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"  As I warmed up the T-shirt on the radiator, I reminded myself that I could never admit what I was about to do , even when I was drunk, even with my best friends.  Plenty of them had probably tried it, too, but candour does have its limits \u2013 unless this turned out to be one of those weird new modes of behaviour that before you knew it would feel totally acceptable and normal, which these days seemed to happen more rapidly and more unpredictably than ever.  I didn\u2019t\u00A0feel guilty so much as just pathetic. Part of me wished I\u2019d never kept Lucy\u2019s old Grimes T-shirt, so that I wouldn\u2019t have had the opportunity to stoop to this level, but by this stage there was no going back.  I held my phone against the inside seams of the armpits for long enough to let its chemoreceptors get a good sniff, and then I waited for Musk to process the data.  My phone already maintained a record of my own body odour for my various medical apps to monitor \u2013 I\u2019m a bit of a hypochondriac \u2013 so when I installed Musk it had just been a matter of giving it the necessary permissions.  The app loaded a page of results. There were 124 matches within a 50-mile radius of my flat. One hundred-and-twenty-four was a tiny selection by the standards of the other dating apps I\u2019d tried, and even that was prior to filtering by age, but the matches were supposedly very precise.  In each case, the woman smelled exactly like Lucy, and I smelled exactly like her most recent ex-boyfriend (or whomever else she might have chosen as a model).  According to the articles I\u2019d read online, a date with one of your matches was almost guaranteed to proceed to frantic sex within an hour or two. You just had steel\u00A0yourself for a certain amount of mutual weeping afterwards.  One woman \u2013 Emma, 26 \u2013 even looked a bit like Lucy, or at least she did in one of her four profile pictures, if you ignored the bottom half of her face. I almost couldn\u2019t bring myself to contact her, but then I reminded myself that she was voluntarily on Musk, just like me.  I\u2019d started typing out a banal message when I was startled by my phone ringing. Jonny was calling me. I didn\u2019t want to answer, but I had the irrational feeling that if I didn\u2019t then somehow he\u2019d guess why.  \u201CHave you tried it yet?\u201D he said.  \u201CTried what?\u201D I said in a rather strangled voice.  \u201CYou know what.\u201D  \u201COh.\u201D  Jonny had been pestering me for weeks about another dating app called Horizn. Its slogan was \u201CBuild a future together\u201D, but I still wasn\u2019t sure exactly what it did, and anyway it had some off-putting features.  First of all, you had to pay to use it, even though nearly every other dating app was free. Second, it demanded access to all your messages, all your photos, all your transactions, and all your biometric data, which seemed to me not just intrusive but potentially criminal.  Third, it supposedly used a smartphone\u2019s Q-chip, which seemed like such overkill for a dating app that it had to be a silly marketing\u00A0gimmick.  \u201CNo, I haven\u2019t tried it,\u201D I said.  \u201CSeriously, mate, you have to. Just trust me. All those apps for random shags are fine but this one\u2019s all about the real thing and that\u2019s what you need. You\u2019ve been moping around for so long now. If we\u2019re not careful you\u2019re going to end up as one of those poor bastards on Musk!\u201D  \u201CRight. Don\u2019t want that.\u201D I forced a laugh.  \u201CYou know all the girls on there are looking for guys who smell like their dads? You know that?\u201D  \u201CI\u2019m sure that\u2019s not true.\u201D  \u201CPromise me you\u2019ll give Horizn a go.\u201D  \u201CFine. I promise.\u201D We chatted for a few more minutes before he rang off.  I decided that this time I really would try the app, if only because it might rescue me from a long evening of swapping emoji with Lucy\u2019s pheromonal doubles.  After I installed it I was disconcerted to find that my profile was already complete, presumably because it had gathered everything it needed from my personal archives.  All it wanted to know was whether I was currently looking for \u201Cnew friends\u201D, \u201Clong-term dating\u201D, \u201Cshort-term dating\u201D or \u201Ccasual sex\u201D. I ticked all four, and right away Horizn presented me with a page of matches.  I didn\u2019t realise how long I\u2019d been using it until I heard the birds singing outside my window the next morning.  The full details of Horizn\u2019s technology were proprietary, but according to the FAQ it used the phone\u2019s Q-chip to locate the possible universe in which you agreed to go on a date with the person whose profile you were looking at.  Using the information it had about the two of you, it simulated your future together from the first\u00A0minute of that first date. If you liked the future it showed, you\u00A0swiped to the right, and if you didn\u2019t, you swiped to the left.  When I saw a beautiful, intelligent-looking woman on the Tube and immediately found myself fantasising about the hilarious speech I\u2019d make at our wedding, I felt sheepish about it, because it seemed to\u00A0me a bit unmanly to be so sentimental and conformist.  As a red-blooded male, my mental simulations weren\u2019t supposed to go beyond a glamorous restaurant and a desecrated hotel room, and even that much detail would be extravagantly elaborate.  Also, if by some implausible turn of events I really did get a chance to introduce myself to this person, I wouldn\u2019t be able to stop thinking about how creeped out she\u2019d be if she ever found out that in my mind we\u2019d already\u00A0gone shopping for furniture together.  And yet I couldn\u2019t stop making these projections and extrapolations. So Horizn was perfect for me.\u00A0  Most of the women on the app I wouldn\u2019t see again after the first date. A proportion of those first dates would be one-night stands, and I might have considered pursuing those, except that some of the other outcomes were so much more interesting.  A few evenings with legal secretary Tasha, 31, would leave me so infatuated that I would agree to join the secretive Fulham-based \u201Cpersonal development community\u201D that had already taken most of her savings, and an intervention from my friends would bring me to my senses only after I\u2019d handed over most of my own.  My relationship with artisanal cheesemaker Marianne, 28, would end so badly that for years afterwards I would find myself not just resentful towards coagulated milk but also physically allergic to dairy products.  And then, with about one in 40 women on the app , I would\u00A0end up married with children (seven daughters, in one case). The proportion was so high that it made a bit of a mockery of the notion that each of us has one true love out there waiting for us, but I\u2019d never found that very plausible anyway.  There was nothing to stop me swiping to the right on all of them, and waiting to see which ones would actually develop further. But the strange thing was that I couldn\u2019t bring myself to swipe to the right on a single one.  I felt like, if I did, I would be announcing that at least in principle I would be satisfied with the possible future it was showing me. And yet how could I possibly be satisfied with any one possible future, when I would be missing out on so many others?  Obviously, the same is true of any decision you ever make. Any time you\u2019re on a date with a woman, it entails that you\u2019re therefore not on a date with any of the other women at the bar.  But on Horizn the sense of infinite potentiality was so blinding. Of course, none of these visions of happy middle age were anything more than hypothetical constructs on my smartphone\u2019s Q-chip, and I didn\u2019t even know if these women would reciprocate by swiping my own profile to the right, so it was preposterous that I was already \u201Cafraid of commitment\u201D.  And yet the app made it feel like a sort of existential tyranny that I would ever have to make any kind of irrevocable choice ever again. By this point it was hard to imagine even ordering off a menu in a restaurant.  I was so exhausted I was going to have no choice but to call in sick to work, so if I\u2019d felt like it I could have spent the rest of the morning scrolling through my future selves.  But I didn\u2019t want Horizn\u2019s limitless paradise any more. I just wanted something narrow and shabby and backward looking. I opened Musk and started a chat with Emma, 26.  Later, after we\u2019d arranged a place to meet, she had one last condition. \u201CAs well as everything else, there\u2019s a particular cologne I need you to wear. Is that OK?\u201D  \u201CYes,\u201D I wrote back. \u201CThat\u2019s absolutely fine.\u201D  Ned Bauman&amp;#039;s third novel, Glow, is out now.  *** More Culture:8 TV Shows You Didn&amp;#039;t Know Were Based On NovelsAmerica&amp;#039;s Most Controversial CartoonistThe Other Side Of Trainspotting*** "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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