In this world, money can literally buy happiness.
But it ain't cheap.
Money is one of the more expensive emotions. It looks like sunshine in a bottle and tastes of your favorite food. There is the cheaper version of happiness, contentedness. It's a mint green and tastes like one of your regular recipes that you pull out all the time.
Rage is carefully regulated, more so than any other emotion. It is usually bought in dilutions so even though it is purely red, the bottles sold of it are often a shade of pink. It tastes like sulfur.
Sadness is cheap, but has a certain artistic following. Real artists, true geniuses, they say, can drown themselves in sadness. That is what makes art. Sadness is blue and salty.
Anxiety is, oddly enough, most popular among students. It is orange and tastes of your least favorite caffeinated beverage--the one you only drink because no other caffeine is available. Students use it to get them into that panicked work mode that they believe is when they do their best work.
I could go on and on about every emotion, every nuanced feeling that is bought and sold, every dilution that is approved by the government, but let's take a look at what this world looks like.
Emotions are harvested from those that still feel organically--the feelers. Feelers are an object of fascination from non-feelers, also known as buyers. What is it like to not be able to choose how to feel? Could they contribute anything to society besides their bottled emotions? Debates raged on whether or not feelers should be able to have other jobs. No laws are passed banning them from doing so, not yet, but feelers often conceal their identities from others.
How emotions are harvested exactly varies on the emotion itself. It's also a knowledge that the feelers keep to themselves out of fear of being turned into chattel. They rely on the secrecy of their community and the trust that comes with that. Threatening to share the secrets is a quick way to disappear.
Buyers are not all rich. Some rich buyers stay on a happiness high for their whole lives, but others, seeking to add depth to their lives will dabble in other emotions. Yet they always know they have that next bottle of sunshine-bright happiness waiting to relieve them.
Some poor buyers stay in their neutral state for lack of funds to buy any emotion. But sometimes they will buy the cheapest, most diluted emotions to keep themselves going, to know there is more than a blank slate.
Some buyers think that buying emotions is crass and that being in the blank slate state is the pure thing to be. Emotions sully actions, they say, better to rely on logic, which, of course, exists outside of emotion in their eyes.
Finally, some buyers are also feelers. Some feelers are desperate to be in control of their emotions and don't want to be controlled by them. However, the emotions they buy, unless immensely pure, can be easily overridden by their own emotions.
There is much debate about whether animals are divided into feelers and buyers. Most people believe animals are feelers, but some rich buyers will buy emotions for their most beloved pets. They do seem to have some effect but, again, feelers are sometimes buyers as well.
Besides being able to buy emotions, there are other ways to get them. Obviously, gifts are one way, but there is also an emotions lottery, emotions benefits at work, and emotion investment plans.
Yet the wealthiest buyers hire their own fleet of feelers so that they know they're getting the purest emotions and know where the emotions are coming from.
(Prompt by ChatGPT)
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