Essay
The Chamber is the subject of great political and social debate, though it’s not entirely clear why. Technology this matured and sought-after shouldn’t cause such division in society. The truth is, something about it unsettled people. Not what it did, exactly, but what it kept at bay. Powerful technology that can perceptibly alter the fabric of one’s reality, and the new behaviors that follow, seems to have that effect.
“God, that was so hot,” Amanda was still huffing and puffing as she emerged from the Chamber. Sweat lined her skin, and her sports bra was drenched. The BioStickers came off—ripped off, really, though you’re supposed to peel them gently. Fragile technology be damned. Amanda wasn’t thinking about that. Two dudes had just fucked her vigorously for two hours, and she still felt their hands and mouths and everything else all over her body. The after-effects of coming out of artificial reality. Her horniness came back for a second and she had the primal urge for round two, but willpower and rationality prevailed. Going back in the Chamber meant another two-hour session, time she didn’t have. She needed to get to work.
After an intense shower where she used her freshly opened bar of soap to scrub down every nook and crevice that she found sweat lodged in, and a quick text to her girl-friend describing the scene and recommending the download, the name of the game was traffic. The dreaded reality of commuters.
The cars piled up as if an apocalypse was in the other direction. Especially in her city, where drivers were almost too eager to get to work. Switching lanes and cutting each other off, you’d think that the Chamber would have solved this by now. Amanda took a few long, deep breaths as another vehicle filled the pocket of space her delay had created. The brakes squealed under her foot, the horn shouted a few times, then the button to turn on the radio was hit to drown out the hustle and bustle of honkers and roadragers—herself included.
Voice 1: Y’know, Steve, it seems to me that the Chamber is good for society, eh? Whenever my wife says no, the Chamber says yes!
Voice 2: I’ll never step in one, it’s just a data harvester for creepy billionaires.
Steve: Honestly, people should be left to their own devices for how they use technology. Anyone ever tell you how to use a phone?
Voice 2: Fantastic point, Steve. No one told me not to put it on my balls when it vibrates. But I still did!
The car was flooded with chuckles and laughter. Amanda wondered if she had missed the joke or if there was one in the first place. There was no winning with the Luddites, as she described them. Some people are early adopters and ahead of the curve, others wait for society to catch up collectively. The Chamber is a net positive for humanity, that was her conviction.
After pulling into the parking lot, she scurried to class. Past the receptionist, who glanced at Amanda’s awkward bumbling down the hall—she was struggling to walk after her session—with confusion, then a smirk of realization.
The auditorium sat about 100. Around 25 were present, scattered around the venue, with eight in the front of the class ready to learn. Her favorites. Not because they were particularly good students, but because they were the only ones on the attendance list. The rest just came for the show.
The students watched as their professor ran in (still with her awkward run), threw her bag down, yanked on the string to send the screen for the projector flying upwards, crashing into the ceiling panel and creating a loud BANG! which startled everyone, including Amanda; then, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, began to discuss the end of the last class.
“Okay, today’s topic,” Amanda began, with some huffs and puffs in between, “is about falling crime rates in association with the Chamber. As new independent research comes out, it’s clear that in almost every major city where Chambers are legal, violent crime has basically collapsed—murder, assault, rape, crimes of passion. We can also see the inverse, where cities or countries that have banned Chambers continue to have the same rates, or worse.”
She pulled up a graph on the projector. “Now, to be precise with the data, property crimes driven by economic necessity, like theft, burglary, and robbery, have remained relatively constant. The technology addresses deep-rooted psychological urges and violent impulses, not poverty or desperation. White-collar crime, fraud, and corruption have seen minimal change.”
Amanda looked around the room and made eye contact with one of her students. A little older than the rest, he looked like one of her compatriots in this morning’s pre-work simulation. She bit her lip, then realized what she was doing, and saw someone else raise their hand.
“Yes, yes, you!” she enthusiastically said, trying to distract from her internal dialogue.
“Sorry, but why would a country ban Chambers? Are they stupid?” Chuckles from around the class echoed. “It’s literally the best technology to keep us from creating The Purge.”
Amanda took the question seriously, as she did her job, and thanked her lucky stars that no one noticed her momentary departure into fantasyland. “There are many good reasons why. The biggest reason right now has to do with astropolitics. Nation-states on Earth and the Moon are not too pleased with how close the CEO of Athena is with our President. They think—and for sure, there is some hard and damning evidence to support it—that Chambers around the world are biased towards America, specifically the New America movement. For example, sometimes when interacting with your respective simulation’s NPCs, if you haven’t carefully configured the setting and installed certain parameters, they could begin to biasedly talk about politics more than anything else. I had a friend who ended up having pillow talk in her simulation, all about how Chambers are healthy for citizens and that they should be mandated in every household and classroom. It was the primary talking point for this Presidential run, and it came up after intercourse.” Amanda realized what she was saying but kept going so as to avoid realizations if she paused.
“Don’t be fooled, though. Rival nations still have their own Chambers available, but under the radar. French and Russian Chambers have been seized at ports around the world. The Chamber black market is real and dangerous. There are even talks about hacker groups around the world who are studying the code and attempting to fry every Chamber in our solar system. A scary thought indeed.” The student seemed pleased with the answer despite Amanda’s tangent.
The students usually shut up when Amanda talked. They enjoyed listening to their young, hot professor speak on such complex but interesting matters. The class was interesting but she was the talk of the campus. Outsiders trickled in like clockwork to catch a glimpse, and, especially, to save the memory of her and her body, mannerisms, lipstick color, for later. Every detail of one’s persona mattered if a simulation were to be precise; and satisfying.
The Chamber is an artificial reality device taken to the extreme. Once inside the Chamber and hooked up with the various equipment, you can act out your wildest fantasies and darkest desires. Nothing was off the table; no judgement, no illegality, no strings attached. The simulations felt real—the BioStickers tracked neural patterns, muscle responses, hormone levels, feeding data back into the simulation in real-time, creating a feedback loop of sensation indistinguishable from reality—meaning the brain couldn’t tell the difference.
The CEO of Athena came up with the idea after his wife was murdered by an old lover. Being the high-profile executive, he couldn’t just kill him and face public criticism (really, a drop in Athena’s share price). Towards a more psychopathic avenue, he created a machine that housed a simulation of the same event. This time he found himself—and an axe—in the same room as his wife’s lover and used the axe to separate his wife’s killer into many pieces. He played through many similar scenarios until he came to the realization that this machine could be broadened, deepened, and certainly monetized. The Chamber was born amidst bloodlust.
It became an instant hit. Within a mere year of release, almost every household in the Western hemisphere had at least one Chamber per person. (Sometimes, people would buy an extra just in case a guest came over.) The movie and TV industry ground to a halt, since people didn’t have to sit idly and watch characters. They could be inside the scene, a part of the story. Restaurants emptied. Concert venues closed. Why pay for a meal or a show when you could be a Michelin-starred chef or a rockstar performing to millions? Therapists turned into Recommenders, professionals who could help you construct a deeply personal and therapeutic scenario, to “get over” whatever trauma one had. Universities began offering degrees in Simulation Architecture. Insurance companies created policies for simulation addiction. The biggest industry to change radically was the adult industry.
Overnight, a democratized power and access was given to any person with an unregulated Chamber; schools and public institutions set limits on what citizens could simulate in public. Any person could have sex with any person, anything, in any place. This was a power hitherto unknown. The debates raged: Was it cheating if your partner had sex with a simulation of their ex? Was it pedophilia if the child was just code? Was it rape if the victim didn’t exist? The law couldn’t keep up. Ethicists published contradictory papers. Religious leaders condemned it, then quietly bought their own units. Instead of struggling with real human relations, any fantasy with any celebrity or adult star or friend or relative could be carried out, always to the extreme.
Amanda, having gone through a nasty breakup where her ex began to generate revenge porn of her with other men, sometimes multiple, thought the best medicine would be to act out exactly this. So she fucked and fucked and fucked until she completely forgot about her ex-boyfriend. Her sexual memories were now filled with hot men and dazzling displays of sexual prowess. As she deserved. As he deserved. As she found out, simulating sex was not the top preference for most. Others took a different path—the original path.
She thought about her neighbor, a woman in her 60s who confided to her of killing her emotionally abusive husband in every way imaginable; axe to the head, slit throat, pillow suffocation, running him over with her car. “If I didn’t have the Chamber, I wouldn’t last long” she’d always confess to Amanda. Sometimes she’d get specific: the angle of the blade, the sound it made, how many strikes. Fifteen to his neck, her neighbor once explained cheerfully while watering her garden, to decapitate him completely. His face—shock, realization, then nothing. Amanda had assumed these were therapeutic fantasies, catharsis rendered in high definition. The woman seemed so calm afterward, so relieved. So happy. Like she deserved it. The Chamber was clearly working.
Amanda never really enjoyed murder, but out of curiosity she tried it, once. She killed some random drug dealer on the corner. Better to be a good Samaritan even if it’s a simulation. The splattering of blood across her face and clothes still made her queasy. She couldn’t bring herself to kill a stranger. Sex it was.
Reports were coming out that people were getting sexual fantasies for murder, somehow generating the desires of folks like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Kemper, combining sexual desire with murderous intent. Some studies pointed out that as much as 20% of Chamber users had happily reported that they engage in necrophilia, mutilation, rape, and a new behavior, loosely called “necroma”: having sex with a person as you slowly kill them. Athena didn’t remove these scenarios from their marketplace. They added content warnings and age gates, then continued collecting the subscription fees. Specialized designers emerged, experts in crafting the perfect death-sex experience. People on forums traded tips on optimal timing, ideal victims, best methods. It became a subculture, then a mainstream interest, then just another preference, like preferring bondage or blondes.
“…and so, crime rates remain steadily near zero because any person can simply act out the crime in the Chamber and suffer no legal consequences for it. It’s a foolproof mechanism that keeps our streets safe and prisons empty.”
“But ma’am, what about–“
“Oops, looks like we’ve hit our time. Thank you everyone for coming!” Amanda began to scramble to put her items back in her cluttered bag.
The same student that tried to ask the question mumbled, “We still had two minutes left. Guess she wanted to go back to fucking guys that don’t exist.”
Amanda heard it but said nothing. Her life was her life. She walked out of the classroom to her office, where she spent the rest of the day fantasizing about what scenario she’d simulate tonight.
It happened in the most unexpected way. On the weekend, Amanda sipping red wine while leftovers heated in the microwave. No Chamber yet—the simulation was still downloading. The couch beckoned, along with steaming hot Chinese noodles and reruns of old shows. That comedy about people in a traditional office building. Not as exciting, to her credit, since she had literally lived this episode so many times. There was a calm beauty to the originality of art, without inserting oneself as the main character. A gentleness of avoiding narcissism. Almost every avenue of art was becoming corrupted because people would simulate themselves as the creator, getting all the fame and money and status. The point was never to struggle and learn what the creators went through to achieve such magnificent music or powerful paintings. It was always to just be them…which felt plain. Plus, Amanda had better things to do than engage with art.
A loud PING! emitted from the corner that the Chamber lived in. A spring in her step, Amanda skipped over to the Chamber. TV still on, a third of her noodles abandoned. “Whatever, I’ll heat it up later.” BioStickers on and laying down, the lid automatically closing. Any second now, the new environment would materialize. Opening her eyes, she was still staring at the ceiling of the Chamber.
“Ugh.” Annoyed sigh. Maybe the machine wasn’t primed? The button beside her hand got pressed—user ready, simulation start. Eyes closed…then open again. Same black ceiling. “What the fuck is going on?” Amanda kept saying as she hit the button again and again.
Eventually, she ripped the BioStickers off and got out. Internet forums showcased an outage on Athena’s servers. “Jesus FUCKING Christ, man. Every time I look forward to something it just FUCKS UP somehow.” Grabbing the bottle firmly, she chugged and chugged. All she wanted was to relax for the evening and she couldn’t even have that. The wine worked, and she collapsed onto the couch, the TV still playing as her eyes closed and she drifted off into dreamscape. Her second favorite biological simulation, the last thing she saw being the food that she still hadn’t eaten.
Athena’s servers were usually fixed quite quickly, with backup servers ensuring that Chambers around the solar system were always ready and working. Athena’s servers had never gone down before; Amanda hoped that this would be a fast anomaly as she woke up late Sunday morning with a slight headache. The headache wasn’t from the wine. It was something else. An emptiness, a restlessness. Her body felt wrong, like she’d forgotten something essential. She checked her phone compulsively, refreshing the forums every few minutes. The itch to get back in the Chamber was physical, crawling under her skin.
Phone in hand, forums loading. Still out. New news, though, of hackers sending a breaking protocol that wiped Athena’s servers and all Chamber access. Cutting through the geekspeak and panic, she realized that all Chambers were bricked. The Athena CEO made an announcement that the company was working on restoring functionality and meeting the demands of the hackers.
This was unbelievable. The last time her Chamber hadn’t been used was the day she was leaving for Paris, six and a half months ago. The only reason she didn’t use it was because the download hadn’t registered the night before, and so there was no time before her flight. Every single day afterward was built around her preferred, intensive, sexual simulations.
Life without the Chamber felt alien. What to do with a free Sunday? Her entire routine—diet, exercise, everything—existed to optimize simulation performance. Heavy foods meant sluggishness in the Chamber. Too much working out, same problem. Unbearable. Even her social events paid a price, as she often cancelled them because there was no energy or want left in her body for other people.
Some commotion outside brought her out of her worrying. Through her window she saw flashes of red and blue. “The fuck are the police doing here?” she muttered. The front door opened onto chaos. Her neighbor—blood smeared across her pajamas, handcuffs biting into her wrists—was dragged between two officers. Something out of a simulation. For a split-second, Amanda wondered if this was a simulation, some cruel hack job by the attackers. The musing was cut short by her neighbor beginning to scream, “HE DESERVED IT. HE FUCKING DESERVED IT. THAT FUCKING CUNT. FUCK HIM. I’LL DO IT AGAIN MOTHERFUCKER!” Staring in confusion, another police officer came up to Amanda.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. Did you end up hearing or seeing anything?” the female officer asked, half-staring at Amanda and half-glaring at the neighbor. The rest of the neighborhood were outside standing on their porches, bearing witness to this incredibly bizarre scene.
“Uh, no, sorry. I just woke up.” Amanda struggled to make eye contact. Unbrushed teeth. Crusty eyes. The officer noticed, taking a small step back to escape the smell of her morning breath. “What happened, if I may ask?”
“Well, the old lady took a butcher’s cleaver and went to town on her husband. It seems from the way we found the body that he was just…” the officer met Amanda’s eyes and then looked away, confused and disturbed, “He was just sitting there apparently. And she hacked away at him like I’ve never seen in real life before. Probably because the Chambers have been down for like 20 hours. God willing, they’ll be back up before some crazier stuff happens. Thanks for your time. I hope the scene wasn’t too distressing.”
The officer gave a wink and quickly checked out Amanda’s body before leaving. Returning inside, she spent the rest of the day trying not to think about the scene outside or about not being able to escape into the Chamber. Almost impossible. Her neighbor had just murdered her husband. Decades of abuse and emotional torture, ending on a random Sunday. The thought wouldn’t leave. Connecting sharp metal with flesh. Surreal. Passionate. Longing. A thought crossed her mind, and this was when she’d search for a new download and enjoy her Chamber. Now all she had was the couch and cold, leftover food, all masked by her waiting for the beloved PING! that wouldn’t come.
Time blurred after the Chambers went down. Forty-three hours. Amanda had been counting. Forty-three hours since her last simulation. The longest stretch in six and a half months. Every minute felt wrong. Reality felt thin, unconvincing, like a poorly rendered simulation with low-resolution textures and laggy responses. Her own life felt fake. She surfaced from autopilot in traffic, no memory of the last ten minutes of driving, no idea which lane she was in or how she’d gotten there. The radio droned on with new reports from around the country.
Steve: Breaking news, everyone. Famed celebrity Beatrix Rosa has been caught having an affair with her husband’s brother, father, and mother. Can you imagine the sight of coming home and seeing your entire family in an orgy, happening without you? Sheesh.
Voice 1: Even crazier, the new President of France has declared a territorial dispute with England. His reasoning states that his simulations had shown him every possible permutation, and that the two countries have unresolved conflicts that must be addressed in this century. Diplomats from America have arrived in both countries to sort out this conundrum.
Voice 2: All of this to say, that CEO needs to get his Chambers up and running before the world comes crashing down!
Steve: Indeed, we’re feeling it. More news to come soon. Stay tuned.
Amanda pulled into the campus parking lot, hands still gripping the steering wheel. A long sigh escaped. How would she work when she knew there was no sexy fun times waiting for her at home? Her students would notice. They always noticed when she wasn’t herself. They came to her class for the energy, the enthusiasm, the barely contained sexuality that made even crime statistics feel electric. That woman was a product of post-simulation euphoria. Without the Chamber, she was just another burned-out academic droning through slides. They’d be disappointed. She was disappointed.
Bag in hand and head down, Amanda slowly walked into work. The receptionist’s desk sat empty with no omniscient smirk. Uncaring, she trudged to her office to get some work done before her first seminar. Really, it was all to try to take her mind off the fact that she hadn’t had a simulation for far too long. The door swung open to reveal the receptionist having aggressive sex with one of Amanda’s students, on her desk.
“DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK?!” Amanda screamed, dropping her bag and slamming the door shut.
“Oh fuck fuck fuck!” she heard the receptionist and student yell through the door, in unison.
Amanda began to bang on the door, “What the fuck are you guys doing in my office?!”
“It was the only one that was open!” the receptionist responded, a hint of innocence in her voice. The student began to gently but firmly knock on the door, “Professor, let me out, I’m sorry!”
Amanda opened the door and glared at the two of them, “Get the fuck out. Now.” They both ran out in a hurry, the student refusing to make eye contact and the receptionist, her blouse still undone, giving both dirty and sorry looks.
Walking into the office, she saw a pair of women’s underwear next to her chair. That was enough for her. The receptionist fucking a student. The underwear. The realization that everyone was breaking down, acting out, unable to contain themselves. Everyone except her, stuck in this intolerable reality with no escape. “No thanks, I’m taking the day,” she said as she walked back to her car. The drive, the job, now the scene, all under the guise and pretense of normalcy—all of it felt absurd. Pressing the button to start the engine, the radio came on full blast. She forgot to turn it off when she left some minutes ago. The usual talking heads were gone, replaced with new voices.
Voice 3: He just killed him. Stabbed him in the throat. During the break. Said he had it coming for a long time.
Voice 4: A direct result from the Chambers being down. Steve was a good guy. Can’t believe this happened.
There was barely any traffic on the freeway, so Amanda was speeding home. She could feel something shift in the energy of civilization. Things were falling apart. People were falling apart. It felt like the apocalypse had truly started. Was their technological addiction that deep, to the point where these devices being taken away caused complete societal breakdown? It was almost unbelievable.
Indeed, she felt something in her mind switch. A darker thought crossed her mind, and it made her smile. Maybe civilizational chaos was a good thing. Maybe, just maybe, she could get away with something, too. If everyone else was taking advantage, why not her? Her neighbor had done it. The receptionist had done it. Steve’s killer had done it. The French President was about to start a war over simulation-induced delusions. Everyone was acting on impulse, and society hadn’t collapsed. Not yet at least. There was a window, a brief moment of lawlessness before order returned. Why waste it being good?
Driving past her house, she noticed that there were a few too many cars around her home. In these new times, that could only mean one thing.
Her desire took her to the neighboring town, where things seemed much calmer to begin with. The city usually had a high concentration of crazy people, anyway. She pulled up to a house with two cars occupying the driveway and put her car in park.
Rummaging through her purse, Amanda found lip gloss and makeup. A touch-up would help. This moment had lived in her fantasies for months. She wanted to look good and enjoy herself. Finally, it would be real. One final check in the mirror, then out of the car. Slowly, she walked up to the front door. Excitement flooded her body. Her nervous system was hyperactive. She wanted to start immediately. A few long, deep breaths centered her. Then a knock, and what felt like almost an eternity waiting.
Some moments passed, and she heard someone coming to the door. The front door opened, and Amanda drove a knife straight into the heart of her ex-boyfriend. As he realized what had happened, the screams of a woman in the back of the house drowned out the scene. In her periphery, she saw a child standing in the hallway, watching his father be murdered in cold blood.
Amanda didn’t break eye contact. She stared into the soul of her ex, the person who had caused her so much pain and suffering, who never got what he deserved. She took the knife out and began to stab him, over and over again, warm blood spattering her face. She smiled. She was loving it. Her neighbor was right, it felt good.
Her ex’s face changed from shock to a lifeless stare. Blood gushed from the stab wounds, his body going limp and unable to be held up by Amanda. She pushed him off and heard a loud THUMP! as she walked away.
Back in the car, heart hammering. Adrenaline coursing through her veins and blood everywhere. The towel from the backseat became soaked with blood as she wiped her forehead, hair, neck, hands. God only knew how much she needed this. She deserved it.
Vengeance tasted sweet, especially since this was real. Somehow it already felt like a memory from someone else’s life. Or like another simulation—vivid while it lasted, fading now. Had she really just done that? The blood on her hands said yes. The knife in her purse said yes. The THUMP! still echoing in her ears said yes. But her mind felt calm. Quieter than it had been in days. The itch for something was gone. Euphoria…no…peace was the feeling. Finally, peace. Turning on the car and preparing to leave, the radio cranked on.
Voice 3: Thank God in Heaven, Athena paid off the hackers and has met their other demands. All Chambers are fully restored.
Voice 4: It’s a miracle! Let’s just hope nobody did anything they’ll regret.
Ayush Prakash
Montréal, 2026