pacific Northwest, were the first to sellthe rights to open their Soulmails live on-air, though a handful of celebrities had already done so on social media. The rumor around the office was that Tate Dimmock had flipped over a table when he’d lost the bid for this interview. I happened to know that rumor was false. It was a chair he’d overturned, and the sound had reverberated up my rib cage.
AI. AI. AI, screamed Reddit,The New York Times, BBC. But even with the vague truth that something non-human had to have executed Soulmail, given the limits of our capabilities, the idea had to have come from someone—orsomeones, I guess—in the first place.
As my new contract negotiations hammered closer to something real, I began to have the hunch that it was possible—probable, even—the world would never really understand what had happened.
The dance between decreases and increases continued. Was the intent to increase morality by changing hookup culture? Decrease suicide rates and depression and encourage us to have agency over how and when we open this information? Most people would agree it didn’t matter who or what or where they came from, even though I was curious about the why. But in the end, what mattered was they came, and the world had to learn how to deal with their fallout.
Life moved on in an unfamiliar way. The undercurrent was the same: flowers from Wells, stray texts from the friends I didn’t have saved in my contacts anymore, apartment listings. But even as I ignored the flowers, the emails, the texts, even as I set up a night out with Caleb, I couldn’t shake the feeling I had stepped into someone else’s life.
