We Don't Know the Way...

I unplugged my phone, rolled onto my side, and tapped the small blue icon. That dotted white chat bubble was supposed to open last night’s conversation, where my unfinished draft sat waiting. Instead, nothing happened. The home screen wouldn't let me into the world I craved so desperately—the one I had conditioned myself to need. It just stared back at me, frozen. Forever stuck. Forever waiting. Forever gone.

Hmm… how odd, that couldn’t be right. Maybe the app glitched, or was stuck. I wiped my fingers off and tried again. The feeling of dread sank further into my bones, my stomach lurching in a fear I had never thought to expect. What do I do now?

I did what any logical person might do in this situation. I turned my phone off, then on, then off again. Still the same result. I wiped in on my pant leg. Still. Nothing.

Sure, my phone was lagging a bit more than usual.

Internet wasn’t popping up with the latest news feed.

No texts, no music, no video. Nothing.

I walked into my living room first, the house eerily quiet, no Alexa playing 8-hours of dark academic classical music. It was well past noon, it should be half-way through the playlist by now.

The air conditioner, vacuum, and lights—all still.

I swiped the modes on the smart-house app up and down, watching the color wheel shift from pink, to blue, to green, then purple-red. No lights flickered, no hum from the vents, no Roomba catching dust at my feet. The lights were off. My coffee maker hadn’t ground my beans or brewed the first cup of the afternoon. Something was most definitely amiss.

“I will have to find the manuals,” I mused aloud, to no one in particular. Completely unsure if these items even worked without the App. Moxy—my short-haired Persian sat on the top of the sofa looking out into the windowed plant boxes—butterflies flitted around the bees, darting from flower to flower. Surely, if something had happened, there would be better signs than this.

I flicked my television on, hoping that it would at least break the reprieve, and give me some sort of distraction. But it only showed a blank screen, the apps were hanging in muted suspension, unclickable.

I walked out onto my front porch. The sun was out, the neighborhood was quiet, nothing unusual or lifechanging seemed to have occurred in the few hours I slept. In fact, I could see Mrs. Abrahams on her porch reading a book. She didn’t seem bothered by anything.

Joe—the lawn guy was mowing the house nearest the street corner. His earbuds were in and he didn’t seem affected by the lack of technology. I walked further out into the sunlight to get a better look, to hopefully catch his attention.

Beads of sweat rippled my spine, soaking into my gray shirt. The thickness of my robe felt stifling in that moment.

“Hey Man,” I waved, walking the short distance from my porch, passing three of the neighbor’s houses—Myrtle Dishman, Randy and Linda Smith, and finally up to where Joe was, Jack Steeley’s abandoned house.

“Hey, Shawn,” Joe replied, taking his earbuds out.

“I cut yours next week,” he reminded.

“Yeah, yeah, that isn’t why I am here,” I quickly cut him off— “does your phone work?” I held my darkened phone in my hand, as though the suns energy would power it to wake up.

Joe looked down, his lips pursing into a tightly lined smile, which was less reassuring than even he intended.

“It was the strangest thing, my alarm never went off this morning, so I got a late start. To make matters worse, my phone is completely bricked. Dead. No music, no GPS, and no way to let anyone know I’m running behind. Luckily, I am working at Jack’s house most of the day, so there is no one I actually need to report to. I’m just wearing my earbuds to block out the sound of the mower.”

The sun beat heavier, radiating a dry, indifferent heat. I was soaking through my pajamas. I stared at Joe, my chest tightening in places I hadn’t felt before. He didn’t look panicked—at least not yet.

“A brick…” I repeated, nervously. The rest of the words he had muttered fell on deaf ears, swimming around my mind as I tried to make peace, find logic.

“Forgot to pay your bill?” I sputtered, half-joking as the last word caught in my throat and I looked down at the brick in my hand. It seemed to weigh heavier.

Even I knew that wasn’t funny— “so you said your phone doesn’t work?” I mused, trying to sound normal, indifferent.

Joe laughed, wiping beads of sweat off his forehead with an old looking dish rag. He chugged a swig of yellow liquid; I could taste the chalky lemon in my mind, prompting my mouth to water—and still, my tongue remained parched and stubbornly glued to the roof, resisting my panicked attempts to peel it loose and swallow.

“That’s correct, I figured the network provider was having an issue, maybe a massive outage, or something. It sucks, but I have gas in the mower, so I figure, what is one-day without the phone really going to do.”

I tried to smile, not sure of who I was trying to comfort more, him or myself.

The sun beat further down onto the pavement, cementing me to the spot.

The thought of this going longer than a day ticked inside me, ready to explode. No one else seemed to share this same sentiment. The bad feeling just kept getting worse.

Joe popped his earbuds back in, giving me an indifferent nod before gripping the lever on the mower. The engine roared, filling the air with the comforting smell of freshly cut grass and gasoline. I stood quietly as Joe cut a line down the edge of the perimeter.

An outage—yes that made sense. Networks crash all the time. Servers fail and overload. I just needed to figure a way to see how long it would be. Normally a text would have come through or some other app would have notified me. A Facebook alert with thousands of comments. A two-sentence broadcast. I held the phone in my hand, the black, blank screen staring up at me—this time the phone wasn’t dead, it was just empty. I clicked on the static gallery of roving bubbles, buttons that lead to nothing. Apps that no longer seemed to exist. Unclickable icons. I locked and unlocked it, clicked onto Google once more. The screen remained frozen, white. No loading, spinning arrow. No crash noted.

I typed “Is the internet down today” into the search bar. Nothing happened.

It was pure habit, to keep clicking until I felt the familiar pulse of my blood pressure beginning to sky rocket. The throbbing, tense heartbeat thumping in my neck, my chest, the sides of my temples. I did not like having to wait on technology to work. I did not like not knowing what would happen next.

The browser didn’t even attempt to load.

A cold sweat prickled under my robes, replacing the sweaty, stifling heat from before. Maybe this was a fever dream, or I somehow, someway had forgotten how to use my phone. The realization hit me, I didn’t want the internet to work, I needed it to work. There was a difference, a compulsion.

My stomach grumbled furiously with an aggression I hadn’t remembered. It was completely empty. In all this confusion I must have forgotten to eat. The thought of coffee or food became an overpowering urge. Maybe I could figure this out once I got some nourishment in me.

I turned on my heel, and walked back to my house, leaving the comforting roar of Joe’s lawnmower falling quickly behind me as I stepped into my now cool house. Inside, the silence was deafening, physically. It muted your thoughts and settled into you like a sickness. In my kitchen, the thousand-dollar app-controlled coffee maker now seemed like an overpriced paperweight—it wouldn’t even be good for that. The thought of it having any other use than making my gourmet coffee at the press of a button peeved me. Intruding my thoughts more than I wanted to admit.

All of this because I couldn’t be bothered with having my old trusty pour-over Chemex from college, and here I thought I was being spendthrift, saving loads of money by investing up front in all the gadgets—remote and temperature controlled frother, bean grinder and measurer, the gallon sized bag of beans, the water pressure function, the expensive but perfectly measured cups for each part of the process—all the things that my coffee maker automated for me. I never had to step foot into an expensive coffee house again—at least, with the exception of today notwithstanding.

I pressed my fingers hesitantly over the smooth interface of the appliance. Nothing lit up. I checked to make sure it was plugged in. Surely this thing would work without my phone—right?

There had to be another way.

I walked over to my pantry, shuffling a few items before moving over to the top, back of my cabinets and then finally the garage. I couldn’t find the flimsy glass vessel, or the metal filtered top. Maybe they broke, or were donated, or thrown away. I went back to the pantry, pulling out the bag of coffee. I had a hand-grinder somewhere, or a blender. Either one would do.

I turned around, pulling the drop-down shelf where my miscellaneous kitchen appliances were housed and to my utter dismay—they all seemed to be app-controlled. I could not, for the life of me remember the blender or the toaster, even the mixer being app-controlled. Why had I done that? In this moment, I couldn’t remember, couldn’t understand.

I opened my phone, sure enough, each item was listed in a drop-down option labelled “Kitchen”. It was a sheer miracle, pure happenstance that I had, thankfully, not purchased the fridge, stove and washer-dryer to be app-controlled. The dishwasher and the microwave on the other hand were also listed under the appliances owned by a technology that didn’t exist in that moment. Each one quickly becoming dinosaurs. Extinct—they were, effectively, quite useless.

There was no one to blame but myself. This was my fault entirely. In the quest to be fully automated and save time and be energy efficient—I had theoretically pigeon held myself into a corner I couldn’t escape. Half my house had become useless overnight.

I let the cold, hard beans fall through my fingers as I pondered what next to do, what my options were. I didn’t own a hand-grinder. I had no use for one yesterday, or the year before when everything in my kitchen worked at the press of a button, automated to exactly 8-o’clock. Every morning like clockwork. Weekends were the exception—10, 11, or 12. Depending on when I fell asleep. Just rove the dial on the app and it would set for the next day. Presto Espresso.

The cute nickname in my phone was no longer funny.

There was nothing “presto” about this. Not expresso. Nothing.

It was all useless to me.

I thought about putting the beans in a sandwich bag and pounding them to death with a hammer, or my hundred-dollar meat-tenderizer. That might be best. I could boil the water and strain it into my mug. Yes… Yes.

This was the play.

My eyes darted to the stove with a desperation I had not yet known. It was thankfully gas. I turned the knob, left, then right. A spark clicked and a blue ball of fire popped up through the coils. Relief finally hit, I felt my shoulders dropping and the tension lessening in my head.

I could cook something, I could boil water.

I opened the refrigerator door.

Another well of panic exploded in my veins.

The light was out, the fridge was quieter than usual. The temperature read 72 on the internal display. I felt the shelf, it was tepid, cool, but barely.

“Fuck,” I exhaled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

This could NOT be happening.

I slammed the door shut. The power was on in my house, the time on the stove was displaying the same as my watch.

I looked back at my phone, scrolling under “Kitchen”, my refrigerator was not listed on the app—but something titled “Keeler’s Cool Compressor,” was.

“Fuck.”

I muttered again. Slamming my phone down onto the counter.

Of course, I bought the only fridge with a smart-sense fan; of course, I did—all to save a few bucks on my electric. I pulled a handful of eggs out, cracking them one-by-one into a cold pan. I drizzled olive oil in, and ripped the bacon out of the package, shoving them onto an oven tray. There was no time for niceties.

I began to boil the water in a smaller brown-glass pot. Watching the bubbles erupt one after the other in unison, just like my brain-cells until they were a roaring frenzy. I was exhausted already and the headache was back with a vengeance.

I dug a cup into the coffee beans. A task that felt abysmal to me, pouring them into the confines of a plastic Ziplock. It felt good to slam the meat-tenderizer—hit—hit—hit—hit—hit—hit—hit—in rapid succession, each pounding buzzed through the lighter items on my counter, causing them to move ever-so-slightly. The sound of hammering and clinking glass filled my quiet house.

It wasn’t enough. My headache still kept pace. I reached for two-pills in the back of my cabinet, and swallowed them. Tap water tasting like bad memories. I grabbed the milk from the side door and poured it into the bottom of the mug—but something was wrong. The liquid came out in clumps.

My heart was hammering inside my chest now.

The eggs were starting to burn, a rancid, sour smell filling my nostrils. I hit the burner and pulled the pan into the sink, washing it out as black smoke wafted up. It was only a matter of time before the fire alarm sounded.

I clicked the app, once more, expecting something different to happen. It was no use. The eggs were a wet, expired mess on the bottom of my sink. I turned the oven off next, the bacon would be bad as well.

“Just google it,” my brain begged, goaded, chided—from some compulsively driven section of my mind. I clicked on the Google button again. But for what? I couldn’t remember long meat would be good for once the power went out. This wasn’t a hurricane, or storm outage. I had no real idea how long my fridge had been without power. I hadn’t used anything in my house since yesterday afternoon. Come to think of it, I had no idea how to reset my thermostat, what the phone numbers were for bills I paid, if something broke, the landlord, the neighbors. I didn't know any of it. Not recipes, directions, temperature or bake times. My mind worked solely because my phone did, my internet. I didn’t know anything, not directions. Nothing. Even my vehicle worked based on technology.

The thought hit me. My car.

I rushed through my house, barely stopping to put clothes on—jeans and a shirt—as I grabbed my keys and wallet. Thankful to have enough cash to buy a days’ worth of non-perishable food items. I had barely cut through the side of my yard, jamming the unlock button on the key fob. No lights, no noise. The sensor didn’t seem to recognize my approach.

Dread washed anew, though it tempered slightly as my car finally unlocked when I physically used the key. I climbed into the driver's seat and turned the ignition. It sputtered for a few seconds before cranking to a steady idle.

I nearly cried. Thank God. Something was going to go right. That was all I needed—a reprieve.

I pulled out of the driveway and onto the main stretch of road. The air conditioning dials worked, but the radio, gas gauge, and odometer were completely dark—black screens. I reached the first set of stop signs before the roundabout, hoping I had enough fuel to make it. I normally heard a woman’s voice telling me to turn right. Nothing happened; no prompt. No comforting banter putting me on autopilot.

I sat at the intersection longer than necessary, doubting my route. Was it North? East? Did that matter? I had driven this way thousands of times, and yet, here I was, unable to function. I didn’t know street names or numbers. Was this going up or down numerically? Is the store on the right or left?

I did what anyone else would do: I took the next left.

The further I drove, the more the world seemed unfamiliar. Traffic lights were completely dark. Cars were at a gridlock—some crashed, others unmoving. Do I merge for the yield signs? Who has the right-of-way? Do I stop and turn first, or do they? It was no use. When I finally found the store, it was chaos: no lanes open, nowhere to park, lines out the door. Signs were taped all over the front: Select items remaining. Estimated cash only.

The sun cast long, spindly shadows across my lawn when I finally made it home. A quiet thought bloomed in my mind as I stared at the dead brick in my hand: I was completely, utterly alone. And come tomorrow, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Who would make our bread when factories fell apart.