what's in a word?: Thursday - Not Yet Ready for Prime Time

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Thursday - Not Yet Ready for Prime Time

Appropriate to the previous post, in which I do not have a mobile phone of any sort, here is a very short story I wrote a couple of years ago. It was published in Public Illumination Magazine no. 63 - Devices, under the title:

Gregor

One morning Gregor awoke to discover his hand had become a smart phone. It was his left hand, which was good because he was right handed. And it was a rather generic Android, which was also good because Gregor despised the cult of Apple.

He stared at the screen and without thought, tapped gently on an icon where once was the ball of his hand. The screen flashed and the app spread across it. How wonderful, he thought, and for a moment, Gregor was filled with a serene glow. He would never have to worry about misplacing the phone, or dropping it, ever again. He was in love with his phone, a deeply passionate love though he never thought of his relationship to the device in quite those words and now, he felt, for the first time, it loved him too.

“How will you charge it,” Mendel asked him when Gregor showed off his hand. “And is it waterproof?”

“I don’t know. I think it doesn’t need to be charged and well, I hope it’s waterproof. Let’s find out.”

He filled the kitchen sink and rolled up his sleeve.

“Wait,” Mendel shouted.

Too late. Gregor plunged his hand into the water.

“What hath god wrought!” he shouted.

His hair, previously brown, suddenly white, stood on end, his eyes bulged out, a smell of ozone and burning flesh suddenly filled the room. Gregor collapsed to the floor, his arms and legs twitching, his tongue hanging out. Smoke seemed to come out of his ears.

Before Mendel recovered from the shock of witnessing his friend’s collapse, Gregor lie still. He was gone.

The hand-phone, it seemed, was not yet ready for prime-time.

End of story.

I told you it was very short.

Also appropriate to the previous post, though for a different reason, are some photos of people taken in and around the International Fusionism Museum (IF Museum) in Easton PA. These were all taken at the opening of Michael Zwicky's installation on July 30, 2021.