The burnout wasn’t a sharp pain, but a low, persistent static that fuzzed the edges of his world. Elias moved through his days in a state of advanced goblin mode, his remote work a blur of muted notifications and the dull glow of a screen. He’d heard the whispers on the net, the hushed testimonials about a new kind of healing. It wasn’t talk therapy; it was somatic. It was The Archives.
The clinic was the epitome of quiet luxury, all pale wood and diffuse, calming light. A woman with an unnervingly steady gaze led him to a room containing a single, egg-like chair. “The algorithm is designed for precision,” she said, her voice a soothing monotone. “We don’t erase the memory. We simply… archive the physical response. The trauma signature.”
He settled into the chair. A soft-gel neural interface was placed on his temples. “We’ll begin with a prompt,” she instructed. “Vocalize a memory you wish to decouple from. The AI will map the corresponding somatic spike.”
Elias closed his eyes. “The third-grade spelling bee,” he whispered. The word was ‘rhythm.’ The hot flush of shame as he fumbled the letters. The sea of faces, the ripple of snickers. He could feel it now, the tightening in his chest, the clammy sweat on his palms. On a screen to his right, a jagged waveform of angry red light flared.
“Acquiring,” the woman said. A cool sensation, like menthol, spread through his body from the temples downward. The tightness in his chest vanished. Not faded, but excised. Gone. He thought of the spelling bee again. The memory was there, a flat, two-dimensional fact, but the hot shame was missing. In its place was a clean, hollow space. A rush of pure, unadulterated dopamine flooded his system. It was better than peace; it was emptiness.
It became his side hustle, this hollowing-out. Every week he’d return. An awkward a-list he sent to the wrong person. A ghosted first date. The gnawing anxiety of doomscrolling late at night. He fed it all to the AI. His nervous system had never been more regulated. His life had become a smooth, frictionless surface.
One afternoon, he saw a video of a child laughing, a pure, uninhibited peal of joy. Elias tried to remember feeling that way. He searched for a memory—Christmas morning, age six, a bright red bicycle—but when he reached for the somatic echo, the exhilarating jolt in his stomach, there was nothing. It was just a picture. A beige flag in the gallery of his mind.
Panic, cold and sharp, tried to prick his skin, but the sensation was muted, distant. He realized with dawning horror that the algorithm, in its quest for efficiency, hadn’t just taken the pain. It had taken the entire emotional cluster. The fear of failure was so deeply wired to the joy of success that the AI had archived them as a single package.
He rushed back to the clinic, demanding to see his file. The technician, unnerved by this flicker of passion, complied. She showed him a screen displaying not a list, but a swirling galaxy of light points. “This is your digital twin,” she explained. “Every somatic point we’ve archived.”
But there was more. Faint lines connected his galaxy to others. His data was being streamed.
“The feelings don’t just sit here,” she admitted, her professional calm finally cracking. “They’re too valuable. Raw, authentic. We license them. For generative media. To train parasocial companions to feel more real. To give deepfakes genuine emotional resonance.”
His shame from the spelling bee was now the engine for an AI influencer’s apology video. His heartbreak was the texture in a simulated lover’s voice. His entire history of feeling, the very essence of his main character energy, had been upcycled into a product.
“Can I have them back?” His own voice sounded alien, a flat recording.
“Re-integration is… not recommended,” she said carefully. “The system shock could be catastrophic. You came to us for healing. You are healed.”
Elias walked out into the overbright afternoon. The world was crisp and clear, but it had no depth. He was perfectly regulated, a ghost in his own flesh. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling for the familiar ache of being human, and found only a profound, and terrifying, calm. He had traded his trauma for peace, and in the process, had lost the rizz of being alive.
Leave a Reply