Kismet

by Luke Tredget

  At 3.56 p.m. she enters the atrium of Strata SE1, and her stomach does an even more intense version of its usual plummet as the lift bears her up to the twenty-second floor. When she knocks at flat 176 Geoff opens the door immediately.

  ‘Darling,’ he says, in a mock jolly tone, his white teeth gleaming. But his smile falters when he sees her, and he steps back from the door and says she’d better come in.

  She follows him along the hallway and into the open living space, and he asks if she wants a drink. She says no, but he drifts into the kitchen anyway, leaving her standing with one foot in the tiled kitchen and one in the carpeted lounge. Geoff tells her to make herself at home, and she says thanks; there is so far a conspicuous absence of joviality. She takes off her coat and finds that removing her boots is a struggle; when they finally pop off she is surprised by her bare feet, and remembers not being able to find socks this morning. The white skin is a raw pink where the leather has pinched and rubbed. Geoff has gathered several bottles, a tumbler and ice on the kitchen island, and Anna grows impatient.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about something,’ she says.

  ‘I gathered that much,’ he says, clinking ice into the glass. ‘I’m not a complete idiot.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she says, unsure how to continue, ‘about things.’

  ‘It looks like you’ve been doing more than just thinking,’ he says, carrying his drink, a short lemony something, to where she stands. ‘You look a little … frazzled.’

  ‘It’s nothing bad.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I’ve just been thinking about work. And about writing. And about what you said about us working together. On your project. And I decided that … I’d like to give it a try.’

  His eyebrows jump in surprise, and he says right, and great, and comes to hug her.

  ‘That’s not all,’ she says. ‘I’ve been thinking that if we were to do that, it would mean us spending a lot of time together. It would mean us … carrying on what we’ve started. Carrying on … seeing each other. Being together.’

  A new concern spreads across Geoff’s face.

  ‘And how do you feel about that?’

  ‘I feel great about it,’ she says, and he smiles. ‘Really great.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he says. ‘Me too.’ He puts his drink down on a side table and comes at her with his arms ready for another hug, as if they have reached the resolution of the conversation. She steps backwards away from him.

  ‘Geoff, there’s still more. If we feel this way, about each other, then there’s something we should do together. Don’t you understand what I’m getting at?’

  The dark cleft between his eyebrows indicates he does not, and Anna realises she will have to talk him through it; she regrets the unromantic circumstances, and wishes they’d done this in Somerset.

  ‘Geoff. We met using Kismet.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘And, as far as I know, we’re both still using Kismet.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘So we’re both still getting matches. Only I’m not looking for anyone else.’

  Geoff blinks a couple of times.

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No! Are you?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not.’ He smiles at her and she sees that, amazingly, he still doesn’t get it.

  ‘When people aren’t looking for anyone else, they switch off Kismet. Together.’

  ‘I’ve heard about that,’ he says, nodding.

  ‘So? Is that what you want?’

  He appears to think for a moment before giving the question back to her: ‘Is it what you want?’

  Her annoyance is such that she can’t bear to look at him, and she says, ‘For God’s sake,’ and turns on her heel. Through the kitchen’s glass wall she can see the Shard, the only nearby building of comparable size – the sight of lifts gliding up and down makes her insides wobble.

  ‘It’s just that you seem so fraught,’ he says. ‘I want to make sure you really mean what you say.’

  ‘We’re an 81,’ she says, turning back to face him. ‘Do you know how rare that is?’

  ‘I have an idea, yes.’

  Just saying the number makes tenderness replace her momentary annoyance, and she steps towards him and takes his hands.

  ‘I couldn’t be more certain,’ she says. ‘About anything.’

  Geoff looks down at their joined hands and smiles.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s do it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes. Now.’

  Anna smiles back and follows him to the bedroom, where he says his phone is. She sits on the side of the bed with her phone in her lap, but Geoff can’t find his, and leaves again. She sits watching the southern view of London, a textured map in which the west-facing walls are brightly lit by a resurgent sun.

  ‘Found it,’ says Geoff, coming back in with a chunky, red-backed device that surprises Anna, since it is different from the phone he had when they met. She realises she hasn’t seen him hold a phone since those very first moments in Vauxhall.

  ‘Right then,’ he says. ‘Talk me through it.’

  He sits on the other side of the bed, and they face each other like card players, their phones held up to their chests.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Are you on Kismet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, get on it. Okay? Now, select options.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Do you see where it says “Close account”?’

  Geoff peers at his screen, and Anna is struck by how old he is; she isn’t finding this romantic in the least.

  ‘“Close account”,’ says Geoff. ‘Press that, do I?’

  ‘And then press “Confirm”. Now, see that it’s asking if you’re linking with one of your matches?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Click “Yes”. Then find my name.’

  ‘Anna 81.’

  ‘That’s right. Press that.’

  ‘And you’re doing this too?’

  ‘Yes!’ She turns her phone around to prove it. ‘Then click “Confirm” again, and it’s all over.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  A short silence as both make the final steps. Anna hits her thumb three times through ‘Geoff 81’, ‘Confirm’ and ‘Double confirm’. Then her screen fills with a short animated congratulations, and the whole app shrinks and disappears from her screen.

  ‘That’s it?’ says Geoff. ‘We’ve done it?’

  Anna nods, says they’ve done it, and Geoff sighs theatrically and falls back onto the bed.

  ‘Well done, Anna,’ he says. ‘It’s all over. You’ve done great.’

  Hardly the words she had expected, but at least there is relief and happiness in his voice. It is hard not to think of the same moment she had with Pete, his proposition delivered with flowers and champagne. Eventually Geoff stands and walks around the bed, before kissing the top of her head and leaving the bedroom. Again, not what she expected, but who is she to judge, since she barely feels happy herself; she mainly feels drained and numb. She looks again at the glass wall and sees the shadows have risen like liquid up the eastern-facing walls since she last looked; in another hour or so the individual buildings will be invisible. She keeps watching the view for long enough for some of the buildings to become lost to shadow, but still Geoff doesn’t return. She can’t hear anything from the bathroom next door, and decides to give him another minute, before leaving the bedroom. She is surprised to find him sitting in an armchair in the living area, doing nothing. When he sees her enter he comes to life.

  ‘Hello, Anna,’ he says, in an unusual tone, as if this is the first time he has seen her today. ‘Come and take a seat.’ He aims a flat palm at the sofa opposite him. ‘There’s something I need to tell you. Something important.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Please. It’s really better if you sit down.’

  She steps into the s
unken, carpeted lounge area and sits on the sofa. Geoff studies her with a blank expression. Her first thought is of his daughter in Argentina, and that maybe he is going to say she actually lives in Bromley, or that he has a second wife and child elsewhere. Immediately she decides this is bearable, that she can cope with it, and that this is a natural time to exchange their secrets; once he’s finished she can tell him about Pete.

  ‘There’s no easy way to say this,’ he begins. ‘So I’m just going to come out with it. But I think you should try and keep an open mind. And try and see how, on the whole, this doesn’t actually make a difference to you and me.’

  ‘It’s okay, Geoff. Just tell me.’

  ‘Very well. We’re not an 81 match. On Kismet. In actual fact we have a much lower score. A 62.’

  Silence. His words are nonsense, and as such they bounce off the plane of her consciousness; after a few seconds it is as if he hasn’t said anything.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve been carrying out an investigation. My secret project has been about Kismet. My colleague, Dmitri, hacked the system so every match I get is an 81. I’ve been tracking the results.’

  Another silence, into which Anna hears herself laugh.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you do. But I promise, it’s the truth.’ He leans forwards and taps his finger against the glass coffee table. His eyes hold hers with calm authority; there is no apology or pity in them. ‘This is the investigation. We wanted to show the effect that the number has on people. So I made several 81 matches, and you were the one I decided to go with. For several reasons …’

  Anna laughs and says she doesn’t believe him again, but she is beginning to feel the world turn around her, as if the skyscraper is rotating or being shaken by the wind.

  ‘You see why I couldn’t tell you? And why you had to be the one that suggested switching off? I know this is a shock, but try and think about it. I want us to work together on this, we could—’

  ‘Why are you saying this?’ she says, standing up from the sofa. Her voice wavers, while Geoff appears utterly calm. Without breaking eye contact his hand goes into his pocket and takes out a phone, which he passes up to her.

  ‘See for yourself.’

  She takes it from him and sees this isn’t the phone he just had in the bedroom; this is larger and thinner, like the one she remembers him having in Vauxhall.

  ‘Open Kismet,’ he says. ‘Go onto connections.’

  She follows his instructions, and a list of names appears on the screen:

  Josie 81

  Elinor 81

  Anna 81

  Sita 81

  Anne-Marie 81

  The list goes on but Anna reads no further; the words blur as if sliding underwater and she lets go of the phone; it clatters against the table top and falls to the carpet. She thinks she might be sick, and turns and walks away from the sofa. Geoff asks where she’s going but she doesn’t answer, just keeps on towards the bathroom, but the sight of the glass wall and the city beyond fills her eyes, and the idea of the sheer drop down to the distant street hits her like a punch in the stomach, turns her legs to water, and she falls to the carpet. Geoff calls her name and a second later is helping her to her feet.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she says. ‘I’ll scream if you touch me!’

  She makes it to her feet and goes to the bedroom, thinking she will get her phone and leave, but once in there she feels dizzy again and decides to lie down for a moment. Perhaps she sleeps for a time, for the next thing she knows the light has changed – the glass wall is now dark, the city a spread of tiny white and yellow lights – and Geoff is sitting on the edge of the bed, in the middle of a speech. He is talking about Wikileaks and the Cypherpunk movement, how he’s been vaguely involved with each for years, but never led any of his own projects.

  ‘But as soon as they launched Kismet I knew this was what I wanted to do. It struck me as the culmination of our dominant ideology; the fulcrum, the godhead. It trades on the additional ghostly something that all commodities have, the intangible extra that all products share: “Just do it.” “It’s the real thing.” “I’m loving it.” This it is powering the profiles. All Kismet is doing is matching people with a few things in common; the rest just happens in a person’s brain. Ask any psychoanalyst – the human mind can fill any shortfall with its own invention; it’s a real chancer, an opportunist. So we set about hacking into the system to find a profile, to unpick the algorithm. But we couldn’t find one! After almost a year of trying to find a hole in their system, Dmitri admitted defeat – we concluded that the profiles were so well guarded they couldn’t be stolen or, even more interestingly, that they don’t actually exist.’

  Anna wants to get up and leave the flat, but she feels immobilised. He continues talking about how, for all their supposedly scientific evidence, Kismet has never been tested against a placebo, and they have never released a profile for independent scrutiny. He doesn’t doubt that the European Court decision to make Kismet release people’s profile data will be overturned on appeal, as it has been many times before. He says that’s why they decided to stage their own experiment, so that they could use the results as an exposé and put Kismet on the back foot.

  ‘But that’s why I need you to help me write it. It’s your story, as much as mine. People will listen to you. Together we could dissect the whole system.’

  Anna sits up against the padded headboard. She still feels nauseous, but is at least in control of her motor functions, and this makes her want to get away from him as quickly as possible. He is talking about ideology again, and Anna swings her bare feet off the bed, finds the floor, pushes herself upright.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m leaving.’ Her voice sounds reassuringly solid. ‘I don’t want to be here.’

  ‘I know you’re upset,’ he says, following her out of the bedroom. ‘That’s natural. But you have to keep an open mind and listen to what I’m saying. This is exactly what you said you wanted: to be part of an interesting project, to write something important. You’re meeting that Guardian journalist; this is exactly the kind of story you could sell them.’

  Anna walks away from him. The ground wobbles beneath her, but she manages to get to the sofa, though her boots aren’t where she left them.

  ‘And you have to keep in mind that nothing has changed between us,’ he continues, following her. ‘All the time we’ve spent together. The fun we’ve had. The sex. That hasn’t changed at all. Unless, that is, all I am to you is the number.’

  ‘Not just a number. You’re a fraud, as well. I might call the police myself.’ She looks behind the armchair and sofa, but still can’t see her boots. He follows her around, tells her that it is definitely not illegal, that all the hacks happened in Russia and that the police couldn’t touch him.

  ‘Criminal or not, you’re still a fucking liar.’

  ‘But I haven’t lied.’

  The gall of this makes her stop still, and she wheels around to face him.

  ‘You haven’t lied? The whole thing has been a lie.’

  ‘Only the number! And the number is a fabrication anyway. We just switched a made-up percentage for another made-up percentage. Why trust one over the other? The only real thing you can trust is the time we spent together. It was a person, me. I am the person you decided to be with.’

  Anna considers this. The number 62 flashes above his head, and with it she sees more clearly the loose skin hanging from his neck, his arrogant demeanour, the simulated poshness of his voice. It is like these imperfections have sprouted from him in the last few minutes.

  ‘Don’t play their game and think of me as a number. Think of the time we spent. Think of the things we have in common. These are real things, experiences that happened between us, as two people. Don’t let them interfere with that.’ He continues talking, says that the only way to escape the ideology is to step right out of it, to go agai
nst what their numbers are telling her. His speech does send her mind back to the time they spent together, and one memory in particular – the loose skin around Geoff’s neck becoming inflamed and rigid during sex. The image is repulsive. Anna stops listening before the end of his speech, wanders about, opens a squat wooden cabinet that might contain a shoe rack. Inside there are several bottles of spirits.

  ‘Is that really all I am to you?’ says Geoff, following her around. ‘A number?’

  ‘No, you’re not a number,’ she says. ‘You’re nothing to me. Now: where the fuck are my boots?’

  *

  Elephant and Castle is still busy, but has switched to its evening routine. The market stalls have been packed away and the shuffling old women have been replaced by swift, suited commuters, who rush along the pavement from tube to bus, bus to tube. Anna floats through them and into the brightly lit shopping centre. The vinyl tiles beneath her feet are refreshingly solid and strong, and it is a relief to be at ground level. The floor feels so robust that her legs are precariously flimsy in comparison; it seems possible that they might buckle beneath the pressure of each downward step. She proceeds, one step at a time, past the Body Shop and Clarks, and suddenly recalls those school shoes, with the Velcro straps and the ladybird prints, and another time when she went to buy Doc Martens with her dad in Bedford and burst into tears in the shop. She continues deeper into the shopping centre and her aimless drift is rewarded with a discovery: rather than ending after the long row of shops, the building opens up into a huge supermarket. Or maybe it is a hypermarket – it certainly seems as big as the French giants she was taken to on childhood holidays, with ceilings as high as a warehouse and shelves stacked well above head height. This surprising find makes her think of the gymnasium beneath Somerset House, and she laughs.