Virtually Yours, page 3
And there was an e-mail from HEAVR.
“Congratulations! You’ve made your first mutual match. . . .”
I didn’t need to read any further before every ounce of my anger and frustration dissipated into one big pink poof of giddiness.
Caleb had accepted. We were going to go on a first date (again).
CHAPTER 3
IT WAS THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY. Date night. Or rather, meet-cute night. And I couldn’t help reminiscing about my original real-life meeting with Caleb.
He’d been in his soccer uniform and I’d been . . . dressed as a wolf in a jersey. Minus the head. I’d agreed to sub in to play the mascot as a favor to my new friend Rose, but I was having trouble seeing through the eyeholes of the headpiece, which seemed to be most bizarrely situated in the wolf’s snout, a place that landed squarely on my forehead.
“You’d better hurry up, Rose. You can’t let the little kids see you like this,” a good-natured voice had said from behind me. “It would shatter their illusions of the existence of the Satcham High Wolfman.”
I’d whipped around to be greeted by a face that had struck me speechless with its undeniable attractiveness and warm grin. Caleb’s dark skin and slim, compact body were somehow enhanced by being enshrouded in his white polyester uniform and knee socks, which I had never before thought could look so appealing.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he’d said when he saw my face. “You’re not Rose.”
“Subbing in,” I’d said, awkwardly shifting the wolf head under my armpit. “She has the flu.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he’d said, tilting his head as if to study me. Within a moment, his grin was back. “Howl about you tell me your name?”
I’d guffawed, only because I couldn’t believe someone so hot had just said something so dorky.
His smile got sheepish. “Sorry. I have a thing for bad puns.” He’d shrugged.
“Oh. You mean you moon over them?” I’d shot back. It wasn’t like I’d said anything remotely that clever, but the way his grin deepened, you’d think that I’d just whipped out a killer stand-up routine.
“Wolf them down,” he’d responded with a laugh before putting out his hand to shake mine. “Hi, I’m Caleb.”
“Mariam,” I’d introduced myself, trying to balance the large head on my forearm as I offered him a weak handshake.
“Need help with that?” He’d pointed to the head.
“I think so,” I’d admitted. “Well, unless I want to start a new myth about the Visually Impaired Wolfman of Satcham High. How do you think the little kids would feel about that?”
“It has potential,” he’d responded. “I hear they’re big into reboots these days.”
He’d helped me rejigger the wolf head then, as best he could, so that if I tilted my chin just so, I could see enough to at least be able to walk across the field without causing bodily harm to myself or others.
Of course, what I remembered most was that this had inevitably involved quite a lot of welcome contact between his hands and my neck.
So my original meet-cute? Definitely tell-to-the-grandchildren-worthy. But I was looking forward to getting a second one. I mean, how many grandparents would have two separate stories to tell about the first time they met?
HEAVR had e-mailed me, asking me to rank my top choices of meet-cute locations. Or there was a “surprise me” option. After much consideration, I’d checked off that one. Everything else about this date seemed so orchestrated that it somehow seemed like the right thing to do.
But now I was nervous. I’d spent extra for the meet-cute; should I have planned it out more? What if the machine didn’t have the same vision of romance as I did?
I decided to distract myself as much as possible at my work-study gig, which was manning the front desk at the school’s gym in the Palladium dorm. All afternoon, as I scanned badges and double-checked faces against names, I tried to make small talk.
“It’s warm out there for the season, isn’t it?” I asked an intense-looking grad student who seemed alarmed to have to speak to anyone on the way to her workout, let alone about the weather.
“I like your leggings. Are they weatherproof?” I inquired of an undergrad who told me she had no clue as they had just come in a care package from her dads.
“What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” I blurted to someone whose name matched the old R.E.M. song, and who gave me a strange look as he grabbed a towel from in front of me and then sprinted to the weight machines, as if my weirdness might be contagious.
Dude is in New York. He should probably get used to strangers blurting out non sequiturs, I mused as one of my coworkers brought in a fresh batch of warm towels from upstairs. “Season’s greetings,” he said as he stacked them neatly in front of me.
“Thanks,” I said as I glanced at him.
“No problem,” he said. I didn’t know his name, but he looked familiar. There was a small scar on his left eyebrow that I could’ve sworn I’d seen before. Maybe he was in my Writing Workshop class, but he was gone before I had a chance to read the ID that hung from his neck.
My shift ended at seven thirty and my date was supposed to start at eight. But one of the beautiful things about HEAVR was I wouldn’t have to waste any time getting prepped and primped like I would for a real-life date. Hell, if there was even the tiniest possibility of bumping into Caleb in real life, I would be spending hours shaving and plucking and scrubbing all manner of body parts—and that’s not even taking into consideration the careful and time-consuming ritual of taming my hair.
But with HEAVR, I’d just have to press a few buttons and—presto. My redheaded avatar had on eyeliner, lip gloss, and a cute outfit. This meant that I could walk from my job right over to the HEAVR building and end up with fifteen minutes to spare.
It was Joan who called me in again.
“Are you ready?” she asked with a smile after I’d already donned the vest and gloves and was sitting comfortably in my chair.
I was. I had to be.
“The important thing to know is that you can walk around from within the date. You just have to use your left hand and ‘walk’ your middle and pointer like this.” Joan demonstrated with her own hand on the tray.
I nodded. “Got it.”
“And in the first few minutes, you won’t be able to control everything. That’s so you can have your meet-cute. Okay?”
I nodded again.
“Other than that, everything should be pretty self-explanatory. Agatha will be in there to help you, and again, if you ever need me, press your thumb and pointer together.”
Ugh, Agatha again? It would be like being escorted by a nosy chaperone—AI by way of the nineteenth century.
But I just told Joan, “Okay,” as I took the goggles from her and put them on my head.
The simulation was dark, but it wasn’t pitch-black. Instead it looked navy blue, like a velvety night sky.
“Hello again, Mariam,” Agatha’s voice came through. “I’ve been told you have chosen a surprise location for your meet-cute. May I just say that I’m proud of you for that choice?”
Proud? That seemed like a weird emotion for a computer, but sure, why not.
There was silence, and it made me think Agatha expected a response.
“Um, thanks?” I said.
“It shows a refreshing burst of spontaneity,” Agatha continued. “It will fare you well on your journey here.”
What was she, an old wizard now?
From the distance, a light appeared, almost like dawn, and the dark navy backdrop turned into an orange gradient. Suddenly there was a horizon and then, the silhouette of squat buildings in the distance. There was a sun and clouds. There was water.
For a bizarre moment, I got the overwhelming and awe-inspiring sense of witnessing something almost divine. Then I remembered I was looking at the most man-made artifice that could possibly exist, in that it didn’t even really exist at all . . . except in pixels.
The fake water sparkled and boats appeared on them. There was a breeze, and then there was a bench. And sitting on that bench was a figure made up of polygons and circles that made my heart stutter. Caleb wasn’t trying to disguise himself, so his stand-in looked a lot like him. The dark skin, the black stubble, the muscled arms (though either he’d been hitting the gym in Cali, or he might have exaggerated that part just a bit). He was even dressed like my Caleb, in a purple checkered button-down that I was sure he owned in real life.
And that smile.
Okay sure, this smile had perfect, squared-off generic teeth that didn’t exactly look like the mouth I knew so, so well.
But my mind’s eye had already juxtaposed the real smile on it anyway.
So there he was, Caleb. My Caleb.
I was so lost in the wonder of having any version of him in front of me that it took me a moment to fully grasp the background that Agatha had chosen for us.
A harbor. A harbor that looked eerily like the one back home where I’d last seen the real Caleb.
I gasped, in that instant certain that all my suspicions about Agatha being able to read my mind—and almost certainly being evil—were spot-on.
Caleb was doing something with his right hand, and it took me a moment to realize that he was flipping a coin.
He dropped it on the ground in front of him and my avatar, unbidden by me, stooped down to pick it up. This must be part of the meet-cute.
“Wait, before you hand it back.” Caleb’s real voice came back through the polygon version, melting my defenses. Although I quickly realized that there was a slight robotic tinge to his conversation, like the computer was stringing his words together. “Can you tell me whether it’s heads or tails?”
I looked down. It was heads, and I was about to open my mouth to tell him.
“Okay, and before you tell me, maybe you should know why I was flipping it. Heads, I get up the nerve to talk to the beautiful girl walking down the pier, and tails I let her pass me by.”
Avatar Caleb looked up at me, and I smiled. It was hokey, sure, but something about it also reminded me of the unique cheesiness of our first real conversation. It was undoubtedly that echo that filled me with a rush of extra warmth.
“It’s heads,” I replied.
Caleb grinned back. “Well then, it’s fate. I’m Caleb.”
“Mar—” I stopped myself just in time. “My name is Sienna,” I quickly recovered, and only upon hearing my voice echo did I realize I’d have to disguise that too.
“So nice to meet you,” Caleb said, and the hint of robot in his voice was gone, signaling the end of HEAVR’s meet-cute. Here at last then was Caleb for real, or at least in the pixelated flesh.
“You too,” I said, and realized that apparently my idea of a disguise was a Marilyn Monroe breathiness by way of a light Southern accent. Not what I had expected to come out of my mouth, but now that it had, I had to go with it.
Avatar Caleb put out his hand and real-life me put out one of my gloved ones. The haptic sensors in my fingers went off when we touched in the virtual world, though it was nothing compared to our real sparks.
“Shall we take a walk?” Caleb asked, looking around. “It’s kind of fascinating, isn’t it? I wonder how far this pier goes.”
He looked toward the endless expanse of wooden slats that lay before us.
“It is rawther interesting,” I said, because Sienna was apparently also a tinge British. I’d better cool it on this accent business before it got Lindsay Lohan levels of out of hand.
Caleb gestured with his hand. “After you.”
Remembering Joan’s instructions, I started moving the two fingers of my left hand, causing my avatar to do a sort of strut down the pier. Caleb walked beside me.
After a moment he laughed. “Does walking like this feel weird for you, too? I mean in real life.”
“Yup,” I said. “I feel like I’m playing with finger puppets.”
“Okay, new plan. Bench?” Caleb stopped at a black bench identical to the one we had started out in front of. Apparently HEAVR’s locales heavily favored replication software like the kind that could make four extras on a field look like an epic medieval battle on TV.
“Perfect idea,” I said, only then realizing that I had no idea how to make my avatar sit down in this world, being that my real self was already lounging on the dentist chair.
Our two avatars both stood awkwardly in front of the bench. Caleb was examining the ground.
I decided to try out an idea. I bent the two fingers I was previously using to “walk” and my avatar sat—or rather suddenly collapsed—onto the bench.
“Hey! How did you do that?” Caleb asked.
“I think I just leveled up from you,” I teased, knowing full well Caleb would appreciate the gaming reference.
I was rewarded with a smile. “Oh yeah?”
Caleb was obviously trying to figure out the sitting trick on his own, because his avatar started to move in strange ways. First it was leaning straight back, almost at a forty-five-degree angle. Then it swayed to the side. And finally, it dropped to its knees. Caleb looked extra startled when that one happened, and quickly righted himself.
“Have pity!” Caleb said. I laughed and told him the trick.
And then the digital versions of the two of us were sitting side by side on a bench, looking out onto the harbor. It was so reminiscent of five months ago, just a weird alternate-reality version of it, that for a second I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie of my own life.
“So . . . ,” Caleb said.
“So . . . ,” I responded, and realized I didn’t quite know what to say because I already knew the answers to the typical first-date questions. What he did (student at UC Berkeley, studying veterinary medicine), where he grew up (same place I’d spent the last three years of high school), his favorite food (his mom’s linguine with meatballs). But I’d have to pretend I didn’t know any of that. I opened my mouth to ask about school when he beat me to it.
“So you’re a college student too, right? Your profile said . . .”
“Yes,” I replied. “You too?”
“Yup. I’m at UC Berkeley. Where do you go?”
“NYU,” I responded automatically, and then immediately regretted it. Shit. Mariam went to NYU, not Sienna. Though it was a big school . . . maybe he wouldn’t notice.
“Oh, cool. I know someone who goes there.”
My heart started racing. “You do? Who?” I wasn’t sure what I wanted the answer to be. Would Caleb break the cardinal rule of a first date by bringing up his ex?
“An old friend,” Caleb responded smoothly.
But hearing that stung too, even knowing the rule. “Oh,” I said, and was grateful that Caleb then moved on from this line of questioning, which, frankly, I’d been unwise to continue in the first place.
“What are you majoring in?” he asked.
Oh, great. Another sore subject.
“I’m undecided.” I tried to put a cheerful note in my voice, instead of the desperate panic that was creeping in the more people asked me that question. Up until the first or second week of college, I didn’t think it was a big deal to be seventeen-going-on-eighteen years old and not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. But by my October birthday, when I’d been asked that question probably about a hundred times by every new person I met, I began to read a tinge of concern in their eyes when I said I didn’t have a major yet—even from people my own age.
“Ah. Cool,” Caleb responded again. The fake air around us filled with an awkward silence that I couldn’t remember having ever had with the real Caleb before. This whole VR dating thing had its benefits, but it also had its drawbacks. Even though I was aware it was Caleb underneath that computer-generated image, was sure that I already loved him, it was hard to feel the chemistry between us that I knew for a fact was there.
Man, how did HEAVR boast such high success rates? (Seventy-eight percent of their clients made it past a third date!) Was it just me?
“So, here’s a weird question. And you don’t have to answer if you think it’s too personal, but . . . how come you didn’t put up a profile picture?” Caleb asked.
My heart rate sped up again. I thought this question might come up, so I’d rehearsed a response. But when faced with the real(ish) Caleb in front of me, I suddenly felt dangerously close to confessing everything. I didn’t put up a photo because you wouldn’t have said yes. Instead I stammered out what I’d already planned to say. “I was given the option, and it somehow seemed like an interesting opportunity to take physical features out of the equation. At least at the beginning.”
“Gotcha,” Caleb responded. “But you do know what I look like?”
Hell yes, Caleb. I know exactly what you look like, in all sorts of seasonal clothing and, frankly, in all manners of undress, too.
“Well, I’ve seen that one photo,” I lied, but Sienna did not.
“It just seems sort of unfair.” Caleb’s voice was light.
“Don’t worry. It’s pretty close to this.” I waved my hand over the computer-generated version of me. “HEAVR doesn’t let your avatar go too far off base.”
“So no blue skin or fanciful neck tattoos?”
“I’m afraid if those are your fetishes, you will have to look elsewhere,” I teased, and then felt compelled to ask, “But why did you agree to the date without a photo? Even the people at HEAVR told me that would be unusual.”
Caleb shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t know. Your profile was great, of course, and there was just . . . something telling me to go for it, saying why not. Let’s face it, it’s not like I have to pay for a virtual dinner.” He laughed.
I smiled. Something telling him to go for it, just like HEAVR selecting Caleb as my match. Maybe my ideas about fate and destiny weren’t so entirely far-fetched.
We talked some more. Caleb told me about his major and passion for animals. I mentioned having an older sister but left out my older brother in case Caleb got too suspicious at the similarities between his date Sienna and his ex-girlfriend Mariam.
The fake sky around us was dimming, and I felt myself shivering even though I knew the real room I was in was perfectly temperature-controlled. Man, the power of suggestion was strong. No wonder this whole VR thing had taken off so well.
