A: What do you want?
B: Happiness.
A: Easy. I’ll connect you to a machine that fills your brain with endless happiness.
B: No. That feels wrong.
A: Why? You’d be perfectly happy.
B: Because it wouldn’t be real.
A: So you want happiness that comes from real things. Real experiences that actually happen.
B: Yeah.
A: Fine. The machine will give you experiences and endless happiness.
B: Err…like TikTok or Instagram? I’d be a hallucinating vegetable.
A: Ok, so you want some interaction?
B: I need to choose. I need agency.
A: I’ll let you choose. But every choice leads to the same result you want — happiness.
B: Then the choice is fake.
A: So you need variability.
B: Exactly. Without consequence, agency is an illusion.
A: Variability means sometimes you lose. You may experience pain.
B: That’s okay. I would only know joy if there’s contrast.
A: What if life gives you more pain than joy?
B: Then I need strength, recovery, exits. People who help me stand up again.
A: What if you had agency, experience, challenge, but no one to share it with?
B: Like Tom Hanks in Cast Away. I’d go crazy.
A: So… what do you want, really?
B: A real world. Finite. Messy. Partly mine to shape.
Enough control to steer. Enough chaos to matter.
Pain I can survive. Joy I can earn.
People I can love.
Meaning I can make.
A: Not happiness, then?
B: No. Aliveness.
Strength. Energy. Wisdom. Community. Connection.
Happiness just visits along the way.
A: Ha. That’s a better prompt.
Starting the simulator now. Enjoy!
B: ...Wait—what?
The hum of a machine starts.
Silence.
A: What do you want?
B: …
A: What do you want?
B: I… don’t know anymore.
A: Maybe that’s the point.
B: Maybe the wanting was never mine.
A: Then what remains?
B: This.
The hum fades. Or maybe it was never there.
A: …What do you—
Silence.