Digital Pleasures: Awakening

Since the machines took over, Mar's world has been safer, cleaner, and unbearably boring. Everyone says it's a utopia. Mar just feels numb.

Her friend won't stop raving about the Feelsuit: full sensory immersion, tuned to feel anything, everything, better than real. Mar swears she doesn't need it. Her bank account agrees. Neither wins the argument.

What starts as curiosity turns into obsession the moment the suit powers on. Every nerve rewritten, every sensation amplified past anything her body's ever managed on its own. And that's before she finds out what's waiting for her once she stops just testing the demo and starts actually diving in.

Somewhere in this world, a human queen vanished into a machine emperor's pleasure chamber and never came back. Mar always thought that story was an exaggeration.

She's starting to understand why nobody's heard from her.