Together At Last – Run 8

Non-romantic relationships are not regulated in any way – people make friends and acquaintances through school, work or shared interests, and these friendships can be very strong despite the friends never having met other than in a video chat. However, the Virus proved to be a serious obstacle to the formation of romantic relationships, which in general benefit greatly from physcial contact. After several years of international research collaboration, science has found the only salvation for humanity: the Cross-Immunisation Procedure (CIP for short). CIP is a very complex and invasive medical procedure, during which your immune system is made compatible with one other person, giving a 99.7% guarantee that you won’t infect each other with your personal strains of the deadly Virus upon the removal of your Hazmat suits. CIP is usually a once-in-a-lifetime procedure and cannot be safely performed again for another partner. Therefore, people should not be permitted to undertake such a life-changing decision willy-nilly, just because they fancied someone they met on the internet!

For several years, when people were still allowed to decide themselves whom to CIP-marry, the pre-pandemic divorce rates persisted, leading to 40% of married people spending the rest of their lives cohabiting with someone they despise, or, even worse, trying to elope with a lover into the Wilderness, with disastrous consequences. Fortunately, governments across the world have agreed on the perfect solution to this problem: the Together Forever programme. During the programme, an evidence-based machine-learning algorithm assigns you a sequence of trial romantic partnerships, while constantly registering your emotional reactions through a cortical implant you have been fitted with upon joining the programme. The collected data allows the algorithm to select your Forever Match, which is 97.8% guaranteed to be your perfect, long-term compatible romantic partner. You will then be allowed to undergo the CIP and move in together with that (and only that) person. Participation in the programme is of course voluntary, but most adults choose to join it at some point in their lives in hopes of finding true love (or, at least, not spending the rest of their lives completely alone).