Jason and Rabaka were walking down the Vegas strip. They came across a club called 'AIDM' in a very trendy purple font. Rabaka stopped, wanting to go in, but Jason was more excited to go play roulette at the casinos. As they were outside debating which to do, a young man walked up to them.
"You don't want to go in there." he said.
Rabaka and Jason both turned to look at the man. He didn't look well off wearing a long coat, no shirt, pants that didn't look like they had been washed in quite a while and oily black hair. He was either living on the street or very close to it.
"Why not?" Jason asked.
"That's not a regular dance club, it is an AI dance club. It's like heroin."
"I don't see what heroin has to do with a night club, other than people shooting it in the bathrooms."
"It's the music. The AI is too good at making music, it messes with people in there. "
Just then they all heard another voice, a very well dressed older gentleman.
"If you want to hear the best possible musical experience, you need to check this place out." he spoke in a confident sales pitch tone.
"This guy is a robot, don't listen to him." the disheveled man hissed.
"I am most certainly not a robot. Anyway as I was saying, can compose music at a superhuman level.. In the same way humans have mastered tic tac toe, the AI has mastered music."
"That's the problem." The other guy interrupted. "The AI has perfect understanding of the connection between notes and human emotion, it can calculate the perfect melody to make the human brain have the most profound experience possible. Think back on the most blissful moments you've ever had while laying back and listening to that great moment of a song. Now imagine that going on perpetually. Some people have to be dragged out of there due to dehydration, or lack of sleep.
They charge by the second so people who thought they'd just go in there for a few minutes and spend 20 dollars, end up emptying their bank account after a multi-day binge. As you walk in your brain is constantly scanned, as the music changes, changes in your mood are registered and the music is altered to give you the perfect experience."
"Much of what he says is true, but he puts it in such a bad light. If anyone ends up spending too much money it's only because they are enjoying themselves so much. Some people eat too much fast food and get fat, but it's not the responsibility of the fast food restaurant to prohibit how much their customers buy. Whatever you favorite song is, the experience you have inside will make that song sound like it was written by a child."
Jason and Rabaka both decided to go in. There was a main dance floor full of people dancing. The music seemed just ok at first, but after a minute they started noticing the bass line was slowly evolving in the most interesting way. The beat which sounded relatively straight forward at first, revealed there were multiple beats hidden with in the main beat. The longer they stayed the more depth they found in the music. This wasn't verse, chorus, verse chorus, it was arrange in ways they had never heard before.
The main dance floor scanned the brains of everyone there and created an approximation of the average mind state. There was a convergent journey everybody made together, as they all listened to the same music, they all moved towards a similar mental state. For hours they both danced in the middle of the floor, enjoying the experience more than they had at any other club, but eventually their bodies began to give in.
After they shuffled off the dance floor exhausted they saw a row of doors. These were private suites where one would lay down in a very comfortable reclining chair, and instead the AI scanning the whole room and giving average of every mental state, it just scanned the single occupant, giving an unparalleled experience. Jason and Rabaka were both curious but were weary of the warning they received before entering this establishment. Especially after being in a near bliss mental state on the dance floor just earlier.
They decided that they would go in one at a time and after 15 minutes, no matter what, they would go in and pull the other person out. After a coin flip Rabaka went in and closed the door. Jason sat down at the bar, ordered a scotch, and set a timer on his phone for 15 minutes. He wasn't bored for a moment waiting, enthralled with the music. After what felt like much less than 15 minutes his phone started vibrating in his pocket. He got up and opened the door.
"5 more minutes" Rabaka said immediately after hearing the door open."
"No, you remember the deal."
"Please, just 5 minutes."
"Let's go" Jason said, leaning over and pulling Rabaka out of the chair. Once she was out of the chair, the scan stopped, and also the music. They walked back outside of the room.
"Oh my god, it was amazing, the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. I was tearing up the whole time." she said. She was very emotional and looked drained.
"I can't wait!" Jason exclaimed, "Set the timer, I want to see what it's like in there."
Jason disappeared into the room as Rabaka started the timer on her phone. She paced back and forth. Why couldn't he have let her be in there another five minutes she thought. She watched the timer tick down. It was taking forever. She made it three minutes before she turned her phone off and walked into the next door down.