Cyberella

As the automated floor-to-ceiling shades draw, exposing the somnolent, dark room to the soft caressing warmth of the Los Angeles sunrise, his cellphone pinged, alerting him to a new email. His eyes flicker, as his mind slowly shifts gears, a small groan escapes his throat as he rolls, semi-consciously right and towards his nightstand, slapping aimlessly around the smooth marble, sloppily searching for the emission of said sound. His palm lands on his cellphone. “Ping” as if reacting to his irritability, it sounds off again. Then, again and again, the rate and intensity picking up, before his fingers find the side button, silencing the anxietal quips. A quick, non-sequential swipe up on the screen, opens the holographic-like Home Screen, at eye level.

“8:42am,” he thinks to himself. “On a freakin Saturday”.

He shakes his head disapprovingly and begins to sift through his morning notifications. Junk.

“Damn. 142,000 likes on Instagram, and not a single person stands out. This online shit is a scam, I swear” he mutters to himself, shifting his balance, and sitting upwards. Multi-tasking, he swipes left mid-air, summoning his next email, while still rubbing at the dried sleep crystals, clutching at the corners of his eyes.

“Please review last night’s memories to find your perfect match”, he reads aloud, absent-mindedly.

He taps on the opalescent email icon, opening the email to full screen.

“Hello. You have been selected to submit your top 5 potential interests from The Dating Game you attended last night. Please review your C-Link, submitting the required face shots. Those who match will be given the opportunity to win, an all-expenses-paid, second date. If you didn’t see anyone you would like to mat...” his vocal dictation trails off as he skims the rest of the email for specific submission details. He swipes, dismissively downward in the air, the holographic projection shimmering out of view, the now lifeless cellular device, staring back up at him from the top of the nightstand. Using his elbows’, he pushes his frame-up and back into a sitting position, resting against the soft, black, velvet headboard. Slowly scanning the room, he takes a moment to admire the decor that adorns his penthouse master bedroom. He liked the best and his home was a strong representation of the relationship he had with the finer things in life. He revisits his nightstand, lazily leaning over the bedside, he reaches for a remote about half the size of a CASIO calculator. It was rigid in color, button-less, and completely dominated by a screen. His C-Link. His familiarity was expressed in the way he caressed and coddled it in his palms. Rubbing his fingers over the small led screen, the remote lit up. After a few thumbs swipes whichever way, his head relaxed back and his eyes glossed over with the patented grey, techno-film, and he began to watch, internally, last night’s events. Lazily, he swipes right, jumping the seconds, that constricted as hours, through his memory playback. The brief, semiconscious looks at the women he conversed with replaying, streamlined directly from the catalyst of his cerebral cortex, and organized as brief snapshots before his eyes. He knew he had seen HER somewhere, in between the 5th or 10th stiff-haired blonde, highlighted in his memories.

“She’s gotta be here,” he thinks to himself, searching through the amalgamation of faces he had ignored the previous night. There! There she was! The hairs on his neck stood erect, as he focused his mind’s inner eye on her, double-tapping on the remote’s screen to pause the memory playback. He lingered a second longer, searing her image into the SEARCH option, before tapping once more to continue. She had his full attention, and the memory altered slightly, the neotropical-like technology, confirming his internal cues and phasing out everything else. Surreptitious details became pointedly obvious. For example, the soft groans of ecstasy emitted by the fabric of the yellow dress she donned, as it traced and hugged her silhouetted curves, were easily translated into an orchestra of modulations, his human earbuds could perceive. As the memory progressed, the C-Link evolved, highlighting the more titillating details, more foregone to human perception.

Her sun-kissed skin was a cornucopia of lighter hues, complimented by the river of Jet-black hair that cascaded down her back, stopping right at the curve that was indicative of squats and homemade cornbread. How had he not noticed the complexity of her complexion, before? Mahogany? Chestnut? Fawn? He settled on Golden-Brown. And was that the hint of a tattoo on her lower left thigh?

She turned in his direction, looking down at what appeared to be a glass of Merlot, slowly raising the glass to lips, the same color, and fullness. She sips. Slow. Patiently. As she starts to lower the glass from her lips, he slides his finger across the remote screen, turning playback to slow motion, elongating and exaggerating her motions. She turns her head in his direction and begins to blink. He slows the frames down even more, as the C-Link zooms in on her facials. She begins to open her eyes, her blink eternalized in slow-motion, revealing the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes, he had ever seen. She locked eyes with him and he pauses the memory once more, mentally present in his room, now. He shifts his back against the backboard as chills run down his spine, in lust. “That’s her. I need to know her”.