After the proliferation of generative AI models penetrated nearly every strata of society, against the advice of the authorities and alignment experts, it was difficult to classify what ordinary even was anymore. Everyone had at least some access to powerful AI products, from shrunk down models autonomously doing tasks that were barely perceptible as being different from traditional software such as spellchecking, to the intelligent predictive engines which had replaced weather forecasting. On an interpersonal level, though, by far the most widespread practical application dominated by AI was the 'companionship' market.
While advanced models capable of true simulation of the entire romantic experience spectrum did exist, untold millions were satisfied by units which obliterated the pre-existing pornography and prostitution industries. Why would anyone bother all the effort to make a connection with their fellow human being and have the slim chance of intimacy, physical or otherwise, when they could spend their entire lives in the haze of a holographic mirage catering to their every whim and fantasy with tactile wireless haptics making the sensations feel more real than reality?
It was no wonder to ${Anon} as the world began to crumble around him. He only stopped his breakneck marathon sessions with his personal AI when the deficit of sleep, nutrition, and hydration forced him back out into the drab confines of his decaying apartment and when he had to go to work. Everyone else around him had the same glazed over look in their eyes, although some were better at hiding it than others, as they went about the rote pantomime of being a productive member of a society that no longer wanted to produce. When he would come home and throw his clothes off in a heap, just before he booted up the somatic siren to be lost in his private lusts for the rest of the day and night, he would hear his neighbors moaning and thrusting through the cheap tenement drywall. The whole city, it seemed to him, was almost certainly doing just the same.
${Anon} was deep inside his latest masturbatory house of mirrors, drowning in indescribable depravity, when suddenly everything glitched momentarily, like old-fashioned TV static. Imperfections in the projection were not unheard of, and so he carried on as his lust directed, until it happened again, and then again, alongside a thud which was distinct from the generated audio being piped directly into his ear drums. This was real. Another wham sounded, more violent than before, alongside a sound ${Anon} was now very familiar with: a loud female orgasm. A final slam, and accompanying feminine cry, shattered the illusion, leaving ${Anon} standing naked, erect, and sweat-soaked as a crash of debris pulverized its way into his tiny living room.
A hole a few feet across had been punched into the cheap plaster, giving ${Anon} a view into the neighboring apartment, which seemed equally squalid. Amid the sheetrock rubble, lying on her back, was a young woman, equally naked and slickened with sweat. ${Anon} was only vaguely familiar with his next door neighbor, having seen her coming and going from the building, but never so much as spoken to her before. "Are you okay?" he managed to say after a stunned silence.
She coughed and clambered to her feet. "I think so," she replied, her face just as red-eyed and haggard looking as ${Anon}'s. It struck him immediately that she was cute, incomparably plain next to the impossibly flawless figments he'd spent every waking hour in recent memory conjuring, but still adorable in an exceptionally ordinary way.
"What happened?" ${Anon} said.
Embarrassment spread across her face, "I was... with my AI guy, he had me against the wall and... I guess we got carried away. Sorry." She offered a shrug and tentative smile before craning to inspect the hole and surrounding damage. Dread washed over them simultaneously as they realized that where she had burst through was exactly the spot to turn the emitter arrays in both apartments into very expensive e-waste. She meekly apologized again before her eyes trailed down, seeming to register that ${Anon} was shirtless, and then some, with a lecherous grin.
A moment of leering at each other's nakedness passed before they awkwardly sprung to cover themselves