Terms of Service
by Sharmon Gazaway
We all knew the internet was sucking the life out of us. We laughed about it even as we sped through our steps logged in, weather apps, news apps, checked for new text messages and emails before our first sip of dark-roast in the morning. That alone should have raised serious alarm.
At first we just thought we were getting scatter-brained, ADHD, or forgetful. Stress—or mercury in tuna, Teflon in our eggs, take your pick—was causing it. We laughed about that too.
Malerie was the first to point it out to me, whispered in the break room, ten minutes after break was officially over.
“Jed, do you ever—I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my cell phone. How could I live without it?” She glanced down at her phone in her purse on the break table, reached down and zipped it closed. “But do you sometimes feel it’s taking…something…from us? I don’t mean time, or attention or any of that.” She turned to stare out the window. “I mean, I feel like it’s drawing…a force from me. Brain power, physical power. I feel drained, weak.”
She looked so adorable, perplexed and vulnerable, nothing like she usually did when we swigged Diet Dr. Peppers by the window. I wanted to wrap my arm around her. But what’s new about that.
“Yeah, no. I hear you.” I didn’t. Not then. I just wanted her to keep talking so I could watch her plump bottom lip move.
She touched it with her tongue, as if her mouth suddenly went dry. “I don’t go for conspiracy theories, you know that. But, sign me up for a tin-foil hat. I went on HeadsUp last night.”
This I heard. “Sheesh, are you kidding, Mal? They’re all kooks on there. What possessed you?” I stared, amazed at this brilliant girl—woman—being suckered like that.
She whipped around to face me, and took my hand. “Hear me out. Last night I was on my phone, you know, research, social crap. I started feeling strange, light-headed. I tasted metal on my tongue, tingling. Like when we used to lick nine volt batteries as kids.”
We were stupid kids.
She continued, “Then, I felt the sensation of being magnetized, pulled down into my phone. Don’t laugh.”
I was grinning. I’d listen all day if she kept holding my hand.
“So I put my phone down. The urge to pick it up was almost too much—”
“We’re all addicted, Mal. Don’t you read the daily pop-psyche captions?”
“I know, I know. Listen, this was different. I left it in the kitchen and went to shower. I got so disoriented. I couldn’t remember what I had been doing, what time it was, anything. When I got out, I checked the clock. It was like I knew I’d been at work all day, but had zero recollection of it. Couldn’t remember the weather, a single project, or person I’d seen.”
“Not even me?” I asked softly, looking down at our hands.
“Jed. I’m being serious. When I checked my phone it had a notification on it. It said ‘Malerie Harcrowe, last seen at 10:30 p.m.: disoriented, scared, beginning to suspect. Upload imminent.’”
“What the heck?” I pulled my hand away. “Show me.”
“Can’t. I went straight for a screen shot but it was disabled. A few seconds later it disappeared. Don’t look at me like I’m high. I know what I saw.”
“’K. What did HeadsUp have to say?”
She took me through their darkweb site for the next fifteen minutes. Many people claimed they experienced the same thing Mal had. Some of the people most vocal about this weird thing they called Hostile Absorption—their term for being somehow absorbed by electronic devices—abruptly disappeared. Untraceable on the World Wide Web, it was as if they had never existed.
She trembled, her arm brushing mine, her wide blue eyes full of all things Malerie. Birdwatcher, windsurfer, severe arachnophobe, volunteer for Meals on Wheels.
“Look, I’ll do some research tonight, see what I can find,” I promised.
“Wanna come to my apartment? I’ll pick up the moo goo gai pan.”
I tried to breathe normally with Mal’s hip snugged up to mine on her overstuffed leather sofa. We logged into HeadsUp, tracing threads along with all the other doomscrollers till the empty take-out boxes glazed with evaporated soy sauce.
We dove deeper and deeper into the blue-lit etherworld in our hands. I grew dizzy, my head weightless, as if being emptied. Or maybe—surely—it was the strawberry scent of her shampoo as her tumble of dark hair, freed from its ponytail, sprawled around us, drying.
I’d lost all track of time. “Look at this, Mal.”
Mal’s head sagged on my shoulder, eyes shuttered by her dark lashes.
And I hadn’t even noticed.
Holding my breath, I raised my hand to tuck a frizzy curl behind her ear. My hand felt paper-light, bloodless.
I set my phone down and studied my hands, palms up. My fingerprints dissolved before my eyes, leaving scar-smooth skin on my fingertips. Shaking, I snatched my phone up, physically incapable of leaving it on the table.
I began to see black spots. The spots split, merged and grew, the way cells do under a microscope. I tasted tingling copper on my tongue.
I tried to drop the phone but it clung, appendage-like to my hand.
I stared, blinked, and rubbed my eyes until I could make out phone text again.
“Jedediah Fitch, last seen at 2:32 a.m.: disoriented, scared, beginning to suspect. Upload ASAP.”
“Mal! Malerie?” She didn’t stir, her breath shallow, her phone clutched tight.
The next day I woke, alone, on her couch. Mal was nowhere to be seen. Not even a note. I held my fingertips up to the light sifting through the blinds. No fingerprints; the skin smooth, pale, and numb.
With a cold sweat on the back of my neck, I found Mal at work outside the conference room. I kept my face blank, nodded to our coworkers, my heart fisted in my throat. I took her elbow with my free hand, the other clutching my phone inside my jacket pocket. I glanced side to side, and guided her into her office.
“Mal, you were right. Last night after you fell asleep I found something freaky—well freakier—on HeadsUp.” I could barely detect the warmth and pulse of her arm in my insensate grip.
She tugged her elbow free. “Oh, really. What’s that? New app?”
“Ha ha. This is happening to people worldwide. I received the same kind of notification you did.” I tried to relax my stranglehold on my phone, but couldn’t. “Creeped me out.”
She shook her head, black ponytail swinging. “What notification? Did I miss something cool?”
“Mal?” I looked into her eyes. Eyes empty of all things—or most things—Malerie. “You don’t remember,” I whispered.
“Actually, I’m kind of foggy on the last several days,” she said, putting on a non-Mal smile. “Must be that new allergy med.”
Disembodiment is a state I can’t get used to. I suffer what here is commonly called GBS, or ghost body syndrome, similar to an amputee’s phantom pain. The other disembodieds now existing (this can’t be called living) on nearby darkweb threads assure me I’ll adjust. In time.
GBS afflicts those most tethered to the old self, those who can’t—or won’t—let go. I’m still nerve-aware, feel them stretched and grated as my consciousness prowls every link I can, ransacking the ’net for a contact to Malerie.
I sometimes feel her hand warm on mine, smell a sweet-tart scent in the ether. Phantom sensation torture.
I have to warn her. But every time I get close, the portal is blocked by an insidious, nameless presence, lacy as binary code, strong as steel.
These are the terms of service.
_______________
Sharmon Gazaway is a Dwarf Stars Award finalist. Her sci-fi fiction is featured in New Myths’ best of anthology, Cosmic Muse, and she has work in The Best of MetaStellar Year Two. Her sci-fi work appears in Solarpunk Magazine, and other spec work appears in Daily Science Fiction, ParABnormal, The Fairy Tale Magazine (The Best of Enchanted Conversation), and elsewhere. Her work is included in anthologies from Blackspot Books, Brigids Gate Press, and others. Sharmon Gazaway writes from the Deep South where she lives beside a historic cemetery haunted by the wild cries of pileated woodpeckers. Instagram @sharmongazaway