We won’t charge you a dime until you fall in love with us, the visored attendant manning the stall says. You’re led into one of their small viewing rooms, and a single chair and television screen await you. You start watching. It’s not terrible, you muse to yourself as the pilot comes to a close. It’s not great, either. But hey, you haven’t fallen in love with it yet, so what’s the harm in another episode? It’s all free anyway. You’re given a survey: “What did you like most? What do you wish the episode had more of? Did you empathize with a specific character most?” Those questions made sense, but others made less sense: “Do you consider yourself religious? What is the nature of a soul?” And then the strangest ones: “What were your favorite memories growing up? Have you ever fallen in love? How did you feel?” But the questionnaire didn’t take long to finish, and the visored stall attendant in a full suit with a strange monotone voice told you that it would only be used to increase your enjoyment of the material. He presented you with a short stack of papers detailing your rights, but you didn’t care too much. What’s the worst someone can do with that information, you think? Tell people about it? You have nothing to fear; you’ve done nothing wrong.
The next episode is miles better than the first. You are reminded of the beautiful moments from your childhood, and nostalgia hits you like a bullet train through Tokyo. You had to hand it to the stall owners; they knew what they were doing. But while you enjoyed it, it wasn’t love yet. You fill out another questionnaire to see if the next episode will be better than the one you just saw. And sure enough, this time, you genuinely fall in love. It was incredible. You couldn’t wait to see what happened next and didn’t want to wait and bother with the questionnaire — you wanted it now. And it was dirt cheap, too! A few cents, practically spare change from your wallet. Nothing, really, in the grand scheme of things. You hand over some spare change to the attendant and continue the show.
How was it even better this time around? The characterization, the cinematography, everything was just perfect! How was it so unbelievably good? You don’t even bother to ask how much the next episode is; you just hand the attendant all the change left over in your wallet and tell them to just keep paying for the episodes with that. You notice yourself growing more and more immersed in the show. At first, there was distance — you were watching a show; this was clear. But the more you watched, the more the boundaries between cinema and reality started to blur. You were completely immersed. As you’re about to start the first season’s finale, the attendant knocks on your viewing room. They inform you that you ran out of spare change and must link an alternative payment method. You left the rest of your cash at home but find they allow you to connect your bank account. You look at the prices and fees and find yourself shocked: they wanted how much? I’m sorry, the attendant says without a lick of vocal inflection to be heard, but finales are significantly more expensive due to how much work goes into them. You shake your head but link the account anyway. This is the last one, you tell yourself. You just want to see how it ends.
And oh, do you see how it ends. It was magnificent. You bawled, jumped, screamed, and laughed as you felt. You felt everything, every triumph, every tragedy, every comedic moment. It felt like you were there, and you were made greater for the experience. You sit in the booth for what feels like hours after, just staring at the black screen, the odd splotchy birthmark on your neck staring back at you. The attendant knocks. They inform you that the next season is ready and will come at a significantly reduced price compared to the season finale. You stare at the attendant, still reeling from the emotional roller-coaster you experienced. Your brain takes over, and you process what they tell you.
Another episode? Well, it was a lot cheaper than the one you just watched. It’s more than the penny-change of the first few episodes, but you note that much more work went into this one, which surely justified the price increase. You nod at the attendant, and the following season comes on. Hours pass, days pass, and food and water are delivered to your little room free of charge. You’re on the fourth season finale when the attendant finally knocks on your door again. You barely remember them, but your memory quickly floods you, and you realize again what this meant. You wave them off, telling them you’ll accept whatever rate hike they have, but the attendant informs you that the bank has bounced the payment: your checking account is empty. The attendant tells you you can open a credit line. Free of charge, so long as it is paid back within six months. Well, if there’s no fee, you tell yourself. You continue on. Time passes again, but you barely notice it. The attendant walks back in, this time carrying a small book. You’ve run out of credit, they tell you. You roll your eyes and question how much their credit line is supposed to cover. They inform you, and the bliss you feel turns to ice. What? You couldn’t possibly pay that much back. But once more, the attendant interrupts you before you can fully process things — their strange, monotone voice soothing in its simplicity.
The attendant informs you about DNA payments: the chair you’re sitting in will extract a small amount of DNA from you instead of cash payment. Dead skin cells, hairs, maybe some toenail clippings. This would go towards crafting the experiences of other viewers, they tell you, and don’t worry: none of the data or statistics collected from your DNA would be shared with anyone outside of their partners. You think about it and consider it. It’s a little worrying, you think to yourself. What comes next? But you know that if it ever came to the point that they wanted something really awful, you’d just stop and tell them no — you can stop whenever you want to. You are just enjoying the show; there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of enjoyment. As the show comes on and the attendant leaves the room, you notice an almost imperceptible air of melancholy surrounding the blank-faced attendant. Before you can question what you saw, the screen turns back on. The chair takes a quick sampling of hair and brushes your skin, and soon enough, you’re watching again. The previous boundary between cinema and reality has wholly been destroyed — to you, each episode is real. You know these characters, and they know you. They are your friends, your lovers, your family, and your mentors. They are everything to you, and you are everything to them. Your existence, their being; your being, their existence. Too soon, the attendant comes back. You’ve run out of dead cells to give, they tell you.
You look at your toenails and fingernails, and had you been in any semblance of a right mind, you perhaps would’ve noticed how horrifying it was to see them all gone. But there is another episode to be watched, so when the attendant tells you you can pay for the episode with small samplings of plasma, you give the go-ahead. Days pass. Weeks pass. Between episodes, you see yourself becoming emaciated, a shadow of who you once were. But soon enough, the next finale comes. This one is a bit more expensive, the attendant tells you after another knock; they want much more than just plasma. This time, they want liters of your lifeblood. You don’t care and mindlessly give them the go-ahead. All that matters is that you get to watch the finale.
The next finale comes: they want a kidney. It’s all very safe, the attendant assures you, and all very painless too. It will be replaced with a cybernetic replacement, so there’s no risk in the future! You agree. The next finale comes, and it’s your liver that’s next. Then your pancreas, your intestines, your lungs, your ears, your nose, your tongue, your hands, your feet. When they ask for your eyes, you are finally given pause. How else would you watch your show, you ask? But the attendant assures you that the replacements will be even better than the original — you will be able to see more of the show, take in more detail, and experience more than you possibly could with normal eyes. The logic is sound, and you undergo the procedure. It’s a success; you find yourself immersed in ways you never could have imagined. You discovered that you could see different wavelengths of light previously blind to your mortal eyes, and the show leveraged every last detail it could. As you prepare for the next finale, you notice that plot points are starting to converge. The show is wrapping up, and you fear the worst when the attendant walks in. And sure enough, your fears are justified. This will be the last episode in the series, they tell you. And the price is… significant. You look at the documents the attendant presents to you, and it is with an ironic lack of thought that you sign away your heart, brain, muscles, skin, bones, blood, and veins. Your heart is replaced by a mechatronic pump, your brain with a top-of-the-line processor. Your muscles become servos, your blood becomes oil, and your veins become rubber piping. Your skin becomes a synthetic composite, your bones a reinforced carbon fiber. Your attendant tells you you would be made to serve as an attendant, helping others find the same love and joy you found with them. You agree.
The series finale begins with an anticlimactic lack of fanfare — a mere screen turning on. And as you watch it with your enhanced eyes and listen with your cutting-edge ears, you realize you don’t care. And you don’t care that you don’t care. You watch, and you hear, but you don’t feel. The characters on the screen, playing out a scene so beautifully divine that Dionysus himself would give up immortality to witness, hold no interest to you. As the final scene draws to a close, wavelengths of light and sound crafted uniquely for your enjoyment and consumption tapering off, you calmly get up and open your viewing room’s door. Your attendant hands you a visor, and you put it on. As you’re brought to an empty stall in need of an attendant, you notice someone waiting for assistance. A bright, happy person with a splotchy neck birthmark that looks almost uncannily familiar. You walk to the stall counter, manufactured monotone voice at the ready. We won’t charge you a dime until you fall in love with us, you tell your new attendee.
Still working on this one. The idea for this came from a question of “what would happen to capitalism in a post-scarcity society?” and “what if corporations had the technology to generate content hyper-personalized to an individual?”
- If scarcity is no longer of concern, the only thing left is human expression/culture/art.
- If capitalism now only has human expression/creativity/entertainment left to conquer, what would happen to capital?
- Capital would flow into the hands of those who capitalize/weaponize creativity, since everything else is incredibly easy/cheap to manufacture. Thus, the corporations that thrive/dominate would be those who weaponize creativity the best, using it to maintain capital/control.
So I imagined what the experience would be of a user who winds up addicted to content that becomes increasingly singular to them. The story beat is rather simple and happens in four phases:
- The user finds the product, becomes interested off the product being “free” and trades their data for free access to the product.
- The user becomes more interested/hooked and trades their capital for the product.
- The user is fully addicted now, and trades parts of their physical body for the product.
- There is nothing left of the user’s physical body anymore, and so they trade their soul for one last hit.
It’s a lot more gruesome than something I would normally write, but I blame that on the bulk of the writing occurring at 3AM. It was inspired in part by the idea of large language models like ChatGPT being able to create interesting/interactive books/stories/textrpgs/etc. and being able to learn off your interests/feedback.