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I skimmed through profile after derivative profile. Surely they were computer generated ? Was this whole thing a lucrative scam? Each and every profile exhibited dreams from the same semi-detached mind. All were full of Estate Agent style bullet points that fabricated this decade's idealised lifestyle scenario. I found myself trawling through a repeating description of the acceptable personality as browbeaten into minds by Human's media society. Nobody had any quirks or eccentricities any more. Imagination, daring and individualism seem to have been banned along with smoking and drinking more than once a week. It didn't need to be like this. Technology had given us a great opportunity to negate our frenetic and partitioned world but it's alarming to see how quickly Human deceit can destroy a brilliant idea, casually tap the delete button on progress.

On the photograph pages ranks of faces stared out at me. It was like scanning street after street of uniform two up-two down terraces. All easily maintained, recently modernised, close to amenities, affordable and all that stuff not at all like Jazz.

My mind had lapsed to screensaver by now. I considered switching it to full awareness. That is 'Me, most wanted, alone with SAS sniper brandishing infrared sighted automatic firearm in thick Welsh conifer plantation at night the moment I see a flash of crimson light' mode. Instead I chose something more suitable. I just typed with my mind switched to the less arduous 'random autopilot level'. No cohesion reached my fingertips like it never reached my lips. There was always far too much neuron interference. Whenever I attempted to take my turn in a conversation crowds of judgmental people seemed to teleport down and surround me.

This is what I wrote.
What can I say that hasn't been said before? Fun sized analgesic dystopian clad in ectoplasm. Mistral Okapi at checkout, fluent Javascript spoke. An Teallach? Heaven. Timebomb mocking spectrometer equals dead curtains to the power of ten. Minus seven emerging via Valhalla intercepts cat's eyes. Blue in Green. Nothing, Einstein dancing . Sofa siphons meaning crevasse. Kilimanjaro? Murder jam hesitates. Quarks enraptured. Crytomeria Japonica. Keyboard scrolls on M25. Memory? Withhold skyscrapers and type. GSOH. Bungee jumping, yes please. Whitewater rafting, can't wait. Empathy.

My mind was not in structural mode. I was writing a dateline profile for God's sake. If I had gained anything it was these two nuggets of knowledge. My choice of words would have no bearing on the amount of replies prompted and it was the photo stupid. This profile was approximately my seventy twelfth. I imagined it would sound like the shipping forecast to my audience, probably people who listened to RadioBland, had never considered boats, the dangers of the sea, or the concept of predicting things. But I suppose that was my subconscious remit.

After reading over my latest masterpiece I glimpsed a fleeting resemblance with what passes for modern poetry and concluded that it might possibly be my best effort yet, although I couldn't remember a word from any of its evolutionary forbears apart from the abbreviation. There was science, music, nature and technology in there; darkness and light. All the things my target audience would never understand? I felt I had covered all bases, that cliché had been avoided apart from the ending. But that came as the purest irony so was perfectly allowable. The idea of being a mystery came naturally to me. Why didn't it come to anyone else in Cyberspace? I had thought about who I am at length. All I could come up with is that I am. Who am I is a question with no answer, apart from a name, which is not really an answer at all.

The following evening I received a reply from a lady whose profile professed complete self awareness and control. All the clichés were in place. Young at heart, wicked sense of humour (GSOH had by now been trumped), fun loving, honest, loyal, brimful of empathy, well travelled and all the rest of the Estate Agent type box ticking tricks. So far so euphemistic. If all true she was a genius, a post Human robot. But still, somehow, she managed to see her response as acceptable. Ariadne's photo was stunning though, blonde, porcelain, wistful.

Hello Mallarme . (I had called myself Mallarme Symbolist) What a sophisticated name (as if it reflected my personality). Where are you from? I adored your profile. Those words are indefinably beautiful. They must have taken weeks to compose. I know. I write poetry. It would be futile to attempt an understanding of your deep insights. I couldn't possibly do them justice here. And your face! You are so beautiful. When can we meet?

It wasn't my face, of course. It was a downloaded picture, a self portrait by some obscure Belgian artist. I added the caption “A little portrait I painted of myself”. I also said I had eschewed the clutter of personal possessions, even a camera, especially a mobile phone, and that my access to the dating site was via a computer at a public library to which I commuted on a Penny farthing from a Tarp pitched in remote ancient woodland.

We met a few days later at lunchtime in a Harvester restaurant in the moonscape of Basingstoke. Initially I was standing at a crowded bar. Gradually the people dispersed as numbers were called out. Honestly, it was like Argos! Eventually the crowd was whittled down to two. A girl I didn't recognize was sitting next to me amidst the phoney 'Good country food of Olde England' ambience. I felt like I was suffocating from nostalgia, pressed between two pages of the Daily Mail.

I glanced at the girl. She wore dreadlocks with new age rags and her face had that kind of unconventional attractiveness that grows on you the more you look at it, eventually romping past the stylised glitz of calendar girls. What was blonde, wistful and porcelain anyway? A threadbare rucksack lay at the base of her stool like a sleeping mutt. She had lovely fierce eyes, like a raptors. They soon met mine, there being nothing else whatsoever to look at that was remotely alive. Then she mumbled something incoherently. Eventually I realized she was saying “Mallarme” and, within a nanosecond, that she was drunk. That is the easiest state to recognize, a person off their guard. It is just about the only state I am able to recognize in another person in less than a weekend, and, being universal, is one that hardly matters.

Within ten minutes we discovered a lot about one another. Our photos and names were false, our profiles were completely pointless exercises. Susan was married, had no aims or goals and possessed, like me, no idea of poetry or who she really was. I wasn't a Gallic tarp loving poet. It was a blind date from the age of cable, a blank slate plain and simple. The brilliantly clear and logical ideas of the digital age had been fuzzed by the complex mists swirling in Human emotions.

How to get through it? Crowds of experienced women filled my view. I became lost for words, suddenly longed for the comfort of the swivel chair, the anonymity of the computer screen, the worry bead softness of the mouse mat. For a clue I looked out of the sepia windows and saw clarity in the cloudless sky.

It was then I made the rather stupid suggestion that we go to the beach. My mind had wandered into 'because there is no available plot think of a ridiculously sentimental Hollywood movie scene' territory. And I was driving. There is nothing worse than being with a person you don't know who is residing at the opposite end of the alcohol spectrum. But, and there are always buts, I was with another Human being. She was no longer a terraced house in a shop window. I was in there. I wanted to be shown around. My deception was ironic. Hers was a forced response. She was lonely. I felt for her.

We lay on the beach at Broadstairs. Susan slept beside me absorbing her third bottle of wine. I had wondered why she brought a rucksack. I looked at her face. It mirrored the sculpted low chalk cliffs, was at peace, a lovely face in its most innocent state, sleep. Attractive faces allow people…I don't know what…not to try too hard maybe. I couldn't imagine Susan had ever had to try too hard. She certainly wasn't trying now. I felt so alone being with someone who would not respond, more so than being alone on a remote Scottish mountain.
I began dreaming, became restless. The sand shifted beneath me as if slipping away, like time, into a giant hourglass buried beneath the strand. I dreamt that the Oceans were the first Worldwide Web. There is, after all, nothing new under the Sun. I dreamt I was standing on the end of the pier with a thousand bottles. It was night time, the anglers had gone. All the tackiness slept. The true maritime atmosphere that money chased away had sneaked back under the darkness.

In all those bottles I scrolled up my latest profile as a message and added a passport photo. One by one I dropped them, the faint sound of the splashes sounded like mouse clicks. The dark swaying water looked abyssal, deep as the night. I watched the bottles as they bobbed away innocently, at the mercy of unseen forces. They morphed in my mind. Every bottle became me in that giant sleeping sea. In each one I saw my own body drifting away, the mysterious silent water the world I had been attempting to negotiate.
The early coastal sun rifled through me, left a gaping hole. It was morning. Susan had gone. I was alone. A wine bottle lay on the sand. Remembering my dream I scribbled my profile and 'looking for a mermaid', added my e-mail address and sealed the bottle with a cork. I swam out into the sea and let it go. It was nothing but a sentimental parting gesture.
Stories need to have unbelievable bits. Here's mine. I received a reply to my message in a Bottle. What caught her eye was the word Roija. Her name is Xanthe, she is from Broadstairs. So much for Ocean currents. Her e-mail went something like this.

Winter wind launches spindrift splinters
Scintillating sun refracts rainbow flash.
Ice lacerates warmly into my soul
Tent zip screams sanctuary.
Miles spirits mute melodic sketches
Simple squeezed notes resonate eternally
Trane rips chords, I parachute
Modal blue saturates simply

Stromboli spews blood
Earth is not wounded
Colours, sights and sounds, not words
Rule my world

Xanthe knew somehow. The clues were in my message even though the words were skewed. They were from my subconscious. Only the local is random. My big picture focused somehow, Jazz and mountains and nature came through. Nobody can be truly passionate about more than three things. The rules of dilution and commitment say so. There are so many great written words and great jazz albums but very people really read or truly listen to them. Nature engulfs us but remains invisible to the masses. Perhaps all this edge and realism cuts too much against the grain. The masses feed on the soothing chaff they are fed. Humans love killing one on an indusrial scale when in large groups called nations or religions but individually they are pretty passive.

About the day I met Xanthe. That brief moment of uncertainty is still with me, like all moments where you have no idea of what will happen next but want something to happen. Those precious seconds are rare, diamonds deep in volcanoes. Their glint blinds like dark spots burned on a retina by the Sun, they are what spurs the heart to continue pumping lifeblood. If the first page of a novel hooks you it doesn't really matter what transpires. She was arresting, unconventionally beautiful, the best type.

Like me, she likes reading words. But that is as far as it goes. Words are for the chosen few to speak or write, the superhuman. I could name names. They are the sort of people who make me want to give up. I mean, we don't all try to play Jazz, do we?

There are only a certain amount of words two people can say to one another. Words breed mistrust and kill us because we cannot stop twisting them. That is why we change governments every eight years and have wars.

Xanthe and myself take it a day at a time. We talk sometimes but mostly we use my dateline ProfileSpeak. It suffices. Love cuts through. She is laying beside me now, sleeping, dreaming of who knows what. I hope it's something like Glen Coe, The Catcher in the Rye and a dragonfly hatching.

“Xanthe… Xanthe.” I couldn't help myself. Like an addict I expended a couple of words, bringing forward the end.

She stirred and mumbled, “Ambiguous paperclip suffocates embargo.” Then, elaborating, added, “ Foxtrot protocol tells orange.”

I understood exactly, we seemed to have reached an understanding, realized the truth about Human relationships.

“Anaglypta Tokyo.” I whispered. She smiled, relaxed and fell back into drowsy sleep.

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