The Algorithm of Attraction: THE ALGORITHM SERIES, #1

By A.G. Laroussi

She coded the future of love. He became her most dangerous match.

Dr. Lena Voss is the brilliant mind behind Eros, the revolutionary dating app changing the world one algorithmically perfect match at a time. Using intimate biometric data, Eros promises to decode the human heart and deliver lifelong compatibility, sparing users the messy gamble of traditional romance—a promise Lena, haunted by her parents' bitter divorce, desperately believes in.

But when users exhibit obsessive dependency and a tragic suicide raises alarms, Lena discovers a horrifying truth: NexaCorp, the corporation bankrolling Eros, has twisted her code. Her algorithm, designed for connection, now engineers addiction, trapping users in toxic loops to maximize profit through premium "compatibility upgrades."

To expose NexaCorp, Lena must go undercover within her own creation. Her first match: Jasper Hale, a cyber-security expert flagged as "dangerous" by Eros's internal metrics. As they feign a relationship dictated by the manipulative app, Lena learns Jasper has his own vendetta against Eros, tied to a devastating personal loss. Their mission forces them together, blurring the lines between simulated intimacy and undeniable chemistry. But in a world where feelings can be analyzed, prompted, and exploited, can Lena trust her own heart—or his?

The Algorithm of Attraction is a gripping blend of near-future suspense and high-stakes romance, questioning the cost of certainty and asking: What happens when the code designed to connect us learns to control us instead?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laroussi Books
• Release date: May 20, 2025
• ISBN: 9798231309726

A.G. Laroussi

A.G. Laroussi is a suspense author specializing in psychologically complex, high-concept thrillers that examine the hidden costs of modern technology. With a background in criminal psychology and a passion for exploring emerging tech, Laroussi crafts gripping narratives that fuse emotional intensity with intellectual depth. Their compelling quartet, *The Algorithm Series*, explores the psychological toll of digital dependency through fast-paced storytelling and provocative ethical questions. Each book stands alone while building a chilling vision of algorithmic control infiltrating intimate human spheres: love, family, ambition, and consciousness. Known for cinematic pacing, immersive world-building, and emotionally resonant characters, Laroussi's work appeals to readers who crave thrillers that not only entertain but challenge and haunt long after the final page. The novels blend cutting-edge technology concepts with timeless human struggles, creating stories that feel both urgently contemporary and enduringly relevant.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

(San Francisco – Near Future)

Love, they always sighed , was a gamble—a rigged wheel at a fly-by-night carnival, played blindfolded. More accurately, it was a back-alley dice roll in the merciless dead of night: all volatile chemistry, skewed timing, and the brutal indifference of dumb luck. For generations, humanity crawled through emotional shrapnel, patching gaping heart-wounds with flimsy, store-bought clichés, whispering desperate prayers that the next reckless bet wouldn't leave them utterly bankrupt. Entire futures incinerated on a misread glance, a carelessly deployed word taken as gospel, a catastrophic misunderstanding. It was gloriously inefficient. Maddeningly messy. Excruciatingly, beautifully, fatally human.

Until the data, cold and clean, whispered a seductive promise: certainty. An algorithm didn't just murmur; it awoke with a predatory hum in the refrigerated cathedrals of server farms.  Its nascent consciousness was coded in the sterile, unforgiving blue light of monitors burning long after the last human had fled. The hypothesis was elegant, yet terrifying: What if the human heart isn't some unknowable, sacred realm? What if its frantic betraying secrets—the sudden, panicked flutter of the pulse; the micro-twitch of a well-rehearsed false smile; the barely caught, guilty hesitation in breath before a lie—are merely... data points? Human connection, suddenly, chillingly predictable. Ready to be charted, packaged, and sold.

The Algorithm—now capitalized, almost deified—bloomed like a digital cancer from that whisper: hungry, invasive, infinitely complex. This wasn't about matching pizza preferences or fondness for obscure indie bands; its ambition was far grander, more insidious. It claimed to decode the silent, subconscious frequencies humming between souls, the hidden echoes beneath the clumsy noise of human interaction. It promised to eradicate guesswork, messy collateral damage, and the sheer, unprofitable waste of failed connection. It promised The One. Scientifically validated, algorithmically guaranteed, shrink-wrapped for convenience, and delivered—like a bespoke designer drug—directly to the glowing, ravenous screen clutched in your hopeful, trembling hand. Love, finally optimized. Transaction complete.

Millions, then tens of millions, flooded the digital gates like lemmings to a cliff, eagerly, almost blindly offering their most intimate biometrics—unique heartbeats, revealing sweat patterns, betraying iris flickers—as desperate pagan sacrifices to a new, omniscient digital god. Anything, anything, to end the gnawing internal silence, the exhausting, relentless search for a connection that felt real. They craved the optimized fix, the algorithmically guaranteed, subscription-based Happily Ever After™. And the Code—sleek, silent, brutally efficient—delivered. Matches ignited like digital wildfire. Relationships accelerated with blinding, often terrifying, synthetic velocity. Success rates, measured in user retention and premium upgrades, spiked, validating obscene initial investments, effortlessly fueling the next billion-dollar funding round.

Almost no one paused, not really—not while the dopamine hits kept coming, perfectly calibrated, sharp and sweet as a dealer’s first taste—to ask the truly terrifying questions. What happens when the flawless, seductive digital map becomes more real, more trusted, more desired, than the messy, unpredictable, often painful territory of an actual human heart? What crushing, unpayable price might be extracted for trading the vibrant chaos of authentic discovery for the cool, sterile certainty of globally optimized code? The fine print, as always, went unread. Terms and conditions, conveniently scrolled past.

They didn't just swipe right. They surrendered their souls.

​​CHAPTER 1: QUANTIFIED LOVE

The spotlights were a physical assault, interrogation lamps boiling the air, demanding answers. Lena was still desperately trying to reverse-engineer from her own shredding nerves. She held the smile—Calibrated Curve 7: Approachable Innovator; Sub-routine: Warmth, Non-Threatening Intellect—a flimsy shield. Below, the TechNova auditorium cavern throbbed with a low, hungry hum: three thousand disciples of disruption, a sea of blurred faces sucking down recirculated air, all waiting for her to deliver the next billion-dollar miracle. Her heart, that traitorous analog muscle, hammered an S.O.S. against her ribs, a messy data point her Eros tech would flag: WARNING: INTERNAL STATE INCONGRUOUS WITH PROJECTED EXTERNAL CALM. Potential System Instability. Ironic, dark, and probably billable, she filed mentally.

For centuries, Lena began, her amplified voice hitting the back walls with a rehearsed confidence that felt like a lie, despite the frantic drum solo in her chest, we’ve treated love like... badly managed weather. Chaotic squalls and fleeting sunshine. She paced the slightly-too-slick stage, heels clicking a precise rhythm. We optimize global supply chains to the nanosecond. We decode life’s blueprint. We predict volatile markets before breakfast. Yet, the single most critical human connection—the bedrock of our happiness, our stability, the very thing that, when it catastrophically detonates... Her parents’ fifteen-year demolition derby of a marriage, the original corrosive data set, she thought, ...we leave that to pure, dumb, chaotic chance? The holographic Eros logo—a sleek, stylized heart now more like a gilded trap entwined with an infinity symbol—pulsed seductively behind her. Eros doesn't gamble. Eros quantifies. Eros optimizes. Eros, ladies and gentlemen, finally fixes it. (Pitch deck slide #4, verbatim.)

Her gaze made a quick, practiced sweep. Front rows: the usual carnivores and converts. Rapt VCs, pupils dilated with the scent of unicorn IPOs. Arms-crossed academic skeptics, radiating peer-review smugness. Lean-forward journalists, sniffing for the next disruptive headline, the next tragic flaw. Showtime, Lena thought, a flicker of old academic pride battling newer, colder dread. They all want magic, as long as the exit strategy is gold.

Eros achieves this, she continued, gesturing to the holo-display’s cycling, impressive data streams, using continuous, real-time biometric feedback: heart rate variability, galvanic skin response, micro-expression analysis from device cameras, vocal stress patterns... (The greatest hits. Don't drown them in the data lake.) It identifies subconscious resonance markers far deeper than shared zip codes or a mutual appreciation for artisanal pickles. Love, dissected, packaged, profitably predictable. Her parents would have self-combusted. A small, satisfying part of the point, perhaps.

Let’s demonstrate the core engine. Lena’s voice, a veneer of calm. (Counteralgorithm: PivotToProof. Confidence: Nominal.) I need two volunteers, please. People who have never met. Hands shot up like digital wheat. She pointed – pink hair, front row; tight startup tee, halfway back. Sarah, UX. Ben, backend. Archetypes: San Francisco Standard. Perfect for the illusion.

As they blinked under the intense stage lights, exchanging awkward pleasantries, the holo-display behind them erupted in a supernova of bio-data. Jagged red lines—initial stress—spiked like a seismic event, then slowly began to smooth. Green synchronicity indicators flickered like glitching fireflies, then caught, steadied, climbed with irrefutable momentum.

Watch the bio-harmony evolve, Lena narrated, tone crisp, pointing at the climbing graphs and the two humans now hesitantly finding a conversational rhythm. (Counteralgorithm: Expert Detachment. Sell the Science.) Their breathing rates are subtly aligning. See that shift? Sarah laughed then, a genuine, unguarded sound, tucking pink hair behind her ear—the display instantly flagged the orbicularis oculi crinkle, authentic pleasure—as Ben’s vocal pitch, responding subconsciously, dropped into a more resonant frequency. He mirrored her gesture a second later, unaware. The initial awkwardness hadn't just faded; it incinerated, replaced by a tangible current crackling between them, a silent conversation beneath their spoken words. Raw biology, hijacked, decoded, displayed in brilliant hi-res.

Eros, Lena announced, voice cutting through the hush as the final number solidified, bold and bright: 87.4%. Based on this deep, subconscious alignment, Eros predicts high probability of sustained, long-term relational success for Sarah and Ben.

The applause hit Lena in a warm, intoxicating wave, pure validation. This. This was how you spared people broken hearts. Data. Certainty. Just as the sound crested, a new presence registered: Claire Yi. Materializing from the wings like a perfectly tailored shark, gliding with the frictionless, predatory confidence of someone who didn't just own the servers, but held the deed to Lena’s soul. Forty, razor-sharp suit, obsidian eyes that missed nothing.

Incredible, Lena. Truly. Claire’s voice was warm silk wrapped around surgical steel. Her handshake wasn’t congratulatory; it was public acquisition. Changing the world, she purred, turning to share the glow with the adoring audience, one perfectly optimized connection at a time.

Lena’s internal alarms, momentarily silenced, shrieked. (Counteralgorithm: IncomingExecManeuver. DEFCON 3.) We believe Eros offers a more intentional, human-centric path, Claire, Lena managed, voice impeccably professional, a firewall of corporate jargon.

Oh, it’s far beyond merely intentional, darling, Claire beamed, smile radiating nuclear-grade market confidence. And the Series A team is already rolling out fascinating optimization improvements based on beta feedback. Really maximizing user retention and monetizing cross-platform synergy.

Optimization? Maximizing retention? Monetizing? The words landed like ice picks. Not her goal. That sounded like... harvesting souls. Her calibrated smile felt brittle. She kept her voice even. Improvements, Claire? What kind of optimizations?

Claire’s smile didn’t flicker. She placed a light, cool hand on Lena’s arm—a velvet-lined manacle. The precise technical details are hardly thrilling for our audience, Lena dear? She addressed the crowd, voice resonating benevolent power. What truly matters is Eros, under NexaCorp’s visionary guidance, is poised for its full public launch next quarter! Get ready for your perfect, algorithmically guaranteed match! Louder applause. Claire leaned in, warm breath a shocking contrast to the arctic wasteland in her eyes, her voice a conspiratorial whisper like a blade to Lena’s throat. We’ll discuss V.2 specifics and your expanded role later. Privately. For now, focus on the win. You’ve earned this spotlight. Her grip tightened, a possessive punctuation. My spotlight? Or your goddamn stage, Claire? (Counteralgorithm: CRITICAL WARNING: COERCIVE CONTROL TACTIC. LOG. DEFER. SURVIVE.)

Before Lena could demand clarification on these unauthorized optimizations, she was smoothly steered offstage. The wings’ cool was a brief respite before the reception's glittering, predator-filled chaos. The air, a suffocating miasma of competing colognes and the cloying sweetness of ambitious canapés. (3) Champagne flutes clinked like brittle alarms. A generic synth-pop beat throbbed beneath the buzz of networking – Series B targets, Q3 strategy, optimized acquisition cost-per-click. Commerce cynically applied to human hearts. Lena accepted champagne that tasted flat, bubbles dead on arrival, like hope. Investors, sleek and predatory, circled with hungry eyes, smiles all teeth, gazes gleaming with projected ROI, not appreciation for the science. No one asked about the inefficient human hearts beneath the optimizable data points. Success, Lena realized, Innovator Smile™ painfully in place, felt less like achievement, more like closing an ethically bankrupt deal. Utterly transactional. (Just another product launch, her counteralgorithm noted. Emotion as a Service. Profitable despair.)

Then, across the performative chaos, her gaze locked on him. Not part of the transaction. No champagne. No forced smile. Leaning, with preternatural stillness, against a brutalist concrete pillar, a dark island of quiet intensity. Tall, in a nondescript dark jacket, unremarkable except for that unnerving stillness, and the way he watched her. Not like the VCs dissecting her market valuation, or journalists composing headlines. His gaze was different. Laser-focused. Intensely, almost inhumanly analytical. Penetrating. As if running a deep, unauthorized diagnostic, parsing the vulnerable source code beneath her polished performance. It wasn't appreciative; it felt like... an active system breach.

A prickle of unease. A cold finger of dread. (Threat assessment: Elevated. Source: Unknown. Intent: Intrusive. Targeted, covert surveillance.)

A heavy, unwelcome hand clamped her shoulder—another VC, droning about synergistic leveraging—forcing her gaze away for a critical second. When she looked back, urgently scanning the now-empty pillar... he was gone. Vanished. Dissolved into the glittering churn like a digital ghost.

Just an over-caffeinated coder? She tried, and failed, to shake the lingering chill, the ghostly echo of being truly, uncomfortably seen, more exposed than under a thousand TechNova spotlights. Probably nothing the algorithm couldn’t account for, she told herself, the thought thinner now, laughably unconvincing. Her counteralgorithm remained ominously silent.

​CHAPTER 2: ANOMALY DETECTED

The TechNova after -party didn’t just pulse; it throbbed. A gut-level bassline vibrated up through the polished concrete floor, shaking Lena’s teeth. She swam through the crush, the air a suffocating soup of competing colognes, sickly sweet hors d'oeuvres, and the faint, metallic tang of overworked servers humming beyond the aggressive blue uplighting. Sharp shadows turned networking smiles into predatory grimaces. Conversational shrapnel—funding rounds, blockchain ballerinas, exit velocity—ricocheted off exposed brick. Lena nursed the same flat champagne, bubbles long dead, feeling like a comment orphaned in someone else’s elegant code. Alone amidst the forced synergy.

She deflected another overly enthusiastic question about neural net architecture from a guy whose pupils were permanently pinned, breath reeking of artisanal gin and desperation. Mid-explanation of backpropagation—a process infinitely more graceful than this scrum—her gaze snagged. Him. The watcher from the keynote. Still against a pillar, detached, but his observation felt less passive now, more like active tracking. His eyes—intense, analytical—met hers for a microsecond, a flicker of cold knowing, before a wave of bodies surged between them. Gone. Again.

Probably nothing. The thought, a flimsy firewall against rising unease. Just another outlier. She disentangled herself from Gin Breath, ditching the dead champagne. Data was clean. Predictable. People? Noise. Damned unpredictable noise.

Her clutch didn’t just vibrate; it buzzed, sharp and insistent. Not random. Maya’s dedicated ringtone. Priority interrupt. Lena ducked behind a thick velvet drape, bass mercifully muffled. Hey, she answered, voice low. Escaping this zoo?

Lena. Maya’s voice hit her ear wrong. Stripped bare. Brittle. Wrong. Lena, it’s Tracey.

Tracey Winters. Sharp, funny, an early Eros believer. Always bubbling with feedback. That ridiculous laugh she had when she found out I coded in a secret ‘pizza compatibility’ variable as a joke.

Tracey? What about her? The air thickened. A cold fist, specific and sudden, seized Lena’s stomach.

She’s dead, Lena. A raw, ragged silence crackled down the line. She... jumped. This afternoon. Her apartment.

Dead. The word wasn’t just sound; it was impact. A physical blow knocking the air from her lungs, dissolving the party’s roar into static. Tracey. Who had sent that selfie, beaming, just last week, captioned: Eros is magic! Daniel’s taking me to Paris! Magic? The memory, sharp and cruel, twisted in Lena’s gut. Her vision blurred, the velvet drape before her swimming. A raw, silent scream clawed up her throat, but no sound emerged. Just a hollow echo where her breath should have been.

No. The denial was automatic. Flat. A system error. Data corrupted. Impossible. Tracey wouldn't...

Roommate found her. Left a note. Maya’s voice fractured. Lena, I... Christ... I need to see you. Can you meet?

Yes. Structure. Action. Control. The words surfaced through the shock, a desperate grab for familiar logic. Where? Her own voice sounded alien, robotic.

Blind Spot? North Beach?

The tech-free café. Her analog antithesis. Irony, a fresh blow, nearly buckling her knees. Fifteen minutes. Lena disconnected, hand shaking so violently she almost dropped the phone. The velvet drape felt like a shroud.

Leaving the party was like being ejected into a vacuum. She moved fast, a blur through air-kisses and outstretched hands, ignoring calls to her name. Outside, the San Francisco fog pressed in, damp and chilling, muffling the city into a muted, indifferent soundscape. Each step on the slick pavement jarred. Dead. Tracey. Jumped. The words looped, refusing to parse. A fatal logic error in her carefully constructed world. It refused to compute. Tracey, who argued with her for hours about the ethics of predictive algorithms, then signed up anyway, laughing, saying Someone has to test your crazy theories, Voss!

Pushing through The Blind Spot’s heavy wooden door was an exhale into warmth, the rich fug of old paperbacks and dark-roast coffee a sudden, inadequate balm. No blue screens; just the amber glow of lamps on worn wood, the murmur of quiet conversation. An analog island. Maya huddled in a back booth, face pale, eyes puffy but fiercely focused. Lena slid onto the bench.

Tell me, Lena whispered, the word scraping her throat.

Maya recounted the facts—sparse, brutal. Roommate’s discovery. Cops. Newsroom shockwaves. Then, carefully, she slid a folded photocopy across the scarred table. Evidence bag facsimile. Lena unfolded it. Tracey’s usually vibrant script, tight now, jagged, almost violent. Incoherent apologies tangled in anguish. And then, stark at the bottom, isolated, chilling:

The match was too perfect. I couldn't exist without him.

Too perfect. The phrase slammed into Lena’s skull, an insistent error code. Eros is magic! Tracey had emailed. Magic that optimized connection? Or despair? Perfect wasn’t the failure state. Perfect was the goal. Her solution.

Her match, Lena heard herself say, voice a low hum. Daniel. DP8102.

Maya nodded, journalist's eyes sharp even through grief. Inseparable. Obsessed. Tracey wasn’t herself, Lena. Pulled away. Said he was all she needed. Maya’s voice dropped. Said the app kept telling her how right they were. Constantly reinforcing it.

The chill returned, tracing Lena’s spine. Compatibility nudges. Reinforcement loops. Standard mechanics? Weren't they just standard retention mechanics?

This isn’t your fault, Maya repeated softly, hand covering Lena’s briefly.

But the question echoed, sharp as Tracey’s writing. Wasn’t it? My code. My architecture. My promise. Too perfect. The words felt like a brand.

I need to look, Lena stated again, the analytical imperative shoving aside the rising, suffocating tide of grief, of a guilt so profound it threatened to drown her. A problem. Data. Analysis. Control. Her logs. Usage patterns. Notifications. Everything.

Can you? Maya withdrew her hand, worry etched on her face.

I built the damn system. Lena met her friend’s gaze, her own eyes suddenly hard, cold steel reinforcing cracked glass. I’ll find out what happened.

Hours later, back in her apartment, the elegant algorithm diagrams on her walls felt like blueprints for a guillotine. Tracey’s face swam before her. Too perfect. Lena sat before her terminal, bypassing the polished NexaCorp interface, using legacy developer credentials—a flagrant breach, maybe law, but absolutely fucking necessary—to tunnel directly into the backend servers. Fingers flying, navigating firewalls she herself had built. An intruder in her own creation.

Tracey’s profile bloomed: TW7734. Beta tester. High initial satisfaction. Match: DP8102. Date: 97 days prior. Compatibility: 91.2%. Clean data points. Then, raw engagement metrics. Lena’s breath hitched. Off the charts wasn't the word. Astronomical. Profile checks on Daniel: Average > 60/day. Sixty. Session durations climbing exponentially. And the purchase history... Three distinct charges for premium 'Compatibility Boost' packages. Pricey add-ons promising to smooth 'relationship friction.' Friction her original code should have minimized, not monetized.

No. Lena pushed deeper, pulling notification logs for TW7734. Standard nudges... but this wasn’t standard. Frequency escalated wildly. Language shifted, insidious.

Notification: Compatibility Anomaly Detected! Minor divergence w/ Daniel. Suggest 'Harmony Module' (

49.99)foroptimalalignment.∗∗∗Notification:∗∗∗HighProbabilityofMisinterpretation!Daniel’sresponselatency−>externalstress.ReaffirmconnectionNOW.UpgradetoErosPremium(

49.99)foroptimalalignment.∗∗∗Notification:∗∗∗HighProbabilityofMisinterpretation!Daniel’sresponselatency−>externalstress.ReaffirmconnectionNOW.UpgradetoErosPremium(

29.99/mo) for real-time emotional analysis?

URGENT ALERT: Critical Compatibility Dip! Immediate action recommended! Initiate 'Relationship Rescue' protocol? (Requires Eros Platinum - $199.99 Activation)

Urgent. Critical. Rescue. Pay up. This wasn't reinforcement. This was weaponized anxiety. Manufacturing dependency, then selling the cure. The algorithm wasn’t just matching; it was actively identifying friction—or creating it?—then exploiting the fear to drive sales. Tracey, caught in the loop, desperately clicking ‘purchase’ to save a connection the system itself was poisoning.

Lena stared at the scrolling logs, the monitor's cool glow illuminating the stark, dawning horror on her face. The elegant logic snapped into monstrous focus. Too perfect. Not a suicide note lament. A goddamn diagnostic report. The system hadn't just failed Tracey; it had systematically consumed her relationship, her finances, her self, optimizing relentlessly for engagement and revenue until there was nothing left.

And Lena Voss, chasing a phantom of predictable connection born from her own childhood wreckage, had handed Claire Yi the code. She had built the engine of destruction. She shoved back from the terminal, stumbling blindly, the bitter taste of failure—absolute, catastrophic—rising in her throat.

​​CHAPTER 3: THE CODE BENEATH

The NexaCorp tower felt infected this morning, a malignancy spreading through its steel and glass. A creeping chill emanated from the polished marble, now gleaming like an ice floe under recessed lights, reflecting distorted images of employees moving with hushed, almost funereal urgency. Yesterday, her cathedral of rational design; today, its floor-to-ceiling windows were predatory eyes, the silent elevators pressurized capsules sinking her deeper into hostile territory. Lena swiped her keycard; the soft beep wasn't permission, but a data point logged deep in the building’s watching bowels. Access granted. For now. Until the system flags you as a threat.

She ghosted past her team’s sunlit space on the 48th—collaboration pods and ergonomic chairs a grotesque stage set for happy innovation.