Matchmaker

“Silver Sterling.”
As her name echoed over the old loudspeakers, time as she knew it seemed to slow to a standstill. She stood up and let her feet take her where she knew that she needed to go, relying on her muscles rather than her mind to take her to the chamber. When she arrived, the door in front of her opened before she had even managed to touch the handle.
There was no further prompt or instruction to guide her, but she took this to mean that she was expected to step inside. Much like the way that it had opened, the door closed softly behind her, and it would’ve given no indication that it had closed at all if not for the way that the beams from the fluorescent lights in the hall outside had slowly given way to the dark of the room she now found herself inside of.
It took a moment, but her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the chamber, and she found that it wasn’t at all the way she’d ever imagined it to be. Growing up, she’d envisioned a room with bare white walls, intended to be cold and neutral in appearance. A desk you might see fit for an interrogation in a movie scene would sit in the center, and a one-way mirrored wall loomed to an unspecified side in her mind, always just a touch out of sight. What she found instead was that the room was empty, with sound proof foam paneling covering the walls, floor, and ceiling. The entire room was black, and there was no one else inside of it but her, and yet a voice resounded from a speaker which she assumed she simply couldn’t see in the dark.
“Hello, Silver. I understand that you may be confused, but I’m going to have to ask you not to speak. Can you do that?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but quickly closed it as she processed the request. She nodded to confirm, despite her confusion. _Isn’t this a quiz?_ She thought to herself, wondering just how she would communicate her answers to the Matchmaker without speaking, but it dawned on her that perhaps she was meant only to reply to “yes” and “no” questions.
“Very good. Please make yourself comfortable, and sit on the floor.”
She did as instructed, attempting to calm her nerves with some breathing exercises that her mother had taught her, and she looked around expectantly, hoping for the next prompt from the Matchmaker.
“Are you ready to begin?”
She nodded to confirm.
“Answer with only nods, for yes and for no.”
_I’m already doing that_ she thought to herself, gaining the first bit of confidence she’d had since she was drafted for the Match Initiative eleven days prior.
“Do you ever doubt yourself?”
She nodded to confirm, surprised at the seriousness of the first question. In truth, she had doubted herself numerous times just that day before arriving in the chamber. She had doubted her sense of direction on the way there, wandering into parts of the complex she’d never visited before, following the directions on her map to a tee and still questioning her ability to navigate. She had doubted herself waiting in the lobby, second guessing if she had the proper date or if she was just low on the list of names to be called. She had even gone as far as to doubt whether she had woken up that morning, as she frequently had lucid dreams which would fool her into thinking she’d gotten out of bed.
“Do you doubt yourself often?”
She nodded to confirm, with a touch of embarrassment rising within her at how true it was.
“Do you doubt your sanity?”
She paused for a second.
_What kind of question is that?_ she wondered to herself, struggling to figure how that could have anything to do with what kind of person she could be matched with. But, regardless of how she felt about it, she knew she needed to come up with an answer, and so she took a moment to really think about how she would respond.
When she came to a conclusion, she shook her head no. She was fairly certain that she was sane, although she wasn’t certain that the same could be said for the world around her.
The Matchmaker was silent for a second, giving her the impression that he was perhaps ticking a box, writing a note, or even just silently judging her. It was unnerving, but finally after a short period of suspense, the familiar clicking of the loudspeaker came back on and he once again spoke.
“Do you dream of distant worlds?”
She nodded to confirm, without much hesitation this time. She didn’t know why.
“How do you feel about freedom?”
She opened her mouth to reply.
“That will be all, Silver. You may leave now.”
_Oh, crap. I bet I screwed that up._ She stood up to leave, reaching to open the door, which this time strangely remained closed until she manually opened it. The fluorescent lights blinded her, which was an unfamiliar feeling for her as she’d been quite used to them for the majority of her life, up until that point.
She returned to her family, telling them the strange story, and resumed her normal routine with only a mild fear in the back of her mind as for what was in store.

~

It was a very sunny morning. At least, the simulators outside were trying to portray that it was, but she knew that the sky outside wasn’t real anymore. Her generation had never really seen the sky as it was meant to be.
_Why did I have to be born here?_ She lamented, rolling out of bed and falling onto the floor, reveling in her own dramaticism for a moment before pushing herself up off of the floor and getting dressed to head downstairs.
Rushing down and jumping the bottom three steps as she usually did in the mornings, she smiled childishly to herself over her own daily piece of mischief, and skipped over to the breakfast table where her mother was already seated reading a book on her notescreen.
“Pancakes?” Silver asked excitedly, sitting down across from her mother.
“Yes,” her mother replied, setting the notescreen down and pulling a paper rectangle out of her pocket to slide across the table to Silver, “and a very official looking letter from the Matchmaker.”
Silver stared at the paper in front of her, blinking in surprise as her muddled and tired brain struggled to process this new wrench in her morning plans.
“I’d rather have the pancakes.” She replied, sliding the letter to the middle of the table.
“Aren’t you excited to see who you’ve been paired with?” her mother asked, sliding the letter another half closer to Silver, although still not all the way.
“No,” Silver replied quickly as she piled pancakes onto her plate. “I’d much rather marry these pancakes. Why should I have to be paired with someone from far away just because the big people got in too many wars?” she asked, proceeding to defiantly stuff her face with a pancake, abandoning all sense of her manners, leading her mother to purse disapprovingly at her.
“Silver,” her mother started, “this is important. You have a very important job helping to keep interplanetary relations strong. I _know_ that you would rather choose for yourself, and I would want that for you too, but regardless of why the wars happened, you’re playing a very important role in keeping us out of any more.”
Silver pouted into her pancakes, struggling to swallow them as much as she was struggling to swallow her mother’s words.
“Why couldn’t they just let people sign up for this? I’m sure people would fall left and right to let some creepy Matchmaker choose a soul mate for them from across the stars. They could print a pamphlet. They could make it sound like the exotic trips to Terrarius 5.” She took a drink from her glass of orange juice, which her mother had been kind enough to pour for her ahead of time.
“Silver, you _know_ that that isn’t true,” her mother started, trying to keep her voice sounding patient. “And besides, how many people do you know who are that adventurous?” she continued, looking at Silver expectantly.
“Not enough.” Silver replied.
_Why did I have to be born here?_
Silver and her mother sat in silence at the table after that. Her mother continued to read, and Silver continued to eat pancakes despite the fact that she’d already started to feel ill three pancakes ago.
Her eyes kept drifting to the letter on the table. It was plain, with no addresses and no stamps, and with a simple signature from the Matchmaker on the back which very creatively read _Matchmaker,_ giving her the impression that he really must be a self absorbed asshole if he thinks he’s cool enough to pull that kind of mysticism off.
Regardless, she reached for the letter, turning it over curiously in her hands.
_I wonder if someone licked this closed?_ she mused to herself.
She opened the letter, bracing herself for whatever it was going to say. After all, she had in truth come close to a stage of acceptance about the whole ordeal, even though that still didn’t make her very happy about it. Really, she knew that her mother was right. It _is_ very important to keep interplanetary relations healthy, and the Match Initiative is the perfect solution, even if it seems a bit unethical.
People from across the stars usually end up happy together. They show each other that, despite the distance between their worlds, and despite the different glows of the differing stars, sometimes people are the same at their core. Sometimes different cultures can bloom in similar ways, and two people arranged to marry can find common ground and come to love each other for the greater good. Sometimes, people open their letters and find that the description of their assigned soul mate truly sounds exactly how they’ve always wished their soul mate to be.
Sometimes, people drafted for the Match Initiative find within their letter exactly what they expect, right smack in the middle of their comfort zone.
This was not one of those times.
“Mom,” Silver started. “You’re not going to like this.”
Her mother looked over her reading glasses at Silver, as Silver passed her the open letter.
Her mother read over it, and read over it again, and finally a time more before she was hit by what seemed like a sudden jolt of shock, which lead her to drop her notescreen.
“They paired _you_ with a Revellier?” she asked, gawking at Silver in absolute disbelief. "A Revellier-- The ones with the dangerous sports, the fighting, the planet that has no _law..._ THAT kind of Revellier?"
An excited smile slowly spread across Silver’s face, as she looked back at her flabbergasted mother.
“They sure did!”