SEP 21, 2025

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 a little, 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 demonstrates her mastery of every movement before letting her move on. she plays along a little reluctantly. isn’t dating supposed to be one of these instinctive human things?

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. it looks this way because she’s a little old-school—she prefers to actually read, instead of having the information directly imprinted by the headset. though it does seem that this date has no such qualms, as he’s indicated an interest in moving forward before she’s even read her first word.

she takes her time anyway; it’s something she’s been working on ever since 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 her feel like she’s not really connecting with the person, you know?

connecting or not, 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 worse; in one, she’s rejected before she even loads in. it seems that imprinting has gotten more popular since the last time she’s dated, and maybe the matching algorithm has gotten worse, too.

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. this guy’s deepest fear is….“self-deception”? she’s never seen that before.

she lingers 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.