One original sci-fi story per day for all of 2023 | Created by screenwriter Timothy Michael Cooper, illustrated using A.I.

Cheater

Cheater

I feel awful for cheating on Su2anne. You may say, What kind of fool loses a single minute of sleep for cheating on a digital avatar…with another digital avatar? But I’m not sure there’s any difference between what I’ve done and what you’d call “real.” Because if I told Mar1soo what I’ve done, she’d genuinely be hurt. She’d act cold and distant. She—her image in the app—would hardly stop weeping. We’d have to go to a digital counselor. I was going to ask Mar1soo to be my wife—it’s legal now—but at this point, I’m not even sure where we stand.