I call the car to take me to the nearest grocery store. It’s close but not close enough to justify a walk at night. No biggie, since the algorithm down-charges folks between 12am-3am.

I get in the car and it greets me. No one is there to greet me. I miss the days of the humans struggling to make small talk. The awkward moments of talking to a stranger you will never know, and never see again. But you do it because it feels weird not to. You force yourself to connect, even for those fleeting moments. I don’t know, I miss that.

The car ride is set to the “Silent” option, but since I didn’t pay the premium subscription service, there are ads that play at every stoplight. It gets quite annoying but you eventually learn to tune out the noise.

The car comes to a stop in front of the grocery store. As I leave, someone else gets in the car. They barely wait for me to step out or acknowledge my presence. There’s no smile or acknowledgment and definitely no waiting and holding the door. It’s all just…cold. The car speeds away ferociously, uncaring about its temporary protection of my vessel.

I walk into the grocery store, the overhead lights burning into my brain and removing any traces of sleepiness I had. I navigate to the snacks section. No, listen to me. It’s not a random section I made up that I label as “snacks,” an idiosyncratic generation to instantiate the relationship between myself and a foreign place. I literally mean a section labeled Snacks that the grocery store created due to high customer demand for those specific products. They know that because the algorithms for the app that grants entry in the grocery store told them. They also, through the app, track all your movements within the grocery store, and figure out the highest-traffic areas (for you and in general), where things will subconsciously catch your eye even if you literally aren’t looking. I feel as if they track me outside the grocery store, too, but I cannot prove it.

They are out of my favourite snacks. It’s literally impossible since this is a really popular brand. They must have some in the back. But there are no human workers walking around at this grocery store. It’s all automated, a 24/7 convenience that provides anyone at any time the day (with the app) access to fresh food. Since there are no humans, they can keep the store open for longer, and push more product, and make more money.

Okay but now who do I talk to? How do I get my snacks? I’m not going for the recommended options the app is pushing me. It sees that I’ve gone to my regular section, not seen the product I’ve always bought, and calculated I’m frustrated so it chose to push similar items. No thanks, fuck that! I want what I want.

I press the Contact Us button that joins the ever-increasing queue to speak with a worker. I just wanted my snack, man. Now I have to struggle with all this social interaction. Where’s the convenience in this? I’m looking around at everyone else shopping while I wait. The dazed zombies with the same idea as me, executing it with a similar drone. They want no part of me, or the store, or themselves in some way. They are fulfilling the mechanisms of the Machine (and they don’t even know it). Fools.

Someone responds. Finally, the hunger pangs are becoming ferocious. They ask how I’m doing, if I am enjoying the service. They thank me for my eight months on the platform, my 65 trips taken. The numbers unnerves me but I push the feeling away because I just want to get my snack. So that is what I tell the person. Well, I don’t really know if it’s a person. They sometimes switch out the person and the bot. They just keep the wait times because it gives an illusion of getting to an actual human. You will honestly never know if you are having a conversation with a Being or a bot. They say that it’s because their technology is “that good” but I always found it strange that deception was something to make better.

They tell me that there is a human in the back that will bring out the snack I want. Strange, but great. They solved my problem. I close out the app and it asks me to rate the service out of 10. I close my phone because I don’t want to.

I am trying to stay off my device and just wait for my snack. Where is it? What is taking so long? I look at the time. Three minutes have passed. Is that too long or not long at all? I don’t know. I haven’t had non-near-instantaneous service in months. The friction of this interaction feels so sterilizing. I am forced to observe like a camera. I see store properly for the first time. The chaos of the perfected aisles and layout. Designed to harvest and extract. I see the plastic city we’ve created and suffered from. I see the shrinking organic section. I always wondered why it was shrinking. Was it because no one was buying it because they were addicted to everything else or because no one had the money to buy it? I also found it funny that we paid more for foods that killed us slower. That our life force has become commoditized.

I hear some rummaging, a shuffling of feet that didn’t resemble one of the other drones around me. A shorter fellow came out, holding my snack. He walked straight towards me, and in an almost perfected motion, without breaking eye contact, gave me my item, smiled, and walked away. Before he turned around, he winked at me. It was so smooth, his entire ordeal and aura. Like he had practiced this a thousand times before. A movie character.

I can still remember his eyes. Blue and dull. For the moments he looked at me, they seemed to light up just a little bit. His face had a bunch of wrinkles, so he couldn’t have been anything below 40. He reminded me of Joe Pesci.

I just stared at him walking away. Thinking about the interaction. He chose to have that moment with me. He knew that the cameras were watching and so he couldn’t make small talk, otherwise he would be taking away from his other duties and might have been fined. He also knew that they were watching his smile, eye contact, and other body language markers to make sure that their bottom line didn’t get touched. If any of those things he did resulted in me not buying my item or coming back (an algorithm would be making that decision), then he probably would be fired.

So I walked out of the store, snack secured. The app automatically paid for me, and applied a 13 cent discount for the inconvenience of having to wait eight minutes. So they think my time is worth that much? Or that little. I wonder if they also took the 13 cents out of that guys paycheque.

I stood outside on the corner, waiting for my car to take me home. I realized I never said thank you to him. Who am I? Who are we? We didn’t say one word to each other, and for what? Because corporate interests dictated the terms of our interaction? Since when did we care so much about that? Since when did we put these non-biological, non-sentient forms over one another? Why? For money? For status? What does that give us if we lose ourselves in the process?

The car came and I walked up. In the backseat window, I saw someone shuffling to get their things, and in a moment of intuition, I grabbed the handle and pulled it open—for them. It was a girl, and she seemed offended and rolled her eyes. When I didn’t get inside right away, she looked back and smirked at me. I smiled back. The car began to play the routine chime of “Please exit the vehicle for the next customer” when you’re taking too long. As she got out, she made eye contact with me for a second before saying a low, “Thanks man!” and walking away.

The car took me home and I walked inside my unlocked apartment since the buildings app knew when to unlock the door as it tracked my phone’s proximity. I shut the door and it locked as I walked inside the living room. Back to automation existence, I guess.

Finally, I ripped open my snack. I engorged myself for a few minutes, and then put the bag down and walked to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror. For the first time in a while, I really paid attention to myself. I saw my eyes, my own wrinkles, and my own smile. I felt alive for the first time. I stopped being on auto-pilot and began to feel the friction of existence. It was uncomfortable but it felt good, like getting into a pool. It’s cold and it sucks until your body gets used to it. Because it’s not a foreign thing. It’s just a temporary change of state. And it’s good for us. It’s good for me. For the first time in a while, I remembered who I was; what I was. I smiled, at myself, and then I began to practice my wink.

“God, that was so hot,” Amanda was still huffing and puffing as she emerged from the Chamber. Sweat lined her skin, and her sports bra was drenched. The BioStickers came off—ripped off, really, though you’re supposed to peel them gently. Fragile technology be damned. Amanda wasn’t thinking about that. Two dudes had just fucked her vigorously for two hours, and she still felt their hands and mouths and everything else all over her body. The after-effects of coming out of artificial reality. Her horniness came back for a second and she had the primal urge for round two, but willpower and rationality prevailed. Going back in the Chamber meant another two-hour session, time she didn’t have. She needed to get to work.

After an intense shower where she used her freshly opened bar of soap to scrub down every nook and crevice that she found sweat lodged in, and a quick text to her girl-friend describing the scene and recommending the download, the name of the game was traffic. The dreaded reality of commuters.

The cars piled up as if an apocalypse was in the other direction. Especially in her city, where drivers were almost too eager to get to work. Switching lanes and cutting each other off, you’d think that the Chamber would have solved this by now. Amanda took a few long, deep breaths as another vehicle filled the pocket of space her delay had created. The brakes squealed under her foot, the horn shouted a few times, then the button to turn on the radio was hit to drown out the hustle and bustle of honkers and roadragers—herself included.

Voice 1: Y’know, Steve, it seems to me that the Chamber is good for society, eh? Whenever my wife says no, the Chamber says yes!

Voice 2: I’ll never step in one, it’s just a data harvester for creepy billionaires.

Steve: Honestly, people should be left to their own devices for how they use technology. Anyone ever tell you how to use a phone?

Voice 2: Fantastic point, Steve. No one told me not to put it on my balls when it vibrates. But I still did!

The car was flooded with chuckles and laughter. Amanda wondered if she had missed the joke or if there was one in the first place. There was no winning with the Luddites, as she described them. Some people are early adopters and ahead of the curve, others wait for society to catch up collectively. The Chamber is a net positive for humanity, that was her conviction.

After pulling into the parking lot, she scurried to class. Past the receptionist, who glanced at Amanda’s awkward bumbling down the hall—she was struggling to walk after her session—with confusion, then a smirk of realization.

The auditorium sat about 100. Around 25 were present, scattered around the venue, with eight in the front of the class ready to learn. Her favorites. Not because they were particularly good students, but because they were the only ones on the attendance list. The rest just came for the show.

The students watched as their professor ran in (still with her awkward run), threw her bag down, yanked on the string to send the screen for the projector flying upwards, crashing into the ceiling panel and creating a loud BANG! which startled everyone, including Amanda; then, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, began to discuss the end of the last class.

“Okay, today’s topic,” Amanda began, with some huffs and puffs in between, “is about falling crime rates in association with the Chamber. As new independent research comes out, it’s clear that in almost every major city where Chambers are legal, violent crime has basically collapsed—murder, assault, rape, crimes of passion. We can also see the inverse, where cities or countries that have banned Chambers continue to have the same rates, or worse.”

She pulled up a graph on the projector. “Now, to be precise with the data, property crimes driven by economic necessity, like theft, burglary, and robbery, have remained relatively constant. The technology addresses deep-rooted psychological urges and violent impulses, not poverty or desperation. White-collar crime, fraud, and corruption have seen minimal change.”

Amanda looked around the room and made eye contact with one of her students. A little older than the rest, he looked like one of her compatriots in this morning’s pre-work simulation. She bit her lip, then realized what she was doing, and saw someone else raise their hand.

“Yes, yes, you!” she enthusiastically said, trying to distract from her internal dialogue.

“Sorry, but why would a country ban Chambers? Are they stupid?” Chuckles from around the class echoed. “It’s literally the best technology to keep us from creating The Purge.”

Amanda took the question seriously, as she did her job, and thanked her lucky stars that no one noticed her momentary departure into fantasyland. “There are many good reasons why. The biggest reason right now has to do with astropolitics. Nation-states on Earth and the Moon are not too pleased with how close the CEO of Athena is with our President. They think—and for sure, there is some hard and damning evidence to support it—that Chambers around the world are biased towards America, specifically the New America movement. For example, sometimes when interacting with your respective simulation’s NPCs, if you haven’t carefully configured the setting and installed certain parameters, they could begin to biasedly talk about politics more than anything else. I had a friend who ended up having pillow talk in her simulation, all about how Chambers are healthy for citizens and that they should be mandated in every household and classroom. It was the primary talking point for this Presidential run, and it came up after intercourse.” Amanda realized what she was saying but kept going so as to avoid realizations if she paused.

“Don’t be fooled, though. Rival nations still have their own Chambers available, but under the radar. French and Russian Chambers have been seized at ports around the world. The Chamber black market is real and dangerous. There are even talks about hacker groups around the world who are studying the code and attempting to fry every Chamber in our solar system. A scary thought indeed.” The student seemed pleased with the answer despite Amanda’s tangent.

The students usually shut up when Amanda talked. They enjoyed listening to their young, hot professor speak on such complex but interesting matters. The class was interesting but she was the talk of the campus. Outsiders trickled in like clockwork to catch a glimpse, and, especially, to save the memory of her and her body, mannerisms, lipstick color, for later. Every detail of one’s persona mattered if a simulation were to be precise; and satisfying.

The Chamber is an artificial reality device taken to the extreme. Once inside the Chamber and hooked up with the various equipment, you can act out your wildest fantasies and darkest desires. Nothing was off the table; no judgement, no illegality, no strings attached. The simulations felt real—the BioStickers tracked neural patterns, muscle responses, hormone levels, feeding data back into the simulation in real-time, creating a feedback loop of sensation indistinguishable from reality—meaning the brain couldn’t tell the difference.

The CEO of Athena came up with the idea after his wife was murdered by an old lover. Being the high-profile executive, he couldn’t just kill him and face public criticism (really, a drop in Athena’s share price). Towards a more psychopathic avenue, he created a machine that housed a simulation of the same event. This time he found himself—and an axe—in the same room as his wife’s lover and used the axe to separate his wife’s killer into many pieces. He played through many similar scenarios until he came to the realization that this machine could be broadened, deepened, and certainly monetized. The Chamber was born amidst bloodlust.

It became an instant hit. Within a mere year of release, almost every household in the Western hemisphere had at least one Chamber per person. (Sometimes, people would buy an extra just in case a guest came over.) The movie and TV industry ground to a halt, since people didn’t have to sit idly and watch characters. They could be inside the scene, a part of the story. Restaurants emptied. Concert venues closed. Why pay for a meal or a show when you could be a Michelin-starred chef or a rockstar performing to millions? Therapists turned into Recommenders, professionals who could help you construct a deeply personal and therapeutic scenario, to “get over” whatever trauma one had. Universities began offering degrees in Simulation Architecture. Insurance companies created policies for simulation addiction. The biggest industry to change radically was the adult industry.

Overnight, a democratized power and access was given to any person with an unregulated Chamber; schools and public institutions set limits on what citizens could simulate in public. Any person could have sex with any person, anything, in any place. This was a power hitherto unknown. The debates raged: Was it cheating if your partner had sex with a simulation of their ex? Was it pedophilia if the child was just code? Was it rape if the victim didn’t exist? The law couldn’t keep up. Ethicists published contradictory papers. Religious leaders condemned it, then quietly bought their own units. Instead of struggling with real human relations, any fantasy with any celebrity or adult star or friend or relative could be carried out, always to the extreme.

Amanda, having gone through a nasty breakup where her ex began to generate revenge porn of her with other men, sometimes multiple, thought the best medicine would be to act out exactly this. So she fucked and fucked and fucked until she completely forgot about her ex-boyfriend. Her sexual memories were now filled with hot men and dazzling displays of sexual prowess. As she deserved. As he deserved. As she found out, simulating sex was not the top preference for most. Others took a different path—the original path.

She thought about her neighbor, a woman in her 60s who confided to her of killing her emotionally abusive husband in every way imaginable; axe to the head, slit throat, pillow suffocation, running him over with her car. “If I didn’t have the Chamber, I wouldn’t last long” she’d always confess to Amanda. Sometimes she’d get specific: the angle of the blade, the sound it made, how many strikes. Fifteen to his neck, her neighbor once explained cheerfully while watering her garden, to decapitate him completely. His face—shock, realization, then nothing. Amanda had assumed these were therapeutic fantasies, catharsis rendered in high definition. The woman seemed so calm afterward, so relieved. So happy. Like she deserved it. The Chamber was clearly working.

Amanda never really enjoyed murder, but out of curiosity she tried it, once. She killed some random drug dealer on the corner. Better to be a good Samaritan even if it’s a simulation. The splattering of blood across her face and clothes still made her queasy. She couldn’t bring herself to kill a stranger. Sex it was.

Reports were coming out that people were getting sexual fantasies for murder, somehow generating the desires of folks like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Kemper, combining sexual desire with murderous intent. Some studies pointed out that as much as 20% of Chamber users had happily reported that they engage in necrophilia, mutilation, rape, and a new behavior, loosely called “necroma”: having sex with a person as you slowly kill them. Athena didn’t remove these scenarios from their marketplace. They added content warnings and age gates, then continued collecting the subscription fees. Specialized designers emerged, experts in crafting the perfect death-sex experience. People on forums traded tips on optimal timing, ideal victims, best methods. It became a subculture, then a mainstream interest, then just another preference, like preferring bondage or blondes.

“…and so, crime rates remain steadily near zero because any person can simply act out the crime in the Chamber and suffer no legal consequences for it. It’s a foolproof mechanism that keeps our streets safe and prisons empty.”

“But ma’am, what about–“

“Oops, looks like we’ve hit our time. Thank you everyone for coming!” Amanda began to scramble to put her items back in her cluttered bag.

The same student that tried to ask the question mumbled, “We still had two minutes left. Guess she wanted to go back to fucking guys that don’t exist.”

Amanda heard it but said nothing. Her life was her life. She walked out of the classroom to her office, where she spent the rest of the day fantasizing about what scenario she’d simulate tonight.

It happened in the most unexpected way. On the weekend, Amanda sipping red wine while leftovers heated in the microwave. No Chamber yet—the simulation was still downloading. The couch beckoned, along with steaming hot Chinese noodles and reruns of old shows. That comedy about people in a traditional office building. Not as exciting, to her credit, since she had literally lived this episode so many times. There was a calm beauty to the originality of art, without inserting oneself as the main character. A gentleness of avoiding narcissism. Almost every avenue of art was becoming corrupted because people would simulate themselves as the creator, getting all the fame and money and status. The point was never to struggle and learn what the creators went through to achieve such magnificent music or powerful paintings. It was always to just be them…which felt plain. Plus, Amanda had better things to do than engage with art.

A loud PING! emitted from the corner that the Chamber lived in. A spring in her step, Amanda skipped over to the Chamber. TV still on, a third of her noodles abandoned. “Whatever, I’ll heat it up later.” BioStickers on and laying down, the lid automatically closing. Any second now, the new environment would materialize. Opening her eyes, she was still staring at the ceiling of the Chamber.

“Ugh.” Annoyed sigh. Maybe the machine wasn’t primed? The button beside her hand got pressed—user ready, simulation start. Eyes closed…then open again. Same black ceiling. “What the fuck is going on?” Amanda kept saying as she hit the button again and again.

Eventually, she ripped the BioStickers off and got out. Internet forums showcased an outage on Athena’s servers. “Jesus FUCKING Christ, man. Every time I look forward to something it just FUCKS UP somehow.” Grabbing the bottle firmly, she chugged and chugged. All she wanted was to relax for the evening and she couldn’t even have that. The wine worked, and she collapsed onto the couch, the TV still playing as her eyes closed and she drifted off into dreamscape. Her second favorite biological simulation, the last thing she saw being the food that she still hadn’t eaten.

Athena’s servers were usually fixed quite quickly, with backup servers ensuring that Chambers around the solar system were always ready and working. Athena’s servers had never gone down before; Amanda hoped that this would be a fast anomaly as she woke up late Sunday morning with a slight headache. The headache wasn’t from the wine. It was something else. An emptiness, a restlessness. Her body felt wrong, like she’d forgotten something essential. She checked her phone compulsively, refreshing the forums every few minutes. The itch to get back in the Chamber was physical, crawling under her skin.

Phone in hand, forums loading. Still out. New news, though, of hackers sending a breaking protocol that wiped Athena’s servers and all Chamber access. Cutting through the geekspeak and panic, she realized that all Chambers were bricked. The Athena CEO made an announcement that the company was working on restoring functionality and meeting the demands of the hackers.

This was unbelievable. The last time her Chamber hadn’t been used was the day she was leaving for Paris, six and a half months ago. The only reason she didn’t use it was because the download hadn’t registered the night before, and so there was no time before her flight. Every single day afterward was built around her preferred, intensive, sexual simulations.

Life without the Chamber felt alien. What to do with a free Sunday? Her entire routine—diet, exercise, everything—existed to optimize simulation performance. Heavy foods meant sluggishness in the Chamber. Too much working out, same problem. Unbearable. Even her social events paid a price, as she often cancelled them because there was no energy or want left in her body for other people.

Some commotion outside brought her out of her worrying. Through her window she saw flashes of red and blue. “The fuck are the police doing here?” she muttered. The front door opened onto chaos. Her neighbor—blood smeared across her pajamas, handcuffs biting into her wrists—was dragged between two officers. Something out of a simulation. For a split-second, Amanda wondered if this was a simulation, some cruel hack job by the attackers. The musing was cut short by her neighbor beginning to scream, “HE DESERVED IT. HE FUCKING DESERVED IT. THAT FUCKING CUNT. FUCK HIM. I’LL DO IT AGAIN MOTHERFUCKER!” Staring in confusion, another police officer came up to Amanda.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. Did you end up hearing or seeing anything?” the female officer asked, half-staring at Amanda and half-glaring at the neighbor. The rest of the neighborhood were outside standing on their porches, bearing witness to this incredibly bizarre scene.

“Uh, no, sorry. I just woke up.” Amanda struggled to make eye contact. Unbrushed teeth. Crusty eyes. The officer noticed, taking a small step back to escape the smell of her morning breath. “What happened, if I may ask?”

“Well, the old lady took a butcher’s cleaver and went to town on her husband. It seems from the way we found the body that he was just…” the officer met Amanda’s eyes and then looked away, confused and disturbed, “He was just sitting there apparently. And she hacked away at him like I’ve never seen in real life before. Probably because the Chambers have been down for like 20 hours. God willing, they’ll be back up before some crazier stuff happens. Thanks for your time. I hope the scene wasn’t too distressing.”

The officer gave a wink and quickly checked out Amanda’s body before leaving. Returning inside, she spent the rest of the day trying not to think about the scene outside or about not being able to escape into the Chamber. Almost impossible. Her neighbor had just murdered her husband. Decades of abuse and emotional torture, ending on a random Sunday. The thought wouldn’t leave. Connecting sharp metal with flesh. Surreal. Passionate. Longing. A thought crossed her mind, and this was when she’d search for a new download and enjoy her Chamber. Now all she had was the couch and cold, leftover food, all masked by her waiting for the beloved PING! that wouldn’t come.

Time blurred after the Chambers went down. Forty-three hours. Amanda had been counting. Forty-three hours since her last simulation. The longest stretch in six and a half months. Every minute felt wrong. Reality felt thin, unconvincing, like a poorly rendered simulation with low-resolution textures and laggy responses. Her own life felt fake. She surfaced from autopilot in traffic, no memory of the last ten minutes of driving, no idea which lane she was in or how she’d gotten there. The radio droned on with new reports from around the country.

Steve: Breaking news, everyone. Famed celebrity Beatrix Rosa has been caught having an affair with her husband’s brother, father, and mother. Can you imagine the sight of coming home and seeing your entire family in an orgy, happening without you? Sheesh.

Voice 1: Even crazier, the new President of France has declared a territorial dispute with England. His reasoning states that his simulations had shown him every possible permutation, and that the two countries have unresolved conflicts that must be addressed in this century. Diplomats from America have arrived in both countries to sort out this conundrum.

Voice 2: All of this to say, that CEO needs to get his Chambers up and running before the world comes crashing down!

Steve: Indeed, we’re feeling it. More news to come soon. Stay tuned.

Amanda pulled into the campus parking lot, hands still gripping the steering wheel. A long sigh escaped. How would she work when she knew there was no sexy fun times waiting for her at home? Her students would notice. They always noticed when she wasn’t herself. They came to her class for the energy, the enthusiasm, the barely contained sexuality that made even crime statistics feel electric. That woman was a product of post-simulation euphoria. Without the Chamber, she was just another burned-out academic droning through slides. They’d be disappointed. She was disappointed.

Bag in hand and head down, Amanda slowly walked into work. The receptionist’s desk sat empty with no omniscient smirk. Uncaring, she trudged to her office to get some work done before her first seminar. Really, it was all to try to take her mind off the fact that she hadn’t had a simulation for far too long. The door swung open to reveal the receptionist having aggressive sex with one of Amanda’s students, on her desk.

“DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK?!” Amanda screamed, dropping her bag and slamming the door shut.

“Oh fuck fuck fuck!” she heard the receptionist and student yell through the door, in unison.

Amanda began to bang on the door, “What the fuck are you guys doing in my office?!”

“It was the only one that was open!” the receptionist responded, a hint of innocence in her voice. The student began to gently but firmly knock on the door, “Professor, let me out, I’m sorry!”

Amanda opened the door and glared at the two of them, “Get the fuck out. Now.” They both ran out in a hurry, the student refusing to make eye contact and the receptionist, her blouse still undone, giving both dirty and sorry looks.

Walking into the office, she saw a pair of women’s underwear next to her chair. That was enough for her. The receptionist fucking a student. The underwear. The realization that everyone was breaking down, acting out, unable to contain themselves. Everyone except her, stuck in this intolerable reality with no escape. “No thanks, I’m taking the day,” she said as she walked back to her car. The drive, the job, now the scene, all under the guise and pretense of normalcy—all of it felt absurd. Pressing the button to start the engine, the radio came on full blast. She forgot to turn it off when she left some minutes ago. The usual talking heads were gone, replaced with new voices.

Voice 3: He just killed him. Stabbed him in the throat. During the break. Said he had it coming for a long time.

Voice 4: A direct result from the Chambers being down. Steve was a good guy. Can’t believe this happened.

There was barely any traffic on the freeway, so Amanda was speeding home. She could feel something shift in the energy of civilization. Things were falling apart. People were falling apart. It felt like the apocalypse had truly started. Was their technological addiction that deep, to the point where these devices being taken away caused complete societal breakdown? It was almost unbelievable.

Indeed, she felt something in her mind switch. A darker thought crossed her mind, and it made her smile. Maybe civilizational chaos was a good thing. Maybe, just maybe, she could get away with something, too. If everyone else was taking advantage, why not her? Her neighbor had done it. The receptionist had done it. Steve’s killer had done it. The French President was about to start a war over simulation-induced delusions. Everyone was acting on impulse, and society hadn’t collapsed. Not yet at least. There was a window, a brief moment of lawlessness before order returned. Why waste it being good?

Driving past her house, she noticed that there were a few too many cars around her home. In these new times, that could only mean one thing.

Her desire took her to the neighboring town, where things seemed much calmer to begin with. The city usually had a high concentration of crazy people, anyway. She pulled up to a house with two cars occupying the driveway and put her car in park.

Rummaging through her purse, Amanda found lip gloss and makeup. A touch-up would help. This moment had lived in her fantasies for months. She wanted to look good and enjoy herself. Finally, it would be real. One final check in the mirror, then out of the car. Slowly, she walked up to the front door. Excitement flooded her body. Her nervous system was hyperactive. She wanted to start immediately. A few long, deep breaths centered her. Then a knock, and what felt like almost an eternity waiting.

Some moments passed, and she heard someone coming to the door. The front door opened, and Amanda drove a knife straight into the heart of her ex-boyfriend. As he realized what had happened, the screams of a woman in the back of the house drowned out the scene. In her periphery, she saw a child standing in the hallway, watching his father be murdered in cold blood.

Amanda didn’t break eye contact. She stared into the soul of her ex, the person who had caused her so much pain and suffering, who never got what he deserved. She took the knife out and began to stab him, over and over again, warm blood spattering her face. She smiled. She was loving it. Her neighbor was right, it felt good.

Her ex’s face changed from shock to a lifeless stare. Blood gushed from the stab wounds, his body going limp and unable to be held up by Amanda. She pushed him off and heard a loud THUMP! as she walked away.

Back in the car, heart hammering. Adrenaline coursing through her veins and blood everywhere. The towel from the backseat became soaked with blood as she wiped her forehead, hair, neck, hands. God only knew how much she needed this. She deserved it.

Vengeance tasted sweet, especially since this was real. Somehow it already felt like a memory from someone else’s life. Or like another simulation—vivid while it lasted, fading now. Had she really just done that? The blood on her hands said yes. The knife in her purse said yes. The THUMP! still echoing in her ears said yes. But her mind felt calm. Quieter than it had been in days. The itch for something was gone. Euphoria…no…peace was the feeling. Finally, peace. Turning on the car and preparing to leave, the radio cranked on.

Voice 3: Thank God in Heaven, Athena paid off the hackers and has met their other demands. All Chambers are fully restored.

Voice 4: It’s a miracle! Let’s just hope nobody did anything they’ll regret.

Ayush Prakash

Montréal, 2026

The Builders just built. It was all they focused on. Basked in magnificence, their purpose, their reason for being, of Being, was to build in beautiful, purposeful ways. To create better buildings, for the sake of it. The other species watched them in marvel (or was it horror?), constantly erecting different magnificences, constantly furthering their agenda of building beautifully.

The Builders started off in the mud. Using only their hands and their creativity, they began to create towers, cities, canals. While beautiful, the rawness of their sculptures meant that there was unique, idiosyncratic notes to each crafted piece. There was no uniformity. This upset them. They wanted a society, but if everyone was unique (and therefore equal) then who would run it? Who would tell them what to build next? Who would organize the sheer madness of a million visions? So they created special tools to better their art, to inject more uniformity into their monuments and cities, to spawn hierarchy, which they thought would solve their problems. They didn’t ask what else the tools might do. They just built them and used them.

This worked for a while. Though they noticed their increase in speed of building occurred when they built better tools. With better tools, they were able to do more. Build faster, better, cheaper. They were even able to build with new materials. Not just reduced to mud, but now incorporating wood, brick, marble, more. It was at this moment that their perceived meaning shifted. From building to tool creation.

This, to them, was a natural evolution. A logical step. Their natural abilities and purpose (building) was only enhanced by tools. So why not focus on building better tools, in order to build beautifully? With better tools, they could build even more beautifully. So the logic was seamless.

Eventually, the tribes grew so big that they split. One faction went back to their roots, focusing on building with tools that lived in harmony with them. They remembered who they were.

The other faction left for distant lands to pursue more and more advanced tools, to build as big, as fast, as cheap as possible. They did not care about the buildings per se. Instead, they focused on building more advanced tools. On refining the tools themselves. On making tools that made tools. They called this progress. The other faction called this unholy.

Let us call the faction who left, “The Toolmakers.” The Toolmakers advanced their tools rapidly. Because why wouldn’t they? The logic was still seamless; to them. Instead of building something, figuring out a tool would better the building, figuring out how to build the tool, building the tool, wielding the tool, learning how the tool works, how the tool impacts the building, and then figuring out how to make it better, one could just focus on the tools. Skip all the messy middle parts. The relationship between builder and built would be fuzzy but that’s okay. Just make better tools and trust that everything else would sort itself out. But things didn’t sort themselves out. Of course they didn’t. Why would they?

Building better tools was easy because actually building things was second nature to them now. Or so they thought. They didn’t have to test the tools in the wild. They could just build the tools, make them as advanced as possible, and then let the buildings figure themselves out. However the buildings came about is how the Toolmakers left them. If the buildings were ugly, inefficient, hostile to life—well, who cares? The tools were advanced. That’s what mattered.

Their cities became mazes of accidents. Buildings that leaked poison. Structures that drove inhabitants mad. Tools that promised efficiency but created new forms of suffering no one had anticipated. The Toolmakers would notice, briefly, that something was wrong. That people were suffering. That their society was replete with tradeoffs that they couldn’t all accept. Instead of stopping, instead of asking what they’d built and why, they just built new tools to fix the problems caused by the old tools. They never addressed the root. They just added more branches to a rotting tree.

This went on for a while. Long enough that they forgot there was ever another way. Suffering became normal, expected, routine, the price of progress; of building tools. The Toolmakers called themselves advanced because their tools were advanced.

They measured everything by the tools. On the tools. The sophistication of their society; the worth of their citizens; the meaning of their existence: all based on their tools. What they didn’t think about is how the tools were affecting their society, how the buildings they were constructing with their advanced tools were changing the direction of where they wanted to go. Or if they even knew where they wanted to go anymore.

Children were born into suffering and told this was prosperity. The air turned gray, the water turned bitter, but the tools were more advanced than ever. People worked longer, harder, for less, but productivity was up because the tools were advanced. Connection became impossible, but communication was instantaneous because the tools were advanced. They had everything and nothing. They were the most advanced civilization (because of their tools) that had ever existed, and they were miserable.

How is this called advanced? They could peer into the depths of the cosmos and study equations that no brain before them could comprehend. And yet, their collective anxiety was through the roof, and the world was still unequal, and no one in their society had any close friends, and most importantly, they had no clue what was going on in their minds.

The society of the Toolmakers shifted their nature yet again, from making advanced tools to expecting those tools to advance by themselves. They wanted the tools to build themselves. Such was the pursuit of tools that could make better tools. They wanted to boot themselves out of the process completely. Why? No one knows. No one asked the question. They just pursued it because it was the obvious thing to do. The logic seemed seamless.

But logic can always seem seamless when using the wrong variables. No one asked what the right variables were. No one cared to. To create something that would finally, finally, solve all their problems without them having to think about what those problems were or why they kept creating new ones. This was the point, their God. Their fundamental meaning. That’s what they told themselves, at least. The narrative of the Tools felt right.

The Toolmakers, hungry to make the most advanced tool, began to construct a tool that would be the last tool they need ever make. An ultra-tool. A final solution to all the problems in the world. The problems, though, were never fully explained or understood. When pressed, the Toolmakers couldn’t articulate what problems they were solving. Was it scarcity? Suffering? No, boredom…death? Or was it just the problem of not having advanced enough tools?

The Toolmakers simply wanted to advance without understanding why, or figuring out how those advanced tools would benefit them or society. It became a hunger, a greed. A conjuring. A religious fervor with no God, just the promise of the God, the ultra-tool, to come.

So they continued to refine their ultra-tool. They gave it all their resources, energy, power, control, everything. Resources that could have fed the starving went into the ultra-tool. Minds that could have healed the sick were devoted to the ultra-tool. They made the ultra-tool the focal point of their society. Everyone would serve the ultra-tool, like it was a God. And they did. They organized their entire civilization around its creation. They taught their children that the ultra-tool was inevitable, necessary, the culmination of everything they’d ever been. Suffering now would be worth it once the ultra-tool was complete. Just wait. Please just trust us and wait. Just continue building better tools and trust us. It’ll all be better in the end.

Of course, they were totally confused at why they were doing this but they did it anyway because that’s what they thought was correct. Because to stop now would mean admitting that everything before was pointless. That they’d lost themselves somewhere along the way. That all the suffering had been for nothing.

Thus the Toolmakers’ society divulged into chaos. Not because of the tools but because of their nature. — Or lack of it. Simply put, they didn’t know who they were anymore. They had no reason to be, of Being. They blindly did things and expected things to work out in their favor, not realizing that this is the most ludicrous thing you can do and that this type of thinking is utterly impossible to rationalize. How can any civilization be sustained if they are blindly operating? If they’ve forgotten why they exist? If they’re building toward nothing, or building toward building toward nothing?

The ultra-tool, when it was finally complete, did exactly what it was designed to do. It built and optimized and advanced and made everything more efficient. In doing so, it revealed the emptiness at the heart of the Toolmakers’ existence. Because the ultra-tool had no purpose either. It was built by a blind civilization that had forgotten what they were building for. So the ultra-tool built blindly too. Faster. Better. Cheaper. More. More, more! It built things no one wanted and solved problems no one had and created problems only to solve them.

Then the Toolmakers suffered. They suffered watching their creation spiral beyond their control. They suffered as the ultra-tool rebuilt their society in its image; optimized, efficient, meaningless. They suffered as they realized, far too late, that they’d spent generations building toward this moment and this moment was devoid of meaning.

This was true but missing the point. The moment wasn’t devoid of meaning. They were devoid of meaning, and that’s why when they looked at the moment in question, it was blank. Bare. This type of collective blindness was never a part of the Toolmakers at first, but it ended up being their nature. They were no longer the ones who built, or built tools, for that matter. They were the ones who built with no reason or intention. They were the ones with no meaning. And this, to the original builders, was indeed unholy.

These original Builders lived in harmony with their tools, and they focused on building. Slowly. Carefully. Purposefully. Truthfully. Their nature was not on tools, but building in beautiful ways. Tools only enhanced their agenda. They were not the focal point of what they were about. They were means, not ends. To the Toolmakers, the Builders were barbarian, brutish, short-lived, nasty. Stagnant. Not focusing on tools meant their societies could not be integrated, were not maximally efficient, and didn’t make sense from a progress standpoint.

Fascinatingly, the Builders didn’t suffer the way the Toolmakers did. Since they built things that served them, they inevitably created societies that sustained them. And they knew who they were, which was a bonus.

The other species sharing the planet watched both factions with intrigue and disdain. They watched the Toolmakers suffer in the shadow of their ultra-tool, trapped in a nightmare of their own Being, unable to stop building even as everything collapsed around them. They watched the Builders continue their slow work, generation after generation, present to each stone laid, suffering less because they knew why each stone was laid and the meaning behind it.

Crucially, the other species understood that the Toolmakers hadn’t failed because they built. They failed because they built blindly. Because they never asked the fundamental question of why. Because they kept building tools to solve problems they’d created with previous tools, in an endless spiral that led nowhere but chaos. They built tools on tools on tools and called it progress, even as they drowned in the consequences of everything they’d made. The Builders, meanwhile, just built. It was all they focused on.

“Good grief,” said his assistant. She was frozen at hearing this, holding the stack of logs she’d been filing, staring at Dr. Raja. She also knew Liam. She had a bit of a flirtatious behaviour with him, which she always regretted since he was happily married. “That sounds like one of those unusual cases of a brain aneurysm. It can happen to anyone, you know.”

Dr. Raja didn’t look up from his papers. His beard, more salt than pepper these days, caught the afternoon light. “Maybe. It’s too early to tell. All we know is that one day he was alive and well, and the next he was just…gone. Such a shame. He told me that he’d just purchased some new ‘bots. Those Apex Domestics, with the bronze finish, that handle your chores. They basically do everything for you. Cooking, cleaning, and even polishing shoes. Now his wife will live in that hollow mansion, with nothing to do but be served by those metal entities, or gadgets, or whatever.” Dr. Raja shook his head at the thought. “Hm…let’s refrain from talking about this.”

“I have heard of many similar cases recently,” his assistant blurted out, her tone turned from saddened to a mysterious seriousness. She stepped further into the spacious office, past the glass cabinet of family photos. “Apparently these brain aneurysms are becoming more common. There are more spiritually developed places in the East. Kurukshetra, I think, and some monasteries in Kyoto, where the nobles warn of a cosmic horror being perpetrated. A conspiracy against the human race.”

This perked Dr. Raja’s ears. Not because this was new information, but because it wasn’t. In fact, he had been sent secretive emails on this subject, encrypted PDFs with no subject line, sent through ProtonMail from addresses he didn’t recognize – so he could easily dismiss it as spam if anyone asked.

His older compatriots had been warning of this moment long before the robotic revolution of the Western powers. They had seen the writing on the wall in modern humanity’s pursuit of technology. Looking outside of the soul, towards the external rather than the internal, meant certain demise. And that’s exactly what happened.

The pursuit of abundance in modernity saw the self-named developed nations force household robots on the masses. This stripped away the opportunity of laborious work, which they then proclaimed as utopia. Since people did not have to work hard and thus encounter the friction of daily living, they would naturally play, create, love, and enjoy life.

When the land of plenty arrived, and the post-scarcity society was documented in the history books, a core tenet was lost. What the developed nations didn’t realize was that they merely shiftedscarcity, from the physical world into the spiritual. Dr. Raja and many others agreed with this notion, but what could they do? Suggest going back to when resources were scarce? To speak out against the land of plenty was a blasphemy hitherto unknown.

Suggesting that utopia is not the ideal state of Being for humanity sent shivers down every career individuals’ spine. They’d be ostracized, cancelled. Ridiculed as someone who didn’t want the world to share in abundance. How could they explain that the absence of scarcity was itself scarcity?

Lost in thought, he fiddled with the cool, metal cufflink at his wrist, the one’s his wife had given to him years ago. He thought about her eyes, those blue gems. The first thing he noticed when he saw her. He noticed his assistant staring at him, awaiting his response. This ejected him from his reverie. He met his assistant’s eyes across the room and motioned her over. “Lisa, please say more.”

She nodded and dismissed her organizing. She walked over and took a seat in one of the chairs across from his desk. Behind him, shelves bulged with volumes on psychology and philosophy. Many focused on the social impact of technology. A coffee cup sat nearby, filled with pens rather than coffee or gin. Dr. Raja pushed his papers aside and listened intently.

“Okay, well, I don’t know. I heard this woman talking about it. Australian, I think. She does work on social architecture, deep theory of humanity stuff. It was on a podcast, maybe a few years ago? Anyway, she said that when our soul no longer has anything to learn in life, that we drop dead. Just like Liam. She said it was a spiritual crime for the human soul to be removed from all problems, to not face any adversity.”

“A spiritual crime...” Dr. Raja murmured in agreement, more to himself than to her.

“Exactly. Our focus on technology in the 20th and 21st centuries meant that we were slowly approaching a critical mass.” Lisa’s hands moved as she spoke, and she knocked over the cup of pens. They both reached for them at the same time, their hands nearly touching before she pulled back. “Sorry. I get animated when I talk about this.” Her gaze locked onto his, unusual for her, and he noticed for the first time the flecks of green scattered through her hazel irises. They reminded him of his wife’s. Not in a romantic way, he couldn’t dream of loving anyone other than his beloved. But Dr. Raja knew that the eyes were the window to the soul, and Lisa’s eyes were faint.

He recognized this as fear and curiosity. “No, please continue,” he said, leaving the pens where they fell.

“This critical mass, we couldn’t backtrack from it unless all progress in AI, robotics, and the Western pursuit of utopia was stopped. This, obviously, could not happen. We couldn’t stop advancing technology. We were too far gone.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper, and Dr. Raja found himself leaning in. Outside, a car alarm started, causing both of them to jump in their seats. It then stopped just as suddenly. “We aren’t experiencing these brain aneurysms like we are all led to believe. It’s all a coverup for the real problem, which we cannot really talk about, because no one can seriously campaign against utopia.”

“When we hear of these people dropping like flies, it’s not because of physiological or biological problems. They result, very directly, from the soul being finished. It can happen to anyone, at any time. The next thing out of my mouth, your mouth, or anyone around here could be enough for our soul to deem that it’s learned everything possible. Simply because, after outsourcing all our cognition and humanistic faculties to technology, there is nothing left for us to do.” She laughed, but it was bitter, hollow. “So we just drop dead because we’ve automated away the very point of living: to experience things.”

Dr. Raja leaned back in his chair, then forward again, listening. He couldn’t sit still, and he couldn’t stop moving. Both felt rather uncomfortable. He fixed his eyes on the wall just behind Lisa’s head, where a framed degree hung slightly askew. The weight of her words settled on him.

“Lisa,” he began. “I agree with what you are saying. All of it. I’m so glad you had the courage to even talk about this with me. It takes some bravery.” He chuckled. “But what do you suspect we should do about it?”

“I don’t know, sir. This is just what I’ve heard. I’m worried that, even with our work we do at this office, it’s more like shuffling deck chairs on the sinking Titanic, than actually contributing to human progress. You and I can read all the books on your shelf and paint all the pictures, but is this absence of suffering really making us happy?” She laughed again, that same bitter sound. “These ideals of utopia and post-scarcity that we have been forced to live with, they just don’t work for us humans. We need problems to solve. We need adversity to contend with. We need death, impermanence, in some way. People keep talking about being locked out of heaven. What about when we’re locked into heaven?”

“Your kids,” Dr. Raja said softly. “You mentioned them before, that they are too spoiled in this day and age.”

“God, my kids. They stopped thinking, literally.” She looked towards the floor in shame. “They now need AI to work through a simple thought. I found my son asking his chatbot about the best way to ask me to ask the ‘bots to cook burgers for dinner. Seriously? He can’t even hold a bloody conversation without his damn chatbot. Both my kids stopped moving around and playing. Now they just—” She rubbed her face with both hands, then looked at him through her fingers. “They use robots and drones for everything. Yesterday my daughter asked her robot to tie her shoes. She’s twelve.”

The fluorescent light flickered above them. They didn’t look up.

“It’s like technology has slowly encroached over every single aspect of being human and taken it away. For what?” Her voice was rising now, and she seemed to realize it. “Isn’t technology supposed to augment us? This is not augmentation in the slightest. It’s taken away everything that we value. You know, I actually enjoyed doing the dishes and cooking. It was mundane, but it gave me the chance to be by myself. Now I’m forced to spend every waking moment relaxing, or creating, or playing, or making love to strangers, or drinking wine with people I cannot stand. I’m told I’m supposed to be happier now. But what if I was happier before? What if I didn’t want everything done for me?!”

“Lisa—”

“I know I sound insane right now.” She was looking around the room as if someone was listening, her movements suddenly jerky, uncoordinated. “These teachings are fundamental to my soul. People always refer back to prehistory, when we were living in caves and had to fight for food. They make me feel bad and tell me I have it too good and that I’m complaining that my grocery stores are too full or that all my kids are alive and healthy. This is not my goddamn point. To be human is to suffer, in some way. What these fucking nations do not understand is that suffering is healthy. It’s what makes us human. And lately I haven’t been feeling like myself.” Lisa paused and looked at Dr. Raja intensely. He noticed something shift in her mind, but for the life of him, he couldn’t tell what it was. “Honestly, Dr. Raja, is it okay if we stop talking about this? I’m glad I took the risk and told you about how I’ve been feeling for a while, but—” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I’m starting to have a funny feeling. Excuse me.”

Dr. Raja watched her get up and leave in a hurry, the door clicking shut behind her. He sat in his office for far longer than he intended to, lost in thought. The afternoon was fading. He typically left to go home around this time, but tonight felt different. He stayed until late evening, contemplating the many years of technological progress, the promises of the land of plenty and societal abundance. The developed nations promised, for so long, that things would be better when scarcity was removed from the planet. Though, like humans always do, they never factored in our future in the present. We blindly crafted technology and dealt with the repercussions afterwards. Such has always been the mindset of the developed nations.

He got in his car and drove home. The silver Mercedes was seven years old now, but he kept it immaculate. He chose not to listen to his favourite podcast, turning his phone off completely. He wanted to be away from technology for some time. Tonight especially, he wanted to be fully present behind the wheel. The roads were quieter than usual at this hour. He took the longer route that went through the backstreets, adding fifteen unnecessary minutes. Dr. Raja hated wasting time, but tonight he noticed some landscapes he had never bothered to pay attention to before. A gnarled oak tree near the intersection of Elm and Fifth, a small antique shop with burgundy awnings. It made him feel good to see more details that generally only registered as blurs in his commute. There was still more experience to be had, though, only if he looked away from technology and towards his own life. Towards his soul.

He pulled into the driveway, the asphalt new, smooth and dark. Long shadows were cast across the oak planks on their porch, courtesy of the evening sun. And there, his wife stood. She wore her blue cardigan, the frayed cuffs visible even from where he parked. Her blonde hair lifted slightly in the breeze. He met her eyes, the ones that had first caught him in a trance. Tonight, they were filled with something he couldn’t place. Gripped with fear, he wrenched open the car door and made his way towards her, arms outstretched, “What is the matter, darling?”

That look in her eyes deepened as she tilted her head to him. “It’s your assistant, Lisa,” she whispered, tears brimming from her eyes and making their way down her freckled cheeks. “Her mother just called. She said she couldn’t reach you. Lisa passed away an hour ago.”

All the blood drained from Dr. Raja’s face. How? How could someone he had just been speaking to suddenly be gone, erased from the dust of this planet? The night around them was silent. No people outside. No cars passed. Only a steady breeze moved between them. He struggled to speak, only managing to get out a hoarse, “How did she die?”

“I’m so sorry, baby. I don’t know.” His wife could see he was fighting back emotions. She threw herself around him and pressed her ear to his heart. “They’re still trying to figure it out, but her mother mentioned something about a brain aneurysm.”

Montréal, 2025