Virtual crucifixion: aware or unaware?

[frost]

A while ago, Frank Petrexa posted some thoughts on "virtual crucifixion", and contemplating them has brought me to this question.

The situation: It's the future. Thanks to advances in neuroscience, we can produce totally realistic interactive simulations of real life. Connect the electrodes and, as far as your senses are concerned, you're actually experiencing crucifixion.

In Frank's version, it sounds as though you retain all of your background knowledge during the session. You're always aware that the jeering crowd is made up of simulacura, that no nails are actually being driven into your body, and that when the experience is done, you'll wake up intact and undamaged in the 21st century.

But suppose that you can choose to block this awareness during the session. While it lasts, you won't remember that it's a simulation, and you'll have temporary access to a set of memories consistent with it: of being a rebellious slave, or a captured soldier, or a dissident in a ruthless dystopia. Until it ends, you'll believe that you're actually being tortured to death.

There're advantages and disadvantages to each approach. On the one hand, if you opt for awareness, you only get a watered-down version of the crucifixion experience, without the horror of dying. However, if you choose unawareness, that same fear and terror might well keep you from enjoying the erotic aspects of it all.

Just to make the choice harder, this is an incredibly expensive form of entertainment, so you can only do it once in your life—you don't get the option of trying both ways. So, aware or unaware?

 

[GabriellaSivilla]

I wrote a story (not yet published here, since it is in the polishing phase), with basically the same plot. In some future, which I imagine to be very close, there is the possibility to undergo these virtual experiences in some given scenarios, where many partecipants can interact together, and all feelings, everything, is like reality. When you enter the simulation, literally everything is like reality.

In the story a girl is paid by a bunch of "gentlemen" to undergo all phases of a Roman style crucifixion. During the whole process she knows who she is and where she comes from, but this not dimish at all the reality and the brutality of her experience. She enters the scenario and from that moment of, she cannot do anything to change the fact that the next three days for her will be a sequence of incredible painfull tortures. The pain is all there. The anguish for what is to come, and of the death as well, is all there. When you are tortured to death, every moment is like an eternity and it counts for itself. The brutality of being in the hands of cruel executioners is all there. All the feelings are there.

So, in my opinion, this does not spoil at all the experience. Being somebody who, somehow, gave herself voluntarly for this experience might even highlight and give a new conscience to it. On the contrary being a slave, or a murder, or somebody else who lives in this reality and know that maybe he/she will end up on a cross because that is how life is, well, could be, in my opinion, a less striking experiences. So I voted "aware".

 

[Eulalia]

I'm a bit confused by the question - I want to be aware that I am being crucified,
but (while it's happening) unaware that it's only virtual reality -
so I've changed my vote from aware to unaware -
but I'm not quite sure if I've understood rightly?

 

[Loxuru]

A crux fantasy is always virtual (in our heads).
Any crux fantasy wants the best of both options.
And although the virtual story ends with death, the point of view is looking back on it as an experience.

 

[frost]

I'm a bit confused by the question - I want to be aware that I am being crucified,
but (while it's happening) unaware that it's only virtual reality -
so I've changed my vote from aware to unaware -
but I'm not quite sure if I've understood rightly?

Sorry, Eulalia, I could've explained things more clearly! By "aware", I meant "experiencing crucifixion with your senses, while knowing the whole time that it's only a simulation". "Unaware" meant "experiencing it without knowing that it's not real life". So from what you've said, your "unaware" vote is what you really want.

 

[Eulalia]

Thanks Frost - probably just my confusion, but I could amend the question, if you agree, to:
would you choose to be aware that it is only a simulation, or unaware?

 

[frost]

Thanks Frost - probably just my confusion, but I could amend the question, if you agree, to:
would you choose to be aware that it is only a simulation, or unaware?

Excellent idea! Please do.

 

[Kathy]

A crux fantasy is always virtual (in our heads).
Any crux fantasy wants the best of both options.
And although the virtual story ends with death, the point of view is looking back on it as an experience.

I agree

 

[willowfall]

An interesting concept. The ability to feel the pain with no actual damage to the body.

I'd at least want to give it a try to see if the (virtual) reality matched the fantasy.

Oh course if we ever get that far the human race is gone in 4 generations unless we reproduce by cloning.

I've always imaged that sometime in the future after we have wiped ourselves out some alien race will stumble across the physical remnants, eventually translate our languages, examine our records and their conclusion will be ..........................

Humans were stupid.

kisses

willowfall

 

[Deleted member 16639]

Very interressting idea! To choose an expierience in virtuallity that feels absolutely real. Yes, I would like to do this! And I want to know it is only virtually and I will come out of the whole thing whitout any body damage.
It is just another way to expierience a "real" crucifixion.
My own idea is, to use an "auto-doc-unit", a special robotic thing where they put you in and it repairs any body damage and you will be okay after some hours in that thing. It would also give me the chance to expierience a real crucifixion.
I want for sure be crucified with the knowlege, that I will not die and there will be no body damage after the crucifixion or the damage will be repaired soon.

 

[Eulalia]

Excellent idea! Please do.

Sorry for not picking this up - and now I have, I find it exceeds the character limit, but you've got a good response now,
the amended form, with your first post - should avoid any confusion.

 

[specimeat]

Unaware. I'd love that ---not knowing that it's virtual!!!

 

[JoeyRainbow]

I prefer to do the crucifying, not to be crucified. I'd LOVE to have a super realistic virtual reality where I could crucify countless hot slaves, but I'd very much want to know it was fake.

 

[fallenmystic]

Actually, this is something to which I've been devoting a major part of my free for quite a while. I'm trying to make a virtual BDSM sandbox with which people can build an immersive scene which can very well include crucifixion (although it's not my personal favourite theme).

I've been learning 3D graphics and game development mainly for that purpose. It will probably take at least several years before I can release a public version, however.

But the good news is, we'll have access to much better technology than what we have now by the time I finish this project. And even with today's technology, a VR scene can feel so vivid that people may forget that what they experience is not real. Imagine what it can do for those who crave to have the first-hand experience of being a crux victim or a slave girl without real life implications, then you will get the picture.

I just hope my financial or health concerns won't deteriorate further until I can finish them.

 

[dommmu]

Since it fits the topic, here is some shameless advertising for my current (and almost finished) story: "The Inquisition Game"

In the story, the protagonist participates on an experiment where she enters a virtual world through a neurological stimulation. She undergoes various tortures there, including a crucifixion.

Awareness or unawareness of the fact that the events are not actually happening is a major plot point, too.

 

[Beate]

Virtual crucifixions is an interesting topic. By injecting directly into the nerve tracts or acting on the brain, such a thing would be imaginable.
You can't see any difference, because the brain is directly aware of it.
But...
Because you can be crucified "to death" several times, it would be possible that you keep a damage. At some point the brain is overexcited.

 

[Loxuru]

I voted unaware.
As long as memory filters it as an exciting experience afterwards.

 

[Lucas Soranus]

I like the idea of you being unaware, that way you experience the real fear of dying on the cross. The real shame that actual people are seeing you naked. That sounds incredibly terrifying.