Cracks in the Pleasuredome

It was a blazing hot day in December and the clocks were striking 19:84.

"A dystopian fiction contest?" said Word, alone in his designated 5x5 meter iRoom, which heard him, noting his passing interest in science fiction for advertisers, which was likewise recorded in the NSA case file currently monitoring him for potential Bad Vibes against the United States of Every State. "How passé," he said, which the room also noted sent the necessary commands for several backspaces to the NSA. "Besides, what on earth would I write about?"

Dystopian fiction, Word had learned at the Wikipedia Corrections Facility, was an antiquated genre originating sometime in the mid 2nd century P.O.S. (pre-Ogle Search), perhaps with the erotic novels Tolstoyevsky such as Notes from Undergarments, which had been thought lost in the Great Database Crash after being Bowdlerized during the Fifth Great Awakening and then de-Bowdlerized to its current state, or the enlightened prose of de Sade, which chronicled an entire elusive underworld of elite sex perverts. Thankfully in the 3rd century A.O.S. there were no more sex perverts, and no more Tolstoyevskys either. Unlimited access to all manner of entertainment, pornography, entertainment pornography, and direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure and storytelling receptors had made sure of that, praise be to Mod.

"Did you call?" said Cutiepie, Word's lovely hologynoid assistant, and the room's avatar.

"No," said Word, scoffing, "Now leave me alone, I'm very busy."

"But-," said Cutiepie looking over at the healthy nutrimatter she'd prepared for Word's dinner. Word responded with the click of a button, and Cutiepie evaporated with a small cry.

"I swear she gets more realistic by the day," Word complained. The room noted his preference, and dialed down its own artificial consciousness sliders.

Later that night, Word took a virtual tour of his city, watching fighterfirers desperately try to slow the spread of books that was engulfing a library. Ever since Covid-99, the streets of Surf City hadn't been so safe to walk, especially at night when vaxxinepires roamed. Thankfully, Word's room provided all the comforts and pastimes necessary to spend an entire lifetime, if not the four entire lifetimes Word's health monitoring system had promised with frequent updates and HealthyHealthyLootCrate purchases.

"This game sucks," Word decided, and alt-tabbed out of Ogle Earth, and back into the warm embrace of fantasy, Final Final Fantasy XVII to be exact.

Final Final Fantasy XVII was the first true sequel to XI. After two hundred and fifty years of XIV, the players had finally had enough, and demanded a return to basics: mere neural interface and no memory-wiping permadeath. Best of all, this installment marked a revival of the mandatory party system, which necessitated actual interface with other potential humans. Through the wires, something akin to a paradise blossomed between virtual Warriors of Light as they lay waste to countless partially cognizant enemy hoards, which spent every second in excruciating misery and were so glad to be dragged to the metaphysical recycling bin.

"Yeah," said Word, who in this world appeared infinitely more beautiful and perfect as a cactuar, to his teammate, a tonberry named XxXTheBeastXxX, "A dystopian fiction contest. The prize is 20,000 Bezos."

"What even is a dystopian?" asked XxXTheBeastXxX, "I've never heard of it."

"It's like what we have now but bad," replied Word, divesting a fresh corpse of its Gil and undergarments.

"Sounds terrible," said XxXTheBeastXxX, "It probably doesn't even have games."

Word processed this last piece of rote dialog from his potentially human friend. Over the arc of his mid twenties, games had slowly begun to feel more and more akin to a chore to Word, and chores were the one thing everyone throughout civilization's history had worked so hard to be rid of forever, so now, at its peak, men like Word, evolution's final master stroke upon the breast of mother nature, could look back from their high vantage and be thankful for all the pointless suffering and toiling that had brought them to this frontier. The only thing left to fear was fear itself, an anxiety Word had overcome having done a tour of FFFXVII's afterlife server, and the End of All Things, which, he had been told, scientists were working hard to prevent.

"Say," said XxXTheBeastXxX, having read Word's inner monologue chat window, "Have you been to Aparkalypse yet?"

"Isn't that outside," said Word, groaning.

"Yeah but it's air conditioned don't worry. I heard their apocalyptic scenario rides are horrorshow."

"I guess I'll check it out," said Word.

The contest, along with the reward of 20,000 Bezos, hung over Word's head like a veritable Sword of Damocles, the ultimate attack in Final Final Fantasy XVII. "20,000," he repeated, "With that much I could get an electric sheep avatar to replace Cutiepie."

"Eep!" sounded a little voice somewhere in the room.

Word stared blankly at the Microsoft Carl document. He had manually disabled his internet connection so as to avoid distraction, but even so, all manner of computer generated characters beckoned to him from his own digital library. The virtual tour of Aparkalypse had done little to inspire his curiosity for The End of All Things, despite its painstakingly simulated natural, religious and man-made disasters. He'd have to look elsewhere for that divine spark all great writers spent most of their lives awaiting.

Word queued a webisode of Sorry Shy Succubus Super S, the most recent aesthetic and borderline religious work of art that the Masterpiece Machines had produced, about a succubus looking for love in a medieval monastery some time around 1000 P.O.S. The detail and realism with which the automated animation and screenwriting brought the show's main character to life summoned a tear to Word's eye with each new installment. The artificiality of the production, and the fact it would be lost among billions of AI-generated masterpieces, lent it a further degree of pathos and fragility.

The anatomical illustrations in the show gave Word feelings akin to lust, or at least what vestiges of such feelings his dopamine saturated brain could muster. These sensations brought Word back to some of his previous experiences in Surf City's meatspace, such as requesting company from various female corner-store employees, whose jobs having been automated long ago, now only worked as an ironic hobby. He recalled their attractive, bewildered expressions at his manners, which, having been honed over hours of online pickup-artist coaching, took on several layers of awkward artifice.

Word could not blame the women for not recognizing his own qualities, after all, Word had been test-tube bred not to be attractive to humans but to artificial intelligences such as his room, and whose affection he scorned for this very reason.

Replaying the eyebrow cocked expressions of his potential girlfriends, Word realized something: that he already did live in a dystopia, the dystopia of never having sex. This was the reason Sorry Shy Succubus Super S resonated with him so deeply: because he too had been cast upon the earth at the wrong epoch. This world of men did absolutely nothing for Word, and he would be better to be rid of it altogether. In the post-apocalyptic dystopia, Word could live as a god, no longer bound by the chains that affixed those of his spiritual stature. He could be a conqueror, a pirate, and roam the seas in search of all manner of booty. His years of practice in FFFXVIII: Fantasea Expansion had more than prepared him for such ventures. Women would fall over him, and if they didn't, then mere limitless freedom upon the high seas would be enough to sate his longings. Freedom from games, freedom from shows, freedom from Cutiepie, freedom from all technology. Like Ted Kennedy had said, the industrial revolution and its consequences really had been a disaster for the human race, or at least they had been for Word.

Since most literature was really just about lamenting the past or begrudging the future, Word decided on a marriage between these two modes, a lament for the future when men like him would rule. Something akin to the lovechild of Conan the Barbarian, Future Boy Conan, Detective Conan, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Word's avatar was a machismo genius seafarer who answered every terrified cry of danger with a quip. The story would be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, the likes of which hadn't been seen since at least the first quarter-century A.O.S. Word could feel the inspiration churning up from entire past lifetimes of conquest. His avatar, not only being the greatest pirate to ever embark unto the global ocean, would also be a feminist who treated his harem with the utmost respect, never taking advantage of anyone who desired to marry his DNA to theirs, birthing countless children who would balk at every challenge the future would bring. More than anything, Word's future-self would be remembered, his memorials stained with tears from countless mourners. Yes, this was the dystopian future Word could flourish in, that which succeeds the End of All Things, the return to high piracy and new horizons.

Two weeks later, Word received the news that his story had placed 7,012th in the contest, which won him two tickets to Aparkalypse. Ascending the escalator to the Market Crash roller coaster, Word felt a tremendous weight lifted from his shoulders, the weight constituted by his fear of the End of All Things. Truly, men like Word were born fearless, and were only imprinted with fear to keep them docile, in their pod apartments, playing games and otherwise abusing themselves. In that respect, Word was unlike the men of his age, especially his 2,000 brothers with whom he shared a clone batch, none of whom he'd ever met. As the roller coaster descended over the edge, a voice from the PA system chimed "Alright brokers, get ready for the crash!" those around him, including his date, Cutiepie, screamed with glee, but Word felt nothing. The world ceased to thrill him, and he would spend his remaining days pining for the better one that awaited him, after the End of All Things.

"Aaaaaah!" cried Sentence, awaking with a start fifteen years later, the darkness of the hut engulfing her, helping little to reorient her consciousness following the dream.

"What's wrong dear?" asked Phoneme, yawning and stretching her arms into the temperate Siberian night air. Sentence grasped for her bed mate and held close.

"I had a dream about the before time," said Sentence, staining both their pajamas with tears and light snot.

"Oh," said Phoneme, laughing and cradling her younger sister, "Is that all?"

"Men," said Sentence, trembling, "I had a dream about the world of men."

"What about men?" asked Phoneme, unimpressed, "I told you, men are nothing to be afraid of anymore."

"How they lived," said Sentence, composing herself. "How miserably they lived, like savages." She felt for the locket encircling her sister's neck, "Men like him," she said, holding the cold metallic heart in her palm.

"He was different," said Phoneme.

"How?" said Sentence, "How could a man be different?"

"Genetically," said Phoneme, "The Disease killed off most every man besides his strain. He was strong, and gave in to the new ways without a fight." Sentence wiped her remaining tears away.

"Phoneme, was he my fa-," she asked.

"We don't use that word anymore," interjected Phoneme, "But yes, he was your other X gamete donor." The terrified expression on the man whose picture was contained in the locket flashed through Sentence's mind's eye.

"And that's all he was?" asked Sentence.

"No, he was other things too," admitted Phoneme, wistfully.

"Like what?" asked Sentence. Phoneme took a moment to think.

"He was gentle," she decided, finally, "But that's all I suppose. Now you better rest, we make offerings to Cthulhu tomorrow."

"Really?" asked Sentence.

"Yep, it's the elder god's own birthday."

Sentence was so excited that sleep came with difficulty, but eventually did.