esterday a pop up add flashed on my computer. It was the shape of a giant heart and it had my name in exciting green colors.

As I watched, text scrolled across the heart: ....., YOU HAVE BEEN SEARCHED OUT AND FOUND BY ROWAN ROBERTS ON THE CUPID PROGRAM!!! DO YOU WANT TO MEET ROWAN?? and then two buttons appear: a red NO button and a green YES button.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about a stranger named Rowan since. Cupid appeared almost a year ago now, and the entire world is different. It wasn't as simple as the brief recession that occurred in Cupid's first few months, as men and women in different countries left their old lives behind to be with the partner that Cupid paired them up with.

It wasn't as simple as the disastrous affect on marriages, which almost all came undone once a computer program appeared that could find both husband and wife a more perfect partner.

And it's not as simple as the sudden boom in the romance industry: greeting cards, flowers, sex toys, and the gluttonous industry of marriage. And, after a year of Cupid's existence, the baby industry is starting to explode.

More than anything else I've noticed that since Cupid's arrival the world seems to have become very quiet. Until yesterday I hated it.

New movies and novels are typically slow moving and introspective, with very little conflict. Walking through the streets of even the largest metropolis it's as if the volume has been turned down. People drive better, they are nicer to each other. Alcohol sales have plummeted, to the point where cheap beer is becoming harder and harder to find.

As with most life-altering technology, the creation of Cupid was an accident, a freak occurrence that happened when two young men were playing with the internet in their garage. They had apparently hacked into the database of MallTech, a firm that compiled personality profiles of consumers based on their online activity and purchasing patterns.

MallTech sells these personality profiles to marketing firms, who then target individual consumers with personalized advertising. The two young men devised a simple software program that would match their profiles to female profiles with similar interests and habits.

Of course it took a few months to perfect the software. Once the two young men had sold the idea to MallTech a team of psychologists and various other specialists were put together to make the program more complex, more esoteric. By now the Cupid program has become so infinitely complex that it seems more like a magic spell than anything else.

It used to cost a base fee of $100 to perform the search. Once MallTech realized that all that love and sex was turning the market into a series of vertical lines they convinced the government to cover their expenses.

According to online surveys there are 346 people in the United States who have not used the Cupid program. I assume that number is now 345, as Rowan Roberts broke down yesterday and used the program to find me. I did not realize that I was waiting for her to find me until yesterday, and now, the day after, my whole body is in turmoil.

I am currently sitting in my small, dark room reading and re-reading the description of Rowan. The only light in here comes from the computer screen, which glows an eerie blue. I just stepped out of the shower, and am trying to convince myself to go to bed. Almost all of my friends have used Cupid. I have never heard of a failed match.

I am seeing a woman named Lana, the only other person I know who is protesting the 'Cupid culture.' We're together more by default than anything else. We agree every time we see each other that Cupid has drained our society of anything interesting. Cupid tells me that Rowan is 5'4" with brown eyes and light hair.

She studied philosophy at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. I read, She likes to spend time with her friends, but would often prefer to cuddle up with a good book.

I don't believe that there are any perfect matches. And if there were they couldn't be found by a computer program that is informed primarily by what you buy.

But still I think to myself, sitting at the computer alone, Rowan and I must have a lot in common. More than Lana and I.

Cupid offers to show me a picture of her. I decline. It tells me that she bought a pack of cigarettes today for the first time in a few months.

It suggests to me that she is depressed because I won't answer her request to meet me. Cupid suggests that my refusal has touched on her private insecurities that she is not good enough to be loved. It reminds me that everyone deserves to fall in love. The green button appears again in the right hand corner of the screen, pulsing vibrantly. Inviting me into something better, offering to make me complete.

I switch off the computer and lie in bed for a while. It's a Friday night, but there's nothing going on. There were a few cocktail parties, but everyone is typically in bed by 11. The bars are empty, except for the swingers' bar, but you can't go there unless you have a sexual partner and Lana's not comfortable with the idea. She tells me with a nagging intensity that has been increasing in frequency lately, that she's terrified of losing me. A man named Harold Hobbes contacted her a month ago. I'm not sure where she is tonight. I didn't call her back after work today.

Eventually I fall asleep, and I dream exclusively and for what feels like one 100 years about a woman named Rowan.