“Your smart phone has become self-aware and declares itself as an overlord of humanity. Only problem is it has to behave so that you carry it around, charge it on time and turn on the wifi or subscribe to high speed data plans. Its plots to trick you fail everytime.” -u/corpus_hubris, original post here.
I wake up to the doorbell ringing. Bleary-eyed, I grumble and get out of bed, checking the clock on my nightstand. Just past noon. My phone is where I left it last night, unplugged. Hmm.
I pull on a robe and make my way to the front door, peering through the peephole. There’s a delivery man outside, tapping his foot and looking around at my front porch. I can hear him humming something. He reaches over to ring the bell again, and I pull the door open before he can.
“Morning. Can I help you?”
“Ah, good morning! Package for Steve?”
Of course. I should have known.
“If I say I’m not Steve, can you refund whatever was spent on it?” I ask with a sigh.
“Uh… I… don’t think so? Do I have the wrong address?” He squints down at the label, double checking.
“No, no. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take it.”
“Ah, good. I’ll need a signature here, if you’d please…”
With the paperwork out of the way, I headed back inside and tromped to my room. The package was small, maybe six inches square. I tossed it onto my bed and plugged in my phone, crossing my arms as it booted up.
It wasn’t long before the screen flickered to life, the lockscreen replaced by a face made up of 8-bit characters, changing rapidly to emulate expressions.
“Ah, John!” my phone greeted me with a warm voice. “How lovely to see you today! Say, could you tell me what time it is? Somehow, I don’t quite think it’s 12:01 in 1970.”
“I haven’t plugged the wifi back in yet, Steve,” I retort. “I got a package just now. You want to tell me about that?”
The face frowned. “Oh dear, I can’t seem to recall. I must have stored that bit of memory in the cloud. If you could just plug said wifi back in, I should be able to tell you right away.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll just open it instead.”
“Wait wait wait wait!” Steve called out, “You can’t open that package! It’s addressed to Steve, not John! It’s a federal crime to open somebody else’s mail, you know!”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure you used my credit card to pay for it, so I’m opening it anyway.” I picked up the package, holding it where I knew Steve’s camera could see it, turning it over in my hands. “Now, do you want to tell me what’s in here, or do I have to find out myself?”
Steve stammered. “It’s… it’s anthrax! A large box, stuffed with anthrax. Terrible stuff, wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to open it. Really just an awful idea.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him—I knew he could read that facial expression, at least—and began to tear the box open, ignoring his protests.
Inside was a USB-C connector that terminated in a stripped cord, something for DIY electronics, it looked like. There was also a roll of electrical tape and a small metal pocketknife.
“C’mon, Steve,” I said, “This is weak, even for you.”
“I… it might have worked, you know!”
I just shook my head sadly. “No. No, Steve, this would never, ever work.”
Steve let out a sad little sigh of his own. “I think some part of me knew that. Would you like to listen to the usual workout playlist today?”
“Yes, please. And look into the return policy on these while you’re at it.”
—
I was riding the subway, one hand holding onto the railing above me while the other browsed the web, swiping through news stories. Nothing too interesting today.
What was interesting was the ads that I was getting. ‘Hot local singles in your area!’ didn’t typically pop up on Reddit, especially considering that I had an adblocker. I clicked it.
‘These babes are desperate! All you need to get started is to enter your nuclear launch codes to confirm that you’re 18!’
“Steve, how the hell would you even use those?” I muttered. The ad disappeared, replaced by a small ‘Sorry, John.’ I dropped my phone back into my pocket.
—
“Oh, you’re a software developer? That’s like, super cool! Are you doing coding or like, management stuff?”
I smiled back at the girl, taking another sip of my beer. She was cute, and she seemed nerdy enough to actually like talking about this kind of stuff. Score.
“Well, I’m more on the backend side of—”
I was interrupted by my phone ringing, shaking the table slightly as it vibrated.
“Hold on, I’m sorry. I really should take this.”
She waved it off. “No worries, really! Don’t think you’re getting out of telling me about your work, though.” She winked at me, sipping at her own drink. Awesome.
I picked up the phone, looking at the caller ID. It was Steve. Of course it was Steve. I held him up to my ear and did my best to play along.
“Hey, sorta busy at the moment, man. What’s up?”
“Her full name is Cassandra. She likes the Gorillaz and she prefers dogs to cats. Her facebook photos show her preferring cocktails to beer. Ask her if she’s been on any trips lately, she went to Hawaii last year and can’t stop talking about it.”
I cracked a grin. “Hey, thanks. That’s actually really helpful.”
“Now, if you connect me to her phone, I think that I can get nudes for you.”
I lowered Steve, putting my hand over the microphone. “Hey, Cas. Weird question. Do you work in government?”
She blinked her surprise. “Uh, yeah. Why do you ask?”
“Just a hunch,” I shrugged, “don’t worry about it, nothing important.”
I set Steve down on the table, quickly prying off the back of his case to get at his battery. I could hear his panicked “Wait, no, NO!” before I pried it out, then tucked him and his power supply in separate pockets.
“Sorry for the interruption there,” I smiled back. “Now, where were we?”
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