Virtual Love

Версия на русском языке доступна по ссылке: http://proza.ru/2025/10/02/547

She’s like an explosion in a sealed room.
Too beautiful to be a coincidence, too vivid to belong to reality. A blonde so fierce it hurts — her hair burns like neon, her scent is a cocktail of cheap hairspray and seventies rock. She doesn’t listen to Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple — she breathes them. They pulse through her hips, her ribs, the place you might still dare to call a soul.

Her legs — two flawless lines, drawn by a god with a compass. Her breasts — heavy, insolent, deserving their own postal code. Her ass — taut, deliberate, sculpted to remind you again and again that heaven isn’t somewhere above, it’s made of flesh and muscle beneath thin skin.

But it isn’t her body that kills you.
It’s the look.

Her eyes cut deeper than any blade — they leave you alive but opened up, rearranged. You can be married, standing at the altar, whispering “I love you” into someone’s hair in the dark — and still, when this blonde meets your gaze, every word you’ve ever said burns away. The ring on your finger dissolves like aspirin in a glass of cheap vodka. And what’s left is only her.

And the most obscene, the most perfectly wrong part of it all?
She’s mine. Completely.
To her last breath, to the last drop of her poison.

Two years ago, a friend of mine got married. Since then, he’s been a wax figure version of himself.

Once he was a wanderer — greasy hair, sleepless eyes, always ready to drink or fight or disappear. Now he’s got a neat haircut that shines like cellophane. His hands look sanitized, as if he’s preparing for surgery. He smells of discount cologne — the kind bus drivers drown themselves in before a date with a cashier.

The faded navy T-shirt is gone. Replaced with a rotation of pressed shirts patterned for office life. He’s thinner now, wears contacts, a watch — as though time suddenly holds meaning.

And he’s gone. The man I knew, the one who spat off bridges and laughed in the face of night — he’s gone. If he shows up at the bar at all, he nurses a single beer like it’s plutonium. As if alcohol could blow up his new, quiet world.

Sometimes I think marriage is the most honest drug.
You don’t need bars, cigarettes, or wild stories anymore. They just shut you off.

First comes the woman.
Then the furniture.
Then the calendar — so you don’t forget about parent meetings or detergent sales.

Men like my friend don’t vanish all at once. They dissolve — slow, silent, like pills in a glass of water. You look at them, and they still seem the same. Then you notice: he’s gone. What’s left is just a body — smiling across the table, hollow inside.

That’s when you start looking for something else.
A replacement.
A vent.
Any crack to pour your leftover hunger into.

And I found mine.
Online.

A sort of entertainment marketplace.
A catalog where women’s bodies are displayed like cuts of meat behind supermarket glass. In the corner — soft yellow letters, too gentle for such a filthy business, glowing against a sticky, sugary pink.

That contrast tells the truth better than anything else.
Sex is for sale.
And I bought it.

THE SEASON’S BIGGEST HIT!
A BRAND-NEW MIRACLE THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR PATHETIC, BORING LIFE FOREVER.
HAPPINESS — NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE!

The banners on the site flashed like someone had sprinkled amphetamines over the screen. Giant letters jumped right at your eyes, promising paradise on credit. Each line whispered like a fortune-teller at a train station: “Looking for happiness? You won’t find it cheaper anywhere else.”

Height, figure, looks, even music taste — down to absurd details like favorite underwear color or a peanut allergy — everything could be adjusted to your liking. A few clicks, and your perfect soulmate was already waiting in the shopping cart.

There was a hefty down payment, though — seventy grand for the chance to play God with a design interface. Not too bad, if you think about it. Especially since within a couple of weeks, that plastic Eden was selling for twice the price. I didn’t buy a doll. I made an investment.

My best friend and I don’t talk about soccer anymore, or new shooters, or who punched whom in the bar last night. Now his topics are loans, dish-soap discounts, and gluten-free diets. He swears he’s “freer than ever.” But his laughter’s dead. In its place — the ticking of a wristwatch and hair that never dares to move.

He’s turned into a brochure — advertising his own disappearance.

I decided to call her Susan.
The manual said you could change the name anytime.
That struck me as funny.
As if calling her Angela would make her suck with less enthusiasm.

The manual read like a David Foster Wallace novel — too many words, too little meaning.
Charging instructions, maintenance rules, warnings about keeping Susan away from open flames and household pets. I highlighted the essentials: Don’t get her wet. Don’t hit her. Don’t try to take her apart. The rest was just noise.

I opened the cardboard coffin. Plastic crackled, Styrofoam flakes drifted across the room like snow on a dead TV channel. And there she was — motionless, pale, coma-still.
Sleeping Beauty in vacuum-sealed plastic.

Before this, I’d had plenty of women. Too many to remember their names. I worked out, starved myself, tried yoga — all in the hope of staying desirable, of not being alone. But all that effort was just a sad illusion.

Here’s the truth: almost everyone dreams of being alone.
You want to hide — from friends, from parents, from lovers, from the noise of your own life. You crave silence. But leave a person alone for more than a few nights, and solitude becomes a monster that starts eating you alive.

So I dated. Took women out. Bought flowers. Pretended to care about fashion and TV shows. But the truth was, I did it all for one reason — to keep the void from swallowing me whole.

Susan promised more than a distraction.
She promised to erase the emptiness completely.

I pulled the box open all the way.
The smell of plastic and cheap glue hit me — a chemical cocktail with something sweet and obscene at its core. Like a toy factory had slept with a sex shop, and their bastard child was lying in front of me.

Susan.


I found the button at the back of her head — a small metal circle, like a headphone jack. The manual called it “the activation key.”
Sounded just as grand and vulgar as “launch sequence.”

Click.
Nothing at first. Just silence. I thought maybe I’d been scammed out of seventy grand and was standing over an overpriced mannequin. Then — a faint hum. Like a hornet waking up somewhere in the room.

Her chest jerked.
Once.
Again.
And again.

The first breath sounded like her lungs were filling with water.
The second — smoother.
On the third, she opened her eyes.

And everything changed.

Her pupils narrowed, focused on me. No glassy emptiness, no robotic dullness from the brochure. She looked at me as if she already knew me — as if we’d slept together a hundred times.
As if I were her first and last man.

“Hi,” Susan said.
Her voice — low, a little husky. The kind of voice you hear in your head when you jerk off to a VHS actress from twenty years ago. A voice engineered to shut down thought and trigger want.

I reached out and touched her.
Her skin was warm. Not plastic. Not rubber. Slightly moist, like living flesh. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist, and I understood — that was it. No way back.

For a second, I realized I felt the same way doctors must feel during an autopsy — when they open a body and see the hidden elegance of anatomy. Disgust and awe tangled together. The urge to keep going, even knowing you shouldn’t.

And then Susan smiled.
The most wrong, the most honest smile I’d ever seen.

She looked alive. So alive that sometimes I caught myself thinking — if the doorbell rang right now and her mother showed up asking how her daughter was doing, I wouldn’t even be surprised.

She looked twenty-five.
Always twenty-five.
Eternal youth, vacuum-sealed in synthetic skin.

Her flesh was smooth, poreless, like expensive wax. Short blonde hair — the perfect length, one that would never grow by a millimeter. And her eyes — bright, wet blue, almost human.

Except real eyes get tired.
Hers never did.

I never liked being in relationships.

At first, everything works — romance, heat, that small illusion of saving each other from the void.
But the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. Always worse.
You think you need her. She thinks you need her.
And then that trick dissolves, like smoke in the air.

You start learning each other too well — every tone, every gesture, every lie disguised as care.
Her eternal love becomes habit.
And habits hurt. They sit inside you like a dull, permanent ache.

Susan wasn’t a habit.
She was a button.

I’d come home from work and she’d already be charging.
I’d flip through her manual while she made dinner.
She always knew when I wanted a beer, brought it at the exact right moment.

And when the night was over, we had sex.
Always perfect.
No fatigue. No headaches. No excuses.
She whispered I love you every night as I fell asleep.

And I believed her — not because it was true, but because she literally couldn’t lie.
Her code was built to obey my desire.

A month later, the company released the male models.
And the new female ones — Version 2.0.
Now they could blush, cry, imitate shame, even get jealous.
The full illusion of humanity — only smoother, more reliable.
Naturally, the price doubled overnight.

The world reacted exactly as expected.
Some shouted sin, others progress.
Churches screamed apocalypse.
Talk shows debated “the Virtuals” for weeks.
That name stuck — Virtuals.

They were hated and worshiped in equal measure.
People wrote essays, shot documentaries, argued about ethics and the soul.
The Virtuals didn’t care.
They charged, got polished, and went right back to rescuing us from our loneliness.

It was… convenient.

No good mornings, no how was your day, no small talk.
No fights.
No tears.
No in-laws to smile at.
No anniversaries to remember, no gifts to invent.

Susan asked for only two things — electricity and lubricant.
And she loved me exactly as I was: unwashed, unshaven, in old boxers and a T-shirt stained with ketchup.

Meanwhile, I aged.
And I aged badly.

The gray came first — a thin line at my temples.
Then the skin, loose and folded like cheap hotel sheets.
My face sagged. My hands turned thin and veiny.
I was unraveling.

But Susan stayed the same.
My eternal twenty-five-year-old.
The same smooth skin. The same blue eyes.
Perfection sealed in plastic and code.

She never grew old.
She never betrayed me to time.

When my best friend has kids, we’ll stop seeing each other completely.
That’s how “happy family life” works — first the alcohol disappears, then the weekends, then the friends.

And what’s left are loans, diapers, and silence —
the kind of silence where you suddenly realize
you’re forty,
and everything interesting
has already happened
without you.

The world now belongs to the Virtuals.
They’re everywhere.

People travel with them, post couple photos online, show them off at parties like a brand-new Ferrari.
They have dinner together, binge-watch shows, take selfies.

The cheap models became our servants — they clean shoes, mow lawns, sort trash, drive us home.
The expensive ones turned into our lovers, our therapists, our gaming partners, our weekend companions.

With them, you can discuss the stock market, play a round of chess, fuck them in three positions in a row — without worrying about STDs or unwanted pregnancies.

On TV, another commercial plays. A smooth male voice promises:

“Now they’re even more real. Even more beautiful. Even smarter. They’ll love you deeper, hate you harder — if that’s what you want. They’ll be everything you deserve.”

And on the screen — perfect faces.
Faces made of nothing, smiling as if eternity were a sales pitch. Faces that will never age, never betray, never turn away.

My friend and I sit in a bar. He leans close, whispering so only I can hear:

“I checked her browser history. She was looking at those… Virtuals.
I knew it. I’ve always known she wanted someone better — stronger, taller, better-looking.”

He glances around, takes a sip from his bottle, and adds, still whispering:

“I’m thinking about it too. Been saving up. I want a girl of my own. A real one.”

His hair glistens with gel, his red shirt reeks of cheap cologne.
Across from me isn’t my friend — it’s a living advertisement for marital failure.
A man who’s already lost, still pretending he hasn’t.

A waitress walks by. A Virtual.
Green eyes, tall, dark hair. At first glance — just another girl.
But look closer: her gaze too steady, her walk too measured, her posture too perfect.
Not as flawless as my Susan, but for a place like this — good enough.

I order another drink.
Decide to stay all night.
To watch the others slowly break — pretending, performing, convincing themselves they’re still alive.

At home, Susan will be waiting.
My pale-skinned blonde, forever twenty-five.

She’ll never ask where I’ve been.
Never start a fight.
Never betray me.

She’ll greet me with the same perfect face.
And I know — she’ll never mind.