"FWLS39" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

A Future We'd Like To See 1.39 - Misery Date
By Twoflower (Copyright 1994)

The clipping was pretty clear : this dating service will
GUARANTEE you a perfect match, or your money back. They also
boasted a 97% success rate.

From the outside, however, it did not look like much.
Mostly like one of those one-credit booths that produce washed-
out holophotos which make everybody look sort of purple. (I
suppose that's no big deal for some species, but for humans like
me, it wasn't that hot. However, this is not a tale about
photography.)

Closer inspection revealed that this WAS a one-credit photo
booth. They didn't even remove the little slot the pictures
shoot out of. The 'PHOTO-WHILE-U-WAIT' logo had been partially
pulled off, and replaced with a 'PROJECTED ASPECT DATING' sign in
pink crayon.

I was beginning to suspect a joke. It wasn't uncommon to
have joke ads in the C'atel Times... heck, they ran one for a
baldness cure last week that had five hundred bald men knocking
down the door of some randomly-picked apartment. The riot police
had to be called in. It clearly SEEMED like a joke... the
various dating services I had tried were these posh office jobs,
with comfy chairs and pleasant music and pictures all over the
place. Pictures of miracle dates that worked, people with
perfect hair, perfect clothes, no zits... I had none of the
above... this was, well, just a booth on a street.

Still, physical appearances don't mean anything. Or at
least they shouldn't. I mean, I'm a pretty okay guy... I like
poetry and computer games and the occasional hike up the calm yet
slippery C'atel mountain ranges... what woman wouldn't want to go
out with me more than once? Seventeen at last check, all picked
out by various computer or video dating services. It was enough
to make a man give up. Almost enough.

I had this silly notion in my head ever since reading Romeo
and Juliet in seventh grade that everybody had one person
somewhere in the universe they were MADE for. 'course, only 1%
of the general population ever bumped into that person, but I was
trying my best. It's not exactly easy to tell... you don't get
that 'Looking across the room at your destiny' type feeling they
tell about in books. So, I was trying computer dating. If I can
match up enough interests and ideas and stuff like that, I should
find that one girl, right? It was logical. A logic that had
failed me, as mentioned, seventeen times.