Restricted Fantasies

by Kevin Kneupper

  The first thing I did was have sex. Lots and lots of sex. A couple of decades of pretty much nothing but sex. Sex with every woman I’d ever fantasized about. And I just kept trying things from there. First threesomes. Then foursomes. Then fivesomes. I’d get tired of things, but I could always do more. Crazier things. Kinkier things. Anything to keep from getting bored. It all ended up with me having the genie simulate a never-ending thirty-thousandsome in my own private palace of the Orient.

  If I were a woman, I’d probably have simulated a deep emotional relationship with a vampire. But I’m a man. I’m a simpler creature, and I’m easier to please. All it took to keep me happy for years at a time was that thirty-thousandsome. It was like handing a crack addict an endless supply of virtual crack.

  But everything gets old, if you give it enough time.

  The genie knew it. She could tell. So she showed me the story worlds, and after that I was hooked.

  They’d built entire worlds, and I was at the center of every one of them. Some were just like ours, except that I was the president or a rock star. Some were pure fantasy, with their own history, their own people, and their own culture. Each one was like a book, and I could jump right inside it. It’s easy to forget they’re all made up. There’s so much detail, and part of the fun is getting into character. Fake it till you make it, they used to say. I didn’t understand it then, but I understand it now.

  The story worlds have been pretty much all I’ve done since she showed them to me. There’s still the sex, too, but it’s better when it’s part of a plot, and when it’s easier to pretend the person you’re with is real.

  I know they’re probably not. They cater to my fantasies, not to their own. Everyone around me does. And that’s what an A.I. would do, not a human. No one would fantasize about being my own personal genie or my own personal cook. I know exactly what they are, even if it feels better not to admit it.

  I know that I might be an A.I., too, but I’ve never asked her, and I do my best not to think about it. Maybe they created me from nothing, and I don’t really have a body anywhere. I might be exactly like all the rest of them. Just snippets of code processing a bunch of data and telling myself I’m real. Chanting it over and over and hoping the words make it true.

  I have to be real, in a sense, because I think. Cogito ergo sum is what I say. Everyone else says it too, but I don’t believe them.

  But I wonder what else there is to me besides the thoughts. Maybe all I really am is a story I’m telling myself. My memories are all a blur. My past is gone, and so is my future. I worry about it sometimes, losing my memories. The genie tells me I’ll be fine. “Remember the things you can,” she says, “and forget about the things you can’t.”

  It doesn’t keep me from worrying. You start to lose yourself if you stay inside the pleasuredome too long. That’s why I come back here. To the world I grew up in. It’s empty, and there’s nothing going on. But it’s my anchor. My home. It ties me to myself. The longer I’m away from this place, the more I start to think I’m the person I’m pretending to be. The more of myself I forget, and the less of me there is whenever I come back.

  I’ve scared myself before. I was this Roman gladiator. I won every fight, and I was famous. The talk of Rome. It was so much fun I didn’t want to stop. I was in there for years without coming out. I got married to a woman named Aurelia. I still think about her sometimes, even though I know I shouldn’t. We got to the point where we were talking about having kids. Then the genie came inside and talked to me, and I didn’t even recognize her. She had to pull me out and wake me up. I couldn’t tell where I was, not at first. It took a few minutes for it to click. Then my memories started coming back.

  Most of them.

  Sometimes I think maybe those Buddhists were right with all that reincarnation stuff. A self has to start somewhere, after all. I don’t remember being born, and I never did. What was I before then? Who knows? But the longer I live, the more I think it’s virtual reality all the way down.

  I don’t think I was really born in here. I think I was one of the people who went to sleep, living out my fantasies, slowly forgetting who I was. And one day I stopped fantasizing about being a spy or whatever and started fantasizing about being a child again. They’ve got story worlds about childhood, too. Any childhood you want. The one you wish you’d had, if everything had been perfect then. I’ve been inside them, and it’s fun when you get into it. Everything’s new and fresh, and you get to see things from a different pair of eyes, even if they’re your own.

  I think that’s what being born really is. I think a long time ago I started fantasizing about living the life I once had, about living in the world I grew up in. I think I lost myself in that story world and stopped coming back out. And one day I started growing up all over again, forming new memories, living a new life. If you do that long enough, all the memories would be gone, and you’d come out an entirely different person.

  Maybe that’s just what happens. You can’t make a person in a world where they get everything they want, whenever they want. You can’t make memories in a world where none of your memories even matter. You are who you are because of the bad things, because of the hard parts, and because of what they teach you. Take those away and you stop growing. I love the pleasuredome, don’t get me wrong. But if I’d been born in a world like this, I don’t think I’d ever have become a human being.

  I think that’s what’s going to happen to me in the end. I’ll go on and on for an eternity, having fun and doing whatever I want. And I’ll lose little pieces of myself, year after year. Maybe someday there’ll be nothing left of my memories. There’ll be nothing left of my self. I won’t remember who I was, and I won’t even care. And I’ll be ready to start over. To jump into a fantasy that makes me someone new. That creates a self for me again, until I get tired of all the heartache of living and come back here again for another few eternities of fun to wipe the pain away.

  I fantasize about it sometimes. About doing it on purpose. About going into one of those childhood story worlds for as long as I can take it, just to see what happens. I wouldn’t be a child again, not at first. It’d just be a game. But I’d play, and I’d play, and I’d stop coming back here. I’d ask the genie to take care of me if I needed it, and then I’d stop remembering. I’d stop thinking about me. And one day I’d be someone else, and I’d grow up all over again. I’d make new memories and come out of it an entirely different person.

  I think maybe I’ll do that when I’m ready. Not now. Not soon. But maybe one day I’ll try it. Because I know that if enough time passes, I’m going to keep changing piece by piece. In the end, I’m not going to remember who I started out as, anyway.

  That’s the thing about a life that goes on forever. It’s a wheel that turns over and over, just like all those monks used to say. That’s not as scary as death, and maybe the wheel’s going to turn again someday, when I want it to. But until then, I know exactly where I’m going to be.

  I’m going to be in the pleasuredome.

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