Art by Tilly-Monster
“...And if you’ll look to your right, you’ll see our gallery’s newest exhibit: the Vindictive Prisoner’s Dilemma! This piece is an authentic original work by the famed artistic visionary Liliana La Greca, one of the leading masters of Sadoeroticism! Since the gallery aided her in creating it, she’s agreed to let us display the original here for three months. Once the contract’s up, it’ll be auctioned off to a private buyer and replaced with a hard light hologram duplicate, so enjoy the sight of a living, breathing masterpiece while you can!”
“For this exhibit, La Greca scanned multiple parallel worlds searching for an ideal pair of subjects. They had to be aesthetically pleasing, they had to be exceptionally strong-willed, and above all else, they had to absolutely despise each other in every way possible. Many candidates were considered, but only these two had the perfect mix of personal spite and societal prejudice between them to properly realize La Greca’s vision.”
“Once La Greca made her choice, we sent our procurement team in to retrieve the subjects. Their travelling companions certainly didn’t make things easy - in fact, one of our procurement agents now has a crippling fear of poultry - but we at the Catherine Edwards Gallery for Sadoerotic Art believe in hiring the best in the business, and our agents were able to restrain their targets and flee back to our timeline without sustaining any permanent injuries! From there, our on-site doctors administered the standard treatments - extended lifespan, eternal youth, increased stamina and sensitivity, and the like - then handed them off to La Greca to work her magic!”
“But enough about how it was made, let’s talk about why it was made! With this piece, La Greca wanted to illustrate the self-destructive nature of spite and the vicious cycle of revenge. Each subject’s machine has a hidden internal timer built into it. When one of the machine’s timers runs out, a single-use space-time transporter in the machine will activate, returning the occupant to her own world at the exact moment she was taken away. But at the same time, the other machine’s restraints will fuse solid and its transporter will short-circuit itself, rendering the other subject a permanent prisoner!”
“Here’s the catch, though: the buttons in the subjects’ hands are linked to both timers! Each time a subject presses her button, the other girl’s timer increases by a random amount of time between one and twenty seconds. But lengthening their rival’s sentence comes with a price: with each press of the button, the subject’s own timer goes up by anywhere from one to ten seconds!”
“If our two subjects had been a bit more trusting of one another, they’d already be home free. Their timers were both originally set for the same duration, so if they’d both simply waited long enough without pressing their buttons, their transporters would’ve activated simultaneously! We even told them as much right from the get-go! But tragically, the redhead just couldn’t resist the chance to screw her fellow subject over and pressed the button when they were less than a minute from freedom, and her partner responded in kind. And since the randomized penalties mean they can never be entirely sure where the timers are after the first press, they haven’t stopped mashing the buttons since then!”
“When La Greca first switched on the machines a week ago, they only had half an hour each on their timers. But thanks to their relentless efforts to punish each other even at their own expense, they’re both going to be here for quite some time. In fact, if you’ll give me a second to pull up the exact numbers on my tablet…”
“...Holy shit. That is a lot of zeroes. Well, it certainly makes quite a chilling statement about revenge, doesn’t it?”
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