A small video player popped up, featuring an epic battle scene from the first Star Wars playing on its screen. Annika snorted. This was so June. She was halfway through the scene when it abruptly disappeared. It was replaced, instead, by Annika and Hudson’s projection.

Annika’s breath caught as she watched herself and Hudson doing yoga together on the beach at sunset. Then, hand in hand, they strolled through an open-air market, picking out flowers and fruit, talking together, Hudson’s head dipped toward hers as he whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. There was Hudson, down on one knee, proposing to her in a hotel room with a view of the Seine, while she cried unabashedly and said yes. There she was, walking hand in hand with a dark-haired toddler in overalls, Hudson taking a picture of his little family. And finally, a rendering of her and Hudson as older adults, sitting under a pergola in a beautiful garden, reading together in the dappled sunlight.

The screen faded to black.

This was the future OLLI had predicted for Hudson and Annika, based on their personalities and how they interacted with the world. This was one possible future of many, she knew that. None of them might come true; it wasn’t magic. It was just one machine’s idea of what might happen.

Annika pushed her chair back and stalked to the storage closet to grab her bag, suddenly annoyed that she’d fed the program her and Hudson’s information. At any point, she could’ve realized what a stupid thing she was doing, that it was an exercise in frustration. She was annoyed that OLLI hadn’t shown them arguing or fighting or getting divorced. She was annoyed, most of all, that it had made her long for something that could never be hers.

Grabbing her phone, Annika turned out the lights and stalked to the elevator. She and Hudson were never going to be together. They’d lasted less than a full weekend before breaking up; that’s how incompatible they were. OLLI was wrong—completely, breathtakingly, stupendously wrong.

Once out of the elevator, Annika crossed the foyer and walked into the balmy evening toward the bar where she was meeting Hudson. She’d have to tell June the program wasn’t working nearly as well as she thought it did.

Hudson was already waiting when she arrived. Annika pushed the door open and stood there, her hand still on the handle, staring at him. She could barely breathe.