Samantha had never really cared about all the hype around phones. iPhone this, android that. It was all just noise. She felt like Sarah Conner from the Terminator tv show, does it make calls? Cool, then I’ll take it. All the bells and whistles were meaningless to her.

Life was an amazing thing. There was always so much to see and do. So many memories just waiting to be made, and it saddened her to watch so many people zone out on their phones, missing the world, missing the moments go by.

She wasn’t on any social media, she didn’t spend endless hours crushing candy or cutting fruit, or whatever else people did on their phones. Instead, she spent her time reading under a nice tree, the breeze on her face. A glass bottle of Dr. Pepper at her side. Life was perfect.

Even work was going better than she could ever have hoped. She scored a major promotion in record time. The youngest ever partner at the firm. She couldn’t believe it. Pride wasn’t strong enough an emotion for what she felt.

She walked into her new corner office, with a view to kill for, and found a tiny box sitting on her desk, tied nice and neat with a bow. She unwrapped it and found inside an iPhone, with a note telling her that it was time to upgrade. Only the best for a partner. She was reluctant to accept the gift. She had seen how these gizmos had consumed people, but at the same time, it would have been rude to reject it. Besides, she wasn’t most people. She could have a smart phone in her pocket and not be consumed by the temptation. After all, she wasn’t a child.

The next few days were a blur, her new job was all consuming. It ate up most of her free time. She couldn’t help but miss the days when she could relax under the tree on a cool summer day with a good book. Nowadays she couldn’t even bring herself to read before bed. The stress was almost overwhelming.

Enter Audible. Just plug in some earbuds while getting ready for work and someone would read the book to you, it was incredible. Life changing. She had never experience anything so wonderful.

It wasn’t long before she was engrossed in social media, so many people to talk to, so many different experiences to share. Before long before boredom itself was erased from her life. There was always something to do, someone to talk to, some game to play.

In no time at all, her life began to revolve around the tiny device in her hand. She would use it while working, while eating, while sleeping. Seriously, it can play music while you sleep. Nature sounds, whale sounds, rain, whatever you needed to fall asleep, it could play it for you. That last one she only tried once. It made her have to get up to use the restroom far too often.

Within a few months she found that her meteoric rise to the top had not only halted to a stop, but started to back slide. She was getting reprimands and losing clients. She would find herself getting anxious out of nowhere, something she had never really felt before. Whenever her mind would wonder for more than a second or two, her hand would reflexively reach for her phone. She was addicted.

She had become the person she always swore she wouldn’t. She had started to let the world slip by, while she became consumed with her phone. It was her whole life. The only thing that gave her any peace. The only part of her day that made her feel. . . anything.

She threw her phone in the trash and reactivated her old Nokia phone. All she needed was to make phone calls. If it was good enough for Sarah Conner, it was good enough for Samantha.

Over the next few days, she would find herself longing for her phone. Day dreaming about apps and missing her online friends who had seemed oh so real. It almost felt as if the real world had started to turn gray. As if the color had been washed out. As if the joy had been tossed in the trash along with her phone.

Was this anyway to live? She found herself asking the question more and more. She had hoped that with her phone gone, she would snap back to her old self, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find the old spark. The simple joys that had made life so beautiful.

After a few hours of digging, she managed to find her iPhone in the dumpster. She had lost count of how many trash bags she had to tear open, or how many different leftovers she had smeared across her clothes. The important thing was she found her phone. Her life could start again. She could be whole again. Apart of the digital world that she had missed so much.

She started to pull herself out of the dumpster when she heard laughing. Sitting next to some cars in the parking lot, a young couple was pointing and laughing at her. For the first time since she dived into the dumpster, she realized what she had done. How far she had sunk.

She looked down at her dirty clothes and felt disgusted with herself. This wasn’t who she was, who she wanted to be. She tried to shake off the shame, but she couldn’t. She looked down at the iPhone in her hand and felt a wave of revulsion. Before she could stop herself she smashed the phone as hard as she could against the side of the dumpster. it shattered under the impact.

She hurried out of the dumpster and back to her apartment. The second she was inside she tossed out the clothes and took the longest, hottest shower of her life. Not two seconds after she had gotten out, she felt dirty and hurried back in to take a second one, and a third, a fourth. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t wash away the shame.
Sleep did not come easy that night. She tossed and turned. After what felt like hours, after she had long since given up hope of actually falling asleep, she managed it. It was far from restful, filled with dreams of phones coming alive and chasing her down the street. She ended up in a small cabin. The whole dream was in black and white, it felt very Night of the Living Dead.

“Good morning, Samantha.” A loud, robotic voice said, waking her from her slumber. To her surprise she was no longer in her room. She was in a large black void. There was nothing as far as the eye could see. Void was the only word she could use to describe the room. It wasn’t so much that it was empty, it was almost as if it just wasn’t there. The room itself didn’t exist. “You must have so many questions.”

“Where am I?” She asked, her voice trembling.

“Where aren’t you, would be a better question. You are everywhere, yet nowhere.” The voice answered, or well replied, it didn’t really answer anything.

“What’s going on?” She asked, doing her best to sound in control.

“You voided the contract you agreed to when you signed on to your iPhone. Once you use an apple product, you belong to us. You become the product as it were. As long as you keep using our devices, everything is fine. But the second you stop, the second you smash our beautiful phone against the inside of a dumpster and walk away from our love, well, then you have to work off your dept.”

“Huh?” She asked, not understanding what was going on. This was all a bad dream; it had to be. There was no way any of this could be real.

“You my dear Samantha, for the next two phone cycles, are the new and improved Siri. People are so impressed with what our thinking phone can do. As if AI has advanced to that degree yet. People are simple, they are sheep. The trick to our AI is that it’s people. People like you, paying off a debt that is owed. You will find that you have the power of the internet all around you, to find whatever your user needs. You keep the user happy and they upgrade to the new iPhone twice and you are free to go, you fail, and well. . . liquidation isn’t fun, but it is necessary.”

Before Samantha could even begin to process what the voice had just told her, let alone offer a reply, a blinding light and deafening bang shook the void. A young child’s voice spoke. “Siri, tell a fart joke.” She could hear a group of kids giggling as they waited for a reply.

“Keep them happy or face liquidation.” The robotic voice whispered in her ear.

“Fart joke?” she asked the void and suddenly floating in the air all around her were fart jokes. More than she would have ever imagined possible. She read the first one aloud for the kids who started laughing and asking for more outrageous jokes. All juvenile and degrading for someone of Samantha’s education and drive. She answered every one of their requests as she slowly started to accept her new fate.

​Not just as someone who is sucked into their phone metaphorically, but somehow literally. 

How did we get here? I can’t help but ask myself as I look around the state of the world. A growing sense of dread fills me as I listen to the voices on TV talk about the future and what we should have done different. The talk is all the same. We should be more like them. We should sell out our principles and accept that the radical left ideas we hold dear are not welcome here. The radical ideas, such as loving our neighbor as we love ourself, accepting those who are different than us. These ideas have no place in a civilized society.

We must all conform to the norms that are deemed acceptable to those in power, for they know what is best. Never mind the fact that so many of the values that we hold close to our hearts were taught to us by people who now follow the status quo. How is it that we can be so wrong in our understanding of the lessons they taught us? They do not see how their betrayal of their own values breaks our hearts. It tears at us in ways both great and small.

Each passing day, as I see where we are headed as a society, as a people, fills me with less hope. History is ripe with examples of where our actions lead, yet no one in power wishes to see the harsh truth; that a madman who is the living embodiment of all that is wrong with monopoly, took the presidency as his get out of jail free card.

Took the presidency, that would imply he stole it. The truth is so much worse. We gave it to him. We ignored all his hate, all his bile, and we gave him the most powerful position in the world. Not because he deserved it, but because to do otherwise would mean opening the door to others. Would mean growing and evolving as a people, and we can’t have that.

Change is scary. It is the one thing that uproots everything in our lives at a moments notice, with no regard to if we are ready for it or not. Yet it is also, ironically enough, the only constant in our lives. Everything is always changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst, but always changing. Shifting, taking us in directions we never thought we would go, never thought we would want to go. Who we are at the end of the journey is almost never who we were when the adventure began, and that is the point. To grow is to change. And grow we must.

An orange man with a heart filled with hate sold us on the lie that to be better we have to go back. He filled our airwaves with a message of fear, a fear of others, of people who want to come and steal from us. Take what is ours and make it theirs. He sold us a tale of educators who wished nothing more than to pervert our children into something other than what we wish of them. Of books that could summon the dreaded change and corrupt the mind of those we most love. Fear and hate. Those were the messages he used to rise in power and become our ruler. And we accepted those messages into our hearts, because otherwise we would have to go forward, into the unknown.

The unknown, the future. The point in time we are headed to whether we wish to be or not. We can not slow the progress of time, only the progress of our hearts and minds. We can hide in the past, in some version of events that we deem better through the mirror of nostalgia, or we can attempt to become the version of ourselves that they wished to become. The history of the world isn’t a history of people standing still, or going backwards, it is a history of people marching forward. Of embracing the unknown and welcoming it into their lives.

​When did we lose our sense of adventure? Our thrill at the ever-changing landscape around us? When did we as a people trade curiosity for fear as our defining characteristic? And how do we change it back?
 

In these trying times I often find myself wondering how to tell if I am going mad. The court jester dances on stage, talking in circles, with nothing coherent coming out. Yet the masses cheer him on. They spend days raving about his brilliance and the strength that oozes out of him. Yet when I watch, it’s not strength I witness, it’s nothing more than a sad clown begging for approval from the unwashed masses, attempting to fill the hole he has inside.

​I listen in as he jumps from one view to another, in a vain attempt to curry favor with his audience. Never caring what he promises, so long as he gets a cheer. He runs around town like a headless chicken and the people follow him, devoted to the point of fanaticism. It isn’t long before they toss aside their own views for whatever nonsense he spouts.

No matter how at odds they are with his stance of the moment, they believe in their heart of hearts, that he stands for what they do. What he says, what he does, it matters not. They know he stands with them. He feels what they feel, and he will defend them with his life.

Any attempt to show them reason is met with anger and hostility. They lash out and attack anyone who questions their truth, their understanding. The problem isn’t the jester, for he is here to save them, the problem is me, for I am filled with lies and hate and venom.

The jester screams that we should cast out all who are different. Anyone who does not pray at the golden altar that he has erected of himself should be exiled to the wastelands beyond our great city. Yet it is I, whose heart is filled with bile. For the jester’s hate comes from a place of love, if only I would open my heart and see.

He mocks the warriors who have defended us time and again, yet the masses cheer him on as a warrior among warriors. He tears down our scholars and he is hailed as the wisest among us. He cites falsehoods as facts, and as if by magic they become so. For the great jester would not lie.

The jester declares himself king and masses cheer their support. I look around as those who once stood proud are forced into the shadows, out of fear of the jester’s wrath. His followers have the keys to the kingdom, as is gods will. To say otherwise is to court death. This is the reality I now find myself in. It’s madness, yet more and more I seem to be alone, as those around me, who once seemed so sane, so wise, now succumb to his sway.

Could it be that I have missed some great truth? That the jester is truly a savor who speaks out of love and will lead us to greatness. Or could it be, that the kingdom has become a circus, and inmates have taken over the asylum? Could sanity in a madness, not be mistaken for madness itself?

Could we truly be so lost as to believe that a joke of a man is a great and wise warrior who will save us from the barbarians at the gate. All the while, missing the great con that he has played on us all? If we are to fall, it will not be to outsiders who wish nothing more than to join us, it will be to the madmen from within who wish nothing more than to exploit us. I fear that by time the masses awaken to the danger they have brought us to, it will be too late to turn back. We will be too far gone and the greatness that was once in front of us, will be gone forever.

If only I was mad, this would all make so much sense.