In a future Earth facing demographic collapse, the Calculator has taken over humanity's most intimate decisions. This vast probabilistic machine matches citizens into marriages, calculating optimal pairings to ensure the survival of the species. Love, that unpredictable chaos, has been systematized away. Lao Protik, a successful psycho-artist who makes his living navigating the messy terrain of human emotion, has built a satisfying life alone. Then the Calculator selects him for matching. Suddenly, the man who understands feelings better than anyone must confront the ultimate question: can an algorithm capture what makes two people belong together, or is there something in the human heart that resists optimization? Fontenay's 1960s gem asks what we're willing to sacrifice for survival, and whether a life arranged perfectly might still feel like a life unlived.
