“Whatever Shapes Our Minds Desire”—an Erotic Speculative Fiction Story
Love—and desire—will always find a way
After we fell in love in the metaverse, we built a moving castle, inspired from an anime Pafur loved. Only our castle was white, and it nested on the back of a titan from Greek mythology. We had to make some compromises of conflicting tastes, but we were happy with the result.
“It’s symbolic, you know,” I told her (she was a her that day, blonde hair that reached down her waist, blue gown with sparkling stars and galaxies at the hem, and sapphire eyes deeper than the sea).
“What is?”
“The titan. They called him Kronos, from the Greek word of time, punished by Zeus to an eternity of counting down seconds until the end of time.”
She chuckled. “That’s grim.”
“I like to think we’ll be here until the end of time.”
Her features hardened—a face she makes at my wonderful-but-impossible propositions.“We have to emerge at some point. Our physical bodies deteriorate.”
“This is the only body I need.” I beamed, trying to outshine her doubts with my smile. “I’ll apply for complete organ donation, have my mind entirely uploaded.”
“You don’t mean that, Axel.”
“Of course I do. Can you imagine how bad the world would be if we didn’t have this? Stumbling randomly from person to person, struggling to find a mate that remotely matches our unusual minds, our dirty needs. I can’t imagine living in any other point of human history. Nature has messed up, made us in a way that doesn’t fit that black wasteland of stars and void.”
“There’s magic in the real world, too. And people are coming to change, slowly but surely.”
Magic soiled at the hands of greed. I could no longer pretend to care about that. “It’s not more real than this. And I’d never have found you there, not in a million years.”
She flicked a strand from my hair, and tossed it away where it grew into a butterfly. “Is it real though? This I mean.”
“You and I are. So we experience it together, what’s the difference?”
“How can you be sure I’m real? I could just as well be some tool tuned to your data to please you.”
I laid a hand on her shoulder. “Why does this sound like you’re projecting your own worries on me?”
Pafur averted her gaze. On the horizon seagulls fluttered over a sea that slowly swallowed sand and made pink rivers through a cracked land, around villages and towns.
““I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s my brother. He keeps saying these things. Sending them as text in my dreams when I’m asleep in this world. That you’re not real. That I should not let this destroy my true life like it has so many people. That my real body is deteriorating and they’ll soon put me up for charity if I don’t return.”
I thought of my own wrinkled body, back in that rotten civilization built on exploitation of the young and broken nonsensical rules. I thought of the many times I awoke in that world craving escape.
“Great then,” I said. “Zero carbon footprint, and maybe someone who craves material reality gets saved. What’s wrong with that?”
Her mouth worked but produced no words. I could tell she wanted to say something that would offend me and was struggling to put it into non-triggering words. She didn’t have to say anything though, I had to figure it out.
How could I prove to her I was real and not an AI tuned to please her? What would an AI never do?
“Your brother can suck it.”
For a moment she masked her mouth with anime hands, then broke down laughing.
“Now tell me,” I said. “What commercial AI would ever say a thing like that?”
“You know,” she said, then shifted her features to masculine, and covered his scalp in ashen hair. “I always wondered what percentage of conservatives like your father secretly watch gay porn.”
“Ugh, that was an image I did not need in my head. But good verification. Better than captchas.”
“It really is.”
“So you believe me now?”
He nodded, took my hand and ushered me in the tower. “I’m sorry I doubted.”
A warm feeling nests within my chest. “Truth is, Pafur, before I met you, I was unable to see life as anything but a sick comedy, and myself as an observer.” It’s not something I shared with Pafur before. It’s not the kind of thing you want to put on someone. But if anything, it’s added assurance—a commercial AI never talks about problematic feelings, just points you to suicide hotlines.
Pafur caressed my cheek, his hands warm as starlight. “Seems like a big scam, doesn’t it? They bring you into that world and tell you to follow rules that almost demand you never existed at all.”
I turned into a tidal wave, cradling him to bed in waves and speaking like a sea-goddess to his ear. “In the metaverse there are no rules shaped by chaos, only rules shaped by imagination.”
My shape changed again, grew smaller, and I tossed him into bed, slowly crawling over him. “Turns out a reality shaped by intelligence is far better than the black desert of cold space and random errors. Isn’t it?”
Liquid tendrils intertwining with his fingers, I gave myself the shape of a nymph, as he remained silent, submissive—as he liked to be in male form. “We make our own rules here, we are what we are. And we fuck whatever our minds desire. Whatever shapes our minds may choose.”
“In this virtual heavens of our fantasies, unbound by musts and what-you-should’s, our fluidity finally found home.”
Image Sources: Depositphots
