Loveless

Chapter 1

Soulmates.

What are they, really?

The definition of a soulmate, according to someone that mattered on the internet once upon a time, is this:

'... two persons compatible with each other in disposition, point of view, or sensitivity.'

So, in order to be someone's soulmate, one needs to be compatible with them. Two people need to think the same way, or talk the same way. Maybe even dress the same way. Their interests are shared. Their passions, mutual. Their ambitions line up and their values are transferable, leaving no room for judgement or confusion.

In lieu of that and at the very goddamn least, they have to have something in common to make them compatible. Something that brings them together enough for them to be considered soulmates.

For indeed, having things in common can build the foundation from which all kinds of relationships may grow.

But what if society said otherwise?

What if society said that having things in common with others was a pointless endeavour?

What if society said that relationships were nothing but a constraint, an obstacle to overcome in the pursuit of true greatness?

What if society rejected the idea of soulmates, friendship, love and hate?

For the rejection of all these ideas, of arts and romance, the impossible dreams that form under steadily falling autumn leaves, gives birth instead to only one thing.

Science.

Certainty born from proof and mathematics, from conformity and compliance.

It gives birth to answers, from which nobody might divert or challenge, because when something is 'right', there is simply no room for error.

Soulmates?

No.

In the city of Novus Londinium—dubbed NL City by the residents for ease—there were no soulmates with wonderful relationships.

There were consorts with clinical, emotionally void partnerships.

Such partnerships were created through complex, computer-driven algorithms that matched men and women together via genetics, as deemed by the Magna Imperium; the ruling tyrannical government.

The Magna Imperium proclaimed that matches made this way would advance the evolution of humans and the status of the populace in general, producing more intelligent children, more beautiful children. Children less prone to disease, yet more prone to making great strides in the fields of medicine, science and mathematics. The things that really mattered.

On their twenty-first birthdays, residents of NL City received their consort matches. They would get a small silver envelope through their door, stating a name, a mug shot photograph of their consort, and a place and time.

All they had to do was make sure they were at the right place, at the specified time... And following a small binding ceremony that nobody actually knew the details of, they were tied to each other for the rest of their lives.

They would produce genetically superior children, because that was the whole point. They'd raise them well, and continue pursuing their own ambitions; so long as it wasn't at a detriment to the child, of course.

As a result of all this, twenty-one years old was considered the age of adulthood. All the years before that were steeped in rampant education designed to better you in every possible way, beginning when you were old enough to waddle on two uncertain feet.