Tan Jianwen ripped off her headset, gasping. Her hands shook as she unzipped her immersion suit, and she managed to peel it halfway off before her hands lost their strengths. As she curled up on the omnidirectional treadmill, the bruises on her sweat-drenched body glistened dark red in the faint white glow of her computer screen, the only light on in the dark studio apartment. She dry-heaved a few times before breaking into sobs.

Though her eyes were closed, she could still see the grim expressions on the faces of the soldiers, the bloody pulp that had been the mother’s head, the broken little body of the baby, her life trampled out of her.

She had disabled the safety features of the immersion suit and removed the amplitude filters in the algics circuitry. It didn’t seem right to experience the ordeal of the Muertien refugees with pain filters in place.

A VR rig was the ultimate empathy machine. How could she truly say she had walked in their shoes without suffering as they did?

Byzantine Empathy, by Ken Liu; published in Solar Punk: Short Stories from Many Futures, edited by Francesco Verso.