Ding.

Ding.

*New match identified. Proceed?*

Brandy blinked sleep out of her eyes at the sound of the gentle alert noise and floated on the surface of consciousness trying to decipher the notification. She balled her fist under the blankets, darn it she had forgotten to turn off notifications for the night.

Ding.

*New-*

“Yes, proceed!” Brandy interrupted the electronic voice, hopeful that it was the last disruption of the night. She quickly drifted back to sleep.

This was the start of a new romance in Brandy’s life, but she was unaware of that. And not just because the future is unknowable, but in part because she had spent months programming software to mimic her personality on dating sites, effectively saving her from the anxiety-ridden initial back and forth that made it difficult for her to connect the last few years. The program helped her get over the stress of the tense first few messages with a new person.

So, as Brandy the human dressed for her workday, Brandy the bot was awaiting the perfect moment determined by the algorithm to send an introductory message to their new match, Merlot.

It was a few days before Brandy tuned back into the app and it was only because the familiar ding reminded her that she had been woken from sleep by a match recently. Brandy’s bot was carrying on several conversations that seemed promising.

Initially, she was most intrigued by Len, an avid tennis player whose profile pictures suggested an impressive collection of short shorts. But scrolling to the bottom of their thread, she saw that her last message had gone unanswered.

Another recent match was Sam, a rare book seller that Brandy felt excited about. Sam had enthusiastically described a recent find of a rare edition of Winnie the Pooh stuck between two dusty DVDs at a local thrift shop. Sam had rosy cheeks and short floppy hair and a quirky crooked smile, but their conversation had ultimately dropped off, leaving Brandy with a sad twinge.

Though she felt a pang of disappointment at those missed connections, Brandy quickly shook it off when she reached Merlot’s profile. The messages had flown back and forth in the last few days and Merlot was brimming with silly adventurous stories and clever jokes. Brandy smiled as she read a flirty message she had sent that elicited a winky face emoji from Merlot.

The photos Merlot had uploaded were practically a shot for shot match with Brandy’s. Each had a close-up profile picture of their smiling faces, white teeth peeking out from between flushed lips on a sunny day. They had a photo sitting cross legged at a patio table, holding a glass of wine to toast the photographer, several other glasses on the table suggesting a gathering of friends. Brandy smiled thinking about hers, taken on a lake trip with two close friends a few years prior. She had gone through a recent breakup and her friends took her to a cabin to play board games and float out on the water. The toast she was making in the photo was to their first of three nights together that successfully cheered her up. She wondered what Merlot was toasting.

The last photo on each of their profiles was taken from farther away, Brandy and Merlot each standing in a field of flowers, holding a freshly picked one up to their noses to smell. In Brandy’s she was surrounded by orange poppies, a sea of flowers covering the hills during a recent Super Bloom in Southern California. She wore light jeans, torn at the left knee, a sky-blue tee and a golden yellow cardigan. Merlot was similarly surrounded by a wave of tulips, ranging in color from deep pink to purple and blue. The flowers looked almost arranged into an ombre that framed Merlot, who was holding a blue one and smiling widely, surrounded by breeze-blown hair.

Brandy felt jittery and smiley and hopeful.

Scrolling through their conversation, it was clear to Brandy that Merlot was fun and creative. Merlot’s messages were flirtatious in a gentle and charming way that was almost intoxicating to read. Brandy felt relieved to see that the responses sent by her bot kept pace and their jokey banter carried through both sides of the conversation.

Brandy set her device down the table and got up to get a wine glass and some crackers. She wanted to study up before sending Merlot a message and she had noticed pangs of hunger.

From the small kitchen, she could see across her studio space to her small rectangular screen on the table in the corner. Accompanying the phone was a stack of paper napkins collected from takeout orders, a vase with wilting flowers, and a small wooden pencil with several anxious bitemarks. The lights of the city below created a strobe effect in the small space, until Brandy hit the light switch, illuminating the wine collection on the countertop. She ran her fingers across the labels, changed her mind and decided to get a cold beer from the fridge.

Ding.

When she returned to the table and sat heavily in her chair, she looked down at the notification on the screen.

*New message* the alert said. She swiped the app icon on the screen to open the message. From Merlot!

“Would you be interested in meeting up?” - Merlot

Brandy’s heart was racing, she had barely skimmed over their conversations and felt she had so much to learn before she could be ready to see the smiling face that was so intriguing in the photos.

Brandy took a deep breath; she needed an opportunity to compose herself and to think before she responded. She wanted her message to be meaningful, she felt the potential for something great bubbling under the surface and she didn’t want to crack the feeling by being hasty. Start at the top, she told herself, and took a deep gulp from the cold bottle in her hand.

And at the top, she found:

“Hello! It’s nice to see someone else who enjoys a picturesque flower field :)” – Merlot

“Hi there, I agree! There’s so much beauty in the world.” – Brandy

Brandy thought the message was rather generic, but it wasn’t untrue and it wasn’t uncharacteristic for her, so she continued with a terse nod. The two of them wound their way around such varied topics as the importance of bees to the ecosystem to their most recent visits to local libraries. Merlot wrote about growing up in a vineyard, trading grapes for oranges with kids from neighboring land, and of course, the reason her parents chose her name.

Brandy could tell even through the screen that Merlot lit up when sharing her experiences on the vineyard, a place she said she wanted to return to after finding success of her own in the city. Merlot’s most used emoji in their conversation was the wines glasses cheering. Brandy imagined the two of them tipping their glasses together and smiling as they brought them to their lips.

“Okay, okay,” she said to the empty room, “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Looking over the messages, Brandy saw that they both usually responded within an hour, and she wanted to keep that rhythm up. She sipped her beer and considered her next move. The lights from the street below had slowed as the night wore on, so that her apartment dimmed to a calm evening glow.

With the sounds of cars drifting by below and the electronic glow emitting from various clocks, Brandy felt sure she wanted their first date to be outside. A picnic, she considered, with a classic checked blanket laying across the grass and the smell of flowers lingering in the air. She would get there first, pick the perfect spot that was partly in the shade, smooth the blanket down and spread out a platter with snacks.

Merlot was sure to recognize a good picnic spread, so Brandy knew she needed to get it right. She thought about the local cheese shop a few blocks away, she would walk there with a reusable bag stuffed in her jean pocket, to ask the clerk which cheeses pair well with red wines.

She could practically feel the uneven ground underneath her and the wrinkles in her feet the blanket made after she took off her shoes to hold the corners against the wind. Her charcuterie board was perfectly prepared with only the juiciest looking grapes from the bunch and cheese she sliced herself into little matching cubes. It was a wonderful day, warm, with a gentle breeze and the far away sounds of bees traveling flower to flower.

The ding of her phone and a message that Merlot had just parked prompted Brandy to take the bottle of merlot from the basket and pour a generous amount into the two wine glasses she had set on napkins that matched the blanket. Brandy was excited and anxious, positioning and repositioning herself so she looked relaxed and welcoming from whichever direction Merlot approached.

And then Brandy saw her… the familiar hair bobbing in a musical step above a hill as Merlot climbed. As Merlot’s face peeked over the top of the grass, both women raised an arm in recognition and laughed. Brandy could hear just a whisper of Merlot’s silky laugh from across the lawn. Brandy hoped her own laugh sounded as sweet.

When they were within earshot of one another, Brandy called out, “Merlot, I brought some merlot, I’m sure you’ve never heard that one!”

Merlot’s casual laughter in response told Brandy that yes, of course she had heard it, but was still charmed. Merlot called back, “You’re in luck, because I brought some Brandy!”

Brandy laughed aloud in her dark apartment and returned her attention to her messages.

She typed out, “Yes, I would love to meet up. Are you free this weekend?” And with only the briefest of hesitation, she hit send.