My Only Talent Ch. 39

Several sighs were heard from the audience, including a loud one from me. I could see myself dominating this hot little waifu with exaggerated cartoon-like zeal. It would be my solemn duty to make her happy. And she was coming to my cabin in a few minutes to help me use the system.

"Our system can find me partners who are qualified and proven compatible, safe and acceptable in a way that I myself define and lets me know before I meet them that they truly want what I want and that they will give it to me. And I know what they want, and that I want to give it to them. We are truly simpatico. That was project codename for the system as we developed it: Sympatico."

The screen changed to a complicated looking network diagram, depicting long chains of interlocking transactions, with notations about hashing values, and Merkle trees.

She smiled. "I don't have to tell this crowd about the potential of Blockchain software technology for contracts, supply chains, medical records, and a dozen other uses that can revolutionize commerce. But we see the potential to revolutionize society via social interactions and social contracts."

Another picture appeared on screen, of an attractive but shy looking young woman in her mid-twenties.

"This is Angela." She pronounced it 'An-hell-ahh' the way the Germans do.

"She lives in a big city and has an average office job. But her sexual tastes are anything but average. Most of the people she meets every day would call them bizarre. But for Angela, they are wonderful, magical. They are what she needs and wants, and up to now, hasn't been able to get."

Angela's expression changes to one of frustration and anger.

"But now she can. She logs into the system and begins to specify what she is looking for. She wants someone within 35 km, so they can get together easily. She wants someone who has tested free of several diseases or conditions in the last six months, who is 18 or older, and is a single female of a specific size and build who wants to meet a female like Angela. These conditions are checked transparently with high security encryption, verified by outside third parties, maintaining the privacy of both women, and a potential match is made. After both consent, they exchange descriptions of specific behaviors, still anonymously. If those match, other conditions they may specify, like a short term or long-term relationship, etc. are checked and verified. Finally, a lunch is arranged, for the two to meet."

Another picture of Angela, on her knees, looking adoringly up at a big muscular black woman, who has her hand around Angela's throat.

"They have been together for some time now and are both very happy."

The pictures on screen began to be replaced with images of the people that were here tonight, presumably taken candidly during the munch box dinner and presentations. Laughing single people with happy expressions.

"When you get to your cabins tonight, you will find a Chromebook setup to communicate with our browser interface to our system. We call it LifeJoy. It will change your life. It will ensure that you find what you are looking for, perhaps with someone here tonight. Let the user interface guide you, and don't be afraid to specific exactly what you want. No matter how unusual it may be and how much frustration you have felt in the past. Go for it now! LifeJoy can deliver!"

The room was now buzzing. Glennis Howries took to the microphone again, to wrap up the session.

"Look at the bottom right of your badge for your cabin number in black italics, like "14A". She made eye contact with me just as she said that. Was that her cabin? Wow!

"Each cabin has an "A" or "B" side. You will find the Chromebooks setup for you to try the LifeJoy system, which will undoubtedly occupy the rest of your evening. You will hear a bugle blow reveille in the morning at 0730, and then we will all meet here for breakfast at 0800 to begin tomorrow's activities. Goodnight!"

I watched a few people almost sprint for their cabins. I looked around for Fancy, and in the process, I unfortunately made eye contact with Duran Drathars, who promptly winked, raised his eyebrows dramatically and blew me a kiss. Ewww.

Suddenly, Fancy was at my elbow. "Are you ready for some new experiences, Robbie?"

"Perhaps with you, Fancy, but not with your cousin."

She stopped in her tracks and put her hands on her hips. "Has he already approached you?

"He certainly made it clear he wanted to hook up, but I'm not wired that way."

She smiled, took my arm, and steered me back towards my cabin. "He is a pansexual. He likes women and/or men, and the smarter the better. I am told he is an incredibly skilled lover."

"Isn't that kind of thing dangerous, in terms of exposure to disease?"

"He's pansexual, Robbie, not promiscuous. At 28 years old, I expect he has been with less than 10 lovers. How do you compare to that?"

Let's see. Mrs. Douglass, Janet, Melanie, Lara, Suzanne, Sarah, my TA Miss Wyricki, Strelsa, Millie, Peggy, Erminia, Nora, Elizabeth, Candy, Orinda, Veronica Tappert, Saskia, Rene', Rene', Mei Ling, and Summer. 21 since I was 18. That's roughly 21 per year. If Duran also did not become sexually active until he was 18, and he has had 10 lovers in 10 years, that is one per year. So, I'm the promiscuous one? Or at least, twenty-one times as promiscuous as Duran Drathars. If later tonight, I hooked up with Fancy, or made my way to cabin 14A to see Glennis Howries, that would be an even 22. I never thought of it that way before. I never thought of it at all. Famine to feast.

Fancy filled the silence I had left hanging. "His first lover was my uni roommate, then she got a new boyfriend, and Duran managed to seduce her boyfriend, and then the three of them carried on together in various combinations for three years until he entered medical school. I guess you could say he was getting maximum action from minimum exposure."

Risk reduction. It made me think of Suzanne, which made me sad. By now, we had reached my door. I had questions, but my first one was not about software.

"Was that story you told about your sexual predilections true, or just part of an engaging presentation?"

Fancy smiled her best hot girl with inside information smile.

"It was true at one time. I may have evolved. I'm not sure you will ever know." Emphasis on the YOU again. Damn. I thought I was beyond that.

She opened the door to my room and gestured towards the Chromebook setting on the little rustic desk. "If you will, I want to observe how you react to the software and the interface in a purely unaided and unprepared way and see how well our human factors work applies to a user like you."

Me too. I sat down and put my assigned ID and password in. The computer made that "USB device just connected" sound and a little dongle looking thing next to it beeped and flashed a blinking light in a little depression on its surface. It looked just like the fingerprint reader on my dad's gun safe, so I pressed my index finger on it at several different angles. It made a more satisfied beep. Then my face appeared on the screen, presumable via the webcam built into the unit, with a grey outline of a generic face. I leaned forward and to the left to center my face in the grey outline, and the computer made several exaggerated simulated shutter snapping sounds, and "Recognized: Robbie Roberts" flashed on the screen for a moment.

I looked over at Fancy and she just nodded back toward the screen. A swirling logo appeared: a gif or animation loop. Like M.C. Escher mirror image fish drawings looping and interchanging, only these were made up of the symbols for all the genders and preferences from Fancy's first talk. It finally coalesced into a stylized LifeJoy logo made up dozens of small images of happy smiling people.

Finally, I was offered three choices: preferences, population, and fit. I chose preferences. Should I be honest, or put in something unbelievably unusual and thus undeliverable?

I was presented with an on-screen dialog not unlike the nested one we used to select filters, limits and ranges for measurements in my Embedded Systems class. Only there were no ohms, volts, milliamps, microfarads, and millihenries involved here. There were simple things like distance and age per the Angela example, and lots of other choices. I decided to play it straight. Very straight.

Cis male seeks cis female, relationship only no hookups, no one night stands, no zipless fucks. Age 18 to 34 (the max guess I had for Glennis Howries' age), IQ above 130 (smart girls make the best lovers, I was now sure), height between 5 and 6 feet (I suppose I should include girls that were taller than me, but for some reason I did not), non-smoker (of any kind), disease free of every listed choice, and location within 300 yards of my present location.

The "population" and "fit" choices changed color to a sort of yellow green. I clicked on population and saw a display of multiple short but wide histograms, depicting each of the variables I had input, and the statistics of how the population fell out by each of those factors. It was very easy to understand, but not too useful. Only a tiny fraction of the users of the system were within 300 yards for example, but the clear majority were between 5 and 6 feet in height. About 15% were above IQ of 130, so this was a very smart crowd. About 45% were cis females, 75% were non-smokers, and 80% did not have any of the diseases I specified. This was interesting, but not what I really wanted to know.

Fancy leaned a little closer and looked over my shoulder but kept her expression neutral. I put in a preference for grey eye color with violet highlights, but she made no sound. Another histogram appeared, showing the 99.9% of the user population did not meet my criteria for eye color. At the bottom of the dialog was a button for more choices. I clicked it, there were thousands of them. How would I ever make sense of this?

"Try the fit item" Fancy intoned.

A series of nested histograms appeared, like a cascade of filters of different sizes. You could see how many individuals 'fell out' from your series of choices. Reality raised its ugly head, even in this idealized sexual fantasy! The 'population' item showed you what was out there, the 'choice' item let you say what you wanted, but the 'fit' item showed you the intersection of those two: what you could expect to get. Even in the world of imaginary cybersex, you had to stay in your lane!

There were little 'suggestion boxes' next each filter, with fine print that suggested what you could do to 'improve your fit' by compromising what you wanted to find something you could get. How realistic. I looked at all those thousands of sexual proclivities again in the choice item - they were ordered by popularity, I guessed. In my little subset of cis male seeks cis female, the list began with vaginal intercourse followed by oral and anal options, then rapidly descended into lots of terms I had heard but did not fully understand, followed by others I had never encountered. You could click on each one and see a little mini wiki explanation. Eww! Who made up all these terms? Who already knew they liked that? As my grandmother used to say, it takes all kinds to make a world. But jeesh!

Which made me think: what did I really want? I wanted it back the way it was earlier in the school year, with Lara, Suzanne, and Nora all three humpy and happy. Who wouldn't want that? I could no longer get Suzanne, apparently, but I could still have Lara and Nora, although we might be physically separated for work and school intermittently over the next few years. What did I want in the interim? Someone honest and wonderful like Summer Mawn, or Elizabeth Ashcroft Knowles. What did I want tonight? Fancy Drathars or Glennis Howries?

If Fancy had 'evolved' beyond just liking it very rough, where would she fall out? I began to try other 'filters' and watched the fit window. I re-entered the grey eyes with violet highlights filter and began to experiment with other settings. Was Fancy still watching over my shoulder? Spanking, flogging, anal. As I entered choices the fit window narrowed down, but still did not yield only one result. But I began to detect a little Suzie tone from her, without the pecuniary overtone. What else to try? I tried to put in a threesome with another female, but the choices were 'greyed out' and I couldn't select them.

Fancy cleared her throat. "Tonight, it's singles night so your choices are restricted to select only one individual." But her Suzie tone warbled a bit.

What was it Duran Drathars had said about keeping an open mind about tomorrow night? Surely, he couldn't mean a threesome with his own cousin? I had heard the term 'kissing cousins' but that was too much even for Duran, wasn't it? It was certainly too much for me. I made some more tries and watched the fit window. Suddenly no one was making it through the filters. Control Z reversed my last choice and I tried again. What else to try?

Fancy laid a very warm hand on my shoulder. "I'm flattered, Robbie, but my stock option agreement specifies that I cannot have romantic relationships with potential clients or investors. I must leave you on your own to pursue other possibilities." With that she sashayed out the door. Damn.

I played around with several other threads in the database, but my heart wasn't in it. I wasn't terribly frustrated, and I thought my desires were relatively mainstream, especially compared to this crowd. I shut off the Chromebook started out to find cabin 14A.

+++++++++++++++++++

After his trek through Canada, Dwight returned to DC and he and Carmencita had four days together before he had to report for his new assignment. It was four days of pure joy. Having her in his old apartment made it seem like a palace. They made love three times a day and cuddled the rest of the time. She was overjoyed to have him back and working a job where she could expect to see him regularly. She was even getting used to calling him Alex instead of Dwight.

On day five of his return, Dwight reported for work as directed, at an agency facility on Savage Road at Fort Meade. He almost failed to give the guard his real name. He would have to remember to always use Alexander Walton from now on. The guard scanned a list, looked a little apprehensive, and told him to go to room 100A around the hallway to the left.

"Sorry, pal." He said. "That's where they do the exit interviews."

Dwight, er, ah, Alex, steeled himself. He was prepared for this possibility, but not very well. At any rate, if he had Carmencita he could find a way to be happy, and he could find another job.

Room 100A turned out the be a thoroughly bureaucratic office that could have served any government or military equally well by just changing the signs. A prototypical GS11 HR 'specialist' bade Alex to sit at his side chair and walked him through a procedure he had undoubtedly taken other unfortunate people through a thousand times. Forms on where to send his final paycheck, documenting that he had no remaining vacation days or expense statements outstanding, an inventory of government property, and finally, reminders of all the non-disclosure agreements he had signed, an affidavit confirming that he understood that his previously issued security clearance was revoked but that all his responsibilities under the National Secrets Act remained in place and that he would be criminally prosecuted if he violated any of its dictums.

"I wouldn't worry about that one much, they say it to everyone, but it's just routine," the GS11 said.

Alex laughed inwardly. Not in my case, he thought, but I can't talk about it. "I'll have to remember not to take any selfies inside submarines." The GS11 looked confused. Not much on current events, Alex guessed.

He started back toward the parking lot and began an internal dialog that he had only encountered in fictional stories before. Did he tell Carmencita he just got fired or not? He should always be honest with her, plus she was too smart to fool anyway. Maybe he could use his last assignment as a springboard to work at another, more promising startup? Wait, wrong name. His official resume would show nothing except his Department of Agriculture cover job since he graduated from MIT. That would raise a lot of questions. Could he apply for another, real job in government? Did he want to? This was going to be more difficult than he thought. He was not used to having time on his hands, either. They could pay the rent on his apartment with Carmencita's salary, but it would Top Ramen for dinner six nights a week without another paycheck.

"Alex Walton?" A tall guy in a grey suit blocked his way out, not so subtly demanding a response. Very fit, very black, with that earnest look that said he was a government special agent and damn proud of it.

The FBI was here to arrest him for something, was his first guess. Many of his assignments for no such agency had required him to be very creative financially, and hack a lot of supposedly sacred systems, plus he still had several backup IDs and bank accounts he never mentioned, so they could likely send him to Leavenworth if they wanted to.

But no, the suit fit the guy too well, the tie was much better than expected, and his weapon did not print through the jacket. Secret service, maybe? But this guy was in his mid-forties and still lean as Cassius. Not a desk job then, but an active posting somewhere important. What was up?

"Yes." Alex would make him explain.

"Would you come with me please?"

Alex hesitated. The guy did not back off. "It would be best not to draw any attention to yourself, Sir, even here."

The "Sir" was promising. It meant he was not to be arrested but transported. Where?

"Lead the way, Special Agent." The guy smiled and turned on his heel. Alex spotted an ankle holster and small backup weapon through his pants leg. Most people would not have noticed.

The tall guy walked over to a black Tahoe with several stealth antennas and some very discrete red and blues in the grill and back window. He opened a back left door and gestured for Alex to get in. "My name is Jones. Special Agent Smith here will drive your car in for you."

A younger but just as fit looking white guy in a darker suit had emerged from the right side of the Tahoe and held out his hand. Alex tossed him his keys. This is the only offer I have right now, he thought, plus my schedule is completely free for the rest of the day.

+++++++++++++++++++

Glennis Howries opened the door of 14A after just one soft knock. Her smile and her Suzie hit me like a warm and welcoming wave of perfumed air.

"I hoped you were basically an old-fashioned guy, Robbie, and you would take my little hint rather than devote yourself to a software adventure."

"I am planning to devote myself to you."

"What a line! But not bad, given the circumstances. To be perfectly honest, I only want your devotion for two nights. Are you okay with that?" Her Suzie begged me to be. Can't disappoint a lady, can I?

"Yes ma'am. I'm due back to Texas soon, so that works for me. But if we only have two nights, I am going to expect some intense evenings, if you take my meaning."

"I hope you make me take more than that!" She smiled. She reminded me more and more of Mrs. Douglass. "Cards on the table, Robbie. I was divorced about a year ago from a much older man who hadn't touched me for years before that. I need to know I can be desired and excited again."

It was early in the evening, and I was feeling my oats a bit. I slowly began kissing Glennis. No worries about her being desirable - she was amazing. She looked even better with her clothes off. Her skin was as wonderful as I had imagined that Lynn Da Britain's would have been if I could have stripped her like I wanted to. Glennis was sort of 'short-coupled' and voluptuous under those overalls, and so fascinating to touch.