1 The Email

In the year 2063, our world's population was at an all time low with only about 3 million people. Many people were wiped out due to war between the largest countries in the world like the United States and China from 2045-2059AD. The ultimate cause of so much devastation was China's use of biological warfare.

They had created a new viral disease that when ingested begins necrosis from the inside out. It took a doctor in the Congo to come up with an antidote and vaccine using materials from the rainforest nearby to cure the people left in the world.

However, by that time, there was only about 5 million people left in the world. Nobody was having children in the years of the war due to fear, so the next few years the population kept depleting.

The United Nations came together to try and fix the population crisis. The world's economy was corrupted as a result of the population crisis.

A man named Adonis Manos, a Greek man, appeared before the United Nations proposing a company that would matchmake young people together using DNA testing and other evaluations to encourage them to marry and have children. After a trial period, the company was approved and Soulmates, Inc. was birthed.

When I turned 16, I joined the program like almost everybody else and went through the incredibly thorough testing. I was poked and prodded till no end until they finally said everything was completed.

You'll receive an email when we find your match. That's what the lady at the front desk said, but here I am, two weeks away from my birthday and still no email. I, Kimora Noemi Ali, am convinced that I am destined to live a life alone.

I flop onto my bed and scream into my pillow. "Self-loathing will not get you a match. Patience will" my mother says as she passes my room with a basket of laundry. I quickly turn my head and realize I forgot to close my door. I roll my eyes and get up.

I wasn't self-loathing, I'm just tired of waiting for love. All my friends, all three of them, had their matches and were going on dates and shit. Meanwhile, I got to be third, fifth and seventh wheel. I got to hear about all of their adventures in love, while I got to sit there a whole virgin with no hope of love yet.

I walk to my mom in the laundry room and groan as I slide down to the floor against the door frame. "I'm not self-loathing okaa-san. I'm just bored and impatient. It's been almost two years since I did all that testing. If they haven't found my "match" by now, they'll never find him." I point out.

My mom sighs as she puts clothes into the washing machine. "Maybe he hasn't joined the program yet? You know not everybody joins the program when they turn 16 like you did." My mom tries to remind me that not everybody was as eager to join the program as my friends and me.

I roll out of the doorway, get up and walk back to my room groaning. As much as my mom is right, I didn't like hearing the reality of things.

I enter my room, remembering to close the door this time, and crawl into my bed. I could always escape reality in my bed with a good playlist and my laptop. I like to do graphic art in my spare time to focus my head on stuff other than the impending doom of my love life. It helps me navigate my emotions by transferring them into digital art.

After an hour or two of drawing, I feel my phone buzz. I lift it up to let the face recognition unlock it and see I have a new email. "Probably just another email from a university or something" rolling my eyes as I open the email app.

YOUR MATCH HAS BEEN FOUND.