Call it the weather (which was a steady millenial rain), call it the post-project blues (or burnout, more like), call it whatever, but for weeks I'd been home, restless but without the energy to do much, no interest in dinner with friends or concerts or much of anything. This is the life of a technolinguist, I told myself. A few months of neuron-burning, sleepless intensity, interfacing and trying to keep up with a project, and then a few months of dullness and checking my bank balance. Cleaning my office. Playing video games. Every night I sank into bed with the vibrator and thought nothing more of it.

At least, that was the way it was for the first week or so. And then it began to sink in that maybe I really ought to go out and get laid. Such an expression, "get laid," but apropos--I wanted to be laid down, pressed flat under another human being's body, cruelly literal but true. It had been a couple of years since I'd had time to maintain or look for a regular relationship. I mean, even I can admit that I'm not the most fun to be around when I'm talking like a machine and I can't tell anymore whether the blue in the sky is real or optic nerve burnout. I didn't think of what other complications might have kept me unattached, of course not--I'm into cognitive intelligence, not psychology.

It sank in one night when I was, literally, twiddling my thumbs and thinking about the motor mechanism of habitual motion. I looked at the liquid silver display morphing the seconds on my wall. Only nine pm. I could suit up, head down to the Market and try my luck. As soon as I thought of it, energy came to me and I ran to the bedroom to brush my hair and make myself presentable.

Communications is my business, it's true. The communion between human and machine becomes more intertwined every day. We need it now, our economies and political outcomes and resource allocation and transportation--computers handle it all, and humans need to work harder and harder to keep up. Yeah so anyway, I was muttering to myself all the way there to make sure I remembered how to actually talk to people. Please, thanks, how you doing? The rush of air around my helmet meant I could only hear myself subvocally.

At the Market, the music never stops, but in some parts of the club it's louder than others. I like the loud part, which is also the darkest part, usually. But if I was going to meet anyone, that was a sucky place to wait. Just in case, I made myself an Illumiprint card that read "I just want somebody to treat me rough, fuck me silly, and keep my safety the top priority" in glowing green letters when stroked. The card was in the back pocket of my jeans. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored side of the bar's cash register. Disaster, probably, I told myself. I hadn't been able to decide butch or femme, and ended up in just a t-shirt and jeans, my riding boots unglamorously scuffed. But well, I actually rode a two-wheeler, unlike most of the posers in here. Well, whatever. I checked my signals to make sure they were in place: the black ribbon around my throat officially pegged me a bottom, the red one looking for sex. To me the red one was redundant--what was the point if they didn't fuck you? But some people swore No Sex, so you had to know somehow. I always said those people should have worn a Band-Aid or surgical mask or something, but the system wasn't exactly designed by semantic experts. Before my time, you know.

Bill, the one bartender I knew, was too busy to talk. There wasn't anyone else there I recognized. No matter how little time has gone by between when you last visited a place and the current time, if it feels like a long time has gone by you can be sure there has been some disconcerting piece of renovation done since the last time. The reverse is also true, that the renovation itself can make you feel like you haven't been there in forever. I struck a pose near a new-looking hololgraphic fountain and waited.

The waiting's the boring part so I won't tell you much about it other than that my thoughts were high on the statistical list of what 90% of the other people in that place were thinking: what if I don't meet anyone? what if I meet some psycho? what if I embarass myself? what if s/he wants to get serious? Just because I know the stats doesn't make me any less common in that respect. Anyway, to cut to the chase.

When "he" came along, I was almost convinced that I should give up and leave. He had his hair cut short, peach fuzz short, and somehow the way that it revealed the hardness of his head was sexy, like he was one giant erection...