Chapter 1
It takes Danny and a team of seven engineers four and a half months to cobble together a beta.
They build it out of the existing app, which saves them time, but it also means Danny is confronted with a lot of shitty code he wrote two years prior.
The four and a half months go like this: Every day, Danny wakes up and climbs out of his queen-size bed into the desk chair that directly abuts the bed (huge, his apartment is not) and clickety-clacks on his keyboard.
He vibe codes until his first meeting with Julian (nine thirty) and then checks in with his team, and then he realizes he hasn’t yet eaten so he makes a pour-over coffee while he responds to emails, and then he gets distracted with an idea for how to unsnarl something, so he goes back to his desk and codes some more, then he realizes he still hasn’t eaten, so he goes back to the kitchen and pours a metric ton of granola into a bowl, then someone calls him because a fire needs to be put out urgently (they will have broken something in the existing app while making a new feature), and he will have another coffee and eat his granola and wonder why he feels vaguely like death (maybe he is allergic to granola?
? Google granola allergy?), and then he will go back to coding until his eyes start to burn and he thinks, Hey, maybe I should wrap things up for the day. Rinse, repeat, ad infinitum.
Eve is on tour. If that clarifies anything.
This is the most Danny and Julian have argued over the course of their partnership.
Julian wants to create a totally new app so people in long-term relationships don’t get scared off by the matchmaking function; Danny insists they fold the two halves together so early-stage daters immediately adopt the new features.
“People who are secure in their relationships won’t feel motivated to use us,” Danny says. “We need to get people who are in hazy situationships.”
“Right,” Julian says. “How are things going with Eve, by the way?”
“Good. Great.”
“And yet.”
“I just think,” Danny says, “most of our users will be motivated by fear.”
Danny wins. They end up calling the two halves of the app Seekers and Keepers. People using the app to find a first date: Seekers. People using the app to turn a first date into a second, or a relationship into a marriage: Keepers.
They also fight about how to assign users a relationship score.
Danny thinks they should have a one- to five-star scale, which is visually clean and easy to interpret.
Julian thinks this isn’t granular enough.
They settle on percent—a number out of a hundred, like a grade, which is the same thing they did with their compatibility metrics for Seekers.
“But not a percentile,” Julian says. “It’s not normally distributed. Most couples are middling. A score in the nineties is, like—superspecial.”
“It shouldn’t be that special,” Danny argues. “People don’t want to be told they have mediocre relationships.”
“Deep down, I think most people think their own relationship is a solid eighty. Good enough, but room for improvement. Not that anyone would admit it.”
“Are you and Gigi an eighty?”
“We’re at least a ninety-eight,” Julian says. “I fear that should be obvious.”
“So what’s a zero?” Danny asks. “Is that two people who hate each other? No relationship at all? Abuse?” It occurs to Danny that this rating system could get messy quickly.
“Zero should be apathy,” Julian says. “Complete lack of a relationship.” There’s a pause. “I wouldn’t want to use an app that validates abuse.”
“But there’s so much gray area. Like, you know, accidental gaslighting. Teasing that goes too far. That sort of thing.”
“The whole point of this is to remove gray area. Users come with questions, we give them a concrete answer.”
Danny blinks a few times. Googles “vision blurry things dancing like little worms.” Probably nothing to worry about!
“What’s a fifty?” he asks.
“Committed but unfocused,” Julian says.
“We should include trends, too,” Danny says. “Trending better, trending worse.”
“What are you and Eve?”
Googles “pounding headache how many Advil.” Googles “how to Advil sponsorship.”
“We’re great,” Danny says. “At least a ninety-eight.”
Julian gives him a thumbs-up that may or may not be sarcastic. Danny codes the numbers into being.
It flattens things, but technology always does.
Then there’s the issue of the Rampart data breach.
As it turns out, bad actors will pay a shitload of money for the user data collected by your garden variety dating app.
There was a moment shortly after Eve’s former employer was hacked when Danny didn’t know how bad the damage was.
Best case, the hackers got basic metrics: number of users, et cetera.
Worst case, they got email addresses that could be linked to profiles that could be linked to conversations.
As a rule, senators don’t love it when they’re caught asking twenty-three-year-olds about their feet.
In the end, most of the personally identifiable information was stored securely on Pathos’s end.
Danny did not TA Intro to Encryption for nothing!
This doesn’t stop Julian from bringing it up literally every meeting.
He calls it Code Name Aries. Aries as in Ram.
Ram as in Rampart. There is no need for code names because it’s public knowledge and also it just freaks out the employees.
“Obviously, in the wake of Aries, we have to be hypervigilant about user data going forward,” Julian says in an all-hands; in front of investors; while getting coffee on an ordinary Thursday. “How much would people pay to get all that?”
“A lot,” Danny says compliantly.
“We need to be agile,” Julian says. “Like flying squirrels.”
Basically, Danny loves Julian like a long-lost brother, but also sometimes he thinks it would be so neat if Julian shut up.
Danny is vaguely aware that Chloe and Julian are launching a massive rebrand, of which Danny disapproves (he thinks their branding is nice!), but his head is too far in his computer to do anything to stop it.
It is decreed by the powers that be that they must change their name.
Pathos, as it turns out, really does sound too much like pathetic.
When Julian tells him they’ve settled on Pattern, Danny laughs.
“It’s a great name,” Julian says. “It evokes planning, nature, and forward thinking. It evokes self-knowledge.”
“I just wonder if it could evoke slightly less tartan.”
“The etymology comes from patron,” Julian says. “As in protector, supporter, patron saint.”
“Okay,” Danny says. “But do we think it sounds like a knitting app, is the thing.”
“Actually,” Julian says, “we do not.”
But for all the things Danny and Julian argue about, they are in complete agreement about Bug.
For the first week, his name is Love Bug.
“Drop the ‘Love,’ ” Chloe says. “It’s cleaner.”
Bug doesn’t look like a bug; he looks more like a round little dinosaur.
He answers relationship questions and provides advice.
Technically, he is an AI chatbot powered by Pacifica (billionaire Alvin Breckenridge’s LLM), but they try not to refer to Bug as a bot.
What does a robot know about love? Bugs, like love, are found in nature.
Though Bug describes himself as a helpful pal, the problem he really solves is that of data gathering.
Early on, Danny was faced with the question of how to assess a relationship.
How do you know if it’s good or not? They could track phone location (how often are you with your partner?), identify frequency of date activities (when do you book a restaurant for two?), and ask survey questions (do you feel satisfied with your partner?).
It feels, to Danny, hand-wavy and inauthentic.
But then he comes up with the idea for Bug.
Let’s say User A asks Bug for an idea for a birthday present for his girlfriend.
Bug is pleased the user remembered! That merits some relationship points.
Then User A says his girlfriend mentioned she’s been wanting to learn to cook, and also that she hates clutter, so instead of getting stuff, maybe some sort of cooking class?
Bug loves this. The attention to detail!
The consideration! Their relationship score goes up by six points.
Meanwhile, User B just asks for birthday present suggestions.
Bug suggests a candle, and User B follows the referral link.
When User B’s girlfriend gets the candle, she logs into her own Pattern account and asks Bug what to do about the weird, disappointed energy that descended over her boyfriend when she wasn’t more excited about the candle he gave her even though surely he must have noticed she doesn’t have a single candle in her apartment because her mother was a hoarder?
Quietly, Bug deducts eight relationship points and suggests User B’s girlfriend have an open conversation—Bug can roleplay if she needs practice! —which User B’s girlfriend declines.
When he tries to sleep, Danny pictures Bug hopping from one nubbly foot to the other. Hi hi! Bug says. Love isn’t always easy, but I’m always here to help. :)