June 14 - iMotions

"What's that one?"
"Liberator?"
"I guess. What's it like?"
"You want to try a sample? You can tell me."
"OK."
Brenda's shopper fed her a three-second dose through her iVision.
"Well?"
"Wow. It was like, I don't know, the last few minutes before the bell rings on the last day of school. Really cool."
Her shopper laughed along with her. "Should I add it to your cart?"
"Maybe. Don't I already have something like that?"
"Irresponsibliss?"
"Which one is that?"
"That's the feeling you get when you blew off your homework, wake up the next morning, and school's been cancelled because of snow."
"Ooh, I like that one."
"Yeah, I know. I can tell," her shopper laughed. "But Liberator is different. Much more anticipatory."
"Yeah, totally. Hmm. Let me think about it."
Brenda had been on a nostalgia kick at the iMotions Store lately, downloading almost all the iMotions that reminded her of high school that her shopper suggested to her. It was especially hard to resist when she'd been drinking, as she had that night. Other recently purchased iMotions: Something to Cheer About, which made her feel like she'd just made the cheer leading squad, and Noteworthy, which made her feel like a boy had secretly passed her a note in class.
"Yeah, you know what? Add that one to my cart."
Her shopper touched the Liberator icon and dragged it over to Brenda's cart. She was about to suggest some other iMotions she might like, but Brenda switched avatars before she could speak again. A 3D hologram of Joakim, Brenda's high school boyfriend (computer aged to look like he was 35 years old) replaced the hip African-American woman Brenda normally shopped with. He took over the shopper's side of the conversation like he'd been with her the whole time.
"Liberator is now in your cart."
Brenda took another drink of wine. "What's new in the Romance section?"
Joakim laughed. "You looking for PG or R?"
Brenda blushed. She knew Joakim wasn't 'real' in the same sense she was, but she still felt inhibited whenever she talked to him, worrying about what he would think about her choices. After all, he looked dead on like she imagined Joakim would look now--or maybe she just imagined Joakim would look like that because that's how the iMotions Image Projection System had imagined he would look.
And by the same token, did iMotions Joakim really have the same personality as 'real' Joakim's, as Brenda had often thought? Or had the personality of iMotions Joakim gradually rewritten Brenda's memories of him so that it just seemed that way?
It was all so confusing whenever she stopped to think about it, which was one of the reasons why she didn't anymore.
The other reason was because she had gotten to the point where she preferred iMotions to the 'real' thing. They were just easier. iMotions were available whenever she wanted them. If she woke up at 3 am and wanted to feel like an attractive guy had laughed at one of her jokes and casually touched her arm, she could experience that. If she had had a bad day at work and wanted to feel like she'd just nailed a presentation, she could do that too. Any emotion she wanted to feel was there for her any time. All she had to do was call it up from her iMotions Library. Who cared if it wasn't 100% real, because--and not to get too philosophical here--what was reality? If her brain told her something was real and her nerve endings and emotional receptors confirmed it was real and the sensory images she experienced felt real, wasn't that real enough? If the feelings felt real, who cared about the rest?
Brenda took another sip from her wine and told Joakim, "R."
"All right, now we're talking," he said. "Try Yes. It's the feeling you get the moment you realize that the possibility of sex with a new partner has just become a certainty."
He downloaded a three-second sample of it to her iVision, and she tried it out.
"Ooh yeah, definitely put that in my cart."
"Done. Strong Hands?"
"Sorry?"
"You want to try Strong Hands? Judging from your purchasing history, I think you'd like it."
He sent her a sample, and once again proved he knew her better than anyone else in the world.
By the time she finished her wine, she had the courage to add Toe Suck to her cart, and she rounded out her evening's shopping by adding Sunday Morning Cuddle, which she'd had her eye on for almost a week.
After she finished, Joakim said good night, and told her not to wait so long before she shopped with him again the next time, and Brenda promised she would do better in the future.
Then she told the iHost to plan a romantic evening's playlist for her, poured herself another glass of wine, and settled in for the evening.