About the author
I’m in Santa Fe, Argentina as a Fulbright Specialist. Here I am with my host. Prof. Victoria Peterson, and her partner, Prof. Emiliano Ravera.
New here? Think (or better yet click) here to get to our main page.
BioCompatIbility by Brendan ZaChary AllIson
“That’s the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.”
“But look at our live brain data here. It says we have perfectly compatible sexual attraction profiles.”
“I told you, my dad just got me this brain headset and family subscription to B-Harmony. We didn’t even want it but that fucking pushy salesman from B-Mobile said it was free. I haven’t really set it up yet, I don’t know what the hell it’s telling us –”
“It looks like it’s telling us something… special…” He leaned in. She stepped back. He fell forward.
“It’s telling me I made a bad choice in roommates.”
“But B-Harmony predicts our arousal from our brainwaves,” he said while standing up nonchalantly. “It says we’ll always be horny at the same time!” He winked his left eye. She rolled both of hers.
“Do I seem aroused to you?”
“Well, no, but…” He frowned. “Um. Also, the power light on your headset is off. What the fuck?”
“I said it’s a family account. So you must be looking at data from someone else. I’ll open the user information window. See?”
He looked at that window. “It says I’m interpreting data from a 54-year-old man.” She retched.
After four years and over 2000 neurotherapy sessions, she finally accepted her “new” gay “parents.”
Author Commentary
I wrote this a while back but Andy said the ending was unclear. So I let it mull for a while and just now changed it (Oct 2024) and decided to post it.
Realism
Look at Sutaj et al. (2021) and other examples of the “Blondy check,” which uses the classic RSVP paradigm (Gerson et al. 2006) to assess which faces are considered most attractive. There have been other efforts with brain-based dating. So this story is realistic now – mainly because it’s not clear the system works. It could be just a happy (?) coincidence that the two people who end up marrying each other supposedly have “perfectly compatible sexual attraction profiles.”
Consider E-Harmony and other efforts to reduce (or elevate) dating and relationships to science and psychology. People pay a lot of money for tools to help them find their ideal mate. Many such people are gullible. If anything, I’m surprised nobody has released a bullshit BCI like this before.
Hope
This is another story that’s really up to reader interpretation. Two people ended up in a happy and successful relationship. The female character eventually recovered.
bcifi 
Leave a reply to Sleepy Mochi Cancel reply