Love Is an Accuracy Algorithm (short story)
Love Is an Accuracy Algorithm was the sixth story in The Boulevard: Volume Two.
Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
Poppy sits in the Boulevard of Alternate Brutalities, being patched up by DROOD, her jailer slash roommate after her latest attempt to take her own life. As the bandage slowly wells up with blood, she begins her story of how she came to be here, reminiscing on her past, smiling as she notices the bloodstains taking the shapes of small bat skulls.
As Poppy watches the opera she notices someone across the way from her singing along, words that weren't even to be written yet. An opera that shouldn't have existed for years. She can tell, there's another like her, another traveler. After the opera Poppy follows the woman, and hears her meeting with the curator, handing over a new work, the curator mentioning her name as Delilah. Poppy filches the work, finding yet another opera written years in advance. But, well, not quite. There are things fairly different in it, plot points, names. It's almost Les Huguenots, but not quite.
Poppy followed Delilah for a few days, finally introducing herself and examining a bracelet Delilah was wearing. Inadvertently, Poppy triggers it, sending them both careening into an parallel universe, a battlefield. Delilah expresses her frustration and paranoia, not sure why Poppy brought them here, asking if she's working for the Great Houses. Poppy denies it, insists that this was a mistake, and the two recognize each other as Cousins of Faction Paradox. The pair move around this battlefield, this alternate World War I, and take pictures, determined to bring them back as souvenirs, art pieces.
The two shared the rest of the summer in bliss, enjoying Paris, until one fateful day when a crowd marched outside their window, singing a song from Les Misérables in the 18th century. And as Poppy goes to look outside, there's a choreographed march, one man leading it, a red arrow pointing down at him, with his name. Tomás.
At this point DROOD interjects. He finds this most implausible, and objects as well to the idea that the curator would just happen to mention Delilah's name. Poppy, however, insists that both of these things happened, as much as she'd prefer Tomás never existed. She continues onwards.
Very quickly Tomás became a part of their group, as he too was a time traveler, and Delilah came to cling to him more than she did Poppy, Poppy felt like their romance was falling apart. No matter what Poppy would ask him of his past, he'd deflect, Delilah even covering for him. As Delilah and Tomás moved closer and closer together, Poppy insisted that she wouldn't give up without a fight and performed a ritual, casting herself forward, calling backwards a future of her own making, where Tomás is slain in the streets of Paris, leaving her and Delilah together. But her ritual fails, greater temporal power than hers is in this city, disrupting her work. So she sets off to find it.
DROOD interjects again, pulling up Poppy's confession. He points out that nothing she's saying is in her confession, it's an entirely different story. She waves him off, saying that there's sober her and drunk her, and this is drunk.
Following the source of the temporal disturbance, Poppy comes to a graveyard where Tomás is talking to an old woman in a long robe with a fancy collar. The woman asks for a status report, and Tomás says that it could be some time, but she's already questioning, it will happen eventually, she'll go with him.
The Poppy in the now, drunk, thinks about this past, and imagines herself there, imagines looking at herself as she thought about what to do with Tomás. Somehow, DROOD finds himself in her memory, her imagination, malfunctioning as he does so. The pair follow past Poppy as she confronts Tomás in front of Delilah, eventually prompting him to confess. He admits that he did begin on a mission to deprogram her, but changed his mind and now wishes to elope. DROOD insists to the Poppy of the present that this is absurd, his Accuracy Algorithms simply don't accept that she can be telling him this story. A Faction Godfather appears and confronts Delilah, Tomás, and Poppy, insisting that the entire fiasco must stop, that Delilah's pilfering from other universes has attracted too much attention. And Delilah shoots the Godfather. Poppy takes the gun from her and sends her and Tomás away, lets them live together even as it breaks her. And she stands over the corpse as members of the Faction come to collect it.
As she sits in her cell, DROOD remains on the fritz, an AI specialist being dispatched to her cell to look at him. A small repair is made - she's been trying to corrupt his circuitry by telling worse and worse lies, so a small recalibration solves the problem. While DROOD is still readjusting, Poppy realizes this is her best chance, and invokes the bloodstain on her bandage, attempting to escape. As she fails, remaining with DROOD in the Boulevard, all she can do is laugh.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
References[[edit] | [edit source]]
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Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
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Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
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