Feb 2018 v01 online

“Of course. Present company excluded,
obviously –” another sickly wink, “– it’s
wreaking all kinds of havoc on human natural
selection. Undesirables who would never find
love the traditional way are able to search so
much farther afield that, as a numbers game,
they find someone just as unattractive with
standards low enough to consider them. Then,
these people who would never have reproduced
otherwise, are now able to start families.
Dan shrugged. “Eh. My standards are pretty
high no matter where I’m fishing,” he grinned.
I was silent for a moment while I checked in
with the recovery team. Their location flashed
up in my periphery for a fraction of a second.
They still hadn’t made it to the Živa in Dubai –
but they were close. I had to keep it up for just
a few more minutes. I hoped to god Dan was
stupid enough to tell the truth about his
location.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how on earth
did that relationship work?” I pawed at the first
thing that came to mind to lengthen the
conversation while moving it away from Dan’s
warped theory of eugenics.
Whether they're ugly, or stupid, or whatever
– their genes are being spread through the
population unlike ever before in history.
Online dating is slowly taking the whole
population down the crapper, because
nowadays there truly is someone for everyone.”
I was dumbfounded. “But your relationship
was okay?” I countered, in disbelief.
“Well, you must've been briefed before you
paid for the experience. They’ll do anything to
sell you their upgrades,” Dan laughed, fingering
his glass. Luckily the experience had been on
the company dollar – the wanted man had been
spotted several times at these singles events, so
predicting his schedule and posing as a fellow
customer was an easy way to get information on
his whereabouts – but I had indeed had to sit
through the briefing videos and
demonstrations. “If there's a person you like,
you can pay to come and meet them at Živa
rooms whenever you want to. There are a
couple of these big replicas in every building,
but far more smaller rooms. Fake coffee shops,
dance clubs, spas, wherever you want to take
this person on a date. The more you pay, the
more sensory range you get augmented, the
more realistic the augmentation. I mean, this is
a pretty good Old Fashioned. But the food?
Don’t even bother.”
“Wow. No good?”
“It's just haptic resistance on a plate, to make
you feel like you're chewing something. The
taste is there, but without the sensation it’s just
not the same. There’s no texture, no juice –
only resistance. You see, if I squeeze hard