Your Perfect Match

20250316

https://app.dailyprompt.com/writing-prompts/details/30e4fd20-0120-11f0-9a9c-6304dd745563
Alright, she hadn’t had high hopes for a dating show, but this was a joke!
The premise had been reasonable; use personality tests to match you with your ideal suitor (or at least, the most compatible person who’d also signed up). Which turned out to mean sitting in a booth and answering the questions on screen (presumably being filmed the whole time).
Question after question after question.
She’d been at this for hours! And, while none of the questions seemed ‘phishy’, they were digging far deeper than necessary to match two people up.
It couldn’t be that she was that hard to find someone for? Surely not!
But the questions continued.
“How would you react if…”
“How would you feel if…”
“Would you rather…”
Finally she got up and tried the door. Locked.
So she took a deep breath and, VERY CALMLY, said “I’m sorry, but this is taking too long. I need to get going. I understand if that voids the agreement and I won’t get paid. But I have to go.”
She waited. Counted off ten minutes, then another two just to be sure. Repeated herself. Knocked on the door.
Then, thoroughly ticked off, she wrangled the door and gave it a firm, practiced kick honed by getting stuck in many porta-potties. Turns out the booth wasn’t much sturdier.
Ugh, they were going to edit this to make her look so unreasonable, weren’t they? Fine. Whatever.
She stomped down the aisle of booths towards the entryway. They’d better hand her stuff back without issue, or she was going to the police!
Sounds echoed wildly across the distant ceiling and metal walls. They’d booked a warehouse or something. It was a barren and eerie place with the lights down low like this. She suppressed a shiver.
The front door was steel shuttered, the coat check (well, really it was more of a phone check) vacant. And the shelves were empty! All those politely labelled plastic bags gone!
She dinged the bell several times before giving up and boosting herself over to check. No, no sign of her belongings. But there was a door at the back, and it opened when she tried it.
Hopefully it at least led to an employee exit.
There had to be a way out, right? This was a fire hazard.
She hurried down the dingy corridor, which twisted and turned until she stumbled into an intersection.
To the left, more corridor. To the right, a door with light shining through. And it opened freely!
Giddy with relief she dashed through - into a sterile room filled with machinery. And people.
Watching screens showing the corridor she’d just left. Standing ready for her with clipboards and tranq guns.
And behind them was the spitting image of her, standing docile while a technician finished attaching hair to its robotic skull.

“Pity we didn’t get a full data set. But it should still pass muster. Alright, next.”

Prompt was “Write a story about a character going on a dating show where they have been promised they will meet the love of their life, but something isn't quite right”