The Soul Mate Program

Four

"Hello, hello!" A voice said opening the door, snapping me back into reality. I sat up, looking at the black man who was closing the door.

"Ah, hello." I said, crossing my legs on the bed. The guy stuck his hand out to me.

"I'm Jimmy, hello, hello." He said in a deep voice. I shook his hand lightly, but he shook a rough handshake.

"Alice, pleasure to meet you." I said, letting go of his hand.

"Ah, no need to be so formal. Think 'o me as an old friend, emphasis on the old." He broke out in a hearty laugh at his own joke. I smiled a bit, it wasn't like I could interject, he wasn't lying.

"Cool, I can do that." I said, rubbing my hands together from the blast of cold air he had let in that had finally circled its way around the room to me.

"Amazing, now, what cha need to know?" He said, sitting in the weird chair.

"That thing," I said, pointing at the chair.

"Well I like to this of I has a 'who' not a 'thing.'" He got lost laughing at his own little joke, but surfaced to reality again, "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I know ya mean the chair." He patted the arm of the chair, "This is where you'll be finding your soul mate."

"But, how?" I asked, genuinely curious. He stood for a moment, before gesturing down to the chair.

"Come on and sit, I'll show you how this thing works." He said, before kneeling and playing with some wires on the back of the chair. I waited for him to be finished before I sat down in the chair.

"Okay, now what?" I asked, before realizing I sounded impatient, "How does this work?"

"Well, missy." He said, moving a step close to the chair, "There's two setting to this. One is like a lounge to the other setting, the other is the Soul Mate Program." He pushed the half dome over my head, and pressed a button on it.

I was suddenly staring into a menu screen. But there was only one option that read, "Begin". Everything else was like a white wall behind it.

"This is the first setting, like a video game." He said, before pressing a few more buttons on the half-dome. Controls popped up under my fingers. A joystick on one hand, and a button on the other, "Choose an option."

I moved the joystick around, but annoying beeps told me there was no other place to go. So I clicked on that button.

So before I go on with a meaningless tutorial between Jimmy and I, I'm just going to tell you how it all worked.

See there are five options when you get into the chair.
-Home
-Browse
-Apartment
-Date
-Self

Now, Home meant the place I was physically. It was where I entered out of this game like zone. Pretty simple concept if you ask me.

"Well, Alice, what's apartment then?" Most of you are asking in the blabbing baby voice I heard you in. Apartment is the home inside the project. Its a duplicate of the little house thing I was staying in, except you could personalize it, and earned points to get stuff in it. And you'd get points by doing the job that you apply for, get, and do.

There were two options in Browse, Info, or Free-Browse. Both of these are where you look for soul mates. Info is where you look at the provided info potential-soul mates put on their files. Free-Browse is where you walk around a town square to meet people, not just soul mates. I know, crazy, they want us to have friends, and not just love everyone.

The last is Info, where you personalize your file and avatar that will be in the project. Now there are limits to this, you can't put a bold-face lie on the file, and the avatars has accurately represent you. You can't make yourself six feet tall with abs if you don't have that. Of course you can clear up some acene, have hairstyles, lots of clothes options, you just can't change how you look.

Now, before you can go exploring, you have to put your Info together. So the program can match you up with five dates that you have to go on. So they can best match you up with potential soul mates. Don't worry, the first five date are computer generated cliches, but before we get to that, my Info.

Alice Taylor Ferson
Age: 16
Height: 5'5"
Weight: 138 lbs
Build: Average
Music: Rock, most sorts
Talent: Tumblr browsing
Hobby: The internet

All this information was tied with an actually quite decent picture of me. Just so people can get a look at who I 'really am.'

I'm just going to skip the whole 'Make A Sim' part of this. All you need to know is, my hair was in a bun with a t-shirt, jeans, and casual boots. And that it was creepy as he'll watching me watch me, if that made any sense.

"Okay," Jimmy said, because now I need his help explaining, "Press Apartment."

When I did, I unintentionally stood up. I turned to sit back down, a desk with a computer replaced my chair.

"You're in the program now." He said through the computer, "Get on that computer, and you'll see the same options. Once we're done with this demo, you can go back to a normal computer screen."

I turned on the computer, and sure enough, there they were. Except there were three new buttons, X-out, mute, and Mic on/off. The Mic was on, so I just spoke.

"What do I have to do?" I asked, pulling the spin-y chair put and sitting on it.

"Click on Apartments again, there will be two options, Jobs and Leave. Jobs is where you'll get a job, and Leave just connects to Free-Browse." He said, I did as was told and saw as was told, "Pick any job you want, I'll give you a minute."

Instead of listing all the jobs that were on there, there were loads, I'll just say they were all, basically, summer jobs, not careers. I chose 'Record Store Employee', which is the person at the music store who puts all the music were it should go and what not.

"Okay, you're done." Jimmy said.

"I am?" I asked, doubtful he was right.

"The rest is self explanatory, and if it's really not, you can come back to Home and press the 'Help' button." Jimmy said, "And ah, if you have to eat, or wizz or anything, you have to come back here to do it, kay?"

"Yeah, kay." I said, before getting up and sitting on my bed, "I wonder how I change things." I said, looking down at my bed.

It was on the computer in the 'personalization' this whole time. As I went searching around the room for like a button or something that would change everything. But I eventually found it, and turned this room like my old room back home.

Well, I thought, I guess I'm going to find my soul mate.

A/N
Sorry if this chapter was a bit boring. I had to explain everyrhing, okay? If you did read this, congrats, you know how this system works. If you just breezed through, you might have a bit of trouble, but not too much. Comment and tell me what you think.