The Contract

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 tosome 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.