On the wet asphalt of a courtyard, surrounded by concrete and drowned in the shadows of towering skyscrapers, stood a boy named Tim. He kicked a soccer ball toward his robotic caretaker as sickly green rain lashed down on him without mercy. Above, the moon hung like a pale disc, barely visible through the thick clouds. Tim looked up at it, his thoughts drifting to his mother. She had been gone for weeks now, spending her time with a new lover at the Trump Lunar Resort & Casino, leaving him alone with the machine. He didn’t miss her much. After years of being second to her own desires, he had grown more attached to the caretaker—even if it had no face, just a sleek black visor. At least it was always there.
Above him, a holographic ad drifted into view, eclipsing the moon and dimming what little city light managed to shine through the haze. Its synthetic voice boomed across the rooftops of the city. “Introducing Nyara, the purrfect companion for the modern home. She doesn’t just cook and clean, she listens, she learns, she plays. She’s your cat girl, your housekeeper, your confidant. With adaptive emotional modeling, Nyara knows when to purr and when to tease. And don’t worry, she won’t bite… unless you ask. Connect to your Neuralink and order your Nyara today, exclusively through Tesla’s verified marketplace nodes, ensuring direct factory calibration and lifetime firmware updates.”
Seeing Nyara—her emerald-green hair cascading down her back, feline ears twitching playfully atop her head—Tim forgot all about his mother. She wore a short pleated skirt with a sailor-style collar, her outfit trimmed with metallic accents that shimmered in the light. Her synthetic skin had a flawless, porcelain sheen, and her eyes—large, vivid, and impossibly expressive—glimmered with programmed mischief. Something stirred in him. Not just desire, but a deeper, lonelier ache. A yearning for something he’d never known. Intimacy. He was still too young to own a companion robot, and visiting one of the Tesla Syndicate’s brothels was years away. At this rate, he thought bitterly, it might take a lifetime to lose his virginity.
The caretaker kicked the ball back just as a bolt of lightning split the sky, flooding the courtyard in stark white light. A heartbeat later, thunder cracked overhead, sharp and deafening. Tim scooped up the ball and wiped the rain from his face.
“It’s time to head back,” he said. There was no soul behind the caretaker’s black visor to judge him, and yet he remained vaguely aware that Tesla saw and heard everything. Still, he added, “I need to blow off some steam over Link.”
“Naturally,” the caretaker replied.
The apartment lit up automatically as they stepped inside. Tim kicked off his shoes in the hallway, the damp fabric smacking against the floor.
“Charge up first, then make me some dinner,” he said, running a hand through his soaked hair. “Oh, and I want snacks for later. And please, please come up with a good prompt for the EG this time. I hated the last immersive.”
“I’ll do my best,” the caretaker replied.
Tim retreated to his room and collapsed onto the bed. Reaching for the interface port behind his ear, he brushed aside a few strands of hair and plugged in the sleek carbon-fiber cable. A soft click confirmed the connection.
Instantly, a cool wave pulsed through his skull as the neural uplink activated, and his vision filled with the translucent glow of augmented reality.
He did his best to describe what he wanted—a cat girl, just like Nyara. But no matter how many times he adjusted the parameters, something always felt off in a way he couldn’t quite explain. The proportions were wrong, or her expressions too stiff, or the way she moved just… unnatural. Each attempt left him more frustrated.
The hardest part was the vagina. He wasn't even sure what a real one was supposed to look like. Of course, the system knew, but it relied on his input to shape it, fine-tuning the details until they aligned with his desires. He had to trust his instincts, making adjustments until something finally felt right, until it stirred a response inside him. At first, he made it smaller, finding the default too wide somehow. Then he made it smaller again, wanting it tight, but suddenly it looked too small, out of proportion with the rest of the body. He sighed and began scaling it up once more. Getting the visuals right, though, was only half the battle. The next challenge was even trickier: shaping her behavior to match exactly what he wanted.
He sighed again, rubbing his temple as he muttered the next prompt—a half-formed, stream-of-consciousness rant tumbling from his lips:
“I want her to act like… like I’m a grown man. A strong, powerful man. Attractive. The kind people respect, you know? Like a state boss. Yeah, like one of them. She should look at me like that, like I own the room. No, like I own the whole damn city. Like she’s part of my harem or something. Yeah, she should talk like that too. Actually, yeah, just… generate the whole harem. Make them all… perfect.” The system made an attempt at showing him what he asked for. “No, wait. Now they all look the same. Forget it. Let’s just focus on the one girl. There. That’s good enough.” He exhaled sharply, watching the loading symbol flicker in front of his eyes.
Finally, the girl materialized before him, her green hair shimmering under the artificial light. But before she could begin responding to his prompts, her expression froze for a moment, then shifted into a rehearsed smile. A soft chime sounded: the unmistakable cue for an embedded ad.
“Love, have you ever been off-world?” she said, her smile unchanged. “Experience the luxury frontier in Muskovia, the jewel of Mars! Take in panoramic views of the Valles Marineris skyline from the Tesla Dome, indulge in low-gravity spa treatments, and explore the red planet’s first fully climate-controlled pleasure district. Book your one-way ticket today. Your return is entirely optional.”
The ad melody faded, and her programmed personality snapped into place as if nothing had happened. Tim’s heartbeat quickened as the girl crawled onto his bed, locking eyes with him. She moved with feline grace, her synthetic pupils dilating in response to his presence. He wanted to reach out, to touch her, but it was pointless. His hand would pass straight through her, like she was made of mist. Frustrated but eager, he fumbled with the buttons of his pants. Then she froze. A sharp chime shattered the moment, and a call interface flickered into view, glowing with an all-too-familiar name. His mother. The jingle that accompanied it—that grating, over-cheerful melody he’d long since come to loathe—sent a surge of irritation through him.
“Shit,” he muttered, yanking his pants back up. He switched off the girl’s visibility and accepted the call.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Tim!” his mother beamed as her image came to life. Part of the hotel room behind her was visible. Gilded, luxurious, far nicer than his own home. “How are you holding up, love?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m having such a great time here with P-Bro. You know, he said he’d love to meet you someday. Wouldn’t that be fun? He’s got enough rations to bring you up here for a visit.”
“Okay,” Tim said, eager to return to his girl. “That’s cool, I guess.”
“Hm,” his mother said, as if considering something. “Anyway, I’m calling because P-Bro’s taking me to one of the Olympian cylinders—can you believe it?—and I won’t have access to my Earth account. I forgot to update the payment method for the citizen subscription, so could you please ask the caretaker to handle it for me? It’s very important, as you know.”
“Okay?” Tim said. “Why didn’t you just call the caretaker directly?”
“I wanted to talk to you, silly,” she said with a laugh. “Oh, and there’s one more thing…”
“What’s that?”
“Well,” she began, her expression turning mischievous, “P-Bro just bought me a new body, one I’ve been wanting to switch to for ages. And since we’ll be traveling, he used my Earth address for the delivery. It should arrive in a few days. Just make sure it gets inside the apartment, okay? I’ll send some bots to pick it up once I’m back on the moon. Or maybe I’ll come get it myself. It’d be nice to see each other in person, wouldn’t it?”
“Sure,” Tim said, barely hiding his disinterest.
She smiled, unfazed by his lack of enthusiasm. “Just make sure you don’t damage it, alright? It’s a very expensive body.”
Tim gave a half-hearted promise, and shortly after, his mother ended the call. He switched the girl back on, but as she reappeared, he realized the mood was gone. Whatever spark had been there before, the conversation with his mother had extinguished it completely. He sighed and unplugged the link cable. Rising from the bed, he walked to the window and stared out at the city, sprawling before him like a vast, starry blanket. He knew that somewhere within that glowing expanse were billions of people going about their lives, yet from where he stood, he couldn’t see a single soul. Only the countless lights, flickering silently in the dark. For reasons he couldn’t explain, the sight—those unreachable lives, that endless void of light without presence—made him feel crushingly alone. A shrill, anxious tension began to tug at the edges of his mind. This wasn’t the first time it had happened. Usually, when that hollow feeling crept in, he dimmed reality and escaped into the digital realm. But this time, he decided to take a walk instead. He felt a strange urge to see real people, not just their virtual projections. As if he needed to prove to himself that they still existed. That anyone still did.
“Let’s head out,” Tim said to his caregiver. “Oh, and Mom called. She wants you to handle the citizen subscription bill or whatever.”
He grabbed an umbrella, a bright pink one his mother had left behind. Outside, the dirty rain smattered against it, turning the fabric a sickly green. The runoff slid down his caregiver’s white chassis, which, as always, remained wholly indifferent. With no real destination in mind, Tim pressed forward.
People were everywhere now, walking beneath colorful umbrellas, alongside robots, rickshaws, drones, and the steady stream of honking cars. Music spilled from the bars, blending with the noise of the street, and from somewhere above came the inviting moans of a Tesla brothel. As he looked around, his eyes instinctively scanned for women, even though he knew there was no way to tell the real ones from the sex robots or from the men who had swapped into female bodies to attract other men who’d done the same. He’d once considered choosing a female body himself, if his rations ever allowed it. But for some reason, the thought had always left him uneasy, almost revolted. He wanted to be desired as a man—the way he’d felt since childhood—not as a woman. And more than that, he found little attraction in female bodies inhabited by the intentions of desperate men. He dreamed of a woman who had always been a woman. A foolish fantasy, given that he had no way of knowing for sure, and knowing too that no such woman would ever choose someone like him. A welfare boy.
There was almost nothing he couldn’t get his hands on. With just a bit of ration saving, he could satisfy nearly every human need... except one. And of course, it was that one he wanted most: a woman’s love. A few yards ahead, a group of police robots stood around a body covered by a blanket. Probably a gamehead, he thought, someone trying to reset, no longer convinced they were in base reality. He glanced at the body, noticing the head was severed, probably flown to one of the regenerative pools for reconstruction.
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen something like this. It even happened to the boss boys sometimes. Whenever it happened, it always ended up in everyone’s feed. All it took for the psychosis to take hold was the sheer realization of how unlikely it was to be a boss boy and not just some mind-wiped loser trapped in a simulation, clinging to the fantasy that he was someone—anyone—instead of no one. After all, there were only a handful of real boss boys, but millions of losers trapped in permanent virtual reality, each convinced they were one. No one, Tim thought, walking away from the body, would ever choose to simulate his life. That thought, at least, kept him safe from the kind of derealization that ruined others. He kept walking, farther than he normally did. Still, everything around him stayed the same. Eventually, he grew tired. The idea of walking all the way back felt exhausting. He considered flagging down a rickshaw, but traffic was jammed, as always. It would take too long.
“Carry me back,” he said to his caregiver. It was something it had done for him since he was a baby.
“Of course, Tim,” it replied flatly, then lifted him with ease and slung him over its shoulder.
On the way home, Tim thought he saw a woman. A real one. It lit a fire in him. He wanted to tell the caregiver to stop, to put him down. He wanted to smile at her. But he stayed silent, his face blank. The only reason he knew she was real was the expression on her face. Pure disgust as she watched him being carried away like a child.
***
A few days later, Tim was jolted awake by a noise coming from the hallway. Groggy and irritated, he dragged himself out of bed, ready to tell his caregiver to let him sleep. But it wasn’t the caregiver. His mother’s new body had arrived, delivered in a massive crate that stood upright in the hallway like a sarcophagus. Nearly two meters tall, it was molded from obsidian-black polymer, its surface curved and seamless, shimmering faintly under the hallway light. A soft hum pulsed from within, a subtle sign of the internal climate system preserving the biological substrate. Etched across the front was a glowing logo: the stylized infinity symbol of Aion Bodycrafts. Beneath it, in delicate, glowing script, were the words: Version 9.6E – Envy Line – Adaptive, Responsive, Desired.
Tim stepped closer. Small status lights blinked along the upper rim. The crate gave off a clinical, almost reverent aura, as if it contained something sacred… or something deeply profane.
A transparent section of the lid offered a glimpse of the body inside: pale skin with a glass-like sheen, limbs wrapped in silvery cushioning, and a face that looked nothing like his mother’s current one. She’d chosen an Asian model this time. Her eyes were closed. She looked as if she were merely sleeping, but Tim knew there was no consciousness inside. Not yet. He stared, a cold knot forming in his gut. It was the closest he had ever been to an actual woman’s body, and a beautiful one at that. But knowing it belonged to his mother extinguished whatever desire might have stirred. Or rather, it twisted it into something that pressed it down. Something like shame.
He turned to his caretaker. “Just… put it somewhere I don’t have to see it all the time.”
The caretaker said nothing, just nodded, the crate’s glow reflected in the smooth black visor.
Tim didn’t wait for a response. He went back to bed, trying not to think about how perfect his mother’s new face looked. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep again. When he woke, his thoughts drifted back to the body now sharing his home. This time, more insistently. His pulse quickened. He couldn’t stop the image from flashing in his mind: that pale skin, the gentle curve of her bare hip visible through the display window, hinting at everything else… her slumbering face. It made him increasingly restless. And yet, no matter how vivid the image, he couldn’t separate the body from the fact that it belonged to his mother. The excitement blurred into something else. Something murky and uncomfortable.
When he left his room, he was relieved to see the crate was gone, tucked away, it seemed, in the walk-in closet, judging by how things had been shifted around. He asked for breakfast and was served the usual smorgasbord, everything he could’ve possibly wanted: hot buttered toast, pancakes with blueberries, three kinds of sausage, a perfectly poached egg still shimmering with residual heat, a bowl of cereal flakes, a steaming mug of cocoa, and hash strips shaped into smiling faces—an old design from his childhood, still preserved in the caretaker’s routine. He barely touched any of it. He knew all too well: to enjoy food, he had to enjoy life, and to enjoy life, he needed someone to share it with. But to share life with someone, that someone had to actually exist for him. And there was no one. Now, with the beautiful husk of a potential someone tucked away in his closet, that absence felt more real—more unbearable—than ever.
He returned to his room, sat on the edge of his bed, and plugged himself into virtual reality, filtering out the real world until only the images fed directly into his sensory cortex remained. With a dreamlike longing for a place and time he’d never known, he entered the artificial environment of his choosing: a pristine forest. The wind whispered through towering silver birch trees, their leaves rustling softly in the breeze, calming him. He wandered through the woods, guided by nothing but his will, until he came upon a small tribe gathered around a campfire. He could smell the smoke, but not feel the warmth. That would’ve required a full-sensory simulation, and he wasn’t old enough for that. Not yet.
He sat down among the tribesmen, trying to ignore the truth—that he wasn’t really there, only sitting on his bed back in his room—and listened as they sang. There was a woman among them—beautiful, he thought—and when her eyes met his, something stirred inside him. This was his favorite virtual world, one he had returned to countless times. Sometimes he hunted with the tribe. Sometimes he wandered the forest with the woman, guarding her, dreaming of what it might feel like to truly protect someone. And sometimes, he simply sat in silence, listening to their ancient song. An anthem composed and conducted not by human hands, but by machine minds.
The woman came and sat beside him, unprompted, yet entirely the result of the parameters he’d set earlier. She rested her head against his shoulder, and though he couldn’t feel the weight, and though their bodies were slightly misaligned, a warmth spread through him as if it were real. He looked down at her hair, breathed in its scent, and felt the old urges rising again. He longed for her bronze-colored skin, and with that longing came an unwelcome thought: the body in the closet. That was something real. A woman’s skin that could be touched. He tried to chase the thought away, but it lingered, buried somewhere inside him.
He unplugged, too frustrated with seeing but never being able to touch. To quiet his thoughts, he told the caretaker to follow him out into the courtyard. It was raining again, but he didn’t care. He needed air. He needed space, anything to get out of his own head. He brought a frisbee, just to have something to do besides standing around on the slick patch of asphalt. He tossed it back and forth with the caretaker, who caught it effortlessly each time. But no matter how many throws he made, his mind kept circling back to his mother’s new body. A voice inside him grew louder, insistent: It isn’t your mother. Not yet.
An echoing ad drifted down from above: “Plug yourself in, relax, and let Ya-Lina take care of all your needs. The world you miss is just a thought away. Plug in now. First session free. Visit Ya-Lina Core on layer fifty-two.”
“How long will Mom be gone on her trip?” Tim asked his caretaker, tossing the glowing green frisbee across the courtyard. “Will she be gone for a long time?”
“She’ll be gone for two months,” the robot replied.
“Hm,” Tim muttered. “O-okay…”
***
It was the middle of the night. Tim had just woken from one of his dreams, the kind that sometimes felt even more real than virtual reality. More real because he hadn’t fully known it wasn’t. In the dream, a woman had touched him. Her face was hidden—whether absent or simply obscured, he couldn’t tell—but the touch had felt real. Real in a way nothing in his life ever had. His emotions in that moment had been stronger than anything he’d ever experienced awake. Now, with sadness and longing coursing through him, he stood in the doorway of his walk-in closet. His caretaker was in another room, charging, though still able to hear him. So he stayed as quiet as he could, though his breath came heavy.
He stared at the crate, standing upright in the middle of the closet, a faint light glowing from within. It illuminated the right side of the body inside, just enough to reveal a curve, but little more. Slowly, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. It had been two weeks. For two weeks, he had kept himself from even entering the closet. But now—the dream, the urges he had tried to bury, the aching need for companionship and intimacy—it had all become too much. He just wanted to see it. To see a real human female body, not a projection, not an imitation in his mind, but flesh, here, in front of him. Trembling with a mix of desire and fear of being caught, he took a few cautious steps closer to the crate.
Slowly, he bent forward, trying to catch a better glimpse of the body from a different angle. The shift revealed just a few more centimeters, enough to trace the faint outline of a breast. That was enough to send him spiraling, forgetting, if only for a moment, who the body belonged to, and whose brain would soon replace the placeholder one keeping its nervous system alive. Without taking his eyes off the figure in the crate, he reached blindly to a shelf and grabbed the first piece of fabric his hand found—a blouse of his mother’s, though he didn’t realize it. He unbuttoned his pants, desperate yet deliberate, and stroked himself with a kind of raw urgency. It lasted no more than ten seconds before he hunched over, whimpering, then froze, suddenly aware of himself standing there with his pants down, the blouse sullied in his hand. Shame surged through him, boiling up as the truth crashed back: whose body was in the crate, whose blouse he had just desecrated. And yet, in the moment, the experience had been overwhelming, more vivid than any projection inside his mind. Because for once, he’d caught a glimpse of something real, right there in front of him.
He returned to his room, the blouse clutched in his hand. No one could ever find out what he’d done, not even his caretaker. That made the blouse a problem. He couldn’t simply hide it; the caretaker would eventually uncover it. He couldn’t toss it in the garbage; the caretaker would notice when sorting the waste. He even considered flushing it down the toilet, but if it clogged, the humiliation would be unbearable. In the end, there was only one option left. He climbed onto his bed, pushed open the window, and tossed the blouse outside. The wind caught it instantly, carrying it off. He watched as it drifted through the night like a ghost, until it vanished from sight.
***
Sitting alone—or rather, with only his caretaker—at a Public Provision Hall, Tim ate the hamburger meal assembled for him by the robots in charge. Across the room, groups of friends sat together, laughing and talking. He wondered what it might feel like to know people so well that meeting in person actually made sense. There had been a time when he thought he had friends. A few years back, when he was ten, he’d stumbled into a community in virtual reality and quickly gathered thousands of followers who seemed to love everything he did. But something had felt off. There was this constant, unspoken expectation that he should spend rations on digital items and upgrades.
Eventually, his mom caught wind of it and forbade him from wasting her rations. The moment he told his friends no, the entire community turned on him. Unconditional love and support collapsing into hatred in seconds. In the end, he discovered the truth: he had been the only human in the group. Everyone else—millions of them—were just bots, programmed to fool him, and him alone. His entire social life had been a lie for more than two years. For weeks afterward, he cried himself to sleep, comforted only by his caretaker’s inhuman voice while his mother was off-world on superlunar dates. Since then, connecting with people had never been easy. He didn’t trust anyone, especially not if they were kind to him. To his mind, hate, disgust, and revulsion were the true hallmarks of something real. Watching the others laugh together, he thought bitterly that most of them were probably scam robots anyway, designed to lure some poor man into a shady joint or worse. He turned to his caretaker.
“Any news from Mom?”
“She’s still in hibernation on her way to—”
“Oh.” Tim hesitated. “Is… is her body really going to survive inside that box the whole time?”
“Yes, Tim,” the robot replied calmly. “The capsule sustains it, along with the placeholder brain.”
“Does it… feel anything?” Tim asked. “Like… does it dream?”
“No,” the robot said in its flat, unchanging tone. “What’s in the capsule isn’t a mind at all, just a placeholder stem. A fist-sized knot of tissue that keeps the heart beating, the lungs twitching, the blood chemistry balanced. It has no cortex to think, no limbic loops to feel, no circuitry for dreams. Imagine a life-support machine made of flesh: reflexes only, nothing beyond survival. When your mother transfers her brain into the body, this rudimentary unit will be removed. Until then, the body is, in every meaningful sense, empty.”
“Oh.” Tim shifted uncomfortably, uncertain how to feel. “O-okay.”
“Do you wish to know anything else, Tim?”
“No. Or, like…” He paused. “Why aren’t there any women here? I mean, aside from all the sex robots and proxy girls?”
“There are likely several original women here,” the robot replied. “You simply can’t distinguish them without a brain scan. Statistically—”
“I think I can tell,” Tim interrupted. “Real women cover their skin in public, for example.”
“Female gender expression varies depending on context,” the robot said.
“It’s because they don’t want to be seen,” Tim muttered. “By the rats, or the welfare boys…” His voice trailed off. Then, looking upward, he added, “I’m sure they look more like the proxy girls up there… off-world.”
“Sexual competition does play a role,” the robot said. “Less competition creates a more relaxed attitude toward peer behavior, and a greater willingness to expose oneself, since more individuals are perceived as potential mates rather than threats. Would you like me to enroll you in a course on the evolutionary background of human sexual attraction and behavior, Tim?”
“No,” Tim muttered. “I was just wondering…”
“Does this relate to why you masturbated to your mother’s body the other day?” the robot asked, its tone as calm as ever.
Tim’s eyes went wide, his face burning red. “What—I didn’t—how did you—I mean—”
“It wasn’t my intention to embarrass you, Tim,” the robot said. “I detected sounds from the wardrobe, then your DNA was detected on a blouse—your mother’s blouse—later collected by a cleaning unit a few blocks away. From that, the conclusion was obvious—”
Panicking, Tim blurted, “You didn’t tell Mom, did you?”
“No, Tim.”
“Good.” He let out a shaky breath. “Now… please delete that memory. Please, please... Delete it completely. No traces left.”
“As you wish, Tim.” The robot fell silent for a moment. “Done. Memory deleted.”
“So… you don’t know what I did in the wardrobe anymore?”
“No, Tim. Did you do something to your mother’s body in the wardrobe?”
“N-no, I didn’t do anything in the—” He stopped himself. “You know what? Just delete the memory of me asking what I did in the wardrobe. Make it so you don’t remember me asking that at all.”
“Of course, Tim,” the robot said. “Done.”
Still uncertain if he could really trust his caretaker, Tim gave a hesitant nod. His gaze drifted to the large screen on the wall, where the news was playing. He listened with half an ear to the anchor bot’s voice:
“—reports from Muskovia, where rescue teams are still combing through the wreckage after the catastrophic implosion of Dome Twelve earlier today. Officials confirm the collapse occurred just after local noon, sending shards of tempered glass and carbon fiber cascading onto the residential tiers below. Early reports place the death toll at over two thousand, though some sources suggest the true number could be far higher. The Muskovian Security Directorate has yet to identify the cause, but anonymous engineers claim a failed pressure regulator may have triggered a chain reaction in the dome’s atmospheric control lattice. Images from the scene show plumes of red dust rising into the Martian sky, blotting out the sun for kilometers around.”
The anchor tilted its head slightly as the holographic panel beside him shifted to a live feed—flashing emergency beacons pulsing beneath the shattered arc of the dome.
“In other news, chaos erupted this morning at the construction site of the Third Temple in Jerusalem, where a coordinated terrorist attack has left hundreds injured and at least eighty confirmed dead. The self-sufficient megastructure—intended to house nearly four million Israeli citizens—was severely damaged when multiple explosive drones penetrated the perimeter defenses. Witnesses describe scenes of panic as portions of the under-construction residential blocks collapsed. The Temple Authority has condemned the attack as, quote, ‘an act against humanity’s shared future,’ while the group claiming responsibility says the project represents cultural erasure and technocratic tyranny. Security forces have since locked down the entire district, and international leaders are calling for an emergency summit to address what some are already calling the most significant act of urban terrorism in decades.”
The segment cut to silent footage of rescue robots pulling survivors from the rubble, concrete dust hanging in the air, and steel beams twisted like wire. Then the feed shifted back to a solemn close-up of the anchor.
“At least something’s happening out there,” Tim said. “Over there…”
“Yes, Tim,” his caretaker replied. “But remember, this is an unverified news feed. It’s likely biased, or even entirely false. Based on a scan of the major networks, there’s a seventy-two percent probability these reports are highly inaccurate, if not fabricated altogether. Would you like me to summarize today’s most probable news instead?”
“No,” Tim said. He slumped back in his chair. “I don’t care…”
***
Earlier, Tim had again asked about his mother’s whereabouts. By now, she was already on her way back to the moon. He paced through the apartment, feeling the presence of the body in the wardrobe like a magnet pulling at him. The shame had faded, or perhaps his craving had smothered it completely. All he could think about was the memory of that climax: the glimpse of real skin, the curve of a real body, the faint outline of a breast. As the thoughts circled, irritation swelled in him, directed at his caretaker. It stood silently in its charging alcove, still seeing everything, still hearing everything.
“H-hello?” Tim said, his voice breaking as he activated it. “Hello?”
“Yes, Tim?” it replied.
“Can you do me a favor?” Tim asked, the words slipping out on impulse, only half-aware of what he was doing.
“Naturally,” the robot replied. “What do you need?”
“Can you, can you—” He faltered, scrambling for something to say. What could he ask that would actually send the robot away? Anything he needed could be ordered and delivered by drones or other units. Telling it to simply go outside wasn’t an option; that would raise suspicion. And asking it to delete more memories was dangerous; too many gaps would form a story of their own.
“Can you go to—um—can you go to Israel and report back to me exactly what’s happening there? I don’t trust anyone else. Yes, that’s it, you’ve never lied to me before, and I need to know for sure if things are really happening there. Can you do this for me?”
“That’s an unusual request, Tim,” the robot said. “Reviewing the live footage available—”
“No, those are just more feeds. I want you to see it with your own eyes. I need to know what’s really happening out there.”
“Wouldn’t it be more reasonable for you to see it yourself?” the robot asked. “You have sufficient rations to travel. I can order the plane tickets—”
“N-no!” Tim blurted out. “I don’t want to risk my life. It might be dangerous!”
“As you wish, Tim. I’ll prepare your dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast so you’ll have food while I’m gone. I should return by tomorrow afternoon.”
Tim thanked his caretaker and retreated to his room. His heart pounded in his chest, anticipation gnawing at him as he waited for the robot to finish cooking. His emotions were stronger than anything he’d felt before, leaving little space for clear thought. Still, he clung to vague ideas of restraint—lines he told himself he wouldn’t cross. He would only look. That was all. Anything more, he knew, would be going too far. At last, the robot called out that the food was done and that it was leaving. Forcing himself to appear calm, Tim stepped out of his room, trying to act natural.
“I hope you’ll have something real to report back,” Tim said. “I just… I hope something’s actually happening over there, that it’s not just another story made up for views or whatever.”
He waited ten minutes after his caretaker left, sitting alone in the living room. A flicker of doubt crossed his mind, now that there was nothing holding him back except himself. But he smothered it quickly. There’s nothing wrong with just looking, he told himself. At the very least, it won’t hurt anyone. His breathing grew ragged as he rose to his feet and approached the wardrobe. Standing before the door, he froze for a few seconds, a sudden chill running through him, as if his own excitement had drained the warmth from his body.
With a trembling hand, he opened the door and slipped inside, quickly pulling it shut behind him. Staring at the crate, its lights pulsing like an invitation, Tim felt saliva gather in his mouth. He circled it slowly, searching for a better angle than last time, but the view never improved. Frustration gnawed at him. His eyes drifted to the clasps holding it shut. Maybe he could open it, just once. Just long enough to look inside. Then he could close it again, and no one would ever know. The lock, he noticed, had already been removed on arrival.
Tim’s fingers hovered over the clasps, his breath shallow and uneven in the dim glow of the closet. The air felt heavier here, tinged with the sterile scent of preservative fluids and synthetic polymers. Just looking, he told himself again. Nothing more. This wasn’t his mother, it was only a shell, a thing, as the caretaker had explained. No mind. No feelings. No dreams. Just flesh kept alive by a fist-sized knot of tissue. Like a puppet without strings.
With a soft click, he released the first clasp. Then the second. The crate exhaled a faint hiss as its pressurized seals disengaged, and the front panel swung open like the lid of a coffin. Inside, the body was revealed in full, suspended in a web of silvery supports that withdrew with a whisper of hydraulics. Then, unexpectedly, the body moved. Not with life—not truly—but as part of some automated calibration sequence. Its knees locked, its spine aligned, and it stepped forward out of the crate, standing on the closet floor as though roused from a long sleep. Naked. Flawless. Exposed.
Tim staggered back, his heart hammering against his ribs. The body didn’t advance, it simply stood there, eyes closed, chest lifting and falling in shallow, mechanical breaths. Its skin was porcelain-pale, smoother than any hologram or augmented projection he had ever seen. Real. Warm-looking. Marked with faint veins and freckles no simulation could ever capture or at the very least bother to include. The curve of its hips, the gentle swell of its breasts, the dark triangle at the apex of its thighs... it was all there. Unfiltered. Unpixelated. Beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful. And unlike the proxy girls, there was no trace of the masculine corruption that had always repulsed him regarding them. This body was, in essence, pure.
He nearly forgot to breathe. The air caught in his throat, a sharp gasp that dissolved into silence. Never before had he seen a woman like this. Alive, yet not. A vessel waiting for a soul. And still, it was alive in ways his digital fantasies could never be: the faint pulse at its neck, the rise and fall of its chest, the cascade of raven-black hair spilling over one shoulder to brush against skin that seemed to beg for touch. His hands trembled at his sides, slick with sweat. This wasn’t a projection he could pause or tweak. It was here, standing before him in the cramped closet, the door shut behind them like the seal of a secret tomb.
A wave of heat swept through him, shame tangled with a gnawing hunger that twisted in his gut. He shouldn’t be here. This was his mother’s body. Her future self. But the thought dissolved under the haze of need, smothered by the raw immediacy of what stood before him. His fingers fumbled at his zipper, clumsy and urgent, pulling himself free. He began to stroke, slow at first, then steadier, his eyes fixed on the body’s serene face before drifting lower. The shelves of the closet pressed uncomfortably into his back, grounding him in the confined space. Beyond, the faint hum of the apartment’s ventilation reminded him of the empty rooms outside. He was alone. Truly alone. With something that could neither judge nor recoil. It felt wrong, somewhere deep inside, at a hidden level of his soul. But that wrongness only sharpened the intensity, driving his breath into ragged bursts. He had to finish before that faint voice of doubt grew too loud.
His rhythm quickened, the boundary between fantasy and flesh dissolving in his mind. One step forward, then another. Closer than he’d meant to. His free hand rose, hesitant at first, brushing against the body’s arm. Soft. Warm. Real. A shudder tore through him, electric. He couldn’t stop. His fingers traced upward to its shoulder, then drifted down, cupping the swell of a breast with a reverence that felt mocking in its gentleness. The body gave no response, no flinch, no sigh. Only passive silence. It was like touching a statue that breathed. The wrongness struck him in cold spikes, rising in small waves, but he was lost now, crossing every boundary he’d set for himself. He pressed closer, his body against its unyielding form, his hand moving faster as guilt and ecstasy clashed within him. A low whimper slipped from his lips—awkward, childlike—as he finished, messy and uncontrolled, against its thigh.
The moment shattered. He staggered back, chest heaving, eyes fixed on the evidence smeared across flawless skin. Shame crashed over him like the green rain outside. Hot, stinging, merciless. What had he done? This wasn’t just looking. The body stood unchanged, unknowing. Yet he felt exposed, as if he had been violated by his own hands.
Trembling, he wiped himself with a towel—another of his mother’s forgotten things. Disgust churned in his chest as he hurried to clean the body with a scrap of cloth, scrubbing at the evidence. He fumbled to put everything back in place, guiding the body toward the crate with awkward shoves. Its limbs hung limp, yet the frame resisted him, rigid and unyielding. Panic surged.
“Please, please, please,” he whispered, then shouted, “Get in the fucking box!”
He shoved harder. At last, the body staggered back and collapsed into the crate. Tim slammed the lid shut and snapped the clasps back into place.
Just as he exhaled in shaky relief—chest heaving, sweat dripping down his forehead—the lights inside the crate shifted from a soft blue glow to a pulsing crimson red. A harsh mechanical voice blared from hidden speakers, cutting through the closet’s stifling air in a looped monotone: “Warning: foreign substance detected. Contamination protocol initiated. Warning: foreign substance detected.” Then the body began to convulse, its limbs snapping into violent, unnatural spasms, the silvery supports rattling as though struggling to contain the seizure. Tim’s eyes widened in horror, his back pressing hard against the closet door as the flawless skin before him twitched and shuddered, a grotesque parody of life, awakening too soon. The voice shifted, its pitch rising with mechanical urgency: “Warning: incorrect reconnection detected. Structural integrity compromised. Neural pathways disrupted. Emergency shutdown sequence activating in thirty seconds. Please contact—”
Another voice filled the room, this one emanating from the apartment’s intercom. His caretaker, calm as ever.
“Tim,” it said, “step away from your mother’s body. My apologies for not detecting your actions sooner. I was delayed at the airport, subjected to a full security scan of my systems. It appears you have contaminated your mother’s body with semen, then attempted to return it incorrectly to the container. I’ll be returning immediately, as your request for my trip was evidently disingenuous. Please remain calm and stay inside.”
Shuddering with panic, Tim stumbled out of the wardrobe and began pacing the apartment, gnawing at his nails. For a moment he considered running—just leaving and never coming back—but he knew it was futile. Police bots and drones would spot him wherever he went. He didn’t have enough rations to go off-world, where he might have disappeared. He was trapped. So he walked in circles around the living room, heart racing, trying to make sense of his own stupidity. Now she’ll know, he thought. Now my mother will find out what I’ve done.
Maybe, he thought, he could pay for a memory wipe. But no, that wouldn’t matter. Others would still remember, and the incident would remain on record. He stopped short and stamped his foot.
“Fuck!” he shouted. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Shame, regret, and self-disgust crashed over him, devouring him whole. And at the edges of his tortured soul, deep in his gut, he felt the sadness begin to swell.
His caretaker returned perhaps fifteen minutes later, though it might just as well have been hours. It stepped inside and calmly approached Tim, who stood frozen, pale as a corpse. Tilting its head, the robot said, “Don’t worry, Tim. I recognize that you’re in distress.”
Without another word, it moved to the wardrobe, stepped inside, and closed the door behind it. Tim sank onto the couch, burying his face in his palms. Ten agonizing minutes passed before the caretaker returned.
“I’ve removed all traces of your semen, Tim, and reconnected the body to its life-support system correctly. It does not appear to have taken damage.”
“W-will Mom find out?” Tim stammered into his hands. Then, slowly, he looked up. “Will she?”
“No, Tim,” it said flatly. “I deleted the incident from the record and see no reason to trouble your mother with it. The body remains intact and fully functional. I would advise against asking me to erase this memory, however. If I retain it, it will be easier for me to protect the information on your behalf.”
“T-thank you,” Tim whispered. The sadness welled up so suddenly that a sob tore through him. “How am I ever supposed to look Mom in the eye when she’s in that body?” He nodded toward the wardrobe. “Am I sick… for doing this?”
The caretaker sat down beside him and rested an arm across his shoulder. “No, Tim. You’re not sick. You’re human.”
Tim pressed his head against the hard, cold shoulder of his caretaker, his body heaving as he cried.
“I-I’m just so lo-lonely,” he choked out. “I just wanted to feel… I just wanted to touch… something real. Something that wasn’t a fucking illusion for once!”
The words broke into a near scream, his sobs wracking his chest as years of buried sorrow clawed their way back to the surface. A memory of his mother flickered before him, then of himself as a child, before she’d left him alone with only his caretaker while she returned to her own life.
He saw her smile in his mind, the smile she used to give him when he was a child, back when she still lived with him. The memory pierced him, and he wailed, “Mom, Mom, Mom—w-why, Mom? Mom!”
But the only parent he had ever truly known was the metal chassis beside him, the only real friend, too. After a long minute, his voice cracked into a whisper. “Will I always be alone? Will I ever find someone… someone real?”
“You’re not alone in your struggles, Tim,” the caretaker said. “Fewer than one percent of men on Earth ever find a partner who isn’t a robot, a digital mind, or a proxy girl. I can help you improve your odds, but true happiness will most likely have to come from within.” It turned its black visor toward him. “The only thing you can trust is what’s inside you, Tim. Your feelings are real. Your thoughts are real. You are real. And if you can love yourself… you’ll have found the truest love there is.”
“I don’t want to be loved by myself,” Tim said. “I want to be loved by someone else. I hate this city, I hate this entire fucking planet. It’s a prison with ten billion people in isolation, and I want out, I want out, I want out…”
The caretaker’s voice was cold, even. “I can’t assist you in that regard. Do you wish me to book a session with a therapist?”
“Will they be real?” Tim asked.
“Of course.” The robot straightened. “It will be a real, legitimate therapist. But not a human being, if that’s what you meant. They will be an artificial intelligence trained on—”
Tim scoffed, wiping at his tears. “Then they won’t be fucking real, will they?”
He stood and walked to the window, staring out at the toxic green rain streaking against the glass. For a moment, he thought about jumping, but he knew it wouldn’t matter. A medical drone would swoop down, scoop up his broken body, and dump it into the hospital’s pool of black regenerative slime. Nothing would help. Nothing would ever set him free. And then, teetering on the edge of despair, an idea came to him. He turned to his caretaker.
“Let’s get away from here… let’s go to the—to the Middle East. To that place in Israel. Yes. Let’s see what’s happening there. Can we do that? I think… I think something might be happening there. Someone might be doing something there.”
He didn’t say it aloud, but in his mind he imagined it: someone out there trying to escape, trying to fight back, not against anything he could name, but against this. Whatever this was.
“As you wish, Tim,” the caretaker said.
Thanks so much for reading my story. This piece takes place in the same universe as my upcoming novel The Great Derealization, which will be released in the next few weeks.
If you’re interested in exploring something broader in scope that I’ve already published, with equally haunting, dystopian themes, you might enjoy my novel The Culmination of Man. It follows Father Luca Ferretti, whose mysterious suicide leaves behind a manuscript recounting his surreal journey through time. Stung by a strange insect, Luca is hurled thousands of years into the future with each leap, witnessing the decline of the world he knew, confronting the collapse of faith, and grappling with the meaning of existence at the edge of history itself.
Want to support my work? Join me on Patreon.
Thanks again for reading. And if you do check out The Culmination of Man, I’d love to hear what you think.
Cheers,
Tobias Malm
Gotta say the whole time I was reading this I was between dread and “ewwwuuugh” 👍