The Algorithm

Georgia Hale

“Final diagnostics are green across the board. The servers are purring like kittens who just discovered a lifetime supply of cream. Ready to change the world, boss?”

The voice, Chloe’s, crackles with an energy I haven’t felt in years. It comes through the comms embedded in the obsidian walls of the Nest, my self-contained world. I don’t look away from the holographic display dominating the space in front of me. It’s a shimmering, three dimensional nebula of data points, the collective heart of Elysian.

“Run them again,” I say. My own voice is flat, a stark contrast to her fizzing excitement.

“Georgia.” A sigh. “I’ve run them ninety four times. The system is stable. It’s more than stable. It’s perfect. Just like the code you wrote.”

“Perfection is a theoretical concept, Chloe. Ninety five is a better number.”

I hear the click of her keyboard. She’s indulging me. She always does. Chloe is the only person besides my head of security, Leo, who has clearance to even speak to me in here. She’s my lifeline to a world I’ve systematically cut myself off from.

“Okay, ninety five is a go. Still green. Look, the board is getting anxious. The launch presser is scheduled for nine a.m. tomorrow. They actually expect you to, you know, show up. Or at least beam in a hologram that doesn’t look like a hostage video.”

I trace a glowing data stream with my finger, the light warming my skin. “The board can wait. They get their money. I get my results.”

“About that,” she says, her tone shifting, becoming softer. “Why don’t you let me order you something? Real food. Not just nutrient paste. That Thai place you used to love? We could celebrate. It’s been six years, Georgia. You did it. You actually did it.”

Six years. The words hang in the sterile, filtered air. Six years of working, of coding, of building this digital fortress around me. Six years since my world collapsed into a single, catastrophic point of failure. A betrayal so complete it rewrote my personal source code.

“I’m not hungry,” I lie.

“Right. Of course not. God, you’re impossible. At least think about the presser. You could wear that black Armani suit. The one that makes you look like you could acquire a small country with a single glare.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask.” A pause. “Are you okay?”

I finally look away from the data cloud, my gaze landing on my faint reflection in the dark glass of the server racks. A pale woman with eyes that hold too much information and not enough light. My dark hair is pulled back so tightly it pulls at my temples. I look severe. Reclusive. Exactly what a tech billionaire who hasn't been seen in public in half a decade should look like.

“I’m fine, Chloe. Just… final checks.”

“Okay, boss. Just… call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”

The comm clicks off. Silence returns, thick and heavy. She’s right. Six years. Six years to build Elysian from the ashes of another company. Another life. Elysian. My life’s work. An algorithm so adHaled it can sift through the chaos of seven billion lives and find the one. The single, statistically perfect soulmate for any given person. It analyzes everything, from genetic markers and psychological profiles to the subconscious digital footprints we leave scattered across the internet. It maps desire, predicts compatibility, and eliminates the risk. It eliminates the pain. The kind of pain that can break a person.

It’s my gift to the world. A world I no longer want to be a part of. A way to ensure no one ever has to feel what I felt.

My fingers hover over the master console. The system is ready. It’s flawless. I’ve run every simulation, every permutation. It works. But the scientist in me, the broken part of me, needs one last piece of data. One final, private test before I hand my creation over to the masses.

My own profile is already in the system, a ghost entry used for diagnostics. Coded under a dummy name, scrubbed of all identifying markers except the raw data of me. My entire life, my personality, my hopes, my fears, all translated into cold, hard data.

My heart, an organ I generally try to ignore, starts to beat a little faster. It’s a foolish idea. An exercise in pure ego. What would it even tell me? That I’m incompatible with the entire human race? I already know that.

But my hand moves of its own accord. I pull up the search interface, the clean, minimalist design I sketched out on a napkin all those years ago. A single search bar pulses with soft white light.

I authorize the query. ‘Run Profile 001.’

It’s me.

The system asks for confirmation. My thumb hovers over the biometric scanner. This is a bad idea. A stupid, sentimental, human idea. My entire empire is built on logic, on data, on the predictable patterns of code. This is the opposite of that. This is hope. And hope is a dangerous variable.

I press my thumb to the scanner. It glows green. The search initiates.

The nebula of data on the main screen constricts, then explodes into a supernova of light. Trillions of calculations per second. Elysian is sifting through the world, looking for my other half. For a second, a memory flashes, hot and sharp. A different room, a different screen. Late night coffee and the smell of ozone from overworked computers. Laughter. His laughter.

“We’re building a universe, El,” he’d said, his fingers flying across his keyboard, perfectly in sync with mine. “A digital Eden. Just you and me.”

Simon.

The name is a shard of glass in my memory. Charismatic, brilliant, beautiful Simon Keaton. My partner. In every sense of the word. We built our first company, Genesis, on that dream. We were going to change the world together. And I loved him with a terrifying, absolute certainty. A certainty that made what he did next not just a betrayal, but an extinction level event for the person I used to be.

I shake my head, trying to clear the memory. He’s gone. A ghost. A footnote in my history that I have spent six years and three billion dollars trying to erase.

The algorithm hums, its processing fans the only sound in the room. It’s working through the final candidates. Thousands become hundreds. Hundreds become dozens. Then ten. Five. Three. Two.

My breath catches in my throat. I shouldn’t care. This is just data. This doesn't mean anything. It’s a vanity search. A statistical anomaly. I tell myself this over and over, a mantra against the sudden, ridiculous fluttering in my chest.

The screen goes blank for a single, agonizing second. Then, the result materializes in the air in front of me. Crisp, white text floating in the darkness.

MATCH FOUND.

Beneath it, a name.

Simon Keaton.

And below his name, the compatibility score. A number that glows with an obscene, impossible confidence.

99.9%

I stare. My mind simply refuses to process the information. It’s a system error. It has to be. A bug. A ghost in the code left over from Genesis, the company we built, the code he stole.

“No,” I whisper, the word a puff of air in the silent room. “No. It’s impossible.”

I bring up the error logs. Nothing. I run a full diagnostic on the search parameters. Flawless. I check the core code for any corruption, any trace of old data that could have skewed the result. The system is clean. Pristine. Perfect.

My creation, the most sophisticated matching algorithm in human history, the machine I built to protect people from the kind of devastation he caused, has just looked at me, at the sum total of my being, and declared that my perfect match is the man who ruined my life.

My legs feel weak. I sink into my chair, my eyes locked on his name. The system has pulled his public profile picture. It’s a few years old, but it’s still him. The same dark hair, the same sharp jawline, the same eyes that used to look at me like I was the only thing in the universe that mattered. Now he’s the CEO of some high end cybersecurity firm. A success. Built, no doubt, on the money he got for selling our dream to the highest bidder. To our biggest competitor, the smug, arrogant Marcus Hale, who paraded his stolen victory in every tech journal for a year.

I feel a surge of rage, so hot and pure it makes me dizzy. It’s an old, familiar feeling. The fury that fueled me for six years. The engine that built this entire company.

“You,” I say to the picture, my voice trembling. “How dare you show up here. In my house. In my machine.”

My hand balls into a fist. I want to smash the screen, to shatter his face into a million pixels of light. But I can’t. This is my work. This is Elysian. And Elysian doesn't make mistakes.

The implications of that fact crash down on me. If the algorithm is right, what does that mean? That the foundation of my life for the past six years, the cold, hard certainty of his betrayal and my hatred, is wrong? That the man who tore my world apart is somehow, cosmically, the one person meant to put it back together?

It’s a joke. A cruel, twisted joke played by a universe with a sick sense of humor. Or a flaw in my logic so profound that my entire life’s work is a lie.

I lean forward, my face inches from his name. My reflection is superimposed over his image, two ghosts in the same machine. My perfect match. The man I’ve spent every waking moment of the last six years hating with every fiber of my being.

“What did you do?” I whisper to the empty room, to the phantom on my screen.

The number just glows back at me, a silent, damning verdict.

99.9%.