FEB 04, 2026

your favorite illusion

at the behest of her mother, she pulls on her headset to do some dating.

it’s been a while, so she has to sit through the obligatory welcome-back-we-haven’t-seen-you-in-a-while bullshit. she zones in and out, letting cortana-siri-alexa’s voice wash over her ears:

…remember, there’s a strict five minute time limit for each date. we’re happy to review timer extension requests accompanied by a doctor’s note…

never mind, she’s fully zoned out now. for how efficient dating is these days, they sure take their time to let you know that you’ve been gone. how clingy.

she still has to redo the “how to date” tutorial—here’s how you should wave to end the date early, how to pause and exit using this motion, and how to commit, should you find someone you like. there’s an awful lot of hand-holding. like some sort of disembodied martial arts instructor, cortana-siri-alexa insists that she demonstrate her mastery of every movement before letting her move on. it’s kind of annoying, given that she already knows how to date.

once she manages to convince cortana-siri-alexa that she can be trusted, she gets to load into her first date. she’s greeted by a wall of text: career, hobbies, pet peeves, deepest fear, the like. everything you’d ever need to know to decide whether you like someone. her friends make fun of her for being old-school, but she still prefers to read instead of using the headset’s imprinting feature, especially after she read a study about how dating success increases with average time spent on first date. besides, there’s something about going too fast that makes you feel like you’re not really connecting with the person, you know?

…well, it seems that this guy has no such qualms. he’s indicated an interest in moving forward before she’s even read her first word. as the dialog box whines for her attention, she buries herself in the wall of text. but try as she might, she doesn’t really like this one—“social ridicule” is such a boring deepest fear—and she waves him away at the two-minute mark (in the most cortana-siri-alexa approved fashion, of course). the next couple of dates are even shorter, even worse. in one, she’s rejected before she even loads in.

she finds the whole process slightly mind-numbing, feeling her eyes glaze over as date after date flickers in and out of view. but hey, at least it’s better than the archaic way of doing things. her skin crawls at the thought of having to talk to someone without knowing.

she resolves to be more grateful.

realizing that she’s gotten distracted, she turns her focus back to the task at hand. looking at the blinking timer in the corner, she realizes that they’re two minutes into the date and her match still hasn’t made a decision. huh.

she lingers with him for the rest of the allotted five minutes, then reports back to her mother.

“no one this time, either.”

thanks to my homies for reading early drafts this piece.