100%

"So, who do you think your 100 will be?" Dorro leant over the back of the sofa and whispered into her room-mate's ear. Her casual dress rustled against the sofa's fabric.

Lana batted her off with a gentle laugh, not taking her eyes off the wall-clock as it ticked its way to 12:00. "How many times have you asked already?"

"I know, I know, but you're getting your list today. They might ask you what kind of man you would prefer to marry."

"It's not the 90s, Dorro," Lana said with an indulgent smile. The second hand of the clock seemed to have warped into half speed, the seconds dragging like minutes. "They're not going to ask me anything; they'll use the scan."

Dorro ignored her. She grabbed Lan and pulled her of the sofa, dragging her over to the living-room mirror. Lana let herself be led, affording herself only an anxious glance at the clock. "Look at yourself, for once. What does this person -" She jabbed at Lana's reflection. " - want in a husband?"

"Rather shallow, aren't we?" Humouring her friend, Lana scanned her reflection in the cloudy glass. "For appearances, this person would want a husband who looks so different from her that no-one ever mistakes them for siblings... She's had enough of that."

Dorro smiled. It was something that often happened to the two of them, ever since they started living together two years ago, when Dorro was fifteen and Lana just turned sixteen. It had taken Lana about that long to loosen up around her – for the first month, Lana had barely spoken to her.

Lana continued. "An ideal husband would have... Blond hair."

Dorro pointed to Lana's black-almost-blue hair and grinned. "Check." She grinned. “And... how are you going to find a man with a weak, effeminate jawline?”

Lana smiled. “Take that back.”

"Hm... What's the opposite of grey, in eye colour?" She continued, after Dorro playfully refused to take back her statement.

“Silver,” Dorro corrected affectionately.

“Liar.”

Lana turned away from the mirror and hugged her friend. She checked the clock over Dorro's shoulder, and stepped back with a half-nervous, half-amused grin. “You're making me late for my interview,” she said in a sing-song voice.

Dorro jumped round and checked the clock. It read 11:46. “Oh My Gosh I'm so sorry,” she squealed, anxiously shepherding Lana into her bedroom. She pushed her friend into a sitting position on the bed and threw Lana's Interview suit at her before backing out and shutting the door.

Lana laughed quietly to herself as she dressed. Good old Dorro. Always eager and willing to help. She was like a little sister to Lana, despite their age difference being only a few weeks.

百

At 12:04, Lana was in the waiting room for her Interview, surrounded by other just-turned-eighteen-year-olds. The room was decorated to set them at ease, sporting walls covered in vibrant green ivy, and fat, orange plants with leaves like flower petals sprouting from the floor. There had been no attempt to clear the path to their tree-stump seats, giving in to a façade of wilderness to nurse the appearance of Nature, in contrast with the organized blocks of machines Lana was sure lay behind the entrance door.

“Who d'ya think your's'll be?”

She turned her head sharply, and saw a small girl with chaotic, mousy-brown hair who looked closer to thirteen than eighteen.

Lana smiled hesitantly. She'd never been good at speaking to people – it had taken her two months before she would even exchange pleasantries with Dorro.

“I think mine'll be tall 'n dark 'n handsome, eh?” The girl grinned.

Lana stared past the girl without seeing, musing. It was odd, how everyone talked about their list as if it consisted of only one person, their 100, instead of every man under the sun, from 0% to 100. She herself was more interested in her 0% - after all, being a Single her whole life couldn't be that bad, could it? It would be just the same as being with her 50, without actually being with him.

“And I think your's'll be short 'n fat 'n ugly.”

Lana rolled her eyes inwardly. She could tell the girl was saying it in a good-natured way, but it wasn't something she'd ever say herself – especially since they'd just met.

“I'm Morrina, by the way. Who'd you?”

Lana smiled awkwardly, fiddling with her suit to hide her embarrassment. What had the girl said? She presumed it was how everyone talked around where she lived, considering that women came from everywhere to have their Interview. And men, of course, but they were received elsewhere.

Morrina grinned again. “I mean,” she said slowly, “what is your name?”

Lana weighed up her options, steeled herself for the challenge, and decided to socialise. “Lana.”

“It's a pretty one. Japanese?”

Lana let out a tight breath as the Interview door opened, and a woman in a dark suit walked through, bellowing Lana's name. Saved by the awkwardly-old-fashioned routine-summoning.

“Here” She jumped up, and almost ran across the small room to the open door, trampling on various plants and vines on the way. The woman (an Interviewer? Maybe Dorro had been right about people asking her questions) eyed her disapprovingly before ushering her in.

The door closed behind her with a heavy clang, unsuited to the wooden material she had thought it was made of. She turned to it uncertainly, wondering if her eyes or her ears had been mistaken, and saw a shiny face of metal reflecting an image of herself. The reflection's eyes widened. Was it made of a different material on each side?

She whirled around again at the sound of the other woman clearing her throat, and only then noticed the rest of the room. Or rather, the absence of the rest of the room; besides herself, the other woman, and the four walls (and ceiling) surrounding them, the room was empty.

Lana's eyes travelling over the lines that separated the floor from the walls, the walls from each other, the ceiling from the walls. That in itself was bleak, and only served as momentary respite from the rest of the room, the blankness that seeped into Lana's soul and fill her with nothing. She knew there was a clot of panic building from somewhere deep inside her, but she couldn't feel it. It was hazy and indistinct, as if the emotion itself was just a dream.

She stared at the Interviewer, bemused, waiting for instructions. Waiting for a question, or and answer, or anything to break the alarming monotony of the room that was sanding down her sanity.

After what seemed like years, the woman spoke, giving a strained attempt at an encouraging smile that did nothing to ease Lana's uneasiness. “Please stare straight ahead of you. The sensor will react within a minute. Don't worry – whatever you feel during and after the scan is perfectly natural.”

Lana fixed her eyes on the blank wall in front of her, her mind whirring. The panic she knew was inside her was building until she could feel it, real and terrifying. The sensor? What sensor? How would it react? And the most worrying of all – she'd been specifically asked not to worry. That was never a good sign.

A blinding light sliced and silenced her thoughts. Memories – of things that had happened, and things that would happen – filled her head, flooding through every fibre, every atom of her being, each tinted in a wonderful colour she'd never seen before. A colour utterly indescribable – too rich, too perfect, for words.

Then the moment ended. All the memories of things to come were washed out of her, and the ones of the past and present lost their tint. Lana blinked, knowing she would be in tears if she didn't feel so empty. Her whole life from that moment onwards, gone. Just like that. As if it would never happen. She couldn't even remember its colour, except in terms of the ordinary, dull colours she already knew; it was like the brightest yellow, and midnight blue, and pale red.

She didn't notice the hidden door open, or the group of short, homey-looking women entering, or the way they fussed and cooed her out of the room. She just wanted her life back.

It took a few minutes of sitting silently in the after-scan room (decorated in the same style as the waiting-room) before Lana started to feel more like herself. She recalled the Interviewer's – she still couldn't think of her in any other way – words before she left the room, before the scan: There may be some side-effects, such as a deep sense of loss, but they should wear out within ten minutes. She wondered why she hadn't prepared herself, since she'd been warned.

百

Lana was still slightly dazed when she reached her flat about half an hour later, clutching the envelope that held her list absently in one hand. When Dorro noticed her arrival and crowded round her with the energy of ten girls, she batted her off with a weak smile and sat on the sofa.

Dorro moaned. “You can't do that to me, Lan. I've been waiting for this for almost as long as I've been waiting for my own Interview. I've got to see it.”

Lana patted the seat next to her, and Dorro dropped down to sit beside her. “You've been waiting for your Interview since you were born, Dorro. You're always saying it. Here, we'll look at my list together. I haven't opened it yet. And we need to figure out how it works,” she added.

Carefully, Lana slitted the envelope open and took out the small square of paper inside. They both peered at it curiously.

“It's blank,” Dorro said at last.

“You have a talent for stating the obvious. I think there's a way to turn it on. Maybe...” Lana fiddled with it, turning it between her fingers, folding and unfolding it.

“Maybe you ask it to show you?” Her friend suggested.

“That's never going to work, silly.”

“Why not try?”

“If you'll stop insisting, I might.”

Dorro leant back on the sofa and waited.

“Oh paper of wisdom,” Lana began sarcastically. “Show me your secrets. Show me my list.”

“Well, you could've said please.”

Lana almost jumped out of her seat. That wasn't her room-mate's voice. “Dorro?”

“What?”

Lana squeezed her eyes together, then snapped them open and looked at the paper. “Didn't you hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what?”

“I think it's speaking.”

The paper vibrated in her hand. “I'm your List, the latest, fifteen-meter model.”

Lana glanced at her friend. “You can't hear it?”

Dorro shook her head. Lana turned back to the paper and examined it. There was no hint of anything like a hidden speaker or microphone in it. And anyway, Lana didn't think they had the technology to hide anything within that micro-edge of the paper's width. At least, not yet.

After a minute of inspection, Lana spoke again, addressing the paper. “What are you – no wait, I mean... what do you do?” Dorro looked at her as if she'd gone mad.

The paper seemed to take a moment to collect its words, then chirped, “Keep me in your pocket when you go out, and I'll tell you if anyone on your list in within fifteen meters of you. If there's more than one, I'll alert you to the highest percentage.”

“And,” it continued enthusiastically, wriggling between Lana's fingers, “if you take me out of your pocket and repeat the percentage I reported, I'll draw you a black-and-white sketch of him so you can recognize him, if the proximity isn't enough.” It caught Lana's glance at her room-mate, and added, “and you're the only one who can hear me. I am your list after all.”

Lana mused on the information while Dorro continued to stare at her as if her eyes would explode. After some consideration, she spoke, smiling. “Why black-and-white? Why not colour – and while I'm at it, why not a photo-realistic image? You're a talking piece of paper, for goodness sake.” All her awkwardness and anxiety with communicating was gone – after all, as she'd said, it was only a piece of paper.

The paper managed to say, “Our research wasn't focused in that direction,” before Dorro unknowingly interrupted.

“Spill,” she said decidedly. “Why are you talking to a piece of paper? And why are you pretending it's talking back?” She shuffled closer to Lana and stared intently at the List as if she could see into its soul. If it had one.

Lana handed the paper to her friend with a smile. “It's actually talking, Dor. I'm not crazy, however much you want a crazy room-mate.”

Dorro gave a half-hearted grin as she inspected the paper. “Then how come I can't hear it?” she asked.

“Don't go sulky on me. No, don't pretend you're not, either,” as Dorro tried to look indignant. “I know you too well. There's a natural explanation for it. I can hear it, just me, because it's my List. You'll get your own when you're older.”

Dorro crossed her arms like a teenager. “I hate when you say that. I'm only a few weeks younger...”

“What's next?” Lana asked, in an attempt to cheer her friend up. She knew how quickly Dorro could jump in and out of bad moods – it would only be a minute or two before she bounced back.

Sure enough, her room-mate responded with a cheery grin. “Go out and find your 100, of course!”

百

“100%! 100%!” the List – Dorro had named it Pepper – screamed. Lana whipped her head around, scanning the dewy grass-field and gravel path littered with benches. There were four people within fifteen meters of her, four men who could each be her 100.

Her heart raced. She hadn't expected to find her 100% within a century, let alone a week. For a moment, she saw the luxury and ease of life that came with a 100%-match marriage floating towards her, and the joy of living with someone who, according the tests, would understand her completely.

Then she remembered Dorro, and swallowed. Finding a 100 husband would be a mixed blessing – finding any husband would be.

Quietly, she slipped Pepper out of her pocket and whispered, “100%, please.” She watched in awe as an invisible pen scratched out a rough sketch of the furthest of the four men.

Suddenly it stopped, halfway through the sketch, and she looked up. One of the men was strolling away from her. Her pulse quickened. It must be him.

She ran up behind him and touched his shoulder. He span round, and looked at her curiously.

“Hello?” he said, with an inflection indicating a question.

Faced with a real person instead of an abstract image or retreating figure, Lana was tongue-tied again. “Um... Uh. You – I... My – Ugh.” She gave up, mentally slapping herself, infuriated with her inability to communicate.

“Do I know you?”

It didn't make it any better that he obviously wasn't carrying his List – a new idea struck Lana, and she coloured. What if he wasn't eighteen yet? If he didn't have a List, he might not know how it worked, he might just think she was simply being... odd.

The idea of the man – boy, she couldn't help thinking of him as, despite the fact that their ages were probably less than a year apart. It only reinforced her idea that he was underage, making her more nervous – thinking she was odd, or worse, completely insane, drove her to coherence.

“You're my 100%,” she blurted.

His eyes widened, and a smile manifested on his face – such a wide, honest smile that Lana found herself grinning back. He fumbled with his large coat pockets, and brought out a pink sapphire ring. He must be over eighteen, Lana decided. Otherwise he wouldn't carry it around.

“Will you marry me?” he said, and Lana almost laughed at the absurdity of it. They'd just met. But, after all, what else were they supposed to do? They were 100s.

“Yes,” she answered, grinning. Gently, he slipped the ring onto her finger. Water began to drizzle on them from the cloudy sky, but Lana didn't mind. She looked up at her new fiancé's kind, smiling face as they walked, arm in arm, out of the park, and knew that her life would be perfect from then on. In fact, not just perfect. 100% perfect.