by Foerthe (pronounced forté)

Danny Chung was released from prison on January 1st of the year 20XX. He had committed no crime. Danny knew this, as did the judge. None of his friends or family cried injustice—It was fair. No one said otherwise.

Danny had been randomly selected for incarceration duty by the Parity Algorithm. Of the men selected, a majority had at least one parent of Asian descent.

Before the Algorithm (a handful of years ago) waves of humanitarian initiatives had failed to bring incarceration rates to racial parity. Even the progressive idea of completely de-policing black and latino neighborhoods could not fully diversify the prison population. The Parity Algorithm, the final solution against the unyielding injustice of law enforcement had invented incarceration duty. Overnight, the issue of race and crime had been solved. Finally, civil society was fair.

Professor Daveign, a celebrated professor of evolutionary biology had conceived of the Algorithm after a scandal thrust her career into peril. She co-authored a paper titled Greater than the Sum of our Parts: How Biological Diversity is Humanity’s Greatest Asset. The paper inspired little debate among academics. Two months later, a pop-news outlet ran the headline “Scientists are uniting against one racist professor who’s starting to sound a lot like Hitler. Her shocking words will make you—” The rest of the title was obscured by an advertisement for organic chewing gum.

Donors frantically revoked funding from Daveign’s department in desperate efforts to sever search engine correlations between Daveign’s name and their own. Donors too deeply associated with the department pressured the dean to fire her from her tenured position. The dean refused. The dean was fired. The new dean fired Daveign.

Daveign made great efforts to schedule interviews and lectures to contextualize her paper and defend her views. No universities or talk shows were willing to risk platforming her. Her books (including those unrelated to the paper) were pulled from publication. For two years, she went silent. When she reemerged, she had written a new book titled I WAS WRONG, NATURE IS WOKE. Daveign’s legendary redemption arc began.

The closing chapter of her book outlined the architecture for an artificial intelligence that could judge humanity without bias. Daveign’s new publisher marketed the book with the phrase #RadicalParity. It trended. The publisher began tabulating a list of public figures who had not spread the tag. Those who abstained were accused to be fascists and Nazis. These labels were forgiven once they proclaimed their support for #RadicalParity. Pressure increased on those who had not yet conformed and soon the list of abstainers contained only C-list celebrities. Congress unanimously passed the Parity Algorithm as the nation’s primary judicial authority via constitutional amendment. The next day, the most-searched internet phrase was “What is the Parity Algorithm?”

Sweeping corrections were swiftly made across every sphere of society. In sports, the professional basketball association’s teams were required, at all times, to field players whose collective heights averaged to the national mean. Teams adapted by keeping two gargantuan all-stars on the court along while three abnormally short athletes (who never touched the ball). Viewership plummeted. The following season, the association petitioned to amend the rule so that players could be measured in “subjective inches” rather than “objective inches.” The teams reinstated their original rosters of tall players, all now identifying as being 5-feet 10-inches, defining the length of a single inch on a personal scale. “Inches are not one size fits all.”

Back in the present day, Danny Chung returned to his job having just been released from incarceration duty. He was welcomed back with celebration and soon it was as though he had never left. His company, Space of Waste, had grown in his absence and was looking to hire another employee. Their recruitment ad read “Seeking qualified applicant to join a dedicated team of portable toilet engineers. Non-Asians and non-whites strongly encouraged to apply.” The company received twenty applicants. All were male, white or Asian.

Sexy and lucrative fields such as robotics and rocketry had reached racial parity easily, able to pick freely from the coveted (and highly limited) pool of disadvantaged-minority engineers. The portable toilet industry was neither sexy nor lucrative, and firms had great difficulty recruiting diverse talent. Space of Waste interviewed the candidates, selected the most qualified, and split the salary  between the new hire and the company ringer. Not every company needed a ringer. Portable toilet engineering firms did.

Space of Waste’s ringer had recent ancestors from six continents, practiced 23 world religions, and identified as whichever gender gave the company better diversity statistics. Their job was to show up on time, wait, and leave on time. Being the highest paid employee of the company, their existence on payroll safely brought the company’s salaries to parity. (The Algorithm required the pie chart of salaries to perfectly track the pie chart of the nation’s many demographics, regardless of the makeup within each individual field. Coincidentally, the music industry had become swamped with cringey white rappers.) When Space of Waste’s wheelchair-bound veteran retired, the ringer offered to amputate their own left foot at an Army hospital. The employer agreed. The ringer’s salary grew. It was a win-win.

On the train home, Danny swiped through his dating app. Yes. No. Yes. No. He stumbled across a familiar face. She looked older now, more mature, feminine.

Her name was Chi. Years ago, Danny had had a crush on her at a coding camp. But she lived his city now? Danny swiped yes. It was a match. As he moved to send a message, she beat him to it.

“Danny Chung?! Let’s meet up!”

Danny eagerly began drafting a reply. His phone froze. A red message engulfed his screen:

“DANNY CHUNG. RACIAL SEXUAL PREFERENCE DETECTED IN YOUR SWIPING HISTORY BY THE PARITY ALGORITHM. ACTIVITY MONITORING IN PROGRESS. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF PARITY PROVISION 713.”

The app locked out, and with it, his line to Chi. He did not know her last name. Could he still find her? How many Chis were in the city? He opened his social network to find out. The search function had been disabled. His profile now prominently shone “713” over his entire photo library.

As Danny walked home, his phone lit up with notifications from friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers.

“Bro, you got ‘13’nd? You sick fuck, you should be attracted to all people equally, like me.”

“Wow, I used to work with this guy. Glad I’ve removed him from my life. Toxic.”

“Words cannot describe the betrayal and pain I feel having learned my uncle was mentally twisted all along. I’m embarrassed to admit I once looked up to him. This is NOT ok. This is NOT normal.”

All of the messages were public. Danny oddly received no private messages, except for one from D’Andre, a man Danny had met at an EDM show. Danny recalled D’Andre making out with a white girl.

“I’m here if you need me,” he said. “Went through the same thing myself. It’s never gonna be the same, but you’ll be ok.”

The Parity Algorithm provided Danny with the conditions to restore access to his social media. It was a list of demographics underrepresented in his dating app history. Once his sexual activity correctly involved all demographics without bias, access to his digital life would be restored. Danny cared less for his social network access and more for his line to Chi. What had she been doing all these years? Would she be there waiting for him when he got his access back? And did she know what had happened?

While on administrative leave from work, Danny spent the next month trying helplessly to flirt with women he was not interested in. He had never attempted to meet partners in real life before, nor had just about anyone else. In recent decades it had become unethical to seek romance outside of the safe and controlled environment of dating apps. Expressing interest in real-life required pre-consent, but for pre-consent to be offered, interest had to be expressed in the first place. Loneliness increased.

Danny developed a strategy of being indirect and polite, making chit chat at the grocery store. He kicked things off by comparing cracker brands, asking any woman in proximity for their opinions on salted versus unsalted varieties. After manufacturing some laughter, Danny would suggest the two meet for tea. Strictly as friends, of course. The two could bond over their shared passion for packaged foods. Danny was overwhelmingly rejected, but he persisted and eventually found himself at a table across from a woman, chai tea in hand.

The date begin in silence, both parties surveying their surroundings with intent disinterest. Danny’s brain spun hurriedly with hypothetical tactics to break the silence. He needed an edgy line to spike the date into sex mode. A perfect line to prove he was stud worth lusting after. His mind narrowed to a few options. Suddenly, his mouth ejaculated a confused amalgamation of them all.

“—If I like if, I hope you’re, boobs is be as-spicy-as this chai tea is hot, babe.”

Danny leaned back, folded his arms, and blushed while trying to look cool. He was met with a face of bewilderment. Then, it contorted. In horrid realization, she said. “Oh my god, are you trying to get 713 sex from me?! Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!!” Danny remained silent. He did not like to lie.

After the date, Danny messaged D’Andre. What was he doing wrong? What could he do to be more charming, more attractive, more desirable? Was his fashion sense dull? Or did he lack sufficient muscle mass? D’Andre responded with two words.    “Redemption Row.”

Prostitution, being illegal in all states, was allowed through a loophole in a single block of Washington D.C. nicknamed Redemption Row. Danny arrived at 8am to a sterile room. Danny stood naked in a row of fifty men, each wearing a wristband featuring a personalized list of check boxes. A zoo of women entered in every imaginable shape and color. They began to procedurally service the line of men, inserting their vaginas clinically around each penis for exactly one pump. Two pumps was unlawful. When the first prostitute reached Danny, he was flaccid. The prostitute injected him with an unknown substance and soon he was functioning correctly. She inserted him. The sensation was brief and unfulfilling. The prostitute withdrew a marker from her bra and checked the box for “trans woman” on Danny’s wristband. She moved on without a word. The process continued with the remaining herd of prostitutes funneling efficiently down the line. Danny remembered each successive woman less and less. He knew none of their names.

Upon exit, Danny opened his network profile. The 713 label had been lifted. He opened the dating app. Unfrozen. Hoping Chi was still available, he navigated to their message thread. Danny opened an unread message from nearly a month ago.

“Hey—haven’t heard from you. It’s ok if you’re not interested, but I really do want to catch up. Message me back?”

How would Chi feel about his discriminatory attractions? Danny suspected she didn’t know. He spent twenty minutes writing, editing, and rewriting a carefully crafted message telling her about how he had gone to Redemption Row after serving a sentence of incarceration duty. He signed off the message by mirroring her language.

“It’s ok if you’re not interested, but I really do want to catch up. Message me back?“ He sent. She did not reply.

Danny could not help but feel sparks of naive optimism each time his phone buzzed. Maybe she had changed her mind? Invariably, the notifications were advertisements for enhanced water or targeted ads from emotional-injury attorneys. Ten full days passed and Danny’s usual steady composure returned. No more spikes of adrenaline. He returned to work and resumed his life calculating how efficiently one could stir together shit and piss to achieve a platonic state of viscosity. At the end of his first day back, he received a message. It was Chi.

“Sorry for missing this, I took a break from my phone for a couple weeks. Yes, I’d love to meet up! Can you do now?”

Chi looked better in person than her pictures. She read Danny’s expression immediately.

“I don’t like my virtual image to be prettier than my real one.” The two recounted how their lives had grown since they parted years ago. Chi had become an entrepreneur, though she would not say of what. Danny got the impression it was something underground, perhaps even illegal. She asked pointedly, “So how did you feel about being put in prison?” Danny instinctively looked over his shoulder. He turned back.

“It’s fair.”

Chi leaned in. “So how did you feel about experiencing 713?” Danny glanced at a neighboring couple attending to their phones. First at the couple, then at the phones. Danny turned back and said nothing. Chi smiled. “Follow me.”

Chi took Danny by the hand through drizzling lamplit streets. They reached an unmarked door on an unremarkable city block. Chi knocked.

“Do you have a reservation?” a voice asked.

“Yes.”

The door creaked open. The hostess winked at Chi and led the two down a dimly lit corridor. The door at the end read The Privacy Room. House Rules: No phones. No recording. No clothing. No lies. No secrets.

Danny’s eyes hung on the phrase “No clothing.”

Chi and Danny stripped. Strangely, Danny felt neither shy nor guilty watching Chi undress. The hostess unlocked the door and the two entered. Inside was a musty eclectic library filled with the hum of chatter. A mustached bartender mixed drinks on the far wall. As they walked to the bar, Danny took attendance of the patrons pocketed into alcoves and concealed corners. From what he could tell, the clientele was surprisingly diverse. While Chi ordered from the menu, Danny looked intently at a pair of older women, attempting to eavesdrop. Danny could not pick out their conversation from the crowd. Plus, the lights were fashioned just so that he could not read lips. Danny noticed a faint hum emanating from a globe next to him atop the bar. With one finger, Danny nudged it open. Out poured a conversation between deep French voices which melded into a treble-toned argument in Arabic, before weaving into a cacophonous rabble of what sounded like English in more accents than Danny could recognize. The bartender closed the globe gently and presented Chi and Danny with their drinks, “The Voltaire” and “The Benjamin Franklin.”

Chi led Danny to an empty alcove flush with cushions and an antique table. As Chi sat cross-legged, Danny noticed the beauty of her posture, unhidden by clothes. Pristine, not from effort, but a lack of it. She opened her eyes and looked into Danny’s. If Danny could see himself, he would not recognize his own eyes. They shone with more fire than he had seen in the mirror in a long time. Chi smiled. “Tell me Danny Chung, how do you honestly feel?”