"You've got a call."
Steve side eyed Alicia, his personal assistant, with apparent annoyance.
"I'm in meeting. All calls should be silenced," he grunted.
Alicia did not even need a second to reply. "Not yet. Meeting's scheduled in 2 minutes."
Seeing the empty meeting room, Steve knew that Alicia was right… and even in 2 minutes, the meeting would not have started anyway. Those lazy bums always showed up 15 minutes late, the fastest.
"Oookay. Who's calling?"
"Ron."
Interest sparked in Steve's eyes. Ron was his best friend in college, and they still kept in touch a lot until about last year, when Ron joined a start-up and drowned in his work.
"Accept it."
"Mute the meeting?"
"Of course," Steve chuckled.
His screen dimmed after a notification about ongoing meeting being muted flashed. A familiar voice replaced Alicia's presence in the room.
"Yo, busy man!"
Steve laughed. "I think you can claim that title now. How long has it been since you last called?"
"Eh… I don't know. Ask Aurelia?"
"Aurelia who?"
"Your assistant program?"
"It's Alicia!"
Ron sulked. "Just rename her. Aurelia is a much nicer name."
Steve laughed. Ron has never changed. Ever since Steve told him about Alicia, which was his class project in their final year of college, Ron had insisted Steve to name it Aurelia.
But why would Steve name his project with Ron's dream girl name? How if people thought it was him who fell for Aurelia? It would be awkward!
"You should name your own project Aurelia," Steve still gave him the same answer after all these years.
Ron coughed. Still the same reaction after all these years….
"Turn video on? Or you're not presentable?"
"Nah," Steve touched his shirt's collar, "I'm dressed, but I should be in meeting now. So I need to keep my eye on the room."
"Fair enough…."
"Why do you need to see me anyway? You know I only do text with others, even with my mom. You hate texting, so I yielded and take your calls. But video is far too uncomfortable. I only do it for work."
Ron sighed.
"I don't want to see you, hermit. But I have some things to show."
"What things?"
"It's…."
A ding chimed, interrupted their conversation. Someone finally entered the meeting room.
"Sorry, Ron. My meeting is starting soon," Steve apologized.
"Call me after you're done?"
"I will."
"On second thought, I will call you after you're done," Ron laughed. "Aurelia, text me after his meeting!"
"It's Alicia…."
"Oh, right. Alicia, text me after meeting's finished."
Alicia's soft voice responded, "noted."
Two hours later, Steve hurriedly unbuttoned his shirt, then threw himself into sofa. The meeting itself was uneventful. But as a secluded introvert, such meetings drained his soul every time. Luckily they only had monthly meetings. And if they had no emergency at office, which happened maybe twice a year, Steve could work in the comfort of his home all day long in his own pace.
"You've got a text message," Alicia informed.
"Read it."
"Text from Steve. Meeting is over."
It took him 5 seconds to process the strange message, then he laughed out loud. Alicia needed a little tweak after this.
"Alicia, call Ron."
Ron picked up on the first ring. "Is this the doomsday? I've been waiting for a text, but you called instead!"
"You told Alicia to text me…," Steve giggled.
They burst laughing. After exchanging some jokes about it, Ron requested to switch to video call. Steve accepted.
His best friend's face was now displayed on the screen. Ron instantly frowned.
"Your shirt…."
Steve chuckled. "Wait. I'll change. Keep talking."
"Why do I need to talk to your sofa?" Ron complained. But he knew Steve still listened, so he went on explaining the reason of his call.
The start-up Ron worked for was launching its first product in two months. Now it was beta testing the app on selected people. And Ron was reaching out to Steve to be one of their beta tester.
"Is it a game?" Steve got curious.
"Actually no… it's a dating app."
Steve almost choked. Dating app? But as far as his memory served, Ron worked for a Virtual Reality application development start-up. Dating and VR did not quite match in Steve's mind.
Well, according to Ron, they matched.
World was hit by global pandemic on 2020. Normalcy had changed since, with more things shifted into the web. A home VR platform was launched in 2024, right after their graduation. It slowly gained popularity and finally considered mainstream in 2027.
Ron was attracted to the platform since its early days, so Steve was educated on its development over the years.
He watched Ron enthusiastically wore the company's awkward first home VR device, which looked like a breeding result of cheap sunglasses and headset, with some strange exposed wires that got disconnected randomly. He helped Ron to fix it so many times. He witnessed Ron happily unboxed every new device released, and got impressed by the big improvements each time.
He was also genuinely happy when Ron decided to leave his job and joined a freshly created start-up to follow his passion in VR.
But never once had he imagined that, after all the FPS, RPG, strategy and all type of games Ron had played on VR, Ron would create a… dating app?
The VR platform was able to provide stable networking in 2027, which prompted a boom of VR multi player games, and launched it into mainstream. Then in 2028 it released a revolutionary home VR device.
It was shaped like a mask. Maybe more like a fencing mask, because the front face was dominated by mesh. The mask had 88 sensors to detect facial movements. Each a pair of gloves and boots, connected wirelessly. And the biggest factor that gained tons of new users was its customizable appearance. User could buy or create skins to make their device look nice, unique, whatever their call was.
"We developed engine to utilize the face sensors to recreate user's appearance. It worked great! Like 95% accurate. Isn't it wonderful to be able to see potential match's real face," Ron eagerly explained.
"Can you recreate the hair?"
"A little bit, like bangs or side hair, then we can analyze…."
"How about the body?"
"It's impossible with the current…."
"Then it's not 95% accurate. People can still change their hair, body, height to impress others."
Ron looked frustrated. He opened his mouth to argue, but closed it again.
Seeing him in such state, Steve did not want to make his best friend down. Also, they already talked for almost 15 minutes, and he needed to do some work if he wanted to finish his daily goal.
"Alright. I think what you've achieved with the face part is impressive. And probably could satisfy most of your target users," Steve voiced his compliments, sincerely. "Now, why me?"
Ron's eyes lit up again. He told Steve more about RoVe, the app, which explained why he wanted Steve to be a beta tester.
When he first joined the start-up, he was involved in developing the face mapping engine using the sensors. They intended to use it for their games. But after the engine was finished, Ron suddenly got the idea to use it on a dating app.
The reason? He was thinking of Steve, his secluded introvert best friend, who had never been in relationship because he was uncomfortable to date offline, and refused to use dating app because of catfishes.
Ron pitched his idea in. His company was interested and gave him a go to create a team to develop RoVe.
Well, twenty minutes of persuasion later, Steve finally agreed to join the beta testing. The biggest reason was because he realized Ron would not stop before he succumbed.
He need to work, so….
Later that week, a package arrived. It was a box of brand new home VR device – which Ron bought with his own money, because actually all beta testers were supposed to use their existing devices, but Steve never had one – and bundles of manual on how to connect to RoVe.
Steve was swimming in job tasks so he set it aside, and actually forgot it until weekend. He just remembered it because Ron called on Saturday morning.
After reading the manual carefully as if studying for an exam, Steve finally put the boots, gloves and helmet on.
As soon as the helmet was placed on his face, Steve was greeted by a "body shop." He was asked to choose hair and body features, assisted by a voice that reminded him "to choose as close as possible to your real appearance, to make the dating experience better for your future match" every two minutes.
Ron probably added it after his complain.
Steve spent 10 minutes choosing his appearance, frequently checking himself on the mirror until he looked 99% like his real self. He confirmed with the voice assistant that he was done. His vision then switched to a virtual downtown.
Like his habit when learning new programming language, Steve sighed.
"Hello world."