Trade (A Novelette) Read online

Changes started to take place at Crunkl and time speeded up. Svil and Chet talked frequently. The tie up between the companies was progressing quickly. The undisclosed sum that Chet had sunk into Crunkl was evidently greasing the right wheels as we went from a promising little startup to a major challenger very quickly.

  For the first time, we started getting serious traction beyond the tech press. We got a couple of features in the mainstream European dailies and our user numbers went through the roof. My job as communications designer got more hectic but I enjoyed it, batting phone calls and emails back and forth. We had an internal share issue which basically promised us, the core team, a big wedge of cash a little further down the line, a bright carrot dangling ahead.

  I started to buckle down, focused on reaching targets and worked late. It was worth it. Now that I had a good few shares in something semi-tangible, something that was growing, I wanted to make sure it grew as much as possible, as fast as possible. We all day-dreamed about cashing out and buying a Caribbean island. Thomas even had a printed out Google map of the West Indies on which he had circled two prospective rocks.

  I got swept away with it all, I admit. I pushed myself. I enjoyed pushing myself. I had never really pushed myself before but now I grappled with any problem that popped up until it was fixed, tried to come up with better, smarter ideas than everyone else.

  In truth, despite this positivity in the office we all knew we were facing the ‘plateau’ issue. We had money to keep us going but there was not yet an underlying business model. Chet had taken a chance on us but we were still a long way from the home stretch. If we wanted to achieve a decent pivot and become a serious Global Player we all knew we had to do something to monetize our users.

  I was sitting with Lis. She had cancelled on me the previous night, to spend some time alone with her girlfriend, Heidi, and she was now filling me in on the details. Heidi had just broken up and things were made a little awkward by the fact that it was me that had introduced her to Andre, the cold-hearted lothario that had dumped her.

  Their relationship had started when I swung passed a bar to meet Heidi and Lis earlier that year. I had been planning to pick up Lis and go home, I hadn’t been up for a major bender, but as these things do one beer had led to another.

  When Andre had phoned I had been outside having a cigarette and drunkenly I told him to get his arse down to Potsdamer Platz. The four of us had ended up getting shit-faced and we woke up the next morning to find Andre and Heidi snuggling together.

  From then on the four of us hung out a lot. We were good friends, we went out for meals together, got drunk together, all got on well. I guess I sensed that Andre wasn’t as set on the relationship as Heidi but the more we went out together the more things got cemented.

  Now that it had gone wrong it seemed, in Heidi’s eyes at least, that I was in some sense responsible for her current heartache. I felt little guilt over the introduction as they were both adults.

  Heidi had been distraught the whole day, called in sick to work then went in and had a mini-breakdown. I could tell that Lis was disapproving of the way that Andre had handled it.

  ‘He played her,’ she said with a faint glower.

  ‘Andre is hardly a player,’ I laughed. Indeed he was one of the geekiest people I knew.

  ‘In a sense he is,’ Lis spoke, slowly precisely. ‘He really broke her heart.’

  I shrugged trying to diffuse the situation. I didn’t really want to have this conversation; the implication that I was responsible for breaking Heidi’s heart by proxy was something I didn’t feel like defending.

  ‘She’ll get over it, I’m sure,’ I tried to look sympathetic. ‘She’s a strong character.’

  ‘Yes, of course she will.’ Lis looked a little irritated. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘I think he just realised that she wasn’t the one. It’s better to say these things sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lis said this as if I had hit on a universal truth.

  I reached across and touched her wrist but she shifted her position, annoyed.

  ‘Do you believe in The One?’ She asked, a little too directly for my liking.

  ‘The One?’ I leaned back, spreading my shoulders wide, trying to give the impression that this was a deep question that I would mull over. I could see a commitment chat looming and that was not what I had planned for the evening. ‘No, that’s just a Hollywood invention isn’t it?’

  We had an unspoken agreement that Hollywood films were bad, in fact we both had a sceptical view of American values in general. In a simple, dogmatic way we both decried the simplistic, dogmatic Americans.

  ‘I suppose, but do you not believe there could be a few Ones? A few right Ones?’

  ‘A few Ones? Surely that defeats the point of it? Either there is The One or not?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she looked at me steadily. ‘Do you think there is any more than a part of us that connects? Do you think there can ever be a complete connection between two people?’

  ‘And who says Germans are too serious!’ I let out a little laugh and stood up trying to move the conversation off this topic.

  ‘Oh you don’t think this is a serious issue?’ She was upset.

  ‘Yes it’s serious but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun.’

  Lis caught herself. She made her expression soften. I saw for a moment her self-control, monolithic, standing outside her body, her face, her actions, were all outcomes of her steely Teutonic self-control. She could make herself be fun.

  ‘Let’s get a girl,’ she said, ‘That would be fun, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘A girl?’ I must confess I was a little thrown by this.

  ‘Online, from a website, we can get someone to come round for an hour or two.’

  ‘A call girl?’ It seemed a little unreal to me that Lis was suggesting this.

  She broke out laughing. ‘A call girl, it’s not the eighties,’ Lis was teasing me now, ‘but yes, why not? A call girl. We can afford it, we can try it, if it’s weird at least we can say we tried it.’

  ‘Ok,’ I said.

  If truth be told, the suggestion made me feel slightly uncomfortable but I felt it would be excessively prudish to raise any concerns after Lis had offered this. After all, was it not every male’s fantasy to have two women? Would I not kick myself if I turned down the opportunity?

  Admittedly there was a certain amount of pressure to perform but that didn’t bother me, I had never had any issues in that regard anyway, except for a couple of times when I had been dead drunk. It wasn’t like anyone else would need to know.

  Lis got her MacBook and we started surfing a few sites. I was amazed how much was on offer. Lis translated the ones that were in German but the majority were in English as well. Most of the sites were very professional and described exactly what the girl was like, what she would or wouldn’t do, a little bit about her. I had seen my fair share of pop ups and ‘get laid in your area tonight’ adverts online but I had never gone more than a few clicks before being distracted by actual porn.

  We finally settled on a Polish girl called Ana. A blonde, she said she came from Wrocław and described herself as petite. There was a contact form on the site and she replied within five minutes and said she could meet us the following evening from eight at our place. She told us her rate per hour and included a template text about what she was prepared to do during the time she was with us. She seemed to like the fact that we were a couple. We agreed to three hours to be on the safe side and sent her the address.

  What part of us is it that makes us remember? What part decides that this event or another is worth remembering? Objectively, after all, every event is no more than an exchange of probabilities. No matter how important it may seem at first glance, when you boil it down everything is simply the aggregation of tiny energy fluctuations and as anybody knows that leaves no space for any grand significance.

  The assassination of JFK or the moment you flushed your last shit down the toilet are both described by the same laws. If you reduce events down to their basic components all that’s left is a dry and inevitable web with no space for souls or romance or humour. Most people it seems, when faced with these issues, take the sensible path and ignore it. Was it not Camus that said, ‘people spend a great deal of energy every day trying to be normal’? Well too right, if not what’s the point in remembering anything?

  Certainly I remember the evening we spent with Ana. There is something about fucking that lodges the event in your brain and at the same time renders it completely indistinct. It’s funny how I can remember the bodies of different lovers quite clearly but the individual encounters tend to blur into one. Perhaps it is because, more often than not, these encounters are in a bed and one bed looks much the same as another.

  In any event, the addition of Ana that evening added something new to my sexual memory. She arrived and I poured her a glass of wine. Lis didn’t want to drink – so she could experience everything more intensely she said – but I joined Ana in a glass of Bordeaux. The simple fact that it was only the two of us drinking wine gave the relationship a sort of symmetry - Ana and I were wine drinkers, Ana and Lis were girls and Lis and I were a couple - we each had a shared bond however tenuous.

  As the evening progressed my inhibitions dissolved. I could describe what we did but to be honest it was all pretty much as you would expect. Lis and I enjoyed ourselves. I’m pretty sure Ana enjoyed herself too. If not she was a very good actress.

  At around ten Ana said she should go. She asked if that was ok. We had stopped, exhausted, some ten minutes before.

  ‘You booked another hour,’ she said apologetically, ‘but if you don’t need me any more I should go.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lis was suddenly very business-like, ‘thank you for a wonderful evening.’

  This felt a little formal, especially after what Lis had been doing to Ana only twenty minutes before. They laughed and said something in German which I didn’t catch. Ana got up and dressed quickly, her clothes evidently chosen for ease of dressing and undressing.

  Lis went and found her purse while I lay on the bed watching them. Having finished dressing Ana gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and Lis handed her the cash we had agreed. If I remember clearly, Lis looked a little uncomfortable with the transaction, uneasy with the power that the few crumpled fifty euro notes conveyed on her.

  ‘It should all be there,’ Lis said, ‘perhaps we will see you again.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ana smiled.

  She said something else in German and blew me a kiss as she went out. Exhausted, all I managed was to lift my head from the pillow in response.

  I started reading more about the sex industry. The topic fascinated me. I was fairly literate on the themes of modern capitalism but somehow I had never taken prostitution seriously as a business. Other than leather jacketed pimps and thugs I had difficulty picturing it as a livelihood for anyone. It all seemed too seedy.

  Lis and I talked about our experience and both agreed it was something we would do again. We both agreed it was a good thing that we lived in an enlightened society where people like Ana could make a living by providing pleasure. How guileless we were then.

  I chatted to Andre and found out that he had frequented prostitutes several times, something I would never have suspected of him. He worked as a developer for a multinational IT firm and I had always presumed he was too shy to hand over hard cash for a blow job.

  Once the topic was raised however he proved quite uninhibited. He talked at length about some of the prostitutes he had visited and waxed lyrical about one place he visited every year when he attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

  ‘Those girls in Sitges,’ he said, a look of fond remembrance on his face, ‘are some of the fucking hottest on this planet.’ He never normally swore.

  He lent me a couple of Michel Houellebecq novels, Platform and Atomised. He told me I had to read the latter if I wanted to understand the sexual economy, telling me to read it and then return it to him. He said I could keep Platform as it was unmitigated rubbish.

  I started on Atomised. I had not read anything by Michel Houellebecq before and initially I found his writing rather tiresome. There were some interesting points, certainly, but it was so badly written and edited I sometimes wondered if the author intended any of it to be taken seriously or not. I was slightly intrigued by Houellebecq as a character, I must admit. Was he really such a misanthrope? What sort of person spent their time writing this sort of thing? It was so depressive!

  It wasn’t until I got halfway through Platform that a certain idea started to crystallise in my mind. Obviously the publisher had been as little bothered by the content of the novel as the author. The writing and editorial in this book was even worse than Atomised – there were blatant spelling and grammatical errors, all the characters were two dimensional and the plot in different sections of the novel clearly contradicted itself - but nonetheless I persevered.

  There was, in there, the kernel of an idea. An idea which grew at the back of my mind. A sexual economy, a platform. In the startup world everybody talked about platforms. Facebook was the de facto social networking platform, Google the de facto search platform. I started to wonder - where was the sex platform?

  Having seen what was available online, and having surfed my share of porn sites I presumed there were some startups working in this area but the more I looked into it the less I found. Everybody wanted sexual gratification but it seemed ethics prevented a great number of people taking advantage of the internet to get their kicks. Religious ideologies, peer pressure, societal pressure, all these things helped decide how far a particular individual would go.

  The majority of male Westerners had no qualms about visiting porn sites to get gratification but many would stop short of the more graphic clips, many would draw a line at homoerotic porn, or would be happy to masturbate alone to a clip of rough sex but hesitate before hiring someone to perform the same acts for them. A platform had to distinguish these users but also include them all.

  There was a huge demand but no market to serve it. The existing offerings were seriously fragmented. Some website owners and performers were getting very rich and becoming stars while others were forced to do acts against their will for no money. What was needed was a platform to connect people. What, I thought, if we could use our technology to create this future?

  The Rise of LisbetA

  Initially I found it a little hard to broach the subject with Svil. He always maintained a certain Swedish cool. Explaining an idea like an online platform for sex was not something that I felt I could raise at our regular team meetings but, over a period of a couple of weeks, I refined the idea in my head and eventually we came to discuss it in detail.

  ‘All the way,’ Svil said.

  We were having a coffee in the break out area.

  ‘It’s just an idea, you know, but maybe if we spoke to Chet there could be a tie up there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Svil slapped the back of his right hand off the palm of his left, turning the index finger into a pistol as he did so. He waved the impromptu gun at me. ‘I like it!’

  ‘We’ll have to speak to the guys in engineering but I think we’ve got a lot of the infrastructure in place already. It’s just a case of retooling the value proposition from social photo sharing to sex sharing.’

  I was on fire. Svil actually leapt out of his seat.

  ‘Yes! This is it, this is the idea, I’m telling you. Genius!’

  We talked to Chet that afternoon and he was excited but he also brought a dose of reality that suddenly made the whole prospect tangible. It was a good idea, no doubt about that, but there were plenty of obstacles to be dealt with, legal issues, implementation challenges. Had we considered there might be a potential backlash; political groups, women’s rights and so on. We would need to launch a new offering to create distance from our existing brand. Had we thought of a name?

  I’m not sure if you can remember back then, to the time before Xchange existed? It probably seems quite remarkable, especially for anyone who has never experienced sex another way, but before that beta launch party the world was a very different place. No one who was at that launch dreamed it would grow so fast, that it would take over the whole world.

  The key, we realised, was that desire was simply another word for demand. The idea was simple, we would create a virtual economy for sex. People enjoyed watching and taking part in a variety of sexual activities and we would facilitate that with a technology platform.

  There were plenty of people in the world who enjoyed posing for photos, plenty who already posted naked pictures and videos online. Meanwhile there were plenty of others that enjoyed looking at those pictures. Why not use the data, the analytics, we gathered to match them up? Why not join them together and let everyone make a little money too. Remove the stigma and suddenly you had an explosive money making scheme.

  Until then, the problem had been how to monetize content. Other sites were user centric – if you wanted to see porn you logged on and watched professional actors, or amateurs, go at it for free. There was no shortage of content. A small minority handed over their credit card details to access harder content but the majority just watched for free.

  We changed all that with two factors, firstly we took privacy very seriously and secondly we provided a way for your average user to make some credits themselves.

  Our view was that everybody that used the app was a sexual being and had the potential to produce erotic content. We were the first producer-centric site. Every time someone viewed your content you gained credits, every time you viewed someone else’s content you spent credits. It was that simple, and users got it straight away.

  To begin with it was only images and short videos, we had already built the infrastructure to handle that, but before long a whole market grew up trading any and every sexual gratification that people wanted.

  Blow jobs, hand jobs, spanking, anal, fisting, felching, phone sex, electrostimulation, mammary intercourse, scrotal inflation you name it people were into it. We opened the way for third party developers to use our platform and they flocked to build more apps. We were not wildly original we were just around at the right time.

  Those that were truly hot, the sexy and the young, quickly found they could make good money. They were only too happy to post videos or offer their services through our apps. They took care building their online profiles. Each view earned them credits and each credit could be turned into cash at the end of the month.

  They told their friends and soon even ordinary-looking people were interested in posting a few pics to see if they could make some credits too. A lot of people made some money, not a lot admittedly, maybe enough for a couple of beers a week, but it was the hope that drove it.

  And that is what we didn’t count on to begin with, the hope, the inherent self-delusion in every human being. No matter how ugly or obese someone was there was always the hope that they would be adored. The majority of people would upload a video, hoping that the credits would roll in but in most cases they ended up buying up more credits than they made.

  It may seem strange, but back then, in those early days, we spent a lot of time worrying about the implications of underage users and how to limit access to the site. Prior to the changes at Crunkl we had operated in a world where people shared cute pictures of their pets or the holiday at the beach.

  We imagined that a move into erotic content would cause a bunch of headaches - law suits, unwanted media attention, political campaigns - but in the end it was the kids that saved us. It was the kids that built this new world. It was the kids that took to our platform in droves, and for one simple reason, it was easier.

  It’s hard to remember but dating used to be a fraught experience, an activity that consumed a lot of energy. Imagine the effort required to meet a stranger, converse with them, develop a bond, however tenuous. To convince them to deliver the gratification that you are looking for from them.

  There used to be an American saying “don't blame the player, blame the game”, well the truth is that the game of finding a suitable sexual partner took up a lot of people's time. A good proportion of a person’s life would be taken up playing that game. In reality very few wanted the awkward uncertainty. Relying on chance or existing social groups to find sexual partners and gratification was not efficient.

  The institution of marriage flourished for centuries precisely because of its role in limiting that particular game. In the days before Xchange the majority of people cashed their chips out of the game around their late twenties. There were some winners admittedly, the truly happy married couples, but they were rare. The majority had simply had enough of playing a thoroughly tiring game and would settle for any life that was at least bearable.

  Nobody wants to lie just to attract a partner, to invent a version of themselves that is better than reality. It is a draining effort, a stressful activity, but one which was the status quo. Xchange offered a careful, methodical system to stamp out some of the little lies that used to make up sexual relations. All we did was tighten up the rules of the game.

  This new world we built it is the one that people wanted. Beneath it all it is what people are asking for; an end to the unknown, the doubts, the necessary lies that had been the basis of human relationships for so long.

  Things will never go back to the way they were because it was horribly inefficient. Money is the fairest master.  We created a simple exchange based on desirability.  The market tends to the most efficient equilibrium. The site was always going to be a success.

  It was only the select few that reached super – stardom and at the top of that pyramid, at the very pinnacle of Xchange fame was LisbetA. Lis registered one of the first accounts, when we were still in alpha, and chose the name LisbetA at random as a far as I know.

  Quite how she became the world wide celebrity that she now is I’m not sure. Certainly there was no major transformation. She had an advantage, it is true, being one of the first few people to use the platform, but other than that, there was nothing to indicate she would see so much success through the platform.

  She loved the idea from the start but I think she started posting more as a response to my involvement in the project than anything else. We needed to test the concept and initially people were shy about posting intimate content. Lis was different, she got it straight away and was completely uninhibited.

  You can still watch those initial clips of course and you can see how free she looks.

  ‘I’m quitting my job,’ she said to me one evening after filming a couple of clips. She often worked late into the night updating her profile, responding to her followers or creating more content.

  ‘Quitting?’ I remember I was shocked. I thought she’d had a run in with her boss. She worked in a design studio and was always telling horror stories about the bitchiness of the other employees there.

  ‘Yes, there’s not point going there just to earn money.’

  Her job at that time paid pretty well I recall so the loss of her income was not inconsiderable but we were doing ok. Certainly it didn’t cross my mind to worry about the fact we would only have one income. My job was paying well.

  ‘Xchange made me more money this month than I make in two at the studio,’ she said, a look of pride on her face.

  That threw me, I must admit. I should have known the sort of money she was pulling in. I lived with her and worked at Crunkl after all. I knew she had spent a lot of her free time on her Xchange profile but I had always tried to keep a certain distance.

  Initially she had wanted to film the two of us together but I had refused. Something about the idea worried me even then. I wasn’t prudish, at least I didn’t think so, I was happy enough being naked in front of other people and had already shared Lis with Ana.

  It was more to do with the idea of recording these things for posterity. I couldn’t articulate it then but I have since had plenty of time on my own to think it over and I guess I would put it something like this:

  For me, sex was something ephemeral, passing, it was an enjoyable experience but it was meant to be lived and then largely forgotten. The problem with Xchange was that it made everything timeless when it should be transitory. There could be no nostalgia for sex, only lust for more sex. You could have nostalgia for a sexual partner or for the prowess of your youth, but not for the act itself.

  ‘That’s great,’ I said, ‘so you’re going to buy me a yacht?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she smiled, ‘if you’re good.’

  From that point on things really started taking off. First people at work started congratulating me, a sly wink from the dev guys, a slap on the back from Svil to show what a lucky old fellow I was to be going home to Lis each night.

  Then as Xchange grew internationally the comments became more explicit, people would talk to me about specific clips of Lis, Svil would mention her in board meetings as he discussed monthly figures and slip me a congratulatory smile, I noticed the girls in the office were friendlier with me all of a sudden.

  ‘You’re becoming famous,’ I said to her over dinner one evening.

  ‘Yes can you imagine! Svil wants me to fly to L.A next week to help promote a launch over there.’ She was full of energy, invigorated.

  ‘Svil asked you to go?’ I tried not to sound angry.

  ‘Yes, you know he’s been helping manage my profile, since I’ve started to get so much traction.’

  ‘Traction?’ Some of those phrases of Svil’s really annoyed me.

  ‘Yes, the traffic I’ve been getting on my profile,’ she said, her face crumpled in confusion at my antagonistic attitude.

  ‘That’s great,’ I managed. I knew Svil had been taking an interest in Lis’s profile but I had buried my head in the sand with work, pretending I didn’t have time to think about that. ‘Are you not worried about your privacy?’

  ‘We’ve had this discussion before.’ She seemed deflated. ‘I’m happy, this is good. I’ve got almost enough for a deposit on a place…’

  I stared out the window. Whenever there was something important to talk about she always switched the topic. I wish I had talked to her then.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ I asked, eventually.

  ‘You know what it does. All you need to do is say something, just speak to me, once, let me know what you are feeling, but you never speak to me. You always seem to know just the right time to switch off.’

  She left for L.A the following morning and, a few days later, we got news at the office that the launch party had been a tremendous success.

  Lis was out there in L.A for a good few weeks and it was at that time that I really started using Xchange seriously. Up until then I had trialled some of the features, I had watched some clips and chatted with some of the users, but I had always seen it as work.

  On those occasions when I had felt the need to have a wank I had made sure to go to other sites and use my own computer rather than the work laptop. It was not that I imagined anyone would spy on me but I had just become accustomed with being anonymous when I masturbated. It was the normal way to do things. I could watch but not participate.

  With Lis gone for so many days it was natural that we would connect up.

  ‘Go on to Xchange.’ She wrote. We were chatting on Skype at the time.

  ‘Why??? We can talk on here,’ I replied.

  ‘We can get kinky there.’

  ‘Well turn on your camera – let me see you.’

  ‘No, we won’t earn any credits. Chase me.’

  Her profile status turned offline and so I signed into Xchange. I should have been pleased that she was so eager to use the tool that I was developing but it felt strange. We both masturbated and I enjoyed it but there was something missing. I could sense that she was performing, in a way that was not so obvious when we were together. I liked it, don’t get me wrong it was different, but it made me miss the real Lis.

  She told me she had a few hectic days ahead so we might not be able to catch up, what with the time difference. I smiled and wished her good night.

  ‘It’s Good Morning here,’ she giggled, as she blew me a kiss.

  It was the next day that I started getting the first messages in my inbox. The image recognition and analytics in Xchange had found several matches based on my interaction the previous night. They showed suggested partners and some potential scenarios. I was startled how accurate it seemed, how well it had pegged me. Some of the fantasies were too outlandish but a few really got me going.

  That evening I spent some credits. I watched a cute student in Chile shaving her pussy before making herself cum. We talked briefly but I can’t say there was much of an intellectual connection, it was something deeper.

  It was hard to explain what quality turned me on. I was hard as a rock watching her. I could have searched a thousand clips on other porn sites showing Latino girls masturbating but it was rare that I connected to them in the way I did with her. What’s more she clearly enjoyed watching me as well.

  It surprised me I guess. Not that I didn’t have belief in Xchange but I had sub-consciously viewed it as something of a gimmick. Another way of making money but basically just another porn site. For the first time I saw the power of the technology to recognize desires that were hidden, even to ourselves.

  It had a way to go at that point, nobody was going to give up real life encounters for the sake of mutual masturbation with someone on the other side of the world, but the principal was founded, I could see people, myself included, demanding more of this.

  The next time I spoke to Lis, she was high. There had been a party after another launch event. I was a little annoyed as we had arranged to speak the previous night but she had not appeared online.

  ‘I was out,’ she said without a trace of apology.

  ‘You could have texted,’ I tried not to sound grumpy and share in her west coast enthusiasm.

  Her eyes darted across the screen in front of her and the corner of her mouth crumpled in a pout.

  ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ‘You are a pervert aren’t you.’

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  ‘Me? You’re the star.’ I wanted her there.

  ‘I’m looking at your profile. I didn’t know you were into those sort of things.’

  I checked my profile, there had been some updates based on my recent activity. How it had got me so accurately I don’t know. There were things I had certainly never talked about.

  ‘Oh yes, well that’s what happens when you leave me alone for so long.’

  Lis licked her lips.

  ‘I’m back in three days. Just you wait when I get home.’

  It was the best sex we had ever had.

 

  Separation

  ‘I’m leaving you,’ she said it so timidly, as if she wanted me to contradict her, to stop her speaking. ‘Chet has arranged a place for me in London.’

  ‘Oh, London.’ I did my best to look disinterested, as I felt some continental ice shelf wrench free inside me. ‘You’ll like it there.’

  ‘Yes, Chet says there are a lot of opportunities over there at the moment. The tabloids are all keen on LisbetA. He’s found me a lovely place overlooking the Thames.’

  ‘You’ll be a star.’

  She looked sad, as if I had said something horrible. I wondered if I had pushed things too far.

  ‘You never gave me a chance did you?’

  ‘I can’t stop you from living your life.’

  ‘You need to learn how to start living your life,’ she leaned over and kissed me, ‘or it’s going to kill you.’

  ‘All I ever wanted,’ she continued, ‘was for you to be straight up with me. If you didn’t want me, you just needed to tell me, I can handle it. I thought there was really a chance of something more between us. You know I don’t care about marriage, about any of that shit, I just wanted you , to be with you, but there comes a point, you’re right, yes, I do need to live my life and if you don’t want to be in it then I’ve got to go where people do.’

  I stared at her. She had said all this before but never all in one go and never with such vehemence.

  She talked on, about old conversations she claimed we’d had. I couldn’t remember half of them. The ones I did remember were filtered, different. She quoted things I had said but now they sounded weak, unreal, like I was making excuses.

  The time we had been on King Charles Bridge. The time at the airport. The time she had begged me to move in together .My clinical responses. I struggled to remember what I had been thinking. I couldn’t remember those conversations. Had they taken place? Had I really pushed her away?

  Even then as we talked, that final time, and it was clearer than ever to me that she was leaving, that she had reached a decision, that there was still space for me to do something. Even then, I did nothing. I don’t for the life of me know why.

  ‘Did you ever love me?’ she asked defiantly, a fire behind her eyes.

  ‘Of course,’ I answered hesitantly, ‘Of course, I’ve loved you.’

  But the truth was that love had fallen between the cracks somewhere. At that moment I saw it clearly, a doomed vision of our species. It was a fantasy, love, the sweetest of dreams. To love was a story and we had all stopped listening.

  It had nothing to do with sex or fidelity or the perfect match because those were all real and numerical and mundane. Love was ethereal and beautiful and totally unattainable, a figment that had been invented long ago, a tradition which no-one could imagine anymore never mind touch.

  ‘You say that.’ She was crying now. ‘You say that but it’s not true anymore. How could I carry on loving you when you are not there?’

  Emotionally unavailable? Am I? What does that phrase mean? She was the one parading her most intimate moments for anyone on the planet to see. I wasn’t going to respond to that. I wonder sometimes if there is an emotional core inside me, hidden, buried away, an emotional core that I am unable to access. Is that possible? Am I unable to connect with this centre or am I simply deficient, a stone and nothing more.

  I am at a loss in this new world, that much is clear. I am not designed to navigate it. The technology offers opportunities, unimaginable opportunities, but only for those that can use it. Those that have the motivation to use it.

  The world has moved on from those first virtual matches. Now, of course, most of the transactions are in the real rather than the virtual world. Xchange, and its competitors, have transformed our relationships and left us without even the emptiness of loss.

  We are some of the last remnants, people like me, remnants that remember what life was like before. That archaic past. Everyone else has got used to, embraced it. They don’t imagine things differently and if they do it seems barbaric, unfair. I tend to agree that the old world was barbaric but still I miss it, perhaps I am part barbarian.

  After all, Xchange is not some Summer-of-Love hippy fad. People still go about their lives much as they did before. It is not a million miles away from the way things were. The same exteriors. The same faces. There is still desire. People still marry and have children and die. It has not turned into the world of 24/7 pornography that the naysayers predicted.

  Instead, Xchange quietly regulates the sexual transactions that would take place anyway. If you feel the urge to have an affair then Xchange can find you a partner more discreetly and efficiently than you could ever have done.

  It did not take long to realise that the machines were better than we could ever be at matchmaking. It was natural that society would change, our laws would alter to enshrine their role in the decision making process.

  Sexual encounters are no different to any other form of transaction. People need sex, people need food. You only need to look at the rise of the supermarket to see what efficient logistics can do. Xchange reduced the little frustrations and took away the pretence.

  Sex is such an important activity for the continuation of the species it would be foolish to be left in the hands of us humans alone. Sure, there is no law against doing things the old fashioned way - ‘chatting someone up’ in a bar, or buying flowers - but what sort of girl would want to go with someone who didn’t trust the wisdom of Xchange? What sort of person would want to get intimate with the sort of fetishist that felt they had to operate outside of normal society.

  Everything has changed and nothing has changed. To all extents and purposes the game goes on as it always has, for centuries, the scope for disappointment slightly less. The only difference is that now the game is played by machines. The mating habits of the human race controlled by algorithms. The propagation of our species guided by invisible hands.

  And what about me? Why do I feel such disappointment?

  Well I left Crunkl in the end. Of course. It became obvious that my heart wasn’t in it. I will say this to Svil’s credit, he fought my corner, even when it was obvious that my lack of motivation was costing his company millions.

  It was a good while after I left that Svil called.

  ‘Hey man,’ his voice had a bleak crack down the centre, ‘listen, have you heard the news?’

  ‘The news?’ I slurred.

  I had been drinking so much at that time and yet I remember the entire conversation.

  ‘Listen,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know how to tell you man, you guys were close…’

  ‘I’m over it, Svil, it’s bullshit,’ I said. I felt impatient with him, angry that he had disturbed my gloom. ‘I’m not interested in the money anymore.’

  I guess, to be truthful, my departure from Crunkl had not been entirely amicable. There were some legal ramifications. We are over that now of course, Svil and I have since made up but when he called, Svil and I hadn’t spoken for about two months.

  ‘I don’t care about that, that’s not important, none of that matters now,’ he said, evidently trying to sound sympathetic.

  Even in my drunken state I could tell that Svil was desperate to tell me something. Something terrible. The devil made me try to prolong his unease. Determined not to let him win.

  ‘Listen, I don’t want any more bad blood between us, ok? There’s not time for that anymore. Listen you need to know, it’s Lis…’

  I knew of course, instantly, there is such a thing as a drunk’s intuition. I knew before he even said anything, before he had even rung. When did I know, I chase figures through the fog, was it written on her face when she left me? On King Charles bridge in Prague? When I met her that afternoon in Winterfeldplatz?

  Perhaps she had to do it? It was predestined in some cruel way. I picture hot Melbourne tarmac. I picture Lis’s hair. Swarthy Australian cops. Her lips. The blocked off road. Bone and hair and blood and the sticky pavement.

  I have a lot of money, more money than I can count, billions of credits, but I rarely login. What is the point? I can get anything I want.

  Everything in this world has a price.

  I sit at home.

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  The Wave

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