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I got resituated in Kiefer’s apartment and turned the video and audio back on.
“Okay,” I said. Erik wasn’t back yet, but Cheryl was ready for me. “Let’s just keep on moving along; where were we?”
“Number four,” Cheryl said with a slightly nervous smile on her face. “The number four question is: What was your first word?”
Erik peeked back into the corner of the frame, looking as if he was making sure the coast was clear, and then sat down at his station, showing us his coffee mug to confirm that he had, in fact, gotten a refill.
“And number five,” Erik said, as he took a sip, “which has as nearly as much predictive ability as the other four combined. Cheryl, why don’t you tell her?”
He was trying not to laugh. His face was as red as Cheryl’s by this point, but we were all working together to move forward and pretend that nothing had happened.
“Drumroll, please,” Cheryl said. “What did you dress as for Halloween when you were nine years old?”
They both looked at me with smiles on their faces awaiting my response.
“You have got to be joking,” I said.
Erik shook his head. “No, it’s brilliant. You can get to 80% certainty with that question alone. It’s the same certainty as if you only use the previous four questions. But when you include all of them, you get to 95%.”
It didn’t make sense in my head. There were too many questions. “What about people who didn’t celebrate Halloween?”
“The test is calibrated for American users,” Cheryl said. “For the most part, all of them did celebrate it. For those that didn’t, we can only get to 80%.”
“And what about people who don’t remember what they were?” I asked. “I don’t remember what I was.”
“Think hard,” Cheryl said. “Give it a minute or two, you’ll remember.”
I humored her and thought for a second. When I was nine, I was in fourth grade. In first grade, I was a princess. In second, I was a cat. Third grade, I got sick and stayed home, but wanted to be a unicorn. And fourth grade…
“Oh,” I said, “I was a vampire cheerleader.”
Both Cheryl’s and Erik’s smiles widened and I practically covered my mouth.
“Oh my God, did I just reveal something personal about myself?”
Erik shook his head. “Maybe, but we’ll never know. That’s the thing about the algorithm. We don’t know why it works, but it does work.”
Cheryl typed some words and pressed enter.
“According to the research, you’d best be matched with someone who went as a superhero,” Cheryl said, “but one from DC Comics, not Marvel. And one who traditionally wore bright costumes.”
“Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman,” Erik said, “but probably not Batman.”
“Or,” Cheryl said, “someone who went as a 1930s movie monster. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man.”
“But why?” I asked.
Erik shrugged. “Human psychology is weird. It’s not that the costume made you who you are today, but the kind of kid who went as a vampire cheerleader would grow up to best be matched with an adult who went as one of those things.”
“Look,” Cheryl said, “feel free to play with it, no pun intended,” I smirked at her vibrator reference — at least we could laugh about it. “and try it out. You can provide your info and the info of a potential partner on that sandbox site and it will test compatibility. The science isn’t fully understood, but it’s sound.”
I looked at the time and saw the meeting was already pushing the fifteen-minute limit we’d set aside. Obviously that was due to Bagel’s decision for “play time and my need to change locations so that she wouldn’t find any other “toys” to play with so it was best to try to wrap it up. I also didn’t want to have to keep talking to the two people who saw my Mr. Fuckswell toy doing the cha-cha on the floor.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me play around with it as you suggested, and I’ll get back to you in a few days. But, if this works…”
“It does,” Cheryl told me.
“…as I said, if it works, then we should implement it into the demo app and see how it plays out.”
