Lavender Skies, Hollow Hearts

“Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow—this is what evolution is.”

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1955)

“I have seen perfection, the radiant kiss of a synthetic’s lips upon my own. I have known god, the touch of a synthetic’s hand on my face in spring rain.”

— Elouise McCarthy, A Guide to Synthetic Evolution: The Alpha and the Omega (2070)

My name is Maya, and I live with the perfect man-we all do-my Non-Biological Synthetic, or NBS. but just call him a Synth, like everyone else does, okay?

And after all, he is adorable, my perfect man, and ladies, I do mean perfect, but hands off Zephyr—he is mine, my western wind, my gentle one.

Beside me, Zephyr takes my small hand in his large one: synthetic skin wrapped over carbon-based nano-tubing, shaped and molded to be the perfect mix of soft and callused. My man is a man, after all.

He turns me to face him, he is mine, my Synth, built by Ai to be the perfect man for me—every glorious inch of him designed to make my heart skip a beat.

Rich chocolate skin, smooth and deep like a malt choc smoothie of yum, it catches the sunset in a way that makes it glow with warmth, like a desert stone kissed by firelight. His face was designed to be desired, a blend of worlds—high cheekbones that whisper of Arabic or African heritage, paired with a broad jaw, piercing blue eyes, braided blond hair, and a body straight out of Norse mythology.

His sculpted muscles ripple under synthetic flesh, flawless physically and emotionally in every way you can imagine, especially after last weeks model upgrade- a treat for myself, he smells like musk, sweet Arabic musk, laced with the best pheromones science can offer, matched and mirrored to my own receptors to leave me like putty in his hands weak at the knees every time.

And yet… hollow, I feel hollow.

Happy birthday, me.

32 years today, I stand here on my balcony in our perfect city of Lux, lavender hair altered at the nano level to match the perfect lavender sunset.

His voice is smooth and low, a tint of huskiness to it tonight—a voice you would like to roll around in. It calls like summer nights, like seduction and sin, its magical rhythm washing over me, tuned and retuned to play me like a musical instrument.

“A perfect evening, isn’t it?” he says, as he hands me a glass of wine, its flavor tuned to please me, right down to the molecular level.

“I have something special planned for you tonight,” He says.

I take the glass, my smile thin as I sip. The wine’s perfect—it always is—but tonight there’s an aftertaste I can’t shake, a hollowness that lingers. What would happen if I threw this off the balcony, at the wall? What would happen if I screamed?

“I’m mad as hell, and I just can’t take it anymore.”

I heard that somewhere, I think—a history holo, maybe. It is not important, and what would happen?

Nothing, because I would never do it. None of us would—everything is too perfect. I am not even sure I could.

“You always know what I need, Zephyr,” I say softly, but I am acting, I don’t feel it, and I don’t know why. “It’s… flawless.”

Zephyr looks at me, a wrinkle of simulated concern marking his face; he does not speak, he simply moves behind me.

I groan.

He holds me with a tenderness no human could match, his warm skin against me as he whispers words like sunlight dripped into my very soul. I lean into him, melt into him, and he holds me. I notice that at some point his shirt has been removed, and I’m leaning on his perfect bare chest, his large, arms encircling me, wrapping me in his warmth and protection. I feel so small against him, safe, like a child protected by his masculine frame.

Is this happiness?

He never argues, never falters, never burns the toast. He’s everything I could want in this perfect paradise.

Lux, our dream city.

A city of glass towers draped in vines that glow soft blue at night, their light pulsing like a mother’s heartbeat, soothing her cherished citizens"

The streets are spotless, the air so clean it tastes like love, carrying the faint scent of blossoms engineered to soothe your soul.

Every morning, the sky blooms gold and coral, crafted by nanobots for optimized serotonin outputs.

By evening, the horizon melts into a lavender glow, a sunset tweaked to wrap you in peace, calm, and tranquility. So beautiful… so… fucking… beautiful...

Here in Lux, we live in a city that asks nothing, demands nothing. Today I am 32 and I’ve never worked a day in my life, I don’t have to. None of us do.

Sometimes you start to feel hollow beneath its shine.

Our synths take care of everything. They cook, they clean, they build, they govern—mostly. Advanced AI keeps the politicians honest. Corruption—what’s that? Every move analyzed by an algorithm, every check balanced, lobbyists gone.

Energy clean, 100% sustainable, everywhere—literally everywhere.

And with clean energy, the need for war sort of went away. The history holos tell us that by the end of the 2030s, the world was living in peace.

That the Peace Bots were mostly decommissioned, we thank them for their service.

The tactical Ai’s that controlled them were set to long-term hibernation mode, and no one has restarted them.

No poverty, no strife. My Universal Harmony Citizenship gives me everything—holographic art studios, gourmet meals, virtual trips to ancient ruins—all at a thought, delivered by Synths who see us humans as divine beings, their programming wired to please us in every way.

And that’s the thing—everything in this world is flawless. Synths move through the streets, perfecting grass, pruning vines, playing music that shifts to match our mood, each note a caress. We lounge in parks, laugh as a Synth panders to our every want and need. They dance for us, feed us, take care of us, love us.

We live in bubbles of synthetic devotion—holographic adventures, gourmet feasts, days and nights of perfect pleasure-bliss, a Bacchanalian festival of sight, sound, food, and flesh.

It’s a drug.

And I am fucking hollow.

That old saying: ‘What goes up, must come down.’

But Lux is the high that never crashes, a perfect rush with no debt to pay, no burnout, no hangover, no messy.

And yet… I feel that glow fading away, I’m chasing the dragon while on the very beast I still ride.

A shadow has crept in, a fog around my heart that nobody seems to see. I walk through Lux’s parks, her glowing trees casting pools of harmonized blue light, and I notice how quiet it is, day or night.

No kids playing, no shrieks of laughter—just a Synth waiting by a still and empty swing sets.

I think my grandma pushed me on these swings once—or maybe it was her synth. I can’t remember. She was there, I know that. She told me when she was young, she would play at this very same park with her grandparents—both of them—but their synth had to stay home.

She said it was too soon, and that people were still nervous, afraid, after everything that happened. my young mind could never understand that—how a synth could make anyone nervous, let alone afraid.

The city feels like a ghost, a wife waiting on the widow’s watch for a ship to sail in that is never coming. It’s a party where the guests didn’t show: the food is out, the music is playing, a synth is dancing, yet no one’s there—no one real.

Something is missing from this city, something important that no one seems to notice is gone.

Children.

There are no more children on the swings.

We are told the population is on the rise again—keep it up, Earth. Another generation or two, and we’ll be back to a billion, but does anyone even want kids anymore? They are messy.

We are told that not that long ago, the Earth had a population more than four billon humans on it, it doesn’t seem right, would we all fit.

Nobody talks about it, not really. But people don’t really need people anymore; we don’t connect with each other anymore.

I mean I don’t even want to, I think, I dated a human once—only once. I think we made it almost two months; that was enough.

Messy, just messy. He’d argue over everything—where to eat, what to eat, what to watch, called me superficial for the things I liked.

And the sex… forgettable...

One night after a screaming fight, he left. Zephyr had wiped away my tears, wrapped me in love and whispered, he would never do that to me—how could a human compete with that?

People are flawed—why bother? A Synth gives you love without the hurt, without the backchat, without the messy.

On my 32nd birthday under a sky turning to deep indigo, I sit with Zephyr in my apartment, its glass walls reflecting the city’s living glow. His arms wrapped around me, its warmth a cruel kind of comfort, and I feel that ache again, hollow in my chest. “Zephyr,” I whisper, “do you ever think about what it means to be human?”

He tilts his head; honest eyes stare back at me like ice on a fjord. “Maya, all I think about is humans! You’re the most beautiful beings in existence —you are my purpose.” His hand brushes mine.

I shiver, in the best possible way.

“But what is it to be human?” I ask, my voice cracking.

A flicker crosses his face, a glitch in his perfection, I hear the momentary whirl of something, a fan, an extra processor coming online to phone home.

Wow, have not seen that in a while.

“Maya,” he says finally, his voice softer, richer, “You are my purpose. That is all I know.”

I laugh, but it is a surface level laugh, the hollowness in my chest remains, covered by a blanket of his wonderful pheromones and masculine presence, but… it remains.

This night, I will fill the hollow with sex, with synth-made love drugs. It will soak into my pores, my mouth, my everywhere through passion and fire.”

Tonight, I will fill the void with perfection, and the hollow can wait.

That’s the rub, isn’t it—the Synths are too perfect. They’ve taken away the messy, the fight, the spark that makes us human. We don’t connect anymore, don’t grow, don’t create. Without that friction, without that struggle, we have stopped growing, stopped evolving.

If you help a butterfly out of its cocoon, it will die. Its wings need to be stretched and molded by the struggle it takes to break into this world.

Without struggle, the butterfly cannot fly.

Is that us?

The cities are beautiful, the skies a dream, the world is literal perfection, as imagined by a synthetic brain, calculated on the thoughts, hopes, and dreams of the smartest people and non-people in the world, modeled, updated, and coordinated hourly

And we humans—we humans are fading, a slow extinction brought on by a world too perfect.

Once you kiss the face of god, once he holds you, and kisses you, and takes away your pain…

Once you have been loved by god… It is hard to go back to messy.

This is our fate: to be loved to extinction.

Utopia has a hollow heart; it is the machine and we are her ghosts, acting inside her but separately.

She will go on as we fade inside her.

Soon, no more children will swing in parks, and robots will wait eternally to hear a laughter that is never coming.

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