The Love Algorithm

Chapter 7 : The space between variables

The alert came through at dawn:

"Board Review Scheduled — Algorithm Compliance in Question. 5:00 PM."

Est didn't curse.

Didn't even blink.

He closed the pop-up with a click that felt louder than it should have in the quiet morning. Outside, the city was still gray with sleep, a thin mist curling against the lab windows. He moved to the espresso machine without urgency, as if routine could armor him against disruption.

The machine hissed to life. Est stared into his own faint reflection in the steel casing — pale eyes, rigid shoulders, sleep-deprived and stretched thin. Nothing new.

By 7:12 a.m., he had already run three retrospective simulations on the test data. Each time, the output was consistent.

91.6% compatibility.

His match. With William.

It wasn't an error. Wasn't noise in the dataset. It was a clean result — drawn from validated heuristics, calibrated data, and cross-referenced interactions logged over the last six weeks.

He deleted the report from local cache. Recovered it. Deleted it again.

The system had done its job. And that was the problem.

At 9:03 a.m., the lab doors whooshed open.

William entered like he always did — a gust of energy in a hoodie, balancing a paper bag of muffins and humming something tuneless. The room felt instantly smaller.

"You look like hell," William said, breezily, dropping the bag on Est's desk. "Which means I brought these just in time."

"I haven't slept," Est replied without looking up. "And I didn't request muffins."

"You never do," William said with a shrug. "That's why I bring them."

Est remained still, his hands hovering just above the keyboard.

After a long beat, William leaned his hip against the desk. "What's going on?"

"There's a board review today," Est said. His voice was low, devoid of inflection. "They flagged a breach."

William blinked. "What kind of breach?"

"Subject-researcher boundaries," Est said, eyes still on the screen. "A match was identified."

William paused. "Our match?"

Est didn't answer. He didn't need to.

William frowned, straightening up. "But... it's just a prediction. A number."

"No. It's evidence," Est said quietly. "A variable that shouldn't exist. A deviation from the protocol."

"So now I'm a glitch?"

Est's voice sharpened. "You are a contaminant. I introduced a bias into a closed system. I allowed proximity. That's on me."

William was quiet for a long moment.

Then: "You know, I used to admire how detached you were. But I'm starting to think you just don't know how to deal with real things."

Est's jaw tightened.

"I'm not here for admiration," he said. "I'm here for accuracy."

William exhaled. "You can't even say it, can you?"

"Say what?"

"That it meant something."

Est turned toward him, and for a fraction of a second — barely a blink — something flickered in his eyes. Fear? Longing? It passed.

"I believe it's better to isolate a flaw," Est said, "than to let it rewrite the entire system."

William took a step back. His voice was gentler now, almost sad. "You don't trust your own model. That's what scares you. Not that it's wrong — but that it might be right."

Est's silence was answer enough.

William nodded once and moved toward the exit.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," he said, voice hollow now. "Even if it's just more silence."

The door clicked shut behind him.

⸻

That afternoon, the boardroom lights were too bright, the screens too many. Est sat at a long table flanked by a panel of faces — expressionless, deliberate, clinical.

They didn't yell. Didn't accuse.

They simply asked.

About the match prediction. About the lack of personal-professional separation. About the failure to firewall his own profile from the training set.

He answered every question with measured precision, like he was defending a math proof, not a life.

When one board member — a woman with gray temples and a voice like ice water — asked if he believed the match was accurate, Est hesitated.

Just long enough to matter.

"...I believe the model needs revised guardrails," he said.

No one nodded. No one frowned. The board promised a decision within seventy-two hours.

Meeting adjourned.

⸻

That night, the lab felt different.

Colder. Hollow.

Est sat in front of his console, alone, the monitors reflecting back graphs that suddenly felt meaningless. He began rewriting sections of the algorithm. One change at a time.

Exclude all instances of subject ID: W.W.
Remove interaction logs 203–233.
Recalculate on filtered dataset.

The system spun. Churned. Smoothed itself into a more stable form.

More professional.

More lifeless.

He leaned back, hands folded in his lap, eyes unfocused.

Variable: William.
Action: Remove.
Result: Stability.

He hit Enter.

The fan lights blinked slowly on the server rack.

And Est sat still for a long time — longer than usual — until the silence no longer felt neutral.

It felt like loss.