This Is Real

I ask Jewel if she belongs to me and immediately wish I could retract my message. It is an odd way to begin a conversation. Even when I send vanilla texts, I only receive responses from a tenth of my matches. Sending something this creepy probably destroyed my chances of fucking Jewel.

I consoled myself- telling myself Jewel isn't that hot anyway- when the three bubbles indicating the other person is typing appears. Then the bubbles stop, indicating she deleted what she was writing. Then the bubbles appear again, before disappearing once more. She's having trouble figuring out what to say.

When Jewel responds, it is with a single word. "Apparently."

“What does that mean exactly?”

Again, Jewel has several false starts before she says, “I guess it means I have to do whatever you say.”

"What if I want you to come over?" The message I received upon matching with Jewel reminded me of the congratulatory message I would get after capturing a new Pokemon on my Nintendo Switch. Consequently, I suspect the Ultimate Dating App might be a game where you try to match with and woo different female NPCs. If Jewel is an AI chatbot built for a phone game, she'll be unable to visit me in the real world.

“Can we please do another night? I already have plans.”

I send her my address. All dating apps require users share their location with the app. It was necessary for the app to filter profiles by location and show relevant options. Consequently, I reason that if Jewel is an AI made by the app developers, I won't be giving her any new information by sharing my address. "Come over. Now." My insistence, while rude, is meant to test Jewel's assertion she has to do what I say.

"Fine." She sends me a frowny face emoji.

"When will you get here?"

There's a pause. "Google Maps say I'm forty-five minutes away from you. Expect me in an hour."

Fifty minutes later, I receive a call from my apartment's front desk receptionist. The doorman tells me Jewel has arrived. I tell him to send her in. Two minutes pass between me receiving the call and Jewel knocking on my door, during which I process she's real. The next question is to determine why she's here.

When I ask, she responds by staring daggers at me. "You asked. I had to cancel plans-"

"Right, but why did you come?"

"You asked me to."

I realize we won't get anywhere at this rate, so I offer her more information. With luck, she can fill me in on what I'm missing. "I didn't read the description when I downloaded The Ultimate Dating App, and when I searched for it, I couldn't find it on the app store-"

"The Ultimate Dating App?"

"Yes?"

"I matched with you on Tinder," Jewel says.

"May I see your phone?"

"No."

"Let me see your phone." Jewel hands over her phone. "Why didn't you say no?"

She is frustrated. "I told you. I have to do what you say."

"Right, but-" I swipe twice to get to the search tab on her iPhone and start typing in the first letters of 'The Ultimate Dating App.' I get no results, so I look for Tinder. After opening the app and reviewing her matches, I can verify Jewel is telling the truth. While I had been seeing her profile and messages on the Ultimate Dating App, she had seen mine on Tinder. "Odd."

I turn my attention back to her. "Then why are you obeying me?"

"I told you-"

"I thought this was a fetish thing."

"What?"

"Obeying me," I say. "I looked up the Ultimate Dating App because I expected to find a description or disclaimer explaining the app was for people who like roleplaying power differences. You know- BDSM, DDLG, student-teacher relationships." I thought Jewel was a sub who deliberately downloaded the Ultimate Dating App to fulfill her fantasies. I thought her inability to disobey me was her staying in character. If neither theory is true-

"All I know is that after I matched with you on Tinder, I got a really weird message saying you had captured me, and I had to follow your orders."

"And you decided to play along?"

"I didn't decide anything. The second we matched, it felt like you owned my soul. Now, I can't disobey you." Jewel pauses. "Greg, you don't seem like a bad guy. You didn't know that matching with me would turn me into your ****, did you?"

I hadn't.

Jewel wets her lips. "Us matching resulted in my capture, so us unmatching should free me. I tried to do it but couldn't. My body wouldn't let me, so it has to be you. You can free me. I'll leave, and we'll pretend this never happened. What do you say, Greg?"