Nick threw the headset aside, choking for air and covered in sweat.

The tech-heads weren’t kidding: This shit was wild.

Thirty years ago, pearl-clutching conservatives would have a televised fit over some pixelated gore, or the kind of blocky nipples that an etch-a-sketch would sneer at. 4K graphics and VR would have probably given those people an aneurysm.

Nick had waded waist-deep through the entrails of demons and fondled every physics-simulated pair of breasts he could fit on his bank of SSDs, so he considered himself fairly inured to entertainment technology’s extremes.

He had never been more excited to be proven wrong.

“An authentic execution simulation created using the realtime biometrics of death row inmates.”

Nick had assumed that both the sales pitch for the Nerve and overwhelmingly positive reviews were hyperbole. Sure, the graphics were basically photoreal and the sound was perfect too, but the best he had initially expected was his vision to go blurry while the audio muffed itself out.

What he hadn’t expected was the very real sensation of his muscles locking up, his heart stopping and every organ in his body being slowly starved of oxygen.

Artificial intelligence had refined media fidelity until there were no more pixels to conquer, but neural interfacing was an entirely experimental and thoroughly illegal practice. Western governments had banned its use immediately, on account of the prototypes’ frequently frying the bodies and brains of test subjects.

However, that was an open invitation to less scrupulous nations to literally sell the suffering of their own people for a fee. And not just suffering, either: As always, the runaway seller was sex.

Nick looked at the small pile of digital experiences he’d already tried: Mostly visceral adrenaline trips. The execution recording had come recommended by one of his edgier friends, but he wasn’t keen to experience that again any time soon. He’d tried riding rodeo bulls, wrestling alligators, bungee jumping, skydiving - all of them with varying degrees of success and failure scenarios available.

The much larger stack of smuggled drives contained pleasure packs, and although he’d been saving them for after class that day, he considered trying one just to take the edge off.

Before he could decide, his phone lit up and a cartoonish caricature of female sexuality filled the screen.

“Just about 10, babe. Unless you want to sleep in?”

“I’m already up, Cherry,” Nick sighed, lurching out …