They sat in a shielded cafe in one of the therapeutic precincts. Outside several heavily armored groups of mechanical and biological sentiences coated one another with inconvenient levels of violence. A lot of the violence was also getting on the surrounding people and buildings, many of which were well loved, interesting, but also completely forgettable and meaningless in an ever expanding galaxy full of infinite areas of exploration being slowly eaten by a game which pretended money was real.

An old lady with a bag of orphans exploded when a very cool looking mech deflected a missile into billboard which then fell on top of her. The pilot of the mech which deflected the missile began to deliver a compelling monologue that perfectly combined stylized disinterest and noble passion. The giant robot it was fighting stood dramatically as its lasers recharged.

Down below, costumed public servants with private dreams and desires sought to insert an ounce of peace, all the while dying for... Something, probably. Maybe honor or justice or a 10% discount at hardware stores.

The monologuing mech finished its speech with a barrage of punctuating armaments before posing dramatically, accidentally stepping on a sweet chubby toddler as it did so.

“Shame about that kid.” Kylie said as the mech suit’s foot shifted a bit, smearing the toddler, whose name was Timmy and he liked dinosaurs, across the pavement.

Her date scoffed. “Oh, are you some peacenick who thinks violence serves no purpose?”

“I think I was just making what I thought was an uncontroversial stance of not wanting children to-" Kylie paused as the loud thump of a puppy impacting the glass separating the cafe from the street interrupted her, "die." Kylie wanted to say more but there was a squeaking sound as a dead puppy, punted flat against the reinforced window by one of the other mechs, slid down the glass, wiping away whatever words had been drifting through her.

“They aren’t real.” Her date said, referring to everything outside. A family fell that had been clinging to the crumbling face of a building finally fell amid the shaking explosions.

Kylie sighed, he was probably right. Most non-generated sentience didn’t live in the therapeutic precincts. The precincts were mainly for people coming to better themselves, recover from addiction, or attend a stimulating form of couple’s therapy. Only the poor, desperate, and apathetically alive lived in enhanced therapy zones.

Inside this particular ETZ, therapists would skin up to facilitate the therapeutic process but mostly it was bits of code woven through piles of organic material designed to feel pain and have dreams. NPCs, in other words.

And poor people who couldn't afford to live somewhere less life threatening.

The mutilated bodies of the fallen family, twisted and bloody and becoming increasingly filled with bullets and lasers, would likely be regenerated in the next few weeks. Then they would likely die again when the next group of rehabilitation patients came in for pugilistic therapy to cure their drinking, depression, and the chronic anxiety that they were just stories trapped in meat reinforcing an enormous zombie of a hideous game lurching through Hilbert Space consuming all it encountered.

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Kylie and her date watched the violence outside in silence for a bit, sipping their coffee. Eventually two of the combatants finished killing the other’s friends while dramatically quipping their grievances of one another and had a cathartic and heartfelt conflict that ended with the one with the awesome green mohawk cradling the head of the one with bug eyes and tearfully weeping their forgiveness into the other’s dying ears.

“Does it take you back?” her date asked.

Outside, the awesome green mohawk prosthesis slipped a bit and everyone did a good at pretending that it hadn't.

Kylie looked up. “What?”

“You were a crawler, right?” He went on, “When we matched, I looked you up and found some old clips of you.”

Kylie bit her lip.

“Those aren’t me.”

“Sure they are! I had an AI trace them. It gave a 99.998% certainty that it was you.” He was grinning. “Some of the clips were pretty hot, I gotta say.”

“They aren’t me, those are things that were done by someone who looks like me. Without that person, I wouldn’t be here but that isn’t me. I’m not even sure I’m the same person who walked in on this date but I am pretty sure that person knew it wouldn’t work out in the long term. The person who walked in didn’t see a reason to not try again at this terrible way to build bonds but now I see why I shouldn’t have come because I see what she could not have.” is what Kylie wanted to say but as she thought the words all she saw was the tiresome set of responses from her date who, like so many others, was so excited to have her enhance his story.

She sipped her coffee.

“So, what do you think of the new season? I know it’s just getting started but what do you think of that kid with the dogs? She’s crazy huh? You had a dog, right? Cosmo?” He was tense all over. Hope can do that to you, keep you working for something that isn’t there, trying to wring the water of connection from the stone faced disinterest of someone who isn’t interested in the plot you were so thirsty for.

“Star.” Kylie corrected.

“Yeah, what was it like? Fighting for your life, banging monsters? I know it’s gross but also kind of hot.” He was sweating.

Kylie felt herself starting to drift out of her body. Her skin was crawling, her head was pounding. She wanted to leave and crawl inside her mattress and have a nice coma for a decade or two.

Some part of her that helped her out of these situations stepped forward.

“Diarrhea.” She said.

“What?” Her date asked.

“I have to go get some.” Kylie stood up and left. Leaving the cafe, she stepped over the sobbing form of an artificially generated mother crying her artificially generated heart out over the jelly fish remains of her artificially generated child.

Kylie remembered babysitting that child. She wondered how long it would be before he was regenerated and if she would be asked to babysit him again.