He tapped his own MATC envelope, already open, the copper letters faded from touch. "Three years ago. I've been here every Tuesday."

Leora hadn’t wanted to look. For three years, she’d kept her MATC notice unopened, the silver envelope gathering dust on her shelf. The Algorithm, they said, never erred. It scanned your neural patterns, your dream logs, your micro-expressions during sad films, and found your one statistically perfect other.

He looked up. "You're late," he said. Not accusatory. Stated, like a fact of the universe.

"Then why?"

She slit the seal. A single name glowed in warm copper ink: Cale Brennan.