The Experience Machine: A Metaphysical Horror

By Jason Werbeloff

The skullcap sits to one side of the chair. Its snaking wires and sensors throw a Medusa shadow against the basement wall. I touch its plastic. Stroke its wiry hair.

The Machine gives me everything I want. Or the one thing I want. Life in a woman’s body, under the tangerine glow of the Spiral Arm Nebula. But nothing remains the same for long, not even in the timeless worlds of the Experience Machine.

From the author of 'HEDON', 'The Experience Machine' is a brutal story of identity found and lost. Plug in, baby. You won’t regret it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jason Werbeloff
• Release date: Aug 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311256058

Jason Werbeloff

Jason Werbeloff is a novelist and philosopher. He loves chocolate and his Labrador, Sunny. He's interested in the nature of social groups, personal identity, freedom, and the nature of the mind. His passion is translating philosophical debate around these topics into works of science fiction, while gorging himself on chocolate. **Amazon author page - http://amazon.com/author/jasonwerbeloff **Newsletter - subscribe to get 'The Solace Pill' free, as well as VIP access to Werbeloff's latest fiction: http://smarturl.it/werbeloff **Facebook and Twitter - follow Werbeloff for release date information on upcoming novels: http://www.facebook.com/solaceseries @JasonWerbeloff **Website - want to read about the philosophy behind the fiction? Take a look at: http://www.jasonwerbeloff.com **Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7340789

Book preview

The Experience Machine

Jason Werbeloff

The Experience Machine

Copyright: Jason Keith Werbeloff

Published: 25 August 2015

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Fiction by Jason Werbeloff

Novels

The Solace Pill

Hedon

Anthologies

Obsidian Worlds

Shorts

Solace Inc

Your Averaged Joe

Visiting Grandpa’s Brain

Falling for Q46F

The Cryo Killer

The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost

Dinner with Flexi

Bleed Me Silicone

The Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer

The Experience Machine

F**king Through the Apocalypse

The Man with Two Legs

Other fiction by Jason Werbeloff

In post-apocalyptic Shangri, happiness is compulsory, strictly monitored by a hedometer implanted in your brain. Become depressed, or feel too happy without helping others feel the same, and The Tax Man will get angry. Very angry.

The lovechild of Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale, Hedon is gritty satire on a dystopia drunk with bigotry and positive thinking.

Click here to download the book:

http://smarturl.it/HedonWeb

Contents

The Experience Machine

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Dear Reader

The Experience Machine

The skullcap sits to one side of the chair. Its snaking wires and sensors throw a Medusa shadow against the basement wall.

I touch its plastic. Stroke its wiry hair.

I’m coming, my love, I say. The chair whines as I lean back. Rusted springs creak their protest. Don’t, they seem to say. Don’t.

But I do. I don the cap, and flip the switch on the console to the right of the tattered leather chair. The machine purrs to life. Took me six months to save up for this baby. Meant taking on extra programming jobs whenever possible – weeknights, weekdays, lunch hours. But now she’s mine. The Experience Machine, I call her. Wrote her software myself. Patched together from a menagerie of pirated virtual reality sims.

I adjust the failsafe setting to fifteen minutes. This is the first time I’ve plugged into her. The first time anyone has used a machine like this. Best to start with a short experience.

The Machine asks me in flashing letters which experience I’d like. FUZZY, I select.

The Machine lists experiences I’ve hacked from various online games. But this is no game. What the Machine offers, if my months of effort have succeeded, is nothing less than another world.

The start timer resets to five seconds. I press, BEGIN.

00:05

I pucker my lips. The gloss feels good. Feels right.

00:04

I clutch the frayed arms of the chair as the ground tremors with the caress of a distant bomb blast. A fine sheet of ceiling dust settles on my moussed hair.

00:03 … 00:02

The sequined dress squeezes my hips. My crotch. My mother was two sizes smaller than I, but what is a