The Mathematics of Love
Interior of an upscale restaurant, night. Plates of half-eaten food sit between an elegant woman in her thirties and a well-dressed man. The woman stares intently at her phone. The man is looking out the window; he appears lost in thought.
A soft chime of a text message cuts through the ambience of the restaurant. The woman smiles at the screen, places the phone down on the table, then looks up at the man.
WOMAN: So, three months. That’s how long you’ve been doing it?
MAN: (a beat) Sorry?
WOMAN: The AI. For the dating app. Three months, you said?
MAN: (sheepish) Uh… yeah. It was temporary, you know? Online dating is just soul-crushing, for a guy... You send message after message, day after day, and it’s just crickets. This stuff wears you down.
WOMAN: Yeah. I get it.
MAN: Yeah…
A heavy silence hangs in the air. Another chime of an incoming message.
MAN: (clears throat) So… what about you? Why did you do it?
WOMAN: I needed… a filter, you know? The pick-up lines. The inappropriate photos. The… everything. It makes you lose faith. You understand?
MAN: I think so. And it worked, right?
WOMAN: Yeah.
MAN: Yeah…
The woman picks up the phone and smiles as she scrolls through the messages.
MAN: They really hit it off, huh?
WOMAN: (chuckles) It’s adorable. I keep scrolling through their chats.
MAN: They have a lot in common.
WOMAN: Yeah.
MAN: (turns his head back toward the window) Yeah…
Other short stories: work meetings, eternal life, the rapture, a new beginning.
"Authenticity cannot be outsourced."
While technology can help manage the noise and inefficiencies of modern life—such as filtering bad matches in dating—it cannot substitute for genuine, human connection. By outsourcing the emotional labor to algorithms, the characters find that the true relationship existed between the bots, not between themselves. The story warns against the temptation to automate deeply human experiences, reminding us that meaningful relationships require personal effort, vulnerability, and authenticity. (ChatGPT)