Once I’d processed that startling bit of computer detective work, Elaine said, “After that, we marketed it to the military for assembling platoons and squads. It proved so adept at choosing teams that they asked it to select crews for long-haul transports to achieve the least interpersonal friction on the trips. Then it displayed a knack for housing arrangements, and who should bunk in which barracks together for the greatest contentment.”
“That’s damned uncanny,” I said, further startled and not a little unsettled. A great deal unsettled, truly. “You built it to learn, though.”
“We did. We also underestimated its capacity for learning. It has exceeded our expectations,” she said.
I’m pretty sure that’s how every “artificial intelligence takes over the planet” movie scenario begins.Exceeded expectations.
“So, this server is what makes all the matches for Mail Call Mates,” I said.
“It is. You can see how it was a natural for the role. Every match it makes, it learns, and refines, and the matches improve. The way it pulls together disparate information to create a detailed dataset astounds us.” She reached out to set her hand on the metal nameplate. “But it has begun to throw us the occasional surprising result thatappearsto violate the core tenets of matches but has yet to truly do so.”
“Like me and Jackson Sadler,” I said.
“Like you and Jackson Sadler,” she confirmed. “M4’s ability to anticipate future needs, as well as to intuit hidden information, has evolved to a very keen edge. The few matches that have deviated from given parameters have all worked out. But…”
Her eyebrows drew together. I stared. “But…?”
“But yours is the first that has outright disregarded what we hold as ‘hard boundaries’ or ‘cardinal parameters’. These are what we consider inviolable pillars of matchmaking.” She began to tick them off on her fingers. “Age. Everyone must be twenty-five or older, and we have a range of acceptable age gaps. No forty-year-old soldiers with eighteen-year-old college students. That would be unethical under most circumstances.”
I nodded. No disagreement there, and I felt a lot better the more I heard about the protections in place to prevent exploitation and harm. Except that the computer had apparently disregarded one, but… Had it really?
“Religious compatibility,” Elaine said next. “Some dogma will not match. Sexual and romantic preference, which is what your particular match seemed to disregard.”
“But didn’t.”
“But didn’t, and isn’t it fascinating that M4-KR deduced your true preferences to make your match?” she asked.
“That is one adjective I’d choose to describe it, yes,” I acknowledged.
The other wasuncanny,but I’d already said that and it sounded insulting anyway. Do not talk shit about the machine hooking you up when you’re standing right in front of it. Trying to survive the robot apocalypse here.
“The last of our cardinal parameters are what we call ‘The Nevers’. If someone tells us, ‘I would never marry someone who hates cats,’ for example, we will not match them with someone who has a cat dander allergy,” she explained. “The Nevers are the strange, subjective data that don’t fit easily in a checkbox but cannot be ignored. They often tell us the most about a person, and thus, with whom they will fit best. Shall we look at your match?”
I blinked. “Um, sure. We can do that?”
“Of course.” She removed her hand from the side of the massive mainframe and set both hands on the keyboard instead. Again, I would swear she caressed the keyboard with a fingertip before she began her rapid keystrokes.
All three monitors flared to life, covered with scrolling data I couldn’t keep up with and wouldn’t have understood if I could. One settled at last into something readable.
“MATCH: SADLER, JACKSON ROY | HENDRICK (NÉ VAN HORN), SEBASTIAN GALEN !!!*”
And wasn’t that fascinating. It knew I’d changed my name. It knew my former family. It even included the middle name I’d chosen for myself when I’d shifted my then-middle name, Hendrick, to my surname and left a vacancy for good old Galen to slide in.
Embarrassing fact about me: I almost chose “Hippocrates” instead of “Galen” for my middle name. I grew out of it.
After that line of text came a jumble of data that probably meant something to Elaine but did nothing for me. I did pick up on one detail.
“Why are there exclamation points after our names? And an asterisk?” I asked.
“The exclamation marks denote what M4 considers an ‘essential match’, or one with tremendous weight and importance, in its opinion,” she said, and didn’t seem to find it odd that a machine had an opinion. “It may have been attempting to signal us that this match should be taken seriously despite representing an outlier, and potentially disregarding our cardinal parameters.”
Is it weird that I felt a thrill at this? That my matchmaker had deemed my potential relationship with Jackson Sadleressentialandimportant? That it had written about my match in the same way an excited teenaged girl with her first boyfriend might text her bestie, with !!! to show her enthusiasm? That’s not strange, is it?
“And the asterisk?” I asked.
A fond smile softened her features. “In atomic physics, an asterisk denotes an atom in an excited state. Believe it or not, the asterisk says M4-KR is excited about your union.”
Me, too, M4-KR. Me, too.