Sunday Story – Pod People

Peter’s boredom had reached its limit. It had compounded over many years but today it reached a kind of terminal velocity: he was as bored as it was possible for a man to be.
After waking, he entered his favourite breakfast buffet room. He was sick of food. All fruits regardless of season, many cereals, eggs every way, French toast, sausages, bacon and eggs, lamb curry, chicken stir-fry, a dozen cakes, endless juice, tea and coffee. He could eat for hours without getting full or fat. But what was the point? A lot of people didn’t bother eating any more.
He skipped breakfast and checked the Game of Thrones room. AI was constantly generating new episodes with deepfakes of John Snow and the other characters which mimicked the scripting of that era. Peter sighed. He’d done it to death. Even the interactive mode where you could play a role was dull after the hundredth time.
There was a fully pornographic version of the series but instead Peter went directly to one of the dedicated adult rooms. There were as many to choose from as human and AI imagination could conjure – spa baths, secluded beaches and presidential suites stocked with every variety of nubile woman, plus rooms specializing in anime characters, monsters, robots and a thousand other things. There were some very disturbing rooms. These used to be banned out of concern that someone might be conditioned to harm others in real life but over time that fear had faded. The only rule in the Pod now was that you had to be respectful towards real people. Computer-generated non-player characters, or NPCs, were fair game.
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