As AI find its way quietly into our lives, I can’t help but think that ‘writers’ will soon be obsolete. On the other hand, ‘they’ can take over the writing, but, supplying the ‘prompt’, seems to be a challenge that AI-age-writers can embark on. Regardless, there comes the first AI produced story on Phantacee. At the end of the story, you’ll find the prompt I used on Deepseek.
The room he had rented for the evening was not a place for hiding. It was on the seventeenth floor, with a wall of glass that let the city’s glitter bleed into the space. Edward stood by that window, his back to the door, watching the slow crawl of headlights far below. He was not nervous. He had passed beyond nervous an hour ago, somewhere between the elevator ride and the moment he’d poured two glasses of water and placed them on the low table.
He heard the soft knock. Three times. A pause. Then once more.
When he opened the door, she was there. Lena. Her name was a small island of certainty in a sea of the unknown. She was perhaps thirty, with dark hair pulled back simply, and eyes that did not scan him with the usual calculus of a first meeting—the quick appraisal of his build, his clothes, his potential. Instead, they looked at him, steady and calm.
“Come in,” he said, stepping aside.
She walked in, her gaze taking in the room, not for flaws or for assessment, but simply to acknowledge it. She noticed the water, the soft glow of a single lamp he’d turned on, the vast darkness of the city beyond. She did not comment on the absence of music, or candles, or anything else that might signal a more conventional romantic encounter.
He gestured to the small sofa facing the window. “Please.”
She sat, and he sat across from her, not close. A respectful distance. He was a man of about forty-five, with a quiet stillness about him. His hands rested on his knees, open and unclenched.
“Thank you for coming,” he began. “I know my message was… unusual.”
“It was clear,” she said. Her voice was low and carried no judgment. “You said you weren’t looking for physical touch. You said you wanted to try something else.”
“Yes.” He looked out at the city. “For a long time, I chased the physical. The thrill of it, the closeness of another body. It was like drinking salt water when you’re thirsty. The more I had, the more I wanted, and the less it quenched something… deeper. A hollow place.” He brought his gaze back to her. “I’ve stopped chasing it. Now, I want to see if it’s possible to be truly intimate without it. To be seen. Not my body, but… me.”
Lena listened without interrupting. She didn’t offer platitudes or reassurance. She simply received his words. “And you want me to see you?”
“I want us to try and see each other,” he said. “For one hour. No phones, no distractions, no touch. Just… presence. I want to know if two people can meet somewhere beyond the surface.”
She considered this. In her life, she had been approached with many propositions. This was the first that asked for nothing but her attention. It was, in a way, the most vulnerable request of all. To be touched required only the body. To be seen required the self.
“Okay,” she said. A simple agreement.
For the first few minutes, silence sat between them. It could have been awkward, but Edward did not rush to fill it. He looked at her, not with the gaze of a man appraising a woman, but with the attention of one human being truly seeing another. He noticed the slight furrow between her brows, a line of thought, not of worry. He noticed how her fingers rested lightly on the arm of the sofa, perfectly still, suggesting a deep inner quiet.
Lena, in turn, looked at him. She saw the subtle tension around his eyes, not from stress, but from the effort of this new kind of reaching out. She saw the way his chest rose and fell with a deliberate, slow breath. He was not performing. He was simply being, and inviting her to do the same.
“I am afraid,” Edward said, breaking the silence. His voice was soft. “I’m afraid that after all this, there will still be nothing. That the hollow is just me, and no amount of being seen will fill it.”
The confession hung in the air, naked and unadorned.
Lena could have reached out then. A hand on his knee would have been the conventional comfort. But she respected the boundary. Instead, she met his fear with her own truth.
“I am afraid that I won’t know how to do this,” she said. “I’m used to giving people what they ask for. A touch, a kiss, a conversation. You’re asking me to just… be here. What if I’m not enough?”
“You’re here,” Edward said simply. “That is enough.”
A different kind of silence descended. It was not empty, but full. It was a container for their words. The city lights flickered and danced, mute witnesses. The minutes passed, marked only by the slow rhythm of their breathing. They were two people, sitting in the dark, holding a space for each other. It was an act of radical generosity.
At one point, Lena’s eyes grew moist. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t sadness. It was a response to being in the presence of such stark, unguarded truth. Edward saw the glistening in her eyes, and his own heart clenched with a recognition. He wasn’t alone in his longing. She felt it too. The need for a connection that bypassed the script.
He didn’t ask her why she was crying. He didn’t need to. He simply acknowledged it, letting his own eyes soften, letting his presence be a quiet witness to her feeling. She looked at him, and for a moment, no words were necessary. A complete thought passed between them: I see you, and you see me, and in this moment, that is everything.
Near the end of the hour, Edward spoke again. “I thought the goal was to feel less empty. But this doesn’t feel like filling a hole. It feels like… expanding. Like there’s more room in me now.”
Lena nodded slowly. “I feel it too. It’s like… we’ve been speaking in a language I didn’t know I could understand.”
The hour ended not with a clock, but with a feeling of completion. Edward stood and extended his hand, palm up, an offering. Lena looked at it, then placed her own hand in his. The touch was not physical in the way the world meant it. It was a seal, a punctuation mark on their silent conversation. A brief, warm pressure, and then a release.
At the door, she turned. “Thank you, Edward. For this.”
“Thank you, Lena. For seeing me.”
She smiled, a small, true thing, and then she was gone.
Edward returned to the window. The city still glittered. The traffic still crawled. But he was different. He had touched something, and been touched in return, without a single caress. He had gone beyond craving and, for one hour, had found a quiet, profound satisfaction in simply being known. The hollow wasn’t filled, but it was illuminated. And for now, that was enough.
Prompt used on Deepseek; write a short story of 1000 words about a man whom have gone beyond craving for physical intimacy, wanting spiritual intimacy, and a woman, who is meeting this man for the first time and is open to anything he wants to try.