The Other You, by Neil Coghlan

James Porticus stepped into the elevator and pressed a button. He was soon gazing over the green suburbs as the elevator streaked up the outside of the Sheffield Building in East London. He watched as the horizon receded and both the Thames estuary and their giant floating apartment complexes climbed gracefully into view. The glare from the sun filled the glass cube with a dazzling light.

“Darken,” he said and the walls of the elevator took on a dark tint.

He began to read through the brochure he’d spent so much time perusing recently.

Symmetry: Find The Other You

He could recite whole passages from it by now. Could they really fulfill that promise? he thought. The elevator neared Symmetry’s floor and he touched his finger to his wrist and the brochure closed. As the doors began to open, he checked that the polish on his shoes was still flawless. It was.

The two sleek doors cushioned shut behind James and to his right, a tall woman, blond hair framing her face, greeted him. She was nearly a foot taller than James and wore a dark green dress that had probably been a morning’s work to squeeze into.

“James Porticus.” He shook her hand.

“Welcome to Symmetry, James. I’m Romina.”

James peered a little too long into Romina’s eyes. He knew it was illegal to even ask if she was human, such were the anti-discrimination laws, but he was fairly sure he saw nothing machine-like in those irises and from this, he gained a little confidence.

Romina led James down a wide corridor, thickly carpeted. On the walls were constantly changing projections of a succession of happy couples that Symmetry had brought together. Some of the screens displayed interviews with beaming couples. On yet another screen, James saw the president of Symmetry, an immaculate white goatee jerking up and down as he spoke soothing, encouraging words. He’d already seen the clip in the brochure.

They soon arrived at an open door and Romina gestured for James to enter. She closed the door behind them.

Romina sat on one side of a large, shiny black table which reflected the strong natural lighting that fell from the vaulted ceilings. James, allowing himself a quick glance around the room, sat on a backless chair that tilted him towards Romina. There were screens on three of the four walls.

“What do you know about Symmetry, James?”

“Just what I’ve seen in your brochure really.”

“As you’ll have read, no doubt, Symmetry is here to complete you. We live in such a prosperous, peaceful world, but many, like you, James, are fundamentally unhappy. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Many pass through life unfulfilled, out of kilter and, of course, the offspring restrictions mean you need to be sure of your partner, sure that you have found a match for life.”

James nodded, feeling it was expected at this point. Romina continued.

“We will essentially find the other you, your perfect match. We call ourselves Symmetry because we take the half-you, the half you now are,” she now put one hand out in front of herself, “and we bring a harmony to your life with the other you.” With this, she brought her two hands together in front of her face, as if praying. “In this way, your realized, whole-self will find true contentment.”

“Your brochure mentions a totally revolutionary approach to matching couples,” James said.

Romina stood and walked towards the window.

“Presentation,” she said, almost to herself.

The room darkened considerably and the windows became opaque and brightened to a screen. The first image that appeared showed a flustered looking man compiling a form of some kind, using pen and paper. James guessed it was from the 20^th century.

“When computer dating, as it was then called, began around a hundred and fifty years ago, much of the attempt to match people involved this type of thing: endless form-filling, clients asked to mindlessly list out interests, likes and dislikes, hobbies and so forth.”

Romina touched something on the edge of the table and the image changed, now showing a composite picture of a man playing sports, reading a book, fishing.

“It was a naïve attempt to match people with similar interests, similar hobbies, but there was little attempt to really match the people themselves. That’s something Symmetry has been doing for nearly twenty years, something we believe we have mastered, James.”

“What is the procedure?” James asked. “What do I need to do?”

Romina took her seat again as images continued to display to her right: a couple communicating by typing simple messages on a computer; a man standing under a clock, flowers in hand; a sad-looking woman watching a television while a man sat to one side, his head buried in a newspaper. Arcane images from a century or two ago, images that James continued to take in as Romina began to speak.

“With personality mapping at its current stage, we can have a blueprint for your character, what really defines you, after a few simple brain scans.” She touched her hand to her temple. “This is where you really are, James. Your personality resides here within, not on a list of your favorite movies or pizza toppings. There’ll be no questions for you to answer. None! All our tests are physiological. We can now map your personality as those from our past,” she said, indicating the images that continued to flash up on the window, “first mapped their hearts and lungs.”

“And she’ll be the same as me?” James asked.

“The person we’ll find for you, she that will complement you, will possibly like fish, where you prefer steak, of course. But James, in the core fundamentals, in your very character where it counts, you’ll be perfect for each other.”

James stood and shook Romina’s hand warmly. He was taken back down the corridor and made arrangements with another Symmetry employee to come in for his personality scanning the following week. He left Symmetry feeling as though he was at last casting aside the roles that mere happenstance or fortune had played in his sentimental life to that point.

He had suffered a rough six months since his release, but everything that Romina had told him had felt like a fresh breath of oxygen on his flickering flame of happiness. He headed home with a smile hung upon his face.

***

The first name that was sent to James after his personality scan was Anna. He read her file, hungrily searching for the similarities that Romina had promised. Superficially, they were there, but it would be at their first meeting, arranged through Symmetry, that he would discover whether Anna was the person he was looking for.

James first met Anna at a new sky restaurant less than a month after Romina had convinced him of Symmetry’s worth. They had a meal together and spent the evening talking easily and confidently about their lives to that point, which, unsurprisingly, were quite similar. Both had shown an early passion for climatology and gone into the field of greenhouse-climate terraforming. But beyond these mere details, there was a synchronicity in their words and thoughts, a meshing together of two separates, that convinced James that Romina’s confident words had been fully justified.

They talked about their respective character flaws and laughed loudly at how they were identical. Both had marred their previous relationships with a tendency to over-expose themselves emotionally early in a relationship and a bad habit of dealing with their partners in a condescending manner on a day-to-day basis. By evening’s end, James and Anna held hands over their shared Cream Helium dessert and looked into each other’s eyes.

“I thought that Romina at Symmetry was just giving me the usual promo talk, but she was correct,” James said. “I feel as though I’ve found the person who fills in the hole I never even knew existed in me.”

“Just how similar do you think we are, James?” Anna asked. “I mean, having dinner together once, you’re bound to notice a few similarities and focus on them. But do you think it goes deeper than that?”

James put down his whiskey.

“I hope we’re not too similar, identical.” He laughed. “That would be a little odd, wouldn’t it?”

“Hmm, yes. Though it would be fascinating if we shared the darker aspects of our personalities. Would you end up hating me – or improving as a person once you looked into the mirror of the other person and saw yourself?”

“What are you trying to tell me, Anna?” James asked, his mouth crooked into a grin.

“No matter. Come on, let’s go!”

They took a taxi out to Anna’s place, rushing high over the packed street-level traffic, millions making their way back to their compounds, rich and poor. Anna lived on one of the vast islands in the Thames estuary and within a few minutes, they were on the rooftop.

After the taxi had taken once again to the clear night sky, Anna walked to the edge of the roof. The lights of the city formed a twinkling ribbon along the horizon. Below, the deep waters of the Thames swirled and boiled as tide met river.

“I know of no better view of London than this one. Come, James, tell me what you think?”

James walked up so that he was standing just behind her, laying his left hand on her shoulder. He felt her tremble slightly as he did.

“It’s exquisite. It must have cost you thousands to move here.”

“It was all Daddy!” she exclaimed and walked towards the roof exit. “Come on, James. I’ll show you what a rich father can buy you these days!”

Anna lived only a floor from the top and she led him down two flights of stairs. After giving James a quick tour, during which he nodded his head, asked questions and even gasped at all the opportune moments, she headed for the bathroom, sliding out of her skirt as she did so.

“Lower the lights and make yourself comfy. I’ll be out in a minute.”

He commanded the lights to dim and reclined on the sofa, wondering as he did if it was possibly real leather. The room was cool and James could even feel a slight breeze arriving from somewhere above his head. Sweat ran down the small of his back, however. It dampened his forehead and twice he ran a hand across his brow and dried it on his jacket. He listened to the discordant sounds coming from the bathroom as Anna clattered around clumsily. James too was a clumsy person. Making herself pretty for me, he thought, breaking into a grin.

As he leant there against the armrest of the monstrous white sofa, he let a hand stray into the inside pocket of his jacket. Old habits die so very hard, he said to himself. He allowed the pad of his finger to run along the cold blade, careful to steer clear of its edge. Deeper down into his pocket, his hand reached the handle, made from the horn of a Corsican ram and offering his inquisitive fingers a hundred miniscule ridges and valleys to play over. He could still hear Anna in the bathroom. In one flash of a movement, he pulled the knife out of his jacket and slipped it behind one of the plump cushions to his right, taking care to leave it within easy reach.

Just then, Anna stepped out of the bathroom, wearing only a small towel around her waist, breasts hanging freely. She held one arm determinedly behind her back so James wouldn’t see the stainless steel surprise she had there for him. On her face was a toying smile which showed her teeth. James smiled back at her as she approached him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neil Coghlan is a 40 year old Londoner presently living in Buenos Aires on a sabbatical year. He has taught English around the world for the last fifteen years and is enjoying this new experience of writing, which he discovered only very recently. Six of his stories are currently scheduled for publication in 2010 in a wide range of print and online publications. He will be appearing, among others, in an anthology ìRetro Spec: Tales of Fantasy & Nostalgiaî, in Bards & Sages Quarterly magazine, in Crow’s Nest webzine, in the UK magazine “Delivered” and in the Elements Of Horror Anthology. He also runs an educational website and scribas.com, a site dedicated to nostalgia.