Triple Nine Date

Chapter 1: The number One

"Triple Nine Society?" Meryl repeated with a bit of skepticism in her voice while looking at the austere website on the screen. She had never been on a dating site before, but she imagined it to be ... well, more colorful and superficial. Instead of the smiling faces of supposedly single males and females, there was just a boring logo, a lecture about six sigma and a catchphrase saying: "Our select society is committed to friendship, communication, the adventure of intellectual exploration, and a greater realization of individual potentials. You will definitely find your match here."

"Friendship, huh? Milly, are you sure this is even a dating site?" Meryl turned her head to her assistant who somehow convinced her that this was the shortest and most efficient way of finding a guy while still being a full time workaholic. Of course, she wouldn't have bothered had her boss not implied during the last meeting that he trusted better people who could manage both work and private life for promotions. She had no 'private life' yet.

"Of course I'm sure!" chirped Milly with her usual enthusiasm. "I was told they had very high standards. This is where my great great great cousin Miranda found her husband. And he's such a sweetheart!"

"Fine. How do I proceed?"

"You just need to register. It's pretty simple."

Meryl clicked on the joining link and was met with a long list of questions along with a 30 double dollars fee. She groaned. She filled the first fields asking for her name, age, profession, gender before stopping short on the next question.

"You have 12 sheep," her eyebrows rose, "among which one different animal is hidden. All the sheep weight the same, but the other animal is either lighter or heavier. You have a big balance. How do you figure out which one is the fake sheep in only 3 tries?... You must be kidding me."

Milly leaned closer and frowned. "Hmm, Miranda didn't tell me about this."

After four hours of annoying questions, and the use of multiple sheets of paper, cheats, internet search and useless calls to friends, they finally managed to reach the end of the first section, scoring 1 out of 5.

"This is impossible."

The hardest riddle for Milly this evening was why Meryl didn't give up sooner. Meryl's head was steaming. Her expression angry. Her pen broken. Her paper recycling bin filled with failed attempts.

"Are you sure Miranda wasn't trolling you?" was her only question before, in a state somewhere between frustration, sleep and hypnosis, she grabbed her jacket and went out of the door, mumbling something about a completely wasted afternoon. On the way out, she ran into Vash, the morally challenged but otherwise very smart guy who was known for his selective intelligence.

"…."

Meryl couldn't. She was too frustrated. Tomorrow. She would ask him tomorrow. In trance, she drove home, switched on the tv, didn't get a single word of what was said in today's episode of "desperate insurance girls", her favorite series. The next thing she was aware of was her alarm clock, ringing.

Fresh and recharged with mental energy, she entered her office and switched on her computer. She would solve these damn riddles in a few minutes. How? She could just use brute force. At some point her answers must be correct, and she could reverse engineer everything from failed attempts. Easy.

But when she tried to continue her registration, a "Welcome #1" greeted her.

"Milly?"

"Yes?"

Milly and Meryl both bent their heads to be able to see each other.

"Why am I number one?"

"Oh, I told Vash how hard you tried, and he solved it all for you. Isn't that nice of him?"

"He got a full score in record time?"

The screen showed a low quality picture of a golden medal saying "Smartest Member". She felt very, very dumb. But, to her surprise, there were already more than a dozen messages in her inbox. She read them all.

"Seven people say I cheated. Four congratulate me. One is asking if I have time for a talk. Two say they did some research and think I am using a fake name."

Meryl had no idea what to do next. Answer? Reject them all? Only one seemed to behave approximately how she expected men to behave on a dating site. In the end, she decided to send a broadcasted message to all of them except the polite one: "No." – The polite one had to wait two more days.

Meryl had no idea how to behave, but she knew how she could make herself interesting.

"Sorry, I don't have time right now, too many intellectually challenging tasks. But we can chat in 2 days. I will have all my problems solved by then. Bye."

She didn't worry too much about how to formulate it. After all, she could have everyone, given her score, right? Every man on that site should be after her right now. And would they really find out she didn't answer the questions? In the real world, which kind of problem could she possibly encounter so that it would become obvious? Besides, she just needed…. What was it again? Ah right, a personal life. Nothing that would get too much in her working schedule. Just an independent guy who she would spend a bit of time with.