Tyrell: Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris... Deckard: We call it Voight-Kampff for short. Design fiction is a broad term that occupies a space within the wider miscellany of speculative design approaches and is appearing as a nascent method for HCI research. The factor that differentiates and distinguishes design fiction from other approaches is its novel use of world building and in this paper we consider whether there is value in creating fictional research worlds through which we might consider future interactions. As an example we build a world in which algorithms for detecting empathy will become a major compnent of future communications. We take inspiration from the sci-fi film Blade Runner in order to consider what a plausible world, in which it is useful to build a Voight-Kampff machine, might be like.