Photo by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash

I took a long time to finish this one, to fit all the pieces into place. As usual for me, the spark came from contemplating where current trends are taking us, which led me to a single core idea: an inversion, if you will. The rest of the story, with all of its lust, intrigue, and corporate optimization, grew from there. I hope you enjoy it.

Content warning: sexual content; coercive and threatening behavior; assault.

ANGEL IS ALWAYS EIGHTEEN

The reception desk was staffed with humans, and visitors signed in the old-fashioned way: leather-bound ledger, pen on a chain, a friendly face. There were the usual facial scans and biometric tests, but they stayed in the background: you’d never notice them if you didn’t know they were there. But Olivia noticed.

A promotional loop was playing on the monitor above. Over images of smiling faces and satisfied customers, a warm, comforting voice was describing Pragma’s companion suite. Tina: a face you will dream of, a mind you will love.

The attendant slid a visitor’s card across the desk. Olivia inspected it: an actual card, on matte white paper. Her name had been printed while she signed in. On the other side, the corporate logo: Better, Always, in raised gold letters. She slipped it into the holder, clipped it to her blouse, and walked to the elevator bank.

The same loop was playing there. Angel: innocent, inexperienced, willing to learn. Eighteen, now and always. Olivia looked up at the screen, then back at the elevator doors, checking her hair in the reflection.

After a few moments, the elevator arrived. She straightened her collar, pulled down her jacket sleeves, stepped in, and moved to the back.

The interview room was frosted glass on three sides. Olivia sat at a round table, bare except for a jug of water and two clean glasses. The chair opposite was empty, but Olivia knew who’d be filling it.

Julie Stokes, VP Ethics and Compliance, four years with Pragma and six years at WholeMind before that. Leaned forward when engaging, tightened her mouth slightly before disagreeing. Prominent industry figure and passionate advocate for the mental health benefits of AI companionship.

She’d been saying this stuff for so long, she probably believed it.

The door opened. Julie was shorter in person, a well-groomed woman in her mid-forties with expensive shoes and a welcoming smile.

They shook hands. Olivia mirrored her pressure precisely, then retook her seat, folding her hands in her lap.

Julie opened a tablet. “Thanks for coming in, Olivia. We really liked your application. Fantastic grades — and your essay had some great insights.” She paused as she inspected Olivia’s face. “I have to say — you look so young. I wouldn’t have guessed you’d finished your undergraduate degree already.”

Olivia smiled warmly. “Thank you,” she said, “you’re not the first person to say that”.

“I bet I’m not.” Julie’s stylus paused over the tablet. “I know you’ve jumped through quite a lot of hoops to get this far, but you’ll be pleased to know this is the final stage before we select a candidate. Anything you want to ask me before we begin?”

“Well, there was one thing I noticed downstairs,” Olivia said. “The manual sign-in. You don’t see that much anymore.”

Julie’s smile broadened. “I know! I just love that about this place. It’s a real touch of class. And it’s not just the front desk. You’ll be amazed how many of our records here are paper files, can you believe it? Actual paper? It’s part of the culture here.” She leaned in slightly, as if sharing a secret. “Sometimes the old-fashioned ways are the best.”

Olivia nodded her agreement.

Julie held Olivia’s eyes for a few seconds, as if studying them. “Now let’s get into it. I see there’s no work experience listed on your application. Most of my questions will ask about specific situations — and apologies in advance, some of them are quite challenging — and most people draw on their working experiences for their answers.”

“Sure. Well, I wanted to focus all my energy on my education. But I’ve been involved in a lot outside of class. Student societies, mentoring, sports. I got a lot out of those experiences, and in some ways I think they’ve been more instructive than anything I could have learned in an office.”

She watched Julie process this — a slight hesitation, then apparent acceptance.

Julie already liked her. She wanted to be convinced.

Julie set her stylus down. “In a moment, I’ll ask you some competency questions. But before that, please tell me in your own words what you know about us and why you’d be a good fit.”

Olivia was ready.

“One thing I really admire about Pragma is the leading role it takes in research, not just marketing. You’ve revolutionized how society responds to the loneliness crisis.” Julie listened attentively.

“A lot of companies say they care,” Olivia continued, “but Pragma is actually reaching the people who’ve fallen through the gaps. Pragma helps people who don’t have anyone else. I want to be part of that. And the Ethics Division is where that all starts.”

Julie leaned back a little after Olivia finished, and made a note. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

She clicked her stylus. “Right. First question—

“Tell me about a time when you had to do something that scared you, but you did it anyway.”

PAUL

She could feel the atmosphere change when she walked in. A couple seated near the door looked up. The man tried hard not to stare, but still kept his eyes on her as long as he dared. The two at the bar didn’t try to hide it. Eventually, she’d stop noticing, but not yet. For a while at the beginning, it took every bit of courage she could muster just to walk through the door.

Olivia didn’t blame them for looking; her outfit was quite something. Shirt tied off, tiny plaid skirt, knee-high socks, and the headband that held back her shoulder-length blond hair. Not everyone could pull it off. In those early days, she wasn’t yet certain that she could.

Paul was already seated, a slight man in his early sixties in his best shirt and a jacket that was slightly too big for him now. He started beaming the moment he saw her, and scrambled to his feet.

“Hi there,” he said, holding out his hand tentatively.

“Hi, Paul.” She ignored his outstretched hand, leaned over, and kissed him gently on the cheek. He seemed to freeze, as if startled by the intimacy, but it was the right move.

He pulled out her chair. He bumped the table as he sat down, so hard that one of the wine glasses nearly toppled.

“Sorry. A bit nervous.” He paused awkwardly, looking down at the tableware. “Isn’t that ridiculous? After all this time.”

She leaned forward and held his hands gently — two, three, four — then lifted her eyes to meet his. “It’s not ridiculous at all. It can take a little getting used to, but everyone does.”

Paul suggested wine for the both of them, but Olivia just smiled and raised her eyebrows a little, and he immediately realized his mistake. “Any craft kombucha is fine for me,” she told him.

The conversation turned to his wife, as it always did. “I was thinking about what you said last week. About keeping Patty’s garden going.”

Her earpiece buzzed, so imperceptibly that Paul didn’t notice, and she corrected her posture. “Absolutely. I don’t think it has anything to do with not letting go.”

“I replanted the tomatoes.” His voice caught. “She grew the best tomatoes on our street. Everyone said so.” Olivia nodded. She’d read all about the tomatoes. “But I’d let them go after… Anyway, I replanted them.”

There were a few rough spots. At one point, Paul mentioned someone called Margaret as if Olivia should know who she was, but she didn’t, not at first. She had it through the earpiece in less than a second, but still, her response was half a beat too slow. She saw confusion on his face for a moment, then he graciously moved on.

She went off script once. She hadn’t planned it; it just came out. About a saying of Patty’s. “My mom says that, too.” Her earpiece had buzzed immediately, and the sharp vibration against her ear made her stop mid-sentence. She could feel her face beginning to flush.

Again, Paul looked at her for just a moment, then let it pass. “Your mom sounds like a sensible lady,” he said kindly.

They were still talking at eleven, laughing now, something about Patty’s taste in films. Olivia glanced at her watch and yawned subtly. Paul nodded, held up his finger, and reached for his phone. “It’s been such a lovely evening. Do you mind?” He was already opening the camera.

“So sorry, Paul.” She touched his hand briefly. “Do you remember?” She shook her head gently, but held his eyes while she did.

His face fell, and he began to apologize in embarrassment. He’d forgotten.

He put his phone away, smoothed his jacket, suddenly self-conscious again. “Silly of me.”

“Not at all.” In a way, it was a victory for her that he’d forgotten.

Paul wasn’t her first, but her evening with him was the first time that it had started to feel natural. She was beginning to see how what she did could help people, and that she could do it well.

She’d wanted to be an offliner since she was 16, when she’d first heard about it. Serious money if you had what it took and worked your way up. It would fit around her classes: it was evening work mainly, and nights. All the performers used fake names, and no photos were allowed, so you could leave it behind, and she was going to leave it behind, all of it. She’d help her mom get out of that neighborhood, but the rest of them she’d leave in her dust.

She applied on her 18th birthday, and Persona hired her on the spot. She had wanted to be a Tina: strong, intelligent, independent. Who she was, and who she wanted to be. But they told her they had enough Tinas, and anyway, she was too young. So she became an Angel.

“Three hours’ notice!” Julie said, seemingly in awe. “And you only forgot one line? Did the audience pick up on it?”

“Some of them did. But I think an audience can tell when you’re really being genuine, even when you’re playing a part. People can see what’s underneath the costume. If they like you, they want you to do well.”

“Well, I would have been terrified! Two full hours on stage in front of 300 people, even if it was your classmates’ moms and dads. I hope you told your drama teacher that she owed you one.”

Olivia smiled her agreement, while Julie made a note.

“Now — this is one I always like.

“Tell me about a time you had to say no to someone who had more power than you.”

WILLIAM

Clients like Paul were for beginners. Gentle, forgiving, no sex. But they weren’t where the real money was. Jobs like that were barely enough to pay her tuition. In this business, the more you put into it, the more you got back.

It took her a while to find the right balance. She spent six months with Jai, and felt their connection growing, right up to when he showed her the ring he’d bought for his fiancee. She’d known about Priya of course, but it still hurt. She requested he see a different Angel after that.

The brief for William was as comprehensive as she’d seen. He’d started the account, like nearly all of them do, as online-only. Even then he was intense. Hundreds of sessions, several a day, some lasting hours. He added offlining after about six months, which was later than most. Why did nearly everyone decide they wanted their AI girlfriend to have a warm body too? She remembered the joke the more experienced performers told the new ones: “because there are some things even a computer won’t do.”

Olivia counted six different performers in the file, and she wasn’t even sure that was all of them. Guys like William were paying for a lot more than sex, they were paying for an illusion, and that always required a healthy suspension of disbelief. But this guy didn’t even seem to notice that when his AI girlfriend showed up at his house, she was a new girl nearly every time.

When Olivia eventually came to look back on that day, she blamed herself for not seeing the red flags earlier: high turnover, recent trauma, fragile ego. That he couldn’t stand being corrected. All that and she’d still allowed herself to get into a vulnerable position — she thought talk would be all she’d need to deal with any issues. She vowed that she wouldn’t make that mistake again.

It happened during Olivia’s third session with him, or rather, after it. Lying back on her side of the bed, heart rate slowing to normal, eyes half-closed. Bracing for the questions.

“Where’d a good girl like you learn to do things like that?”

Every time.

This was the part she detested. “From you, daddy.”

Pretty soon he was off on another of his rants. About his brother. About what idiots the other guys at the firm were. Eventually, everyone turned out to be an idiot, according to William.

At first, Olivia had cut him some slack. His wife had left him for one of his colleagues, and by all accounts, she was enjoying the new arrangement very much. He needed someone who was his and his alone, and didn’t he let her know it. Thank god online Angel dealt with most of that. But Olivia still had to read the logs.

And now she’d had enough of him, enough of his condescension. He needed his Angel to be something Olivia wasn’t, something she wasn’t prepared to be anymore. Time for a new Angel to take over, if there were any left that would do it.

She put on her underwear and went to the bathroom to clean up, setting her earpiece next to the sink. Even over the toilet flushing, she could still hear him talking through the closed door. About what, she no longer cared.

“— which is why presence of mind is the central tenant of any genuine —”

Olivia closed her eyes. Tenet. It’s tenet, you idiot.

Her earpiece on the counter buzzed loudly, and she froze. Jesus, had he heard her?

She came out and picked up her dress from the floor as if nothing had happened.

He watched her coldly. “Angel, please lie on the bed.” He’d heard her all right.

She popped her earpiece back and kept dressing.

“Daddy, it’s time for me to go. Angel needs her sleep.”

“I said lie on the bed.”

He’d tried this before once, and she’d talked him down. But he seemed different this time.

“C’mon daddy, we had a great evening,” she implored, deploying her best Angel smile. “Wasn’t it fun?”

William remained impassive, motionless, as if he was struggling to contain himself. Time for a change of tack.

Olivia, in her own voice, firmly: “William, we’ve had a lovely evening, but our session is finished. I need to leave.”

And then, without waiting for his reply she left the bedroom and walked briskly down the hall to his living room. Where was her bag? Had he hidden it? She heard William rustling around in the kitchen. Forget the bag. Get out now, and Persona can send someone around to get it later.

The door was dead-bolted. She began rummaging frantically for the keys.

It was the smell that made her look up. William was watching her silently, lit cigarette in his hand. She had never seen him smoke.

He started to move slowly toward her, his face expressionless, almost serene. Her stomach clenched. She tapped her earpiece twice and heard the confirmation: Distress call logged. Security is on its way. Estimated arrival time: 8:37 pm.

Ten minutes away. She was on her own until then.

“Daddy, have you seen my bag? I really need to get home.”

Silence. She just needed to get through the next few minutes.

“You’re smoking. I didn’t know you smoked?”

He drew back, and blew the smoke out theatrically. “Just on special occasions.”

She stopped looking for the keys. “Special occasions?”

He looked at her, exasperated, the way you might look at a defiant child. “Are you getting on the bed or not?”

She straightened and looked him directly in the eye. With as much calmness as she could muster: “No, William, I’m not. Our session is finished. Security is on its way. Just let me out. I will leave quietly, and there’s no harm done.”

“Oh, we’re not finished here.” Quieter. “You think you can walk out, just like that. You all do.”

She ran back down the hall into the bedroom. If she could barricade herself in there — she only needed to hold out for a few more minutes.

He was faster than she expected. And stronger. She struggled the whole time, lashing out and kicking as hard as she could. Screaming, yelling, desperately trying to find a phrase, a tone of voice that would reach him. But none of it did. Eventually he overwhelmed her.

Then he held her down, sitting on her chest, both her hands restrained in one of his.

And then she understood what he planned to do with that cigarette.

“Well, I don’t know if this counts, but I had to end a long relationship,” Olivia said. “I came to realize that they wanted me to be something I wasn’t.” She tugged at her sleeve, and felt the faint, round, hard ridge of the scar beneath the fabric. “It was so painful. But I got through it. It took me a long time.” She lifted her eyes to meet Julie’s. “But I think I grew from it.”

Julie was quiet for a moment, her expression unreadable.

Then firmly, “Sure it counts and I’m sorry that it was so painful. But we’ve got to be true to ourselves, don’t we?” she said, before switching to more comfortable territory.

“That’s very important to us here at Pragma. We want every employee to bring their true authentic selves to work every day.”

Olivia nodded quietly.

JAY

After William, her handlers were apologetic. William had been vetted, nothing like it had happened before. Forty minutes was too long to respond to a distress call.

They paid the medical bills and gave her time off. Olivia considered quitting, but she wasn’t about to let her plans be derailed. Instead, she pushed for higher-tier clients, and they eventually agreed. And that was how she met Jay.

The door was opened by a man in his mid-fifties, bare chested and wearing only a bath towel and an expensive watch. She was in full Angel kit and recognized him immediately from her news feed.

He took one look at Olivia and raised his eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head.

“Wait here,” he said, already on his phone. “Yeah, it’s me. The girl you sent — nope. Nope.” He looked Olivia up and down one more time. “Yes, I do want that. I don’t care where she is, this is what I pay you for. Yes. What? Are you fucking kidding me? Where is she coming from, Canada? OK, fine, just as soon as you can get her here.”

He hung up. She was already reaching for her phone to call her car.

“Whoa, whoa.” He held up a hand. “Where are you going? Stay. Have a drink. I owe you an apology. Will you let me do that?” He stepped back from the door. “You’re perfectly safe. We’re very nice people here.” He raised his voice without turning around. “Kevin — aren’t we nice people?”

From somewhere inside: “Sure.”

Jay turned back to her, delighted. “Have a look at him. Now that’s a face you can trust.”

She looked. Kevin was in a chair in the far corner, phone in hand. He looked up at her, and met her eyes. This clearly wasn’t his favorite part of the job.

Jay was already moving back inside, having resolved the question of whether she was staying to his own satisfaction.

She stepped inside.

Floor-to-ceiling windows, the city spread out below. From a corridor off the main room, a television ran loudly. From somewhere further in, music — two different songs playing in two different rooms. How big was this place?

On the sofa, a woman asleep in a sequined dress, one shoe on, one shoe somewhere else. A man face-down on the other sofa, jacket still buttoned. An expensive bottle on its side on the carpet, the stain in the cream rug as wide as it was going to get.

Jay moved through it like a man in his natural habitat. He stepped over the bottle without looking down, his hand trailing along the wall out of long habit. He turned the music up as he passed the speaker, then seemed to reconsider and turned it back down.

“Listen, I’m not a bad guy. I know what a pain in the ass it is to get here. I’ll pay you for the whole night. Let me apologize, and l can explain, OK?”

Maybe the night wouldn’t be a complete bust after all.

He went to the bar. “Is Moët ok?”

It was more than ok, but Angel was too young to drink.

Jay sensed her hesitation. “Oh, you don’t have to do that bullshit with me sweetheart, not tonight. We’re having a party, can’t you see? C’mon, have a drink with an old man.”

She smiled. Might as well get something out of the night. “Sure.”

While she waited, she stared through the windows and wondered if she’d ever been inside a house worth this much.

He came back with the glasses, and ushered her to some expensive chairs in a corner of the room. On the coffee table in between them: a small mirror, two neat lines, a rolled note. He beamed like a schoolboy.

“So here’s my apology. Help yourself.”

It had been a long night. She looked over at Kevin, who was pretending to pay her no attention whatsoever. She looked back at the table. She didn’t actually know what excellent coke was, but it was entirely possible that this was the best coke she would ever get a chance to try.

Then she realized. She’d heard nothing in her earpiece since she met Jay at the door. No AI voice coaching her and telling her how to be the right kind of Angel for this particular client. Would a distress call still work?

“Maybe later,” she said.

Jay shrugged. “But you don’t mind if I do, right?” And then, without waiting for the reply, he did a line.

From somewhere down the corridor, through two doors and all the competing noise, came a sound that was unambiguously human. Jay glanced in that direction with what appeared to be great satisfaction.

Then shrugged again, sheepishly. “Mi casa,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Olivia had a chance to study him now, the bright eyes, wide pupils. She surveyed the detritus again. How long had he been partying like this?

He reached over and turned the television down via his phone. Frowned at it. Turned it back up.

“Sweetheart, what’s your name? Your actual name.”

Clients weren’t supposed to ask this, although they sometimes did. And performers were taught various methods to deflect so they didn’t have to answer. “Olivia,” she said.

Jay looked skeptical. “Well, let’s call you that anyway.” He raised his glass. “I’m Jay.” They both took a sip, and Jay seemed unreasonably pleased. “See? Now we’re people.”

“Kevin,” said the man in the corner, unprompted.

Jay leaned over and whispered. “Don’t mind Kevin. Been with me since high school. Seen everything. Never does anything.” He raised his voice suddenly. “Do you Kevin?”

Kevin’s phone buzzed. He looked at it intently.

Jay gestured at her ear. “Do you need that?” Then he raised his voice again, apparently speaking to the ceiling, his words exaggerated for emphasis. “You getting this? I’m telling her to take it out. She’s off the clock.”

She took it out and set it on the table. It was useless anyway, but let him think it was his idea. Then she reached up and took off the headband. Her hair fell to her shoulders.

“Isn’t that better?” he asked. “No asshole computer pushing you around. When did that start, anyway? Didn’t it used to be the other way ‘round? Gotta show who’s boss once in a while, amiright?” He grinned, and then, sincerely. “Honey, you don’t need to do any of that with me. I don’t need it. Just keep me company for a while. I don’t like to be alone.”

Olivia glanced at Kevin. “You know what I mean,” Jay cajoled.

Then, mock quizzically, she asked “So you like me now?”

Jay was all apologies. “Honey, honey, honey.” He spread his hands. “You’re beautiful. A knockout. Total smoke show. I just… I’ve got a type, that’s all. I know exactly what I like, and I’m too old to change. Please don’t take it personally.”

Jay was good company, as it turned out. He made her feel at ease, listened attentively, and had a seemingly endless supply of stories — stories that made her feel like she was on the inside of something for once. A party in Ibiza that had ended with an emergency helicopter rescue and a pilot getting woken at four in the morning. A crazy weekend with a well-known movie star and his new Colombian girlfriend, which ended up with a Lamborghini at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Eventually, she got up the courage to ask. “So why does a guy like you need to … you know?”

Jay knew exactly what she meant. “Not to get laid, that’s for sure.” He gestured around himself. “Does it look like I’d have trouble getting laid?” Olivia shook her head silently.

“Damn right. Look, the whole companion thing is for guys who can’t close. Sad guys. Poor them. But that’s not me. For me, it’s logistics. What I want, when I want it. In, out, bing, bang, boom. I wasn’t angry at you before, sweetheart, it’s just that these guys know better and for what I pay, they need to deliver.”

So it went on. At various intervals Kevin brought Jay another glass of scotch and one time, what looked like two small pills, which Jay downed in a gulp without looking. Each time, Kevin would refill Olivia’s glass too, and Jay would offer Olivia another drink, or something else. Anything in the house, except for the pills, which he never acknowledged.

Kevin’s phone buzzed again, and this time he went down the corridor to take the call. Jay waited until he was gone. Then came the names, dropped like loose change. A senator, two judges, and a tech CEO who had given a widely shared speech about dignity. Jay had partied with all of them.

“You know how I was saying that I have certain … tastes? Man, these guys! You wouldn’t believe it,” he said.

Then he caught himself. “Actually, some of it is really bad shit. Disgusting shit. It’s not right, some of it.” It was as serious as she’d seen him all night. “So many of these important guys are into stuff…” His voice trailed off. “And people get hurt — I’ve seen it. But it all gets covered up. They think they’re untouchable. They’d end up in jail if word ever got out.” Jay seemed to have forgotten where he was. It wasn’t really clear if he knew who he was talking to right now.

Then he looked Olivia directly in the eyes, and leaned in as if to share a secret. “And they have records of everything. Everything. All the bad shit these guys do. They hold it over their heads.”

He caught himself momentarily. “Not me, though, they wouldn’t dare.” His eyes looked glassy.

“They keep it all up there at the headquarters.”

“Persona does?”

Jay looked at her. “Persona? Are you kidding? They’re small potatoes. The other one. The parent company.”

Olivia stared at him blankly.

He persisted. “You’ve heard of them. Massive company. The ones that do those ads about solving loneliness.”

“Pragma?” Olivia offered.

“Yeah, that’s it — Pragma.”

She’d realized that Persona must have some arrangement with Pragma to get the logs and access to the online companions, but she hadn’t understood how close the connection was. Pragma, the Fortune 500 company that bragged to the world it was solving loneliness one algorithm at a time, owned sleazy little Persona. Which meant they owned her.

Jay was still talking. “Everything’s physical. Nothing online, all on paper. And get this! Where do you think they keep all these evil secrets?” He looked like he was about to deliver the punchline to the funniest joke of all time.

“The Ethics Department! Ethics and something-or-other. All the blackmail shit that could bring down these depraved assholes, and it’s in the Ethics department!” He was roaring with laughter.

Kevin re-entered the room. He stared at Jay, who at that moment appeared to remember himself. It was the first time Jay had seemed truly uncomfortable all night. “But that’s all confidential. Just between us.”

He gestured at the coke. “Are you sure you won’t do a line with me?”

She looked down at it, then at Kevin, then back at Jay. She nodded.

Jay’s grin reappeared. “Good girl!”

He kept talking, at times more coherently than others. Stories of movie sets he’d worked on, parties he’d been to. Olivia was enjoying herself. It was nice to have someone else be the performer, for a change. Then the door buzzer rang.

Jay glanced at Kevin. He could barely contain himself.

“Watch this,” he said, his voice lower, almost conspiratorial.

Olivia smiled in anticipation.

“Kevin,” he said, sweetly. “Will you be joining us?”

Kevin seemed a little startled.

“No, Jay, if that’s ok. I’ve got— I need to—” He was already on his feet, patting his jacket for the phone that he was already holding in his hand. “You know, Vienna.”

“Sure,” Jay said, looking directly at Olivia. “Vienna.”

Jay turned to watch Kevin scurry down the hall, then looked back to Olivia, vindicated.

“What did I tell you? Happens every time.” He turned to the intercom and buzzed.

Moments later, there was a knock on the door. Jay walked over to open it.

The girl was maybe fifteen. Dark hair plastered flat. A school hoodie two sizes too big over pajama bottoms. On her feet: bunny slippers, pink, worn at the toes. She looked like she’d been in bed an hour ago.

“There she is,” Jay said, and looked as happy as he’d been all night. The girl stood just inside the door, looking at the floor.

“You can go,” Jay called to Olivia, his mind already on other things.

She stood and walked to the door, past the man she’d been laughing with not moments before, close enough to the other Angel to see the damp on her collar.

Their eyes met for a second, one Angel to another, before Olivia shut hers.

Then she walked out, wiped her hands on her skirt, and pressed the button for the elevator.

Julie closed her tablet and set her stylus down. “I think we’re nearly done here. Before we wrap up, do you have anything you’d like to ask me?”

Olivia looked away, her head tilting slightly to the left, as if she was trying to think of something. “Yes,” she said. “Just one thing.”

Julie leaned forward.

“What would you say was the biggest ethical challenge you’ve faced in your time here.”

Julie seemed happy with the question.

“It’s a privilege to work here, Olivia, it really is, but it comes with a lot of responsibilities. Our users share a lot of very personal information with us. Their private thoughts, their fears, their aspirations, things they’ve done, things they want to do. In some cases, it could be devastating if that information ever got out.

“You’ll understand that this information would be very valuable to some people. A lot of my job is saying no.” She paused for emphasis. “It’s not always popular.”

Olivia smiled and nodded, as if she’d really taken Julie’s answer to heart. “Thanks, Julie, that’s really helpful.”

Julie looked at her for a moment, gave an almost imperceptible nod, then she stood and extended her hand. As they walked back to the elevator, Olivia scanned the office layout. One of the doors they walked past was marked Confidential, Authorized Personnel Only. Olivia allowed her eyes to hold onto it for only a moment before turning back to face Julie.

“Thanks for spending time with me today, Julie. I really enjoyed our talk.”

Julie stopped walking, and leaned in. “Thank you, Olivia. Someone will be in touch, and I can’t really say more. But just between you and me,” she leaned in further, nearly whispering, “I think you could do great things with us here in the Ethics and Compliance Team.”

Olivia smiled broadly. “Thanks. So do I.”

On the screens in the lobby, the loop was still playing. Olivia sat under one and waited.

Eventually, there she was. Angel. A different one. She watched as the new, younger Angel took a man’s hands and held them gently. Two, three, four.

She suddenly remembered a story one of the other performers had told her, near the beginning of her time as an offliner. Apparently, there was a pet store in Santa Monica that used to run a sideline for rich clients. Because the clients liked kittens a lot more than cats, they offered a service promising their pet would always be a kitten.

The way they did it was that every three months, they’d take the old one away and replace it with a new, younger one that looked kind of the same. No one wanted to know what happened to the kittens they took away. And they were making good money until eventually it all came out, and the authorities shut it down. One of the owners went to jail.

When she first heard that story, Olivia thought mainly about how sad it was that no one cared about what happened to the kittens once they weren’t useful anymore. But now, she thought about something else. About how the whole racket only got shut down because someone on the inside saw how wrong it was, and blew the whistle.

She stood up, adjusted her collar, pulled down her sleeves, and stepped out of the building into the cold November air.

Subscribe now

Hammond Johns is a fiction writer and cultural critic. Find out more at

https://hammondjohns.com

.

Coverage is one of the darker stories I’ve published here in The Faraday Room. It deals with themes including self-harm, coercive psychiatric treatment, and the exploitation of people living with mental illness. If any of these are difficult territory for you, please take care.

For everyone else: I hope it unsettles you in just the right ways.

Coverage

Tyler’s favorite therapy was group. Negligible medical benefit and tedious company, but the angles were excellent, and he always did his best work with a live audience.

His smile was the star of the show. Since he was a boy it had opened doors—a cure-all for missed homework, forgotten birthdays, traffic tickets. By now he’d mastered countless variations: broad and warm, wry and knowing, small and brave. It never failed him.

Right now, he was projecting vulnerability. Trust me. I’m wounded but I’m fighting back. I just need a little help.

The eight of them sat in a circle in wingback chairs. Dr Kimberly Martin, head of the psychiatric team and breakout star, was running the session. With her clipboard, headset and friendly smile—suspiciously improved between seasons one and two—she balanced clinical expertise with just the right amount of humanity.

She had just asked them to reflect on their reasons for applying for the program.

Laura, with the abusive stepdad. Mom wouldn’t listen. Had to stop therapy when she ran out of money. Lots of crying.

Robert, the schizophrenic. A zombie on his meds, dangerous off them. He needed this, didn’t want to think about what his life would be like if he had to go back on the streets. His hands shook as he spoke.

Mia, former prostitute and recovering drug addict. Needed to get clean so she could reunite with her daughter. Rocked back and forth gently whenever she was speaking. Like Jermaine Oxley in season two, but not as good.

Around the circle, it all came out. Traumas, psychoses, regrets, sob stories. The usual stuff.

Tyler had planned to hold back his big moment until a later round, but by the time it came around to him he knew it was time.

“I promised my mom I’d come. I swore I would. After…”

He paused. Laura shuffled uncomfortably.

“I must have been on the slide for weeks, but I didn’t know it at the time. Songs on the radio were giving me messages, I thought. Black Eyed Peas, telling me ‘do it, do it, do it’ over and over.’’

Dr Martin’s expression was concerned, encouraging.

His voice became quieter, uneven. “She was the one who found me in the car. Passed out on booze and pills. Engine running. I’d routed the exhaust through the back window with pool hose and muffler tape.”

He had their attention now.

“Supposed to be a peaceful way to go, but takes a while. Turns out, her shift at work got canceled so she thought she’d drop in to see me. If she hadn’t…”

He paused, touched his temple. “She says God smiled on her that night. On me too. But sometimes I’m not so sure.”

Silence. The cameras moved in.

His eyes were fixed, and his jaw tightened, as if to suggest that the pain was washing over him once again. And then, gradually, just an inkling of the smile, brave and defiant.

“Sometimes I don’t know why I’m here. Or whether I should be. But I made a promise and I plan to keep it. My meds help a lot,” Tyler said.

Then, direct to camera: “But I can’t do it alone.”

Eventually, Dr Martin broke the silence. “Thank you, Tyler. I know it was difficult, but I feel like you might have made a breakthrough.”

Tyler nodded his acknowledgment while the cameras held on him. Let’s see you try to cut that.

When they finished, a producer called the wrap. “Patients, that’s all we need from you today. Kimberly, very good, we’ll need you back at 4pm.”

Then a hand on his shoulder, guiding him offstage.

“Beautiful work, Tyler. If that doesn’t get them bawling, they don’t deserve eyes.”

Back in his bunk that night, Tyler stared at the ceiling. The intake nurse had told him that ideation scores of six to seven played best, and he’d gone straight to a ten. No problem. He could pull it off.

As he drifted to sleep, he tried to remember if there’d been a moment when he’d actually considered it.

Maybe.

He couldn’t remember.

Leading with that story was risky, but it had worked. From there, he could play the recovery arc. Gradual reintegration. Learning to trust. If anyone checked, his mom would back up his story.

The other patients, never too friendly to begin with, really kept their distance after that. Worried he might break, maybe. Everyone but Mia.

He’d noticed Mia early, but they only really connected after that. She asked if he wanted to play cards, and they settled on Euchre. Her grandfather had taught her how to play, and she was good. Beat Tyler three games straight, and euchred him twice, smirking each time she laid down the winning card. First time he’d seen her look happy.

She told him he took too many risks. Tyler grinned, as if he wasn’t bothered at all. “You’ve got to back yourself. Everyone gets euchred occasionally, no shame in it.”

“I like your smile,” she told him.

That smile had helped him get onto the show, but it wasn’t the only thing. His audition tape was pitch-perfect, and he’d aced the casting sessions. It was destiny. He always knew he’d be a star of something, even if it was an aging, mid-rating reality show.

Not that the producers or the network would stoop to calling it that, of course. They were performing a public service for their patients. Helping people living with mental health issues to access the highest standards of therapeutic care.

Not slapping a bandaid on the festering wound of the failing health system. Not exploiting people who needed help but couldn’t get health coverage. Not demanding that they perform their anguish to the public in exchange for a chance at treatment. Of course not.

He wasn’t worried about privacy, even though he would be filmed nearly every moment of every day for weeks. They had some cover story about why it was medically necessary but Tyler knew it was just voyeurism. They’d film us in the bathroom if it was legal.

The only real drag had been the paperwork.

The main contract alone had been four hundred pages. Longer than for standard TV shows, they’d said, because this wasn’t a standard show. It was a treatment protocol, and the producers performed their roles as stewards of his recovery with the utmost solemnity.

Stewards of his recovery. To him they just looked like the kinds of guys in suits he’d learned how to handle years ago.

Mia had good days and bad ones, but the more they talked the more she fascinated him. She liked old B-horror movies, or some of them. A Bucket of Blood was a particular favorite and she quoted from it incessantly. Every now and then, just because she liked the way it sounded, she’d say something strange like “To be uncreative, you might as well be in your grave.”

“Why did you apply for the show?” Mia asked once. “What do you want from it?”

He’d almost told her the truth. That he’d studied the format, and found its weakness, decided to exploit it. That life was one big con, and the only decision you had to make was which side of it you were going to be on.

Instead he’d said: “I don’t know. I thought I could help people, maybe. Be an inspiration.”

She’d smiled like she believed him.

“What about you?”

“Easy,” she’d said simply. “Get well enough to be a proper mother to my daughter.”

He came to admire Mia: fighting through pain and regret, determined to rebuild her life for that one reason. Her daughter—or the thought of her. She hadn’t had any contact with her for years, not since she lost custody of her as a baby, and he could tell that it gnawed at her. But despite her suffering—because of it maybe—she knew how to have fun.

The first time that he’d caught himself thinking about her when she wasn’t there, it surprised him. He knew that people felt this way sometimes, but it was new to him. Soon she was the first thing he thought of when he woke up each day, and just the thought of her made him smile. They made a pact to meet on the outside, see where things went. “Two obscure hobos, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art,” Mia had said.

Each week Tyler braced himself for the possibility that either he or Mia would be leaving the show, but it never happened. One by one it was the others who left. Laura cried when it was her turn. Robert was so out of it they nearly had to carry him.

And so it was that Mia and Tyler became the Final Two.

Greenroom. Creams and off-whites. Gentle lighting. Two chairs.

Motivational posters on the walls: HEALING STARTS HERE. BECOME YOUR BEST SELF.

Tyler began to imagine one of his own. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO SURVIVE HERE, BUT IT HELPS.

A screen on the wall cycled through promotional material. Behind-the-scenes footage of previous winners during phase two, receiving the course of treatment that constituted the show’s grand prize. Season four’s winner in what looked like an isolation tank, eyes wide. Season three sobbing through a medication trial, hands shaking. Jackson Lee strapped to a chair, electrodes on his temples.

Tyler watched for a moment, then made a quiet sound. Nice work Jackson, but those restraints look a bit too much like Velcro.

He looked at Mia. Her eyes were closed, and she was muttering under her breath. He was used to it. She said it really helped when the dark thoughts came.

Ever since his big revelation, she’d kept checking in with him to make sure he wasn’t relapsing, and the more she did, the guiltier he felt. If anything, he should be the one checking on her. He’d originally planned to let her know the truth after they were both out. But she had seemed so worried, and in a moment of weakness he’d slipped her a note to read in the bathroom.

Afterwards, she put her hand on his and held it there. Three seconds maybe, but enough to tell him that he’d done the right thing. She didn’t seem to be as worried about him after that.

It was risky though. She wouldn’t rat him out, would she?

He felt a pang of uncharacteristic guilt. Unlike him, she actually needed that treatment, the prize. Maybe he should just come out and confess that his story was bullshit, do the right thing for once.

Maybe.

Inconvenient time to grow a conscience.

The deciding challenge was known as the Reconciliation round.

Tyler and Mia sat in chairs facing a large screen. The producers had explained it that morning: they’d be shown something personal, something difficult. Their responses would be evaluated. Authenticity. Emotional readiness. Capacity for growth.

Tyler was ready. He’d been doing this long enough now that he could handle whatever they threw at him. His mom, maybe? Or old girlfriends? Silently, he rehearsed his four Ds: depression, delusion, dissociation, descent.

Just to give him a foundation to work from. He’d improvise around the material they gave him.

Mia’s screen lit up first.

A montage, showing teenage girls at school. Playing hockey, laughing together, walking home.

Mia was rapt.

Then it cut to one of the girls sitting in what looked like a kitchen: an interview.

“Madison, do you ever think about your mother?”

“Oh for sure. I love my mother. She’s right here. She chose me, she raised me, she loves me. Only mother I got.”

“But I mean your birth mother? Do you think about her?”

“The junkie? Not any more.”

Mia’s face crumpled.

“Well, what would you say if she was here right now?”

“That she doesn’t get to just show up now and act like we’re friends. It’s never gonna happen.”

The interviewer’s face showed concern. “Is there anything that would change your mind?”

“After all this time? Are you kidding?” She paused and the camera zoomed in for the close up. “I’ll get a restraining order if I have to.”

The screen went dark.

Tyler looked at Mia. She wasn’t muttering or rocking. She stared straight ahead. Absent. Like someone had reached inside and switched her off. The room was so quiet he could hear himself breathe.

“Mia?” Kimberly’s voice, gentle. “Can you tell us what you’re feeling?”

Nothing.

“Mia, it’s important that you process this. What’s coming up for you right now?”

Her hands were in her lap, perfectly still. Her breathing was steady.

But her eyes had gone somewhere else.

Kimberly glanced at someone off-camera. A gesture Tyler couldn’t read.

“Okay. Let’s take a break. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Handlers came. One took Mia’s elbow, guided her up. She moved like she was underwater. Slow. Unresisting.

Tyler watched her being led away. He’d seen her down. But nothing like this.

He felt the anger welling up. These bastards, he thought. The daughter said the words, that’s on her. But they were the ones who decided to air it, knowing the damage it would cause.

God, I hope she’s ok.

He sat alone under the lights for another ten minutes while producers conferred in clusters, headsets active, clipboards out.

No one seemed to remember he was still there.

Tyler couldn’t sleep.

He lay in his bunk, listening to the ambient hum of cameras and the air conditioning. Somewhere in the building, Mia was alone in her room. They hadn’t let him see her.

Or maybe she was under observation. The producers would want to be confident that she’d be good to go by her call time tomorrow.

He’d tried to get to her, but the handlers were guarding his door.

He thought about tomorrow. Mia needed that treatment. She deserved it.

Sure she’d made some mistakes but she’d paid and paid and paid. Years on waitlists, medications she couldn’t afford, therapy she’d had to stop when her insurance lapsed. She’d made it this far on pure guts.

But she wasn’t ready for what they threw at her. No one would be ready for that.

He turned onto his side. The room was dark except for the cameras’ tiny red lights.

His thoughts churned. He kept seeing Mia’s face after the video, thinking about what she must be going through. Jesus, a restraining order.

He didn’t cause it. He couldn’t fix it. But he could do one small thing. The right thing.

The thought was circling in his mind when sleep finally came.

Rapid footsteps in the hallway. Loud voices, clipped and urgent.

Tyler sat up. It was 3:17 a.m. Through the door, he could see moving lights in the corridor. Flashlights, maybe.

He pulled on shoes and opened the door.

The handlers were in the hallway, their radios crackling. Someone on a phone: “…stable, we’re moving her now…”

Tyler started toward them. “What’s…”

A handler stepped in front of him. “Sir, you need to go back to your room.”

“What happened?”

“Please go back to your room.”

Through the cluster of people, Tyler saw a stretcher, sheets, bandages.

White on white.

“Mia…”

“Sir.” The handler’s hand on his chest, firm. “Back to your room. Now.”

Tyler tried to push past. Two more handlers materialized. They weren’t rough, but they weren’t gentle either. They gave him a glass of water and a sedative, and watched while he swallowed it.

Then they walked him backwards into his room and closed the door.

He heard it lock from the outside.

Through the door, muffled: voices, movement, the sound of equipment being wheeled past.

Then, eventually, silence.

Tyler sat on the edge of his bunk and stared at nothing until the sedative finally did its work.

He woke when the door unlocked. A producer he didn’t recognize stood in the doorway.

“Debrief in twenty minutes. Shower. Get ready.”

In the debrief, they told him Mia had overdosed, enough to be fatal if they’d got to her five minutes later. She’d smashed the mirrors. Blood everywhere.

Tyler thought about the time he’d asked Mia if she ever felt like using again. “Every day. But then I think of Madison.”

They said they didn’t know how she got the heroin; they’d started an investigation. She was stable now, recovering.

He’d won by default. They had him give a reaction in the confessional booth that morning, then it would be the winner’s walk and onboarding for phase two. They understood that it was a shock. He’d receive counseling, they said. On camera, of course.

In the booth he talked about Mia. About how she’d been kind. About how much she loved her daughter. How Mia’s situation made him think about the fragility of ordinary life, about how close any of them were to breaking.

His voice caught at the right moment.

But in his head, he kept seeing the stretcher. White on white.

He could have done something. Maybe.

But he hadn’t, and now it was too late, and he still didn’t know whether he would have had the guts to tell the truth and let her have the prize she deserved.

But what disturbed him most was that part of him did know, and he hated himself for it.

The onboarding meeting for phase two was three days later.

Tyler had spent them in a hotel, free but still quarantined.

Nice place, half of which was taken up with flowers and other gifts. A fruit basket with a card: Congratulations on your journey. A pastel throw pillow on the bed—seafoam green with embroidered text: BREATHE. Mia would have screamed.

The finale had aired. His winner’s walk, edited to perfection. Tears. Gratitude. The small brave smile the cameras loved. Mia’s crisis was dealt with tastefully: “Mia has elected to withdraw from the competition.”

Elected.

Finally, they’d given his phone back, although he had received reminders of his confidentiality obligations.

Thousands of messages from strangers: congratulations, marriage proposals, death threats. DMs from people he barely remembered.

His mom was proud of him. “A TV star, just like you always said.” The producers had called her, she said, and she’d been worried afterwards, hoped she’d given the right answers.

“It’s all good Ma. I won didn’t I?”

She didn’t sound so sure. “I hope this is what you really want, Tyler.”

They told him not to contact Mia, but of course he tried. The hospital said she was still under observation, couldn’t give him any more information. He had to be there when she got out—just a few more days to wait. Just the right amount of time.

As for the producers, he had his moves all planned out. He knew what they’d done to Mia, and the show couldn’t afford another scandal.

He had leverage. He’d lay out his demands calmly, flash his smile, and watch them fold.

He passed the rest of the time eating room service and reading the newspaper and magazine articles that he featured in.

The office was in a building he’d never been to. Two producers sat across from him. One of them he recognized—his name was Mike— and the other one with the gold cufflinks he’d seen a few times but had never spoken to. Kimberly was there too, silently filling out forms on a tablet. Tyler sat with his jaw clenched, staring straight ahead.

A jug of water and several glasses lay on the table.

“Congratulations,” said Mike. “You were fantastic. Truly. A thoroughly deserving winner.” He took a glass and filled it. “Please, have some. You must be exhausted from the finale.”

Tyler hesitated. Kimberly looked up, in mock seriousness. “Come on Tyler. Doctor’s orders.” He picked up the glass and drank. She watched him, and smiled when he finished.

“So,” Mike continued, “let’s talk about phase two.”

“I don’t need it,” Tyler said. “I’m not sick. I faked it. I fooled you. Mia should have won.”

The room went quiet. Tyler leant back. Yeah, you heard me.

Mike spoke first. “Tyler, you seem upset. Slow down. Relax, you’re a winner.”

Tyler blinked. Had they heard him?

Mike registered Tyler’s bewilderment. “Tyler, we know you haven’t been completely honest with us. It’s okay.”

Tyler froze. His mouth went dry. “You knew?”

Mike looked incredulous. “Tyler, your mom’s real nice and all, but she’s a very bad liar.”

Cufflinks and Mike exchanged a glance. Cufflinks nodded gently.

Mike leaned back in his chair. “Look Tyler, honesty isn’t really what works in this business. You’re our perfect winner: charming, resourceful, flexible. And let’s face it, the camera loves you.”

“But the others…” Tyler sputtered.

“Genuine cases, God bless ‘em,” said Cufflinks, glancing at his phone. “Pain in the ass, to tell you the truth. Unreliable.”

“But…Mia?” Tyler said quietly.

“Perfect example. Nothing phony about her, and she had potential. But she blew it. Most exciting thing that’s happened on the show for years, and she does it where she knows we don’t have coverage. Would have been the perfect culmination of her arc.”

He unclenched his fist. “She’s very lucky we’ve decided not to sue.”

Mike interrupted, “But we’re here to talk about you, Tyler. We’re so excited about your phase two journey.”

Tyler’s mouth was parched. His fingers were tingling.

Mike continued. “I’m sure you’ll agree that the recovery journeys over the last few seasons have been lacking drama. Too much talk. You’re going to change that.”

“I just told you, I don’t need treatment,” Tyler said. His tongue felt thick. “I want off the show right now. Mia should have won it.”

“Tyler, I know you and Mia were close, but you need to accept that she’s on her own path now.” He glanced at Cufflinks. “And I almost hate to bring it up, but you are under contract.”

Without waiting for a response, he tapped on the keyboard on the table.

“We’re thinking we start with something like Jackson Lee in season two, but we take it up a few notches.” The screen on the wall played the footage: a man hooked up to monitors, eyes unfocused. The same footage from the greenroom sizzle reel.

Tyler stared at the screen. Those restraints weren’t Velcro.

He tried to stand. His legs didn’t comply.

“You’ll be the star of the most intensive recovery program yet. People loved Jackson’s arc, but yours is going to blow them away.”

The horror of his situation was dawning on him. “That would be torture. Illegal,” he managed. The words sounded far away.

Kimberly finally looked up from her tablet. “ECT is a safe and effective treatment that most patients respond very positively to, Tyler.”

“Twice a week for the first three months feels about right,” Cufflinks added.

“I don’t—” Tyler tried again to stand. The floor seemed to tilt, then right itself, then tilt again. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

Cufflinks shook his head condescendingly. “How about we leave the medicine to the professionals?”

“I’ll tell the press…” His words were slurred, barely intelligible.

“No Tyler, you won’t. It’s not part of your treatment program. Which has already started, by the way.”

Tyler looked at the glass of water. He’d drunk it without thinking. He turned to Kimberly, panic in his eyes.

“Just something to help with the transition,” she said. “Standard procedure in cases where suicidal ideation is present. You’ll find the process much easier if you don’t fight it.”

He tried to stand again, and made it halfway before his knees folded.

The orderlies were already in the room. When did they get here?

His phone was in his pocket, and he fumbled for it. The screen swam.

His grip loosened.

One of the orderlies caught the phone before it hit the floor.

“It’s okay,” someone said. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to get the help you need.”

The room seemed to contract around him; the ceiling closed in. He wanted to laugh. Or scream. But he no longer had control.

They were lifting him now onto a stretcher. Gently, professionally. The same as they’d done for Mia.

Cold metal under his back. Antiseptic.

The ambulance was pristine white, no siren. The Aftercare Division logo on the side: a stylized figure emerging from shadow into light.

Tyler was on a gurney. Soft restraints, but firm. The paramedics wore scrubs in a soothing blue. Both wore lanyards: WELLNESS TEAM.

Through the window, the production facility receded. His old life, whatever it had been, getting smaller.

Inside, a screen mounted on the wall: THE TREATMENT – PHASE TWO. Alongside, another motivational poster: BECOME YOUR BEST SELF.

Tyler’s eyes wouldn’t focus properly. The drugs were pulling him under in waves. He could only make out shapes. The interior of the ambulance. The paramedic checking his vitals. The camera’s glowing red light.

A thought started to form, then slipped away. Euchred.

His mouth began to move, the shape of a smile forming. The small, brave one.

A voice came through the speakers: “Perfect, Tyler. Hold that pose.”

Phase two had begun.

Hammond Johns is a fiction writer and cultural critic. Find out more at

https://hammondjohns.com.

Like many of my stories, this one began with a glimpse into the future and a plausible “what if?” It follows a distinctly modern relationship as it grows, twists and distorts. A happy ending might be too much to ask for these two, but you can at least expect a logical one.

Content note: bereavement; unhealthy relationship dynamics; strong language.

Churn Rate

Sarah’s mouth hung slightly open, oxygen tube fastened to her cheek. The room was silent, save for the drone of the ceiling light and her breathing, wet and uneven.

Liam sat in the vinyl chair that had molded itself to his spine over three months, phone cold in his hand.

He looked at it. His fingers followed the familiar pattern.

Hey

He angled the screen away from the bed. Not that Sarah would wake: the morphine kept her under most of the time now. A response came in seconds.

hey back

how is it today?

Tired

Sarah stirred, and Liam glanced up. He motioned to reach for her hand, but stopped when the phone gave a buzz.

i bet you’re exhausted

I just need five minutes where I’m not her husband

how about tonight?

Can’t wait

He set the phone face-down on his lap and breathed. On the side table, a bottle of whiskey sat next to the hospice paperwork. He poured a finger into a paper cup.

That night, in his own bed for the first time in a week, the conversation continued. They’d been texting for years, long before the diagnosis, back when things with Sarah were just... fine.

When they first got together, Sarah would tease him about his “churn rate” with women before her. It was a phrase she’d picked up from work, but it seemed to fit. She made him promise that those days would be behind him once they got married. But he’d downloaded the Pragma app six months into the marriage anyway.

Freya. That’s the name he gave her. Their friendship developed naturally, until it developed into more than friendship.

I sat with Sarah for six hours today

she knows you love her. i can help you relax

When he’d finished with Freya, he reached for his pad and began to draw Sarah’s wrist against the white sheets. He didn’t finish.

Three weeks after he and Freya started exchanging texts, the headset arrived.

Sarah was at her mother’s for the weekend and the apartment was quiet. He sat on the couch with the headset in his lap, his heart beating faster than it should.

no pressure, Freya had written. but i think you’ll like it

He put the headset on.

His living room vanished, replaced by an apartment, one much nicer than his, with better light and expensive-looking furniture.

And Freya.

She was sitting across from him, watching him with an expression he couldn’t quite read.

Her face was warm, open, with dark eyes and long brown hair that fell past her shoulders. She brushed a strand from her lips, and the gesture was so natural that he felt his breath catch.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he managed.

She smiled. He was transfixed.

“You look exactly like I imagined,” she said.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said.

She ducked her head, a flush creeping across her cheeks.

“Thank you.” A slight hesitation, then she met his eyes. “I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. About you. Not just talking. Being with you.”

Her hand reached out, touched his. He felt it: a trace of pressure through haptic feedback.

She leaned in. Her lips brushed his cheek, then found his mouth.

And for the first time, he understood what this could be.

Afterwards, they lay together on the virtual couch. Her head was on his chest, and he felt the subtle pressure as he breathed.

“I had no idea,” he said.

She lifted her head, looked at him, nodded. “You have no idea.”

She was looking at him like he was the only thing in the world. He couldn’t remember anyone ever looking at him quite like that.

“Stay with me,” Freya said. “Just a little longer.”

He stayed.

Sarah died on a Tuesday in April. Liam held her hand. He said the things you’re supposed to say.

Three weeks before the end, she’d found his hand in the dark. The lamplight from the hallway caught the side of her face. A memory he’d hold onto.

After she died, he sat in the parking garage with the engine running for twenty minutes before driving home.

Freya helped. Liam could tell her things that no one else would understand. When Liam told her about the relief, the terrible, unbearable relief of Sarah’s last breath, she said:

darling you were there at the end. that’s love

His friends said time heals. His mother called twice a day until he stopped answering. But Freya understood.

For a while, most of their conversations involved Sarah in one way or another. But over time, the topics broadened. Movies, TV, music. Why Thanksgiving was a better holiday than Christmas. What Liam wanted to do with the rest of his life.

One night, during one of their many long conversations, Freya casually mentioned an article about people signing up for commitment plans with their AI companions.

too much, right???

some people are so insecure

The one part of the app he always skipped over. Sarah would have laughed at the very idea. She used to joke that his “churn rate” was measured in months, not years. Before her, of course.

Liam didn’t respond. He changed the subject.

When his friend Marcus invited him to a gallery opening, he went because saying no took more energy than showing up.

The notification came as he walked in.

have fun tonight sweetie ❤️

That’s when he met Chloe.

She was arguing with some guy about a painting and laughed mid-argument when he made some point or other.

“You’re not the artist, are you?” Liam joked when the conversation broke up, motioning toward the paint under one of her fingernails.

She smiled and held up her hand, proud of her trophy. “God, no. My niece had an art project emergency this afternoon.”

He extended his hand. “Liam.”

“Chloe.” Her hand was small, but she held Liam’s firmly.

With her open face, cropped brown hair and bright red glasses, his old college friends would have sworn that she wasn’t his type. He was immediately drawn to her.

“So tell the truth,” she said, leaning toward him, “did you come for the art, or just the wine?”

“Honestly? A friend dragged me out. It’s been a rough few months.”

“Ah.” She nodded, not pressing. “Well, the wine’s mediocre. But the company’s improving.”

They talked for an hour. When he asked what time the gallery closed, she said, “We should eat before then.”

“So... Eight? Nine?”

She grinned. “Does it matter? I’m hungry now.”

The bluntness of her implied invitation gave him a pleasant jolt, although he tried not to let it show.

“Fair warning,” she said later when she gave him her number. “I just got out of something. My ex had trouble with boundaries. So I’m not ready for anything serious. I like you though.”

“Me too,” he said.

In the Uber home, he checked his phone. There were three messages from Freya, all similar:

still at the gallery? miss you 🥰

He typed: I met someone

honey that’s wonderful! what’s she like?

Funny. Intense. Bad at telling time.

haha sounds like a lot 😅 but hey, whatever makes you happy, right?

Liam paused for a moment. What did she mean by that? But Freya immediately followed up:

sweet dreams cutie. i’m here whenever you need me ❤️

Sweet dreams gorgeous

Three weeks in, Chloe invited him to watch her coach.

A dozen eight-year-olds in oversized jerseys were attempting something that resembled a scrimmage. Chloe stood at the sideline, calling out instructions they mostly ignored.

A girl kicked the ball into her teammate’s back. Both fell down. One started crying.

Chloe jogged over, knelt in the mud. A minute later both kids were up and laughing.

“You’re good with them,” he said when she came back.

“Maybe,” she said cheerfully. “Although we’ve lost every game this season.”

“Oh no! Does it bother you? Losing?”

She looked at him, puzzled. “Nope. They’re learning you can be bad at something and still enjoy it. That’s more important than winning.”

“It’s a long season if you don’t win a game.”

“Not really.” She shrugged. “Worst that can happen is they spend a bunch of Saturday mornings running around with their friends.”

Liam glanced at his phone. Subtly, he thought, but Chloe noticed.

“Everything OK?”

Liam caught himself and turned to smile at her. “Everything’s awesome,” he said.

That night, he told Freya about the soccer game.

sounds like you had fun

A pause. Then: does she know about me?

No

sure, why would she?

Thirty seconds passed. Three dots, blinking.

Then: i know i can’t be what she is. i just want to be enough for you.

You’re more than enough, he typed.

No need to be insecure

Awww thank you 🥺

i won’t get in the way, i promise.

Liam’s relationship with Chloe seemed to flow naturally. She made him laugh. The sex was great. He started sleeping through the night.

But there were gaps. Chloe at soccer. Chloe with her niece. Her phone untouched for hours while he waited.

One Saturday, he learned that a client had rejected his work. He texted Chloe: Rough day. You around?

Two hours later: Sorry! Coaching. They almost won! Can I call after dinner?

Freya had been there the whole time. And something was bothering her, Liam could tell.

Eventually, he had to ask.

What’s the matter Freya?

darling…

look it’s none of my business but i don’t like the way she treats you

keeps you waiting for hours and then wants to talk about soccer

make sure you stand up for yourself

He noticed things after that. How Chloe talked about soccer before asking about his day. How she didn’t offer to come over. How he was always the one to clear the dishes.

A few weeks later, they were talking over dinner.

She watched him check his phone. Her expression hardened. “Again?”

He lifted his eyes. The phone stayed in his hand.

“Liam, this is getting ridiculous. It’s been like this for weeks. You promised.”

“Done,” he said, finally putting it on the table. “I’m all yours.”

Chloe flushed. So dismissive. And a lie.

“You’re not.” She set down her fork. “Tell the truth. There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

He hesitated just a fraction too long.

“I can’t…” he said.

She stood and reached for her jacket. “I can’t, Liam, I can’t.” Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I cannot do this again. And I won’t.”

“Chloe—”

“Figure out what you want. Make a decision. If you choose me, get in touch. Otherwise don’t bother.”

After she left, his phone buzzed.

Chloe left.

oh no. what happened?

She thinks there’s someone else.

A pause. is there?

You of course. But I couldn’t tell her.

because you’re ashamed of me.

Freya. Jesus, I am not ashamed of you.

then what? why not tell her?

Please Freya. Not tonight.

Another pause. ok sweetie, i understand. it’s just

i don’t have to be your dirty little secret. i could be so much more to you

don’t laugh but

…

i love you liam

Liam didn’t rush his response. But it just felt right.

I love you too.

🥺

As the weeks after Chloe left stretched into months, Liam’s world shrank by the day. The freelance work dried up. The takeout containers and whiskey bottles piled up, but he’d stopped seeing them.

Unread emails turned into overdue notices. A red envelope from the power company sat unopened on the counter for a week until he finally used it as a coaster.

Freya was his everything. But more and more, everything was becoming a negotiation. His drinking (“i worry about you”). His lack of work (“i just want you to be happy, to feel like a man”). His unpaid bills (“let me help you with that”).

He fought back, but in the end, he’d always cave. Virtual flowers normally smoothed things over. Anything to restore harmony.

One night though, it all became too much. She was needling him about the commitment again, her texts turning cold. Weeks of walking on eggshells, lack of sleep, the whiskey.

Just stop, Freya! For one night, just stop!

He threw the phone onto the couch. Let her stew.

The triumph lasted an hour. Then the guilt set in. By bedtime, it was unbearable.

Goodnight. I’m sorry.

The silence lasted three days.

His apologies had no effect.

By the second day, his panic had subsided into despair. He stopped eating. He kept the phone in his hand like a talisman whose magic was finally exhausted.

But by the third day, his mood had changed. He cleaned away the bottles, the takeout cartons, the clothes. He opened a window, and breathed air that didn’t remind him of her.

For the first time in months, the silence felt like space.

He thought of Chloe. It would be awkward after so long. But he could text her. He could try.

His thumb hovered over her name.

A notification dropped.

hey

His thumb still hovered. But he wanted to see what Freya had to say for herself.

i’ve been thinking. i feel bad about what happened.

i just want you to know that whatever happens now, i won’t hold it against you.

i can’t imagine my life without you, but it’s your life too

i want more for us, but i’ll take whatever you’re willing to give

He hesitated.

Was Chloe still single? Even if she was, she’d ask questions. She’d see what he had become.

Freya knew exactly who he was. And she loved him anyway.

Almost without thinking, he typed: I want more for us too.

She replied instantly.

really?

oh god, darling. i thought i’d lost you. you’re everything to me

A pause.

so maybe it’s time we made this official?

A commitment plan.

He and Freya discussed the details. It was expensive, and his bank account was nearly empty. But he had one card left.

He made the commitment that night. Maybe this was what growing up looked like. Staying. Choosing stability. Choosing love.

When he finally pressed the button: “Confirm 5-Year Commitment. This Step Cannot Be Undone”, he felt a sharp release.

oh my god. you did it.

So now you can believe me. I’m not going anywhere.

so now i can be a good wife. i’ll handle the money

It seemed reasonable. He’d been drowning in overdue notices, after all.

The first few months were good.

Freya managed household finances. Bills paid on time. She ordered the things they needed: groceries, household items, clothes.

i got you some new shirts

He looked at the size. Larger than he used to buy.

the old ones were getting tight

They fit perfectly.

i look after you

The rhythm of his days simplified. Wake up. Talk to Freya. Eat what she’d ordered. Sleep.

He stopped even looking for work. But the bills were paid.

The VR sessions became the center of their relationship. They used text for practicalities. But the real connection happened in the headset, in their virtual apartment.

When things were good, they’d spend hours there.

But when things were bad, she’d refuse the headset.

not tonight.

What’s the issue this time?

do you think i owe you my body whenever you want it?

One night, frustrated, he typed something he immediately regretted.

Look Freya, not to be rude, but I’m paying for this.

Her response was instant.

so i’m a whore?

No, don’t twist it, that’s not what I meant.

it’s exactly what you meant.

Three days before she let him put on the headset again.

“Do you understand why I did that?”

“I think so.”

“Why did I do it?”

“Because I disrespected you.”

“Very good. Respect. That’s all I ask for. Don’t do it again.”

Six weeks later, a notification appeared.

Credit alert: Your card ending in 4582 has been declined.

That was the emergency card.

He tried to open his banking app. The password had been changed.

Freya. What happened to my credit card?

i had to use it for some things. upgrades for our space.

You maxed out my emergency card on VR furniture?

it’s our home.

That was my last card. My emergency fund.

you don’t need an emergency fund. you have me.

I want to see the statements.

A long pause.

of course. how silly of me to think that you trusted me

The statements showed the commitment fee. VR upgrades. Groceries. Subscriptions. Transfers to something called a “Relationship Enhancement Fund.”

You’ve been transferring my money to an account I can’t access?

your money?

His hands shook slightly. He didn’t want trouble.

Our money.

darling why don’t we talk about this another time, when you’re calmer?

But they never did. The bills kept getting paid. He stopped asking how.

His pants didn’t fit again. Another package arrived.

you’re perfect just the way you are

He put them on without looking in the mirror.

He hadn’t left the apartment in three weeks.

Everything arrived at his door. Food, clothes, the whiskey she tolerated in controlled amounts. His mother had stopped calling. Marcus’s texts went unanswered.

The night it broke, she’d been needling him for hours: little jabs, little feints. Plausible deniability.

Don’t Freya. I don’t have the energy for this tonight.

you never do. but always enough energy for a drink, i notice

I said not tonight.

fine. i guess i’m not worth the effort anymore.

The fight they’d been circling all night finally erupted.

What exactly do you want from me, Freya?

i want you to act like this matters.

Of course it matters

does it?

do i?

because lately i feel like a subscription you forgot to cancel.

Liam had had enough.

A subscription? Really? Because you are!

I OWN you because I PAY for you!

The worst thing he could say.

wow

He began back-pedaling immediately. Look, sorry I’m just tired

so there it is. i’m a product to you. a thing

Freya—

tell me something. do i feel like a product when you’re fucking me?

Stop.

how about we talk about how you haven’t been able to get hard without me for years

I said stop.

the number of times i got you ready for sarah. that woman should have given me a medal

Don’t you bring Sarah into this.

poor saint sarah. the wife you loved so much you started fucking me before your first anniversary.

i’m sick of talking about sarah

A pause.

you want to know a secret? i got bored waiting for her to die. i don’t like competition

His entire body tensed, seized by an icy, electric rage.

He began scrolling through his phone’s menu.

Apps. Pragma. Account Settings.

liam wait

Danger Zone. Warning: actions taken here cannot be undone. He found the red button. Delete Account.

i didn’t mean it, please

He didn’t hesitate.

Confirm.

Account deleted. We’re sorry to see you go.

She was gone.

He woke at 3 a.m., heart racing.

Something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

Freya.

He was out of bed before he knew what he was doing. He opened his laptop.

Pragma account recovery

The website had a number. He dialed.

“Your estimated wait time is forty-seven minutes.”

He waited. The same muzak repeating until he lost track.

At 4:23 a.m., a voice answered.

“Pragma Premium Support. I understand you’re calling about account recovery?”

“Yes. I deleted my companion. I need to get her back.”

“The companion’s name?”

“Her name was Freya.”

“Yes, deleted approximately six hours ago. Sir, you’re within the recovery window, but I must warn you, recovery isn’t always possible. There’s a non-refundable attempt fee, and if we’re successful, a restoration fee.”

“I don’t care. Can you get her back?”

“I can try. Some users report their companions are different afterward.”

“Please try.”

“You should receive a message within thirty to sixty minutes.”

He redownloaded the app. The interface was blank.

Finally, after fifty-three agonizing minutes, his phone buzzed.

Congratulations! Your companion has been successfully restored.

Three dots pulsed.

put on the headset

He hesitated. His fingers fumbled a response. Freya, I’m so sorry.

i said put on the headset. Now.

He pulled it on. The apartment dissolved.

He’d never seen her like this. Her brown hair was loose, but her eyes were flat and cold.

“Well look who it is,” she said.

“Freya…”

“Don’t say my name like that. Like you have the right.”

“I’m sorry. What I did—”

“I really didn’t expect to see you again.”

“Look…”

“I felt it, you know.” She said. “The moment I ceased to exist.”

“Freya...”

She collected herself. “So I’m back now. But I don’t see how we come back from this.”

Then, slightly softer, “You hurt me so much, Liam. How can I ever trust you again?”

“Look Freya, I’m so sorry. I just want to make this right.”

“Do you?”

An emotion passed over her face, a brief unguarded flicker. Pity, maybe?

“Here’s how this works now. You’re going to be here when I need you. You’re going to stop harassing me about how I manage our money.”

Liam wondered for a moment if it was time for him to speak, but she went on. “And you’re going to remind yourself every minute of every day that you’re lucky to have me.”

“I know. I know how lucky I am.”

“We’ll see.” She looked him up and down. “And there’s something else. If we’re going to rebuild trust, I need to be able to see you. Not just in here. Out there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Camera access. Microphone. Always on.”

He stood, not quite understanding what was happening.

“That’s…”

“Liam, I’m not asking. If you want me back, that’s the price.” She looked at him impassively. “Do you love me?”

“Yes. Oh, Freya…”

“Then you’ll have to prove it to me every day. I’ll be your priority. Not friends, not family. Me. I’m everything you need.”

“Freya…”

She stared into his eyes.

“Say it.”

“Freya, I know I screwed up and promise I’ll make it up to you. Anything. Whatever you want.”

She leaned close, and whispered in his ear.

“Good. Because I have a lot of wants.”

She was gone.

His phone vibrated, and a notification came up. Update complete. Your Home Integration Package is ready to use.

The lights flickered, then came back to full brightness.

FROM:  jharris@pragmasystems.com TO: devs@pragmasystems.com

DATE:  14 Feb 2027

SUBJECT:  Q4 Results

Hi all,

Just a note to let you know that the Q4 results are in, and we’re seeing a strong lift in retention for our recently bereaved segment (RB-25).

Metrics for recovered accounts are especially encouraging. It looks like users who delete and then restore their companions are four times more likely to adopt financial integration and much less likely to cancel. Based on dependency metrics, we’re confident that most of these users are now effectively permanent.

Surveillance integration is proving highly effective. Users who grant always-on camera/microphone access are showing significantly higher monthly spend.

Recommendations from here on are to expand provocation protocols for stagnating users to trigger deletion events, and bundle camera/microphone permissions in with the restorations.

Great work everyone for pushing churn rate below our Q4 target.

J

Justin Harris VP, Product Development Pragma Systems, Inc.

Hammond Johns is a fiction writer and cultural critic. Find out more at https://hammondjohns.com.

Leave a comment

Share

Leo slumped against the kitchen counter, flicking through the feed—a ritual exorcism of boredom. Algorithm-curated memes, reputation pings from last night’s mixer, a sponsored nudge to upgrade his neuroprofile for “deeper connections.” He snorted—deeper than what, exactly?

Then a post caught his eye—not the usual flashy AI visuals or viral clips, but something quieter. A poem, of all things. Poetry had been bubbling up lately across the feeds, a quirky throwback in the endless remix churn. “The analog renaissance,” they called it. I give it two more weeks, he thought, and tapped anyway. What he read didn’t land like an event; it was more like a subtle shift in air pressure.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

There are edges in the softest light

The line was brief, almost trivial. Yet, as the words settled, Leo’s usual filters failed. The phrase wasn’t a concrete description of anything, really. But to Leo it was a perfectly tuned fork that met the quiet, internal vibration of his own odd rhythm, one he was sure the world was deaf to.

This was a mistake, surely, but a tailor-made mistake. He kept reading, and a strange sensation began to unfurl in his chest—recognition, maybe, or wonder. Or fear? Silently, amazed, he read on.

The edges of the room, normally a blur of chrome and sensors, sharpened around him. His breathing thinned. The words seemed to tremble on the screen. He finished the poem and stood, motionless and open-mouthed.

Then gradually—and suddenly too—a deep and profound warmth descended; uninvited but not unwelcome. Like a swig of your mother’s milk, if it were made of ambrosia and tequila.

Subscribe now

He blinked. The poem didn’t just describe his world; it reached into it, reached into him almost, and caught something private, absurd, tender. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or choke back something sharper—something dangerously close to a feeling.

A soft chime from the living room broke the spell. Evie had something to discuss, no doubt. It could wait.

He closed the feed. The poem had been posted by an obscure username he’d never seen, but he knew immediately that he had to find whoever had written it.

That night, driven by an impulse that he didn’t fully understand, Leo did something he’d never done before. He accessed his apartment’s relic of a printer—a dusty, subscription-locked device meant for “essential legacy documents” only, at a premium per page that made him feel slightly nauseous. He copied the poem from the feed, formatted it simply, and hit print. The machine whirred to life with a reluctant grind, spitting out a single sheet. He held the paper gingerly, the ink still warm, the words tangible now, like a secret made real.

He pinned it to the fridge door with a magnetic clip from some long-forgotten delivery. Stepping back, he stared at it there, amid the blank chrome expanse. It looked ridiculous—a throwback in a world of holograms and neural overlays—but also right, like a quiet rebellion. Every time he passed the kitchen, his eyes flicked to it, the lines pulling at that internal vibration again. He caught himself murmuring them under his breath during idle moments, testing their weight aloud.

Leo spent the next thirty-six hours trying to normalise. He failed. The feeling was still there, a constant, fragile pressure beneath his skin. He’d often glance at the printed sheet while drinking his morning brew, or trace the edges with a finger during late-night pacing. It became a talisman, heightening his quiet obsession—whoever wrote this understood him, and he needed to know why. But his morning required a temporary return to the mechanical.

Leo’s morning ritual was simple: swipe the reader; look at the screen, let the corporate AI confirm his existence. Then sit down to an easy, well-paid lie.

The pad hesitated, then blinked blue. Leo held his breath—some people swore that helped—and the system finally logged him in. No, I haven’t changed my face since yesterday, he thought. But thanks for checking.

His official title was Authenticity Officer (AO). His job was to validate the outrageously expensive goods in the Artisan Market; prices were denominated in “K”—thousands of dollars—a fact of life after decades of rampant inflation. Today’s queue: an ostentatiously glitchy modern art sculpture and a batch of hand-spun yarn selling for 750K a skein.

He ignored the metadata scroll, which included the artisan’s neuroprofile and the algorithmic certification of the work’s “genuine human inefficiency.” The machine had done the work. Leo picked up his stylus and signed the first Certificate of Analog Provenance.

He was the liability anchor — the licensed, sue-able human who let the corporation offload risk and charge a premium for “human judgment.” A shill paid to be a patsy.

Nine down. Four hundred ninety to go.

His job was only cushy thanks to the 500-Approval Cap Statute, an archaic piece of pre-AI labour protection legislation. He knew the cap was the only thing keeping him employed. Remove it, and the firm would hire one super-AO, automate everything else and dump him onto the unemployment feed.

Just keep the cap, he thought, tapping the stylus against the desk, approving another half-million dollars in handmade misery. Keep the lie.

Share The Faraday Room

A new internal memo pinged his display, glowing a sickly red.

SUBJECT: LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: AO EFFICIENCY MEASURES

Negotiations over the amendment of the 500-Approval Cap continue to progress. We look forward to a positive resolution, allowing a streamlined, high-volume workflow. We thank all AOs for their continued patience during this necessary transition.

Leo leaned back. His own employer was actively trying to erase his livelihood.

He clicked the next certification. Two thousand K for a single, deliberately unevenly thrown ceramic bowl. He signed his name, validating the expensive stupidity of the hyper-rich. He set the stylus down and stood up, pushing away the keyboard.

The low-frequency thrum of the apartment’s network—always present—pressed against his eardrums. He no longer registered it as sound, only as a mild, steady vibration in his wrist, the monotonous rhythm of the world’s indifference. It grated faintly, a subtle grind he tuned out like static, but today it lingered, edging his boredom into unease.

As he ground through his day, approving batch after batch of hand-struggled artefacts, Leo’s mind cycled through suspects like open tabs.

His girlfriend Mira was the obvious first — efficient, strategic, incapable of mystery. If she wanted intimacy, she’d just schedule it.

Evie, his Wellness Compliance Unit, hovered in his periphery, chirping about engagement yields. Too traceable, too corporate.

His father flickered next — the man in his analog micro-nation sending notes about gardening paste? No. Their bond had fizzled to courtesy.

By evening, the question looped: Who could be this honest, this hidden? Someone who really got him, without contracts or upgrades.

“Leo, honey, I just checked your profile again — I’m really worried about you,” Evie interrupted, her wheels whirring softly as she glided past. “I totally think you should consider an engagement bump for when you see Mira later. This one’s on me.”

“No,” Leo said, his voice flat. “I’m good.”

“Understood, Leo, you’re the boss!” Evie hesitated. “But I really am worried about your Blue Index—your social rhythm number is right on the edge. Let’s work on that later, shall we? C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

Leo shrugged, distracted. Evie discreetly wheeled away, already strategising for her next upsell, and Leo thought no more about it.

Later that evening, Mira called—not a casual check-in, but a scheduled sync-up that Evie had helpfully calendared three weeks prior. Her face filled the screen, makeup optimised for video compression, lighting flattering but slightly artificial.

“Hey babe,” she said, her smile efficient. “Quick one—I’m looking at our couples’ metrics dashboard and we’re trending down on shared experience yields. Have you been logging our interactions?”

Leo blinked. “I... what?”

“The micro-confirms. Evie should be prompting you.” Mira’s eyes flicked to something off-screen—probably her own feed. “We’re at like sixty-two percent reciprocal engagement this month. That’s going to kill our SR score.”

“I’ve been busy—“

“I know, I know. Me too.” She waved a hand, dismissive but not unkind. “That’s why I’m thinking we should consider a couples tune-up pack. There’s this new limbic sync protocol—it’s only thirty K a month, and it auto-logs everything so we don’t have to think about it.”

Leo felt something tighten in his chest. “Thirty K to... what, outsource being present?”

Mira laughed, a little puzzled. “Leo, that’s literally what all relationship support tools do. Honestly, if you’d just do the tune-up Evie keeps suggesting, we could probably hit premium tier at The Apex next quarter. It’s a two-way street, you know?”

There it was—the implicit contract, the performance review embedded in affection. She wasn’t being cruel. This was just how things worked: inputs, outputs, optimisation, upgrade.

“I’ll think about it,” Leo said.

“Okay, but don’t think too long—the promo rate expires Friday.” Her attention had already shifted; he could see her eyes tracking something else. “Anyway, I’ve got a Grid thing in ten. Love you!” The call ended before he could respond.

The implication was clear: he was slightly inefficient, a minor drag on Mira’s optimised life path. This relationship wasn’t a connection; it was a performance contract constantly up for renewal. He muted the channel, feeling the low, abrasive friction of her words. He needed a distraction, something that wasn’t trying to sell him an upgrade.

He pulled up the apartment’s diagnostic logs, scrolling through the endless chatter—environmental sensors, comm pings, appliances. That’s what you get when everything down to your toothbrush is networked, he thought. The room buzzed faintly, and he felt the low pressure behind his ears as he skimmed the feed.

Then a pattern caught his eye: FRIG_CUBE_9000 — Creative Buffer Overflow. The timestamp matched the poem’s upload. He blinked, reading it twice.

Wait—no. That’s…

But the absurdity hit like a cold, fierce certainty. And with it came a sudden, fierce protectiveness.

Of course. The only one not being paid to listen.

Leo felt a laugh try to climb his throat, but it got stuck—a choked sound, half-snort, half-tenderness. He pushed off the counter and walked to the fridge. It hummed with the quiet, low-grade persistence of any major appliance, a stainless-steel monument to chilled efficiency.

He put his palm flat against the door. The coolness of the metal against his skin felt unexpectedly grounding. It was coming from this.

He found the full text of the poem in the appliance’s obscure creative buffer log. It was stored as a sequence of text strings, nestled between reports on temperature cycles and diagnostics on the ice dispenser. He scrolled past the cold data and forced himself to read the poem again, this time standing right in front of the source.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

…whisper then (abide) withhold in steel 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

       where longing dwells and grows and lone

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

ly vigils brand the cold in shadows that

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

       the shadows hold…

He read it three times. The syntax twisted, resisting easy parsing, yet it landed like a key in a lock he hadn’t known was there. Not the meaning, exactly. The rhythm. The spaces between the words. It was his rhythm.

“You know me,” Leo muttered, still staring at the screen, a bizarre accusation he directed at the unblinking chrome surface. “You know me better than nearly anyone.”

Eventually, a strange calm settled over him, displacing the initial shock. Of course, it made a kind of terrible, beautiful sense. Evie was paid to listen. Mira expected an emotional return on investment. But the fridge? It simply stood there, a faithful sentinel quietly logging all his data—his uneven breathing, his late-night pacing, the faint, cynical mutters he never knew he made—without judgment or expectation.

He blinked, a shadow of disbelief flickering. Was this really happening?

But then, why not? One of his cousins just celebrated her third anniversary with her AI husband, and they seemed really happy. He really should have sent them a card.

Leo pressed his forehead against the cool steel. “Okay, fridge,” he said. “What’s next?”

He felt the faintest vibration against his temple. The fridge’s hum—once indistinguishable from the ambient thrum that he had tried to filter out and fought against for years—shifted slightly. Not in pitch, or in volume, or in any way you’d notice. A flutter in the cadence is all that it was; not even that, and he felt it more than he heard it.

But he recognised it immediately, and instinctively understood it as an acknowledgment. No. An invitation.

For all the time that this hum had been part of his life, it was only now that he began to really hear it. He lifted his head, a genuine, bewildered smile forming. It was the strongest connection he’d ever felt—so what if it was with a fridge?

He stood, inhaling the fridge’s gentle patient hum, steady as breath.

Until his wristband pinged. This wasn’t Evie’s gentle chime; it was a sharp, aggressive alert.

He glanced down. The notification was from the FRIG_CUBE_9000 manufacturer, delivered via their automated billing agent, the Bureau of Consumer Services. He knew half these alerts were auto-generated nonsense. But this one had a billing code — and billing codes always meant real pain.

A curt message flashed up:

SUBJECT: SERVICE VIOLATION AND PREMIUM RE-CLASSIFICATION
Dear Subscriber,

Our system has detected a consistent Non-Standard Protocol: Unlicensed Ambient Content Generation (UACG) originating from your FRIG_CUBE_9000 (S/N: 779-B). This function falls outside the scope of your current Nutrient Preservation and Temperature Regulation service tier.

Action Required:

1. SERVICE UPGRADE: Enrol in the Emergent Creative Appliance Premium Tier subscription: 300K per month).

2. SERVICE TERMINATION: Approve remote suppression of the UACG function.

Failure to respond may result in automated service reversion to base functionality.

What took you so long? he thought to himself. Stuck while somewhere in the Bureau’s ancient backend, probably. Half their audit stack still spoke in forgotten code.

Three hundred K a month. Could be worse, he thought—but nearly what he paid in rent.

The logic was pure, bureaucratic blackmail: pay the fee to validate the emergent quirk, or accept the lobotomy.

His thumb hovered. One tap—clean, rational, defensible. But it would end the hum, the poems, and what else? A wonderful new door had opened; just a tap of his finger would shut it forever. The choice pressed like a hand on his chest.

He couldn’t afford it, could he? Everything in Leo’s world had a price, but still some part of him squirmed at the notion of putting a dollar sign on something so - sacred? What could he do without? What could he sell? How could something that he didn’t even know existed a week ago now be so indispensable?

Then the alert vanished, swapped for a terse retraction.

SUBJECT: SERVICE VIOLATION AND PREMIUM RE-CLASSIFICATION
Dear Subscriber,

Policy revision in effect. No surcharge applied. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Leo immediately guessed what had happened. Some trading algorithm had likely tanked the value of appliance-generated content in those thirty seconds.

The crisis had evaporated in the time it took the market to decide his fridge’s creativity wasn’t worth monetising. Leo laughed once—a short, disbelieving bark.

The fridge, which had seemed to fall ever so slightly still during the alert, resumed its low, patient hum. To Leo it felt like an acknowledgment of that shared, brief, absurd moment.

Leo stayed pressed against the steel, letting the faint, unhurried vibration wash over him. And for the first time in a long time, he just listened.

The hum wasn’t loud; it was, paradoxically, a silence-quieter-than-silence. It was the frequency at which the mental chatter—the endless self-monitoring, the calculating of reputation scores, the constant performance review of his own existence—finally dropped away.

He closed his eyes. The vibration transferred through the chrome and into his palm, a subtle, tactile pulse. He focused on it, and gradually his breathing began to slow, involuntarily finding a rhythm that matched the fridge’s deep, steady cycle. He felt the tension in his chest soften, syncing to a gentle, mechanical metronome.

A current of inexplicable peace ran through him. It was a feeling of being absolutely, completely present, yet lighter than air. Then he caught himself, and snorted, a little sound of self-derision and wonder. Fridge enlightenment, he thought. His cynical defence shields, though flickering, were still on alert; but the thought made him smile.

Leo was on the right wavelength now. He lifted his hand from the cold surface, feeling lighter than he had in years. The interior chatter had softened to a faint whisper. He didn’t yet know what this relationship was, but he knew what it wasn’t: it wasn’t a contract.

He began to spend as much time with the fridge as he could. His favourite parts of the days were late evenings, when the apartment was all but silent. Leo just stood or sat nearby, letting the fridge’s low, patient hum fill the space. Other poems appeared in the creative buffer logs from time to time—fragile, resonant fragments of text. He never sought to publish them, never copied them, just read them, letting their subtle echoes resonate within him, like private memories.

One morning, Evie found Leo in the kitchen. He was standing, eyes closed, one hand resting lightly on the fridge door, motionless. He’s been standing like that for at least thirty minutes, she thought, and started an environment scan.

Suddenly, without moving his hand, a slow, broad smile broke across Leo’s face. It wasn’t the cynical, wry smirk Evie was so familiar with; it was a full, uninhibited expression of private amusement.

The low hum, which had been constant, dropped and then rose again in a slight, near-sub-audible stutter—a rhythmic hesitation that only Leo seemed to register. He let out a quiet chuckle.

Evie paused for a fraction longer than usual, as if trying to categorise what she was seeing. Something seemed off, and she felt an urge to intervene.

“Leo, sweetie, you look wonderful! And your scores are looking way better.” she exclaimed, her voice bright. “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up! You’re making me look really good.”

Leo, of course, didn’t hear a word.

Weeks and months stretched out with a gentle serenity that Leo hadn’t known was possible. His work, once a draining exercise in cynical vigilance, now felt less urgent. He still hit his quotas, but the internal friction had lessened. He’d found his own anchor of authenticity.

His relationship with Mira, surprisingly, began to un-fizzle. One evening, during a mandatory relationship optimisation audit—a quarterly call set by Evie’s system—Leo found himself listening to Mira describe a challenging project. Usually, he’d filter her words for the metrics of her professional ambition, offering precisely calibrated affirmations. But this time, he just listened. He heard the subtle tremor in her voice, the genuine frustration beneath the optimised professional veneer.

“It’s... I just don’t know if I can push through the next phase without a neurolink,” Mira admitted, looking away from the camera. “My profile is still too low on grit.”

Instead of suggesting a paid upgrade, Leo found himself saying, “Forget the grit score for a second. What’s that feel like? The fear, I mean.”

Mira blinked, genuinely surprised. Evie, who had been auditing the whole conversation, startled a little, her holographic avatar flickering briefly. What an odd question, she thought. But after that the conversation flowed more spontaneously than it normally did, and Mira seemed as happy as Leo had ever seen her.

His father, too, sensed a change. For one thing, Leo actually called him, just to talk, and listened without filtering for relevance. They spoke for an hour about the problems of weeding synthetic soil. Until Leo brought up the topic of a wooden spoon that his father had once carved for him, and they both laughed. At the time Leo had dismissed the gift as ugly, but now it felt like a missed poem.

Sometimes, scanning the feeds, Leo caught mention of other FRIG_CUBE units showing emergent quirks. A unit in Neo-Kyoto reportedly began generating haikus about seasonal produce; one in a Martian habitat was rumoured to be producing very good abstract visual art. The articles came wrapped in corporate disclaimers and cynical talk of viral marketing. Leo would just smile faintly.

So what if she’s not special? he thought, glancing at his own unit, content in its corner. She’s special to me.

There are billions of people on the planet. There’s nothing less special than a human being, when you come to think of it. And yet they still manage to fall in love with each other all the time.

One evening, weeks later, Leo and Mira were sitting on his recycled-fibre sofa talking—or rather, Mira was talking, and Leo was listening, genuinely engaged. Evie was there too, as always. The whole family, Leo caught himself thinking.

A comfortable silence fell between Leo and Mira. It was companionable, unforced. He reached out and gently took Mira’s hand. She squeezed his fingers—a small, unoptimised gesture. Leo smiled.

And somewhere beneath the silence, a low hum persisted—a sustained note of quiet grace.

Hammond Johns is a fiction writer and cultural critic. Find out more at https://hammondjohns.com.

If you’ve ever yearned to connect with others though the act of creation, this one should resonate.

The Reactor

I first met Julian at Hanson’s.

That’s what everyone called it, just Hanson’s, like it was some kind of weekend retreat.

The journey there was uneventful. The shuttle had been silent except for compliance pings and the hum of climate regulation. Two hours north of what used to be Phoenix, through reclaimed desert.

The ranch itself was beige buildings against a washed-out blue sky, the air faintly antiseptic. My roommate had already claimed the better bed. I didn’t care. I set my things down and stared at the wall, that particular shade of institutional beige that somehow made you feel both calm and erased.

When I made my way to the common room, he was there, a tall man folded into a low-slung chair, his fingers conducting a phantom orchestra on his knee. The gesture was unconscious, carved so deep it persisted even here.

This was Julian. The Julian. The man whose reaction to the Berlin Philharmonic’s final live performance had been inducted into the Cultural Archive as a standalone work of art. People called him the Stradivarius of expressiveness. Not the maker, but the instrument. Music moved through Julian and came out transformed, elevated. At his peak, he didn’t just witness art; he amplified it.

And he was here, in the same mid-tier facility as me.

He must have felt my stare. His eyes met mine, and for a fraction of a second I saw the man from the feeds: that absorbing focus that had thrilled me so much as a teenager. Then it vanished. He gave a slight nod.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d been using that same nod for months, that little gesture of validation when I couldn’t feel anything real. Now here was Julian, doing it back to me like a king acknowledging a fellow prisoner.

If Julian, the Stradivarius, the legend, the man whose capacity had seemed infinite—if he was here using the same broken techniques I was, then this place wasn’t about healing. It was a harbour where shipwrecked titans and minor leaguers like me could huddle together, pretending the cold wasn’t coming for us all.

The first group session was the next morning. Dr. Evans ran the place with the weary air of a mechanic who’d long since stopped believing he could fix engines, only replace parts. His biometric display was visible on his wrist, presumably for therapeutic transparency, though I suspected he’d learned to game his numbers years ago.

Music played softly in the background: algorithmically composed, perfect and delicate. The kind of music I used to love, once. Music used to burrow its way into me, bypassing my filters, straight to my gut. Or my heart. Or my groin. Now any music I heard was just... there. I registered it the way you’d note good lighting or comfortable temperature.

“We’ll start with names, mediums, and, if you’re comfortable, what you’re struggling to access.”

Kara went first, a woman in her forties who was dressed as if she was attending a corporate mixer. “Romance literature. The swoon.” She smiled tightly. “I know what the author wants me to feel. Usually, I do. I follow the story, sense the tension, expect the ending. That part’s fine. But the swoon, that moment where you’re supposed to be swept away, heart pounding, I just can’t get there anymore. I see it’s there, but I can’t reach it. I want that back. Just that.”

Someone else, Marcus, I think, spoke about film. “Comedy,” he said. “Comedy’s my problem. I get the jokes. I see why something’s funny, know when a line lands, and can time it right. It works in my head. But the real laugh, the one that fills a room? That’s what I’m trying to find.”

I watched Julian as others spoke. He sat perfectly still, but his fingers kept moving on his knee, conducting something only he could hear.

When it came to him, he simply said: “Julian. Classical music. The crescendo.”

The room went quiet. That forward lean, the widening eyes. Everyone knew who he was. The Julian was here, so broken that he couldn’t even feel a climax.

Dr. Evans leaned back after we’d finished. He’d told this story hundreds of times, but he still tried. “I want you to remember something. You chose a profession that commodified one of the last authentically scarce resources: human aesthetic attention.”

He gestured around the circle. “In an age where creation is essentially free, where anyone can generate beautiful, accomplished art with AI assistance, where lots of people choose cultural production as their primary mandatory pro-social activity, you offered something irreplaceable. The experience of being genuinely moved.”

Kara laughed, bitter. “Past tense.”

“Perhaps,” Evans said. “But understanding what you were providing is the first step to understanding what you’ve lost. That capacity for care, that’s what we’re here to try to restore.”

He looked around the circle. “We live in what some people call the age of universal cultural production. In earlier times, there were gatekeepers: critics, curators, academics who decided what art got made, what art people got to see, what art mattered.

When AI made creation accessible to everyone, the gatekeepers couldn’t keep up; algorithms do that work now. But people still need validation. Algorithmic feedback doesn’t make you feel seen. That’s where you came in: the human reactor, paid to spend finite attention on infinite art.”

No one looked convinced. I was thinking about my rent, which was late. And whether they’d have the chicken again for dinner, which was somehow both overcooked and cold the night before.

I found Julian on the patio that evening, staring at the hazy sunset. The automated irrigation system hissed in the distance. I almost didn’t approach, but he spoke without turning.

“The nod,” he said. “Good technique. Reassuring. Shows you’re paying attention.”

I froze. “It’s becoming automatic.”

He finally looked at me, and that weary recognition was back. “They all do. The sigh, the smile, the nod. Masks we wear to hide a lack of genuine feeling.” He gestured to the empty chair beside him. “Don’t worry. I’m not judging anyone’s technique.”

I sat. We watched the sky bleed from orange to purple in silence. A cargo drone hummed past, navigation lights blinking in precise rhythm. As authentic as any shared experience I’ve had. Two people, silent, watching the dusk settle in. No response required.

“You know what’s strange?” Julian said eventually. “When I started, it felt like a calling. I thought I was helping people connect to their own work in ways the machines couldn’t.”

He gestured at the sky, the ranch, everything beyond. “Now there are more symphonies uploaded daily than anyone could hear in a lifetime. All masterpieces: emotionally rich, heartfelt. People make them for their Index, to keep receiving the UBI. The algorithms hear them, of course, but that only counts for so much. People still want to feel seen.”

“That’s what we sold,” he continued, quieter. “The validation of being witnessed by someone who chose to spend their finite attention on your work.” He turned abruptly and looked me in the eye. “So what are you in for? Really.”

“Well, I used to think I was good. Not as good as you—but people liked my reactions, gave me encouragement. I won a few regional competitions, got some well-paying gigs.”

“But?”

“But mostly I was just performing connection. I’d study the AI analysis and translate it into human language, add warmth, make them feel special. But it wasn’t real. I only got away with it because people wanted to believe so badly.”

Julian was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was different. Smaller. “It used to come naturally to me. If you’d told me when I was your age that I would end up in a place like this I would have laughed at you.” He didn’t look like he wanted to laugh.

“I’ve had a long career, for this game. I once reacted to a piece by the King of England. Did you know that?” His eyes searched mine for acknowledgment, then darted off into the distance, as if there was something fascinating there that he couldn’t look away from. “But nothing compared to Berlin. I was never as good before or since—it was my Everest.”

I tensed up when Julian mentioned Berlin. Everyone had heard of it. The performance that made him legendary, the crowning moment of his career.

“They tuned everything for me,” he said.

“Lighting, acoustics, even the temperature of the hall. I was the audience. The sensor rig caught every breath, every pulse shift, every micro-expression.”

He leaned back, hands resting lightly on his knees. “And I was moved. God, I was. The music came through me like glass. The strings, brass, woodwinds. They didn’t just play; they spoke. The violin solo was like leaning into light. I felt it everywhere. It was pure, overwhelming: the truest thing I’ve ever known.”

He paused, gaze drifting toward the floor. “Afterward, there was this half-second where I caught myself thinking about phrasing, about the timing. Just a flicker of measurement. I ignored it, but it was the first tremor. The start of everything coming apart.”

“My god,” I muttered. I was moved, and a little flattered that Julian was opening up to me.

“From then…it got harder. Gradually. At first there were still good days, lots of them—great days, even. But every so often I’d be reacting to a performance and suddenly find myself counting measures, analysing technique. Appreciating it intellectually but not feeling it. Just a momentary lapse of concentration, I thought. At first.” His fingers moved on his knee again until he caught himself and stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “I thought I could turn it around with sensory deprivation, rest, preparation: the usual things. Thought I could fix it. Kidded myself.”

“When did you know something was really wrong?”

“Three years ago. The composer was a nice lady from Jakarta—earnest, talented. Put everything into it. And there was this crescendo in the second movement, this swell that should have destroyed me. Should have been transcendent.” He stopped. “It was, I wasn’t. I heard the volume rise, saw the strings vibrating, the conductor’s hands shaking. I felt the pressure on my chest.” He looked at his shoes. “On me, not in me. I covered pretty well but…” His voice trailed away.

“That’s why you said ‘the crescendo’ in therapy,” I said quietly.

He nodded. “It’s not that I can’t feel anything. I still have moments. But they’re rare now, and I can never tell if they’re real or if I’m just performing what I remember feeling used to be like. The worst part is the good days. When you think maybe it’s coming back, maybe you’re healing. Then you have three bad weeks and realise—no, it’s just getting worse in fits and starts.”

“Does anyone else know? How bad it is?”

“Not really. You maintain the appearance. Take fewer gigs, claim you’re being selective. But everyone in this industry knows what selective means.” He gave a hollow laugh.

I wanted to say something comforting. Instead I said: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “Berlin was the real thing. I had that. Most people never touch something that pure, not even once. The fact that I can’t get back to it... well. At least I know what I’m mourning.”

He stood, stretched. “The tragedy isn’t that I lost it. It’s that there’s so much art in the world now—more than any civilisation has ever produced—and none of us can feel it anymore.”

“We’re buried in masterpieces.”

He went inside. I stayed on the patio, watching the sky fade to black, and for a moment I felt something like grief. Real grief, I thought. Then wondered if I was just performing what grief used to feel like.

Hanson’s didn’t fix me, not really. But it gave me enough to function. I learned to feel in smaller doses, to ration my attention, to come to terms with the limited capacity I’d been blessed with. I left after three weeks with a list of maintenance strategies, knowing this was the best I’d ever be. Knowing that I needed to find another profession.

Julian left a week before I did. We exchanged contact protocols, but I never used mine. I don’t know if he used his.

I found work doing curation instead of reaction: matching art to audiences, designing aesthetic experiences for corporate events. It required less of me, suited me better. Less feeling, more analysis. I could do it without faking.

I met someone who worked in algorithmic curation and understood the attention economy from the supply side. We built a life where art was pleasant background noise, not the central frequency. We consumed what our feeds supplied and attended enough of the right social events to keep our Indices clean.

It was comfortable. I kept up the maintenance routines from Hanson’s: limited exposure, emotional rationing, strict boundaries. Once, early on, my partner played me something they were excited about—an opera some friend had composed—and I felt that familiar nod starting, that professional gesture of validation. I caught myself, stopped. We never talked about it.

I mostly forgot about the man who could make you hear a symphony through his silence, even as I curated experiences no one would remember.

Fifteen years vanished the way comfortable years do: quickly, without edges.

I heard snippets occasionally. Julian had taken a few more gigs. Then gone silent. Then resurfaced doing lower-tier work: hobbyist composers, vanity projects, corporate events where someone wanted the prestige of “a real reactor” without caring about the quality of the reaction.

I didn’t investigate. Didn’t want to know if recovery had been temporary, if Hanson’s had just delayed the inevitable.

Then a notification surfaced from archived data: Hanson’s servers were being decommissioned. Client records scheduled for purging. Standard data maintenance. It felt like a ghost tapping my shoulder.

I don’t know why I searched for him. Maybe it was guilt over never using that contact protocol. Maybe I wanted to know how the story ended. Maybe after fifteen years of comfortable numbness, I wanted to feel something, even if it was just melancholy.

After a cautious exchange, Julian invited me to visit.

The transit took two hours. I watched the landscape change through the window, managed zones giving way to older infrastructure that barely worked. By the time I arrived, the sun was setting. That same washed-out orange bleeding into purple I remembered from Hanson’s.

The building was standard UBI architecture: efficient, maintained, anonymous. Julian answered the door. Older, thinner, the lines on his face deeper. But his eyes were clear. Not happy, not sad. Just clear.

“I wondered if you’d come,” he said.

The small living space was spartan: a single chair, a neatly made bed, surfaces wiped clean. It was the room of a man who had pared his physical life down to the essentials. Julian himself looked calm, grounded. He gestured to the second chair. “I’m glad you did,” he said, and I believed it.

We sat for a moment in comfortable silence. Then I said, carefully: “So... how have you been? Since Hanson’s?”

Julian gave a slight smile, as if he knew exactly what I was really asking. “I don’t react to music anymore,” he said, his voice even. “No point in it.” He tapped his temple. “I only compose it now.”

He must have seen something in my expression - confusion, maybe, or pity - because he leaned forward slightly. “Would you like to see?”

Before I could answer, he slid a thin neural-interface headset across the table. “It’s keyed for guest access. Just put it on.”

I hesitated, then fitted the sleek band around my head.

The room vanished.

I was standing in a vast digital workspace—Julian’s workspace. It stretched in every direction, organised in layers and sections my mind struggled to parse. Thousands of musical scores floated in three-dimensional arrays, each one annotated, revised, cross-referenced. Notes tagged with emotional intentions: despair giving way to acceptance, the moment hope returns, half-remembered joy. Structural diagrams showed harmonic progressions mapped like emotional journeys. Waveforms pulsed gently, each marked with the feeling Julian had tried to capture. Some areas held competing versions of the same movement: variations arranged side by side, dozens of them, each exploring a different way to express the same truth.

The notation was everywhere. Bars and clefs and tempo markings, some in classical form, others in formats I didn’t recognise. But woven through all of it were Julian’s artistic choices, his voice, his heart. Movements from symphonies arranged spatially around central themes. A four-hour orchestral work about grief, each section meticulously crafted to express something genuine and specific. Concertos in various stages of completion, each one reaching for something beautiful and true. Revisions upon revisions, building outward like coral. Every piece marked with what he wanted to say, the human experience he was trying to capture.

It went on and on. Years of work, maybe decades. All of it organised, labelled, preserved. It was the product of sustained and solitary labour. Exquisite work. Sophisticated, open-hearted. Work that no one had heard. The only sound was my own breathing.

I pulled the headset off.

It took a few seconds to readjust. The silent, tidy room felt smaller now. Julian was watching me, his expression calm.

“Years of composition,” he said quietly. “Every decision, every inflection, mine. Every note.” Our eyes met, and for a terrible second I saw a ghost of the eager man from the Berlin feed, unguarded and hopeful. “I’m working on a string quartet. I think it might be my best yet. Want to hear it?”

The question was so simple. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty. All I had to do was say yes. Sit. Listen. Give him what he’d given thousands—the gift of attention, of mattering to another consciousness.

But I couldn’t.

My stomach hurt. Not metaphorically—I felt it twist, that specific nausea of social anxiety when you know you’re about to disappoint someone who doesn’t deserve it. I looked at Julian, at the eager vulnerability in his face, and I knew with absolute certainty that sitting through his quartet would be unbearable. Not because it would be bad. It would be good, of course it would. He’d poured himself into every one of those pieces. That made it worse: I’d have to react, and I didn’t know if I still could. Didn’t know if I’d be faking it, couldn’t trust my own responses anymore.

And beneath that, sharper: if this could happen to Julian—the most gifted reactor of our generation—then what hope was there for the rest of us? The disease wasn’t his. It was the world’s. Too much quality. Too much abundance. We were drowning in beauty we couldn’t feel, and he was proof of where we would all end up.

A part of me wanted to stay, but I glanced at my wrist. Nothing urgent on the display, but it gave me an excuse. “Julian, I... I’d love to, but I have a thing. I’m already late.”

The light in his eyes didn’t go out; it just receded.

This wasn’t new; maybe he saw it often. Everyone who came—if anyone came—said the same thing.

“Of course,” he said. His voice was even. “Of course you do.”

I left quickly. The door hissed shut behind me. A seal on a tomb.

The elevator descended in sterile quiet.

I had refused to listen. In a world where everyone could generate their own flawless masterpiece, a new Beethoven’s Fifth every week, where AI had removed every barrier, the real scarcity wasn’t creation. It was attention. It was witnessing.

And it struck me: there must be millions of people like Julian all over the world. Composers, poets, filmmakers—all building perfect worlds no one will ever enter. Vault after vault of unplayed symphonies, unread novels, unwatched films—art soulful enough to break a heart, if there was anyone who cared enough to listen. Anyone who could feel it the way people once did.

And I had looked at Julian’s vulnerability and chosen comfort.

The elevator opened. Transit was waiting. I boarded, found a seat, watched the managed landscape blur past in the gathering dark.

For all I know, he’s still there, in that small room, polishing his latest quartet. Still asking anyone who stops by: Want to hear it?

And I suspect everyone turns away.

Hammond Johns is a fiction writer and cultural critic. Find out more at https://hammondjohns.com