“As You Log Into Isekai Heaven”—an Erotic Speculative Fiction Story
Escapism can take many interesting and frequently arousing forms
Content Warning: Dissociation from Physical Reality
The joint nests finger-thick on the ashtray, its smoke still warming your lungs, numbing your mind. You eye your dating accounts on the cellphone, no longer matching just scrolling through all the apps, the failed conversations. A celebration of your incompetence at finding a partner, even for one night.
Cannabis starts to take effect, numbing the part of your brain generating what you used to give.
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Weed had always helped. When life got too much, the smoke carried your thoughts away into blissful detachment. But then you returned from that date—the Date—and weed could not help you. Weed gave you insomnia.
You first thought of it as a date, but they were already pitching it as the Date. A mysticism and uniqueness to it, because the girl was special. Not in any conventional way though. The Date was a service, and the girl a product of the new company, Build a Lover.
By the time the date was done, it was like a religion, and it was impossible for you not to capitalize the word in your head. The girl was divinity, because she had lived inside your mind, growing alongside you. The perfect partner, fine-tuned to your desires. Build a Lover bought your data, made the girl, and even though you knew you could never afford the subscription money, you went out with her, because they offered a free trial. Nice of them to do so, huh? Well, they did use your data after all.
But the trial was over with the Date, so you lost sleep, and the weed plunged you into a loop of intrusive thoughts. Because now you’d never see her again.
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You tried bargaining with the tech lead, the project manager, but found no leeway. It made sense that such things were expensive. They had people to train the model of your perfect partner, but after the software was ready it had to sustain itself.
Adaptive AI to process the immensity of information that clouds the real world, which needed stacks of graphic processing units that spanned a room larger than your apartment. Rent and electricity bills beyond your pay grade.
Instead they sold you on something more affordable, and that was when it hit you. They never meant for this corporeal robo-wife to be the product. The Date was the advertisement. They meant to sell you on a virtual version, a controlled environment where her personality would interact with you without having to filter the overwhelming noise of your analog world.
Your life savings, for this VR version of a perfect waifu. But it was okay. They had an installment plan.
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The joint, used up, drops into the ashtray. Surrounded by twelve screens, you lean back on the VR chair as electrodes from the armrest and back press against your skin. As the headset settles on your scalp, cold metal presses your temples and electric warmth hugs your brain—isolating thoughts, readying neurons for isekai download.
“Want me to massage your brain, master?” the anime girl says from the twelfth panel of your visor. Anime is simpler than 3D, less resources, lower cost. But that’s convenient, isn’t it? You prefer the anime, and more money was an excuse to buy extra girlfriends. Enough spare to get your own master class at coding romantic partners to perfection.
A massage would be more than welcome, sweetheart, you think (no need to speak, your waifus read your mind).
The rest of the panels are still loading, blinking spirals, then pixelated outlines, their contrast sharpening every moment, just as the real world fades away. Partners trained on your own data, nourished by neural networks fine-tuned to your soul.
Why communicate with humans, deal with rejection, heartbreak, disappointment, when digital surrogates fool your circuits to drug-like depths of divine delight?
Your awkward approach attempts are buried in the past. No more drinks spilled on your face, no giggles judging you for daring to punch up. You’ll never need to understand women, now that fem-algorithms have been refined to understand you. Harem-blessed, society isn’t relevant, only carnal desire.
Cannabis smoke licks out your palate, and then the sensation vanishes, your tongue neurons already synced and isekai’d. The warmth of vapors stolen with a wet kiss from your twelfth waifu.
In the VR setting of your visor, your keyboard appears at your command, replicating the world your body still resides in. You crack your knuckles, snap a nail you haven’t clipped in over four months. You hear the snap, but you don’t feel it—sex-digitized, implanted with circuits, your senses know no mortal pain.
As your fingers dance on the keyboard, programming your next wife, the pins digging your scalp tingle, sending pleasure down your spine.
It’s not just the twelfth, the others join her, but download isn’t enough. This world still clings to you, the life of struggle, disappointment. Of being unwanted by everyone. You’ve convinced yourself it is a lie, that the digital is all there is—but still it hurts. You want to let go.
In near-synchrony your waifus whisper: “Pressure will leave your shoulders, master. We’ll upload you entirely, when this massage is done.”
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