Haptic

by Nicholas Godec

My name is Ethan. I, like everyone here, work for the company. Sunnyside InterSpec. Most days are the same. I wake to the sound of birds chirping—synthetic birdsong from an extinct species called the yellow warbler, Setophaga petechia, according to its archival tag. It’s one of many stimuli InterSpec optimizes to control our circadian responses.

We live inside the InterSpec Enclosure, a sealed and self-contained environment rebuilt after the fires. It’s too dangerous outside. I’ve experienced immersive 3D renderings of the devastation—entire cities collapsed, skies rust-red with smoke. Truly terrifying.

Softly at first, and then louder and louder, the chirping plays as I struggle to get out of bed. For breakfast—well, for every meal—I eat InterSpec Meal, which this morning I’ve programmed to pancakes.

I look at the viscous gray-white liquid packed with proteins and nutrients calibrated to keep us efficient. I stare at the barcode just above the bowl. This triggers the chip in my brain connected to my optical nerve. I see pancakes. Thick, round, and fluffy.

I’ve tried all the choices: eggs, bacon, waffles, sausage, scones, even lox. My favorites are pancakes and cinnamon buns.

Pancakes remind me of a project I worked on in which I had to eliminate outlying taste receptor neurons only present in 0.03% of the population, which neurons made it difficult to optimize flavor for the statistical mean. I’m a data analyst, but I like to think of myself as a data janitor. I review troves of endless numerical tables, use advanced AI models beyond my comprehension to spot numerical outliers, and I remove them. In other words, I help the AI kill bad data so that the InterSpec Intelligence (that’s InterSpec’s comprehensive artificial intelligence model) can operate. We all have our role to play. The Creator Class requires clean data to build the virtual spaces and applications we use. Cleaning data can be fun. It’s gamified to enable us (that is, data analysts) to maintain greater engagement. We have simulated outlier clay shoots, or operating rooms where we excise bad data bodies, My favorite is outlier Whack-A-Mole.  But lately I’ve been feeling restless.

Every day is the same. I work, take a half-hour break to connect to the InterVerse Game Zone, where I join a quick sudden-death, last-man-standing battle. Breaks are standardized so everyone can join. I’m always one of the first to die, either by axe, sword or arrow. I haven’t collected enough InterCoin to afford the best armor or munitions that might give me a fighting chance (literally). But they say skill can enable anyone to win the game, even a data analyst, regardless of armor/munitions. To win is to earn enough InterCoin to take off a month of work. The very best get to game fulltime. I’m far from the best (I’m not even good), but I still earn coin by ranking above the median for data analysts. If by some chance I rank above the median for the engineering or design class, the payoff can be massive. In theory, if repeated, you can even get reassigned. Ranking affords me luxuries—like enough coin to spend time with my wife. Most days when my wife and I connect in the InterVerse, it’s as ourselves—a 3D rendering of ourselves, that is. Sometimes we embody avatars and go on adventures together. That costs more. Tactile sync visits are most expensive. These haptic visits are the only sexual experiences we’re allowed. Intimacy in meatspace is forbidden. All this makes me lonely.

At the end of the day, after I’ve connected with my wife in the InterVerse for as long as I can afford, I go to sleep. I say, “sleep now little Ethan,” and my InterSpec chip triggers the release of sleep chemicals in my brain. I sleep about eight hours and do it again the next day.

My wife is part of the Creator Class. I am not. In this world, relationships between classes are frowned upon, but tolerated when the relationship forms early in life.

My wife and I met as teenagers. I gave a thumbs up to a pig with wings that she created. She accepted my chat message, saying it was cool. We started chatting regularly, then meeting as avatars, both too shy to reveal our real renderings. Finally, after a month, we met in meatspace at InterSpec Park on a Saturday. The sun was out that day, if I recall. Clouds. Light wind. We’ve been inseparable, except for mandated separation, that is, ever since.

On weekends, we walk the perimeter of InterSpec Park. It’s a beautiful, sprawling space—about one square mile, immaculately maintained: square-cut grass, rolling knolls, breezes, and fruit trees spaced in regular intervals.

My wife pauses beneath one of the fruit trees— kumquat, I think—her gaze lingering upward.

“What?” I ask.

She shakes her head slightly. “Nothing. Just thinking about a project.” But her eyes stay on the fruit a moment longer before we move on.

She rests her head on my shoulder as we watch the fountain rise and fall into the artificial pond. The water ripples outward in concentric circles.

Tiny cameras hang from the trees recording potentially illegal activity, like physical intimacy. Meatspace reproduction isn’t necessary for propagation. It’s been banned since well before I was born in the nursery lab. A meatspace pregnancy is punishable by excommunication. That’s what they call it. Excommunication. In reality, it’s a death sentence, because beyond our enclosure there’s only scorched earth and debris. Of course, that sentence can be commuted if you’re a producer, and any pregnancy is immediately terminated.

In the grass, we sit together and I smell her hair, kiss her wrists and taste her skin. That’s as far as we’re allowed to go. But I so badly want more. We’ve only ever been intimate in the InterVerse, her avatar and mine intertwined, haptic suits connected to our bodies delivering electrical impulses to “pleasure points.” Sensations arrive in optimal sequence. Clean. Efficient. Productive. After, I hold my pillow and think of her.

Most nights, unfortunately, I can only afford to talk to her.

“Did you hear? Troy from Design was excommunicated,” my wife said at the top of our call. Our connection time is limited. We don’t waste any.

“Wait, what? Why?” I reply.

“Apparently, he found a way to make an intoxicant for InterMeal. They found him and he was out of his mind. They searched his dorm room and found evidence that he’d been hacking the food design program to trigger synthetic fermentation. He added red grapes as a new food option, and since no one knew what red grapes were, no one noticed. Red grapes as a food option have since been scrubbed from the InterMeal program and server.”

“That’s wild. Excommunication. Can you imagine? I’m not surprised, though. Still, he’s a Creator. It’s not like he was a Data Analyst or anything.”

My wife frowns. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Not that it means anything, but his output was among the worst of the designers.”

“Speaking of, I’m a bit worried about my own output,” I say. “Today, work was rough. There were more outliers in a program sent from the Productive Compliance department, so many that the spotter algorithm was having trouble despite my assistance. It took me a few hours to adjust the settings to reflect the nature of the outlying data, but once done, the AI model caught outliers in a few seconds. Usually, I have to interfere a lot less.”

Suddenly a screen pops up in our InterSpace Room. Each party insert 10 InterCoin to continue.

Frustrated, I give a wave and log off.

I’d only been able to fix six of the ten datasets I was assigned for the day. Fewer completed sets means less InterCoin. I won’t be able to afford haptic time with my wife tonight, and I sorely wanted it.

The next day, I am going to meet my wife in the park near the sculpture and fountain dedicated to the first InterSpec engineer. He developed the advanced AI drone cloud-seeding techniques that put out the wildfires. He used special drones to precisely measure individual cloud conditions. He then tailored the chemical release from other drones to create maximum rainfall. He single-handedly saved civilization, and then rebuilt society based on advanced data principles. We are his legacy. That’s what we learned from the InterSpec History Feed.

I enter the park. My wife’s back is to me as I approach. She turns, as if sensing me. She smiles. Eyes emerald green. Freckled face and golden hair. I speed up to reach her.

We kiss, walk and hold hands. I breathe in the faint scent of her recently washed hair. I hold the satchel with a blanket and two containers of InterSpec Meal for our usual Saturday picnic.

We stroll over well-manicured grassy knolls under fruit trees with fruit nearly ready to be plucked. We settle and spread the blanket on one of our favorite hills, the hill’s soft surface facing away from the center of town, back in the direction of the dorms.

I rest my head on her hip.

“I’m so happy to be with you,” I say. “Yesterday was miserable. Work was unending. I had to pinch myself a few times to keep my eyes open.”

She squeezes my hand. “Sounds awful. I missed you too. I’m glad you figured it out though.” She pauses a minute.

“Let’s set out a bit further,” I say. “There’s a small grove just past the next knoll—kind of tucked in, like an enclosure. Want to see what’s there?”

She doesn’t respond immediately. She looks at me tentatively, her eyes searching mine. “Um. Sure, okay.”

We pack up the blankets and start walking. We move slowly, getting slower as we get closer to the grove.

We find the grove. It’s hidden, shadowed by the approaching trees.

“Let’s put the blanket here,” I say, pointing to the darkest corner, just beside the trunk of one of the older trees. We lay it out and sit. For a moment, we just look at each other. She glances away.

“Let’s lie down like we always do,” I say.

We lie side by side. I take her hand and she rests her head on my shoulder. I pet her hair, which I know she loves. My fingers drift down her arm, over her waist, then further. She doesn’t stop me. I kiss her neck, slow and deliberate. Her skin is warm and salty, her body moving with my touch.

She pulls back slightly, meets my eyes. I feel her breath. “We could get in serious trouble for this,” she whispers. “But I don’t care.”

“I don’t either,” I say.

She leans in, kisses me hard. Her hands are on me now too. We move toward each other. Heat. Skin. It’s everything. The only thing.

And then we’re doing what we’ve only imagined in the InterVerse. It’s clumsy, urgent, sacred. I search her with my hands, not knowing quite how to proceed. But they move over her body with a life of their own. The rest falls into place. The air smells like bark and sweat.

When it’s over, I roll to my side, breathless and shaking. It’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. I close my eyes. I smile.

“Isabella,” I say, “I love you.” I’ve said it before, but it seems different now.

Her fingers trace my jawline. “We just changed everything, didn’t we?” she whispers.

I open my eyes to look at her. Her cheeks are flushed, hair tangled with bits of grass. She’s beautiful.

That’s when we hear the crunch of boots on grass.

“Zip up your pants and get up,” says a voice like grinding steel.

It’s a policeman. No, it’s five of them. They are in full body armor, their faces masked by their helmets.

Isabella is quick to her feet.

“Ethan 3701, you’ve been found guilty of physical fornication. You’ve seduced and dragged a member of the design class into your crime, which the judge took note of for your sentencing.”

I say nothing. The ecstasy gone. The look on Isabella’s face. Her wide eyes, her face now almost translucent, ghostlike.

My wrists feel a sharp pain as the handcuffs come on.

“Wait, where are you taking him?” she says.

“Go home to your dorm,” one of the policemen says to her. “You’ll notice about half your InterCoin missing from your account. A doctor has been dispatched to meet you at your dorm.”

“But my husband—”

“He’s not your husband anymore.”

The police drag me away, load me into the prisoner transport drone.

At the police station, they march me through a cold corridor of white light. No windows. Only surveillance domes lining the ceiling like glassy insects.

Part of me wants to plead, to beg forgiveness, promise compliance—anything to get back to Isabella. My head swims. I try to hold onto the memory of our time together. The officer’s grip tightens when I slow my pace. “Keep moving,” he says, voice metallic through his helmet.

I am deposited into a sterile courtroom. Everything gleams under the blinding overheads. The room is bare: a polished concrete floor, a single elevated brushed metal bench. The judge sits behind it, unmoving. Two officers flank the door behind me.

He doesn’t look at me as he scans his tablet. But when he finally speaks, his narrow eyes and tight-set mouth betray rage.

“You are hereby excommunicated,” he announces flatly. “You will no longer enjoy the privileges of The Enclosure and our way of life.”

“But my wife—”

“Alone, and forsaken!” The judge exclaims, jaw clenching.

“I need to see her. I need to say goodbye.”

His face is bloodless. His aggressive brow unrelenting.

The judge nods toward one of the policemen nearby. “Officer, remove all InterSpec property, and deactivate his chip.”

The officer nods and approaches me.

I try to fight him off, but he throws his pacifier into my stomach. I pulse, feel pain. Horrible pain. Can’t think or move. The air pours out of me. I spill to the floor. The officer pulls off my shirt. Then my pants. Then my underwear. Lastly, even my socks.

I look up. Through my watery eyes I see the judge smiling at me, enjoying the view. “And the chip, officer. Don’t forget.”

The officer withdraws a wand, points it toward my head, and then I feel another terrible zap. Everything goes black.

When I wake, Isabella is there. I don’t know if they brought her in as a witness or a warning—but she stands near the back of the courtroom, flanked by two officers, her eyes locked on mine.

The judge frowns. “Please, I implore you to reconsider. Go back to the dorm. Don’t throw away your life for this … this, degenerate,” the judge says. “You’re one of our best, most gifted, even if sometimes misguided.”

Isabella stands straight. In the years I’ve known her, she’s always been gentle, accommodating. But now there’s something different in her eyes.

The judge leans forward. “Think carefully, Isabella 42. You’d be throwing away a promising future.”

“No,” she says. “I’m choosing a real one.”

My wife looks beautiful.

“Isabella!” I cry. It comes out choppy through my aching chest.

“Hey Ethan,” she says, smiling at me.

“Disgusting,” says the judge. He seems puzzled. “Well,” he says after a minute, “it’s the right of every InterSpec employee to leave the company.”

Naked, cold, swollen from the shock punch to my gut, I reach out toward Isabella.

“Strip her,” the judge commands the officer standing behind her.

“Don’t you touch her!” I yell.

The officer near Isabella starts moving toward her. She holds up her delicate hand, and he stops. She turns to the judge.

“That won’t be necessary,” she says, then starts to undress. Starting with her shirt. Then her pants. She looks at me, then takes off her underwear.

She steps forward, tall under the courtroom’s gaze.

“You’ve taken what’s yours. We’ll leave with what’s ours,” she says.

The judge looks defeated. Then manages a smirk. “There is one more item we can’t let you leave with,” the judge says. “Say goodbye to your ability to create.” He signals to the officer.

The officer steps forward and points his terrible wand right between her eyes. He presses the button. Her eyes turn white as her pupils roll back, and she crumples to the ground.

“Monsters!” I yell. I feel a kick to my liver. I struggle for breath.

Isabella starts to stir. She looks around, then at me. Struggling, she sits up, her hands pressing against the cold floor for support. She stands.

“My husband and I will be leaving now,” she says.

The judge looks at us, then fixates on her body. He takes his time, looks dumbfounded. Then he regains himself, narrows his eyes and raises his nose. “Disgusting,” he says. “Officer, put them to sleep and get them out of here.”

The officer hesitates for a moment.

“Now, please.”

Both officers move forward, take us each by the arm.

“For security purposes, we’d prefer if you didn’t know the location of our company. You know, competition, corporate espionage, spoilage, and all the rest. Good luck in perpetual meatspace, meat stick,” the judge says.

Then the officer holding me presses the plunger into my arm.

“Go to sleep, little meat stick,” is the last thing I hear the judge say as the world disappears.

I wake to a cool, damp cloth pressed against my forehead, then my cheeks and neck. A woman with gray hair is leaning over me, smiling gently.

“Good morning. Or maybe good afternoon. You’ve been out for a while.”

I try to sit up, panic rising. “Isabella . . .”

She presses her hand lightly to my shoulder. “Lie down, champ,” she says. “She’s fine.”

I drift back into sleep.

When I wake again, Isabella is sitting beside me. She smiles. I reach out, squeeze her hand, and she squeezes back. She’s wearing a light-yellow garment without sleeves that stops just above her knees. Not InterSpec’s usual gray.

“What is this place?” I say quietly.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But what they’ve given me to eat is amazing. It’s so much better than any InterSpec Meal iteration I’ve tasted. This morning I had pancakes with maple syrup. A little while ago a kale salad, which I didn’t like as much.”

Pancakes. “Pancakes? But your chip is deactivated,” I say.

“Yes. No one wears a chip here—I’ve asked. I had real pancakes. They made them in front of me.”

I can’t comprehend what that means, but I love pancakes.

“Come on lazy bones,” Isabella says. “Let’s get you out of bed. I haven’t stepped foot outside yet, but I hear there’s a whole world beyond these walls.”

I get out of bed and the gray-haired woman gives me clothes. Jeans (she called the pants). They’re stiff and strange, but I like the weight of them. She offers me an array of shirts with short sleeves. Some had writing and images on them, some didn’t but were colorful. I pick a shirt the color of the sky.

“Wait just a moment before heading out,” the woman says. “There’s someone who wants to introduce himself.”

A man with a sun-creased face and a wide-brimmed hat arrives shortly and introduces himself as the mayor. “Welcome to El Paso,” he says, tipping his hat. He holds out his hand. I take it. He squeezes hard and my hand aches. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” the mayor continues. “Everyone who escapes from InterSpec and finds themselves here is bewildered. Goddamn, I hate that company.”

I wonder why he says escapes. I should tell Isabella once we’re alone not to mention the circumstances of our expulsion.

“Come, follow me. You should get to know our city,” the mayor says, beckoning us toward the door.

We step outside. The streets are whirling with activity. People are walking around and the sun is shining. It’s hot. So many noises compete with each other.

The buildings surrounding us are beige and worn. But intact.

“How is this possible?” I say. “How’d you build this after the fires?”

“ Climate change was bad when InterSpec formed,” he says, “but the fires didn’t destroy everything. Not like they tell it, anyway. They turned away from the world, but the world remained.”

I stare at him. Thankfully Isabella fills the void. “What happened? What do you mean, ‘InterSpec formed’?”

“Well, there were fires. And there was climate change. Still is, matter of fact. Society as we’d known it had all but collapsed. There was no trust in government. People were stuck in digital silos. But those digital walls were breaking. We began to see the movement for what it was. InterSpec was exactly this: a movement created by the tech elite to keep the silos in place. They took digital silos and made them physical. What you’ve known as The Enclosure was just what it was: closed to the world. I hear they’ve been able to reach ever new technological feats. That’s impressive and all, but we value individual liberty here.”

Isabella’s face, I’m sure, is a mirror of my own. Her mouth is ajar.

We look around. New facts, the busy street, the noise, the heat—it’s all overwhelming. Last year, I remember, I was temporarily assigned to archive and merge legacy atmospheric monitoring records into the latest version of the InterSpec DataFrame. Unlike the messy datasets I normally clean—full of statistical anomalies and outliers that need removal—these historical records were perfect. In fifteen years of data analysis, I’ve never seen any real-world measurements without outliers. But the wildfire data? Pristine. Now I understand why.

“Okay then,” the mayor says, “why don’t you look around. Here, take this.” He hands me numbered paper. “It’s money, not the digital version you’re used to, but you can buy goods with it. You’ll have questions. Find your way back here. Debbie, whom you’ve already met, is happy to have you both until you get acclimated. I’ll check in later to see how you’re settling in.”

With that, the mayor departs. Isabella and I walk the streets toward larger structures in the distance. Monoliths that climb and refract the sunlight. The noise is constant. Voices, vehicles, an argument. The vehicles are less developed than those of The Enclosure. They hug the ground and blare at each other crudely. There are trees on corners and gardens in front of houses. A dog barks at us as we walk by. We laugh, which makes the dog bark all the harder. The air carries new smells, some pleasant, some not. Wind gusts and my eyes water slightly. The sun beats down. It’s uncomfortably hot. I’m sweating through my new garments. It was never this hot in Sunnyside. Clouds float by and offer a moment’s relief.

Strangely, I recognize this place. It’s different, given that before me is a thriving town, but the streets and the structures feel familiar. The streets, I realize, resemble those in the popular Escape the Wasteland game I played in the InterVerse. In the game, all the structures were destroyed, and we were survivors navigating a ruined civilization, dodging mutants and scavenging supplies. We’d furtively move through the town, hiding in rubble, killing mutants, clinging to our group. Eventually, we’d find The Enclosure. Not The Enclosure of today, but of its early founding. Scientists in lab coats, gentle, extending their hands, welcomed us in. In the game, we were finally safe. But in life, we were not. I see that now.

Now, up is down. We escaped The Enclosure, found our way back to the town. Here, the windows are open, and clotheslines hang between rooftops. A group of kids, they must be five or six years old, are running, chasing each other in a small sand dune. Adults in their periphery sit on benches and occasionally glance in the kids’ direction. The kids laugh and the adults laugh too. A kid falls, scrapes his arm. He cries, an adult runs over to him, and moments later he is running and laughing again.

We walk by a storefront with a sign reading Ice Cold Beverages. I realize just how thirsty I am. We go inside.

“An ice-cold beverage, please,” I say, thrusting the numbered paper at a man behind a counter.

He looks at me, a single eyebrow raised, then hands me back even more units of paper. He walks to the back of his store, opens a sliding glass door, withdraws two bottles, each with Coca-Cola written in red on the side. The substance inside is black. He opens the bottles, sets them on the counter before us.

“You drink out of this?” I ask.

“That’s what people do.”

I pick up the bottles—they’re cold, feel good to touch—and hand one to Isabella. I look at the man, whose expression is flat. I put the bottle under my nose. It smells sweet. I sip, and the cold liquid fizzes in my mouth, then travels down my throat slower than water. The flavor is wonderful and odd.

We take our drinks, exit the store and keep walking.

“This is great, isn’t it?” Isabella says nodding to the bottle in her hand. I agree.

There are no cameras. At least, none that I can see.

We pass couples holding hands. A young woman sits on a bench, straddling her partner’s lap. They’re kissing openly, wildly. I look around for police. Then I see one walk by, unperturbed by the couple.

“Get a room,” someone calls cheerfully and keeps walking.

Isabella squeezes my hand. “Let’s sit down on the bench over there.”

The is bench underneath a sprawling tree. Its trunk is wide. The tree looks like it’s been there for hundreds of years, since before this town was here even. Its limbs are wild, the leaves overhead providing shade.

We walk over and sit, happy to be out of the sun.

“It’s all possible now,” Isabella says. “You and me. Nothing to stop us being together.”

I put my arm around her, pull her toward me. “What I’ve always wanted,” I say. “To be with you always.” We kiss.

“So, what should we do now?” I ask.

She doesn’t reply immediately. “I have no idea. But we’ll figure it out.”

We sit there and watch people walking by. The sun starts to fade. The air around us cools. Eventually, the sky above takes on a stunning purple hue. We look up and marvel.

“Let’s go home,” Isabella says.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do that.”

BIO

Nick Godec writes poetry and short fiction, with works appearing in a variety of journals, including Sierra Nevada Review, El Portal, Grey Sparrow, and MORIA Literary Magazine. He has a B.A. in history and an MBA from Columbia University and works in finance in New York City. He lives in Bronxville, New York, with his wife, Julia, and their miniature pinscher, Emma.