Phone Boundaries
15-minute prompted flash fiction
I wrote draft of this thing during the kickoff call for “The Great Substack Prompt Celebration” hosted by . We had 15 minutes. This was the prompt:
You wake up one morning, and every time you reach for your phone, you get extremely nauseous, sometimes vomiting. You turn on the tv and it’s happening all over the world. Why? Is it fixable? Will the world ever be the same?
Afterward, I spent another hour fleshing out the beginning a bit, and polishing up the prose. Otherwise, it’s pretty close to the original.
Am I proud? Yes. Am I bragging? Also yes.
Enjoy!
Phone Boundaries
The rule is no screens until I get back from my morning jog. It's part of the whole routine -- get up, pull on my running clothes, brush my teeth, drink a bunch of water, and then I'm out the door.
When I get back, I'm feeling good. Like hell yeah, look at me go. And then checking my notifications is a nice little reward for exercising. All part of the habit building paradigm.
So it's a cruel twist when instead of this nice little reward, I'm puking over the railing outside my second story apartment.
SPLAT goes last night's dinner on the pavement below, not far from my downstairs neighbor's front door. Now in addition to my post-vomit misery, I'm feeling guilty about the mess, and hoping the guy is still asleep.
He's not.
His door opens before I can retreat.
"You too?" he says.
"Yeah," I say, having no idea what the hell he's talking about. "Sorry."
Back inside, I stare at my phone on the ground where I dropped it. I have this weird thought, like maybe the damn thing finally gave me cancer. Just like my dad always said it would.
I'm no luddite, but what else am I gonna think? It's not visual, it's proximity. I'm looking at it across the room, I'm fine. I stand next to it, I feel a little queasy. I reach out, and it's full on, seeing-stars nausea. I pick it up anyway, and next thing I know I'm sprinting for the bathroom to empty whatever's left in my stomach into the toilet.
Hilarious moment -- my face is still in the bowl when I think I gotta go Google this. What's the first thing I do when I can walk again? Head right back to the stupid phone. And then, just as quick, back into the bathroom. It's just dry heaving this time.
I take a beat.
OK. Maybe the MacBook?
I approach my desk with caution. Seems fine so far. I sit down. Still good. I take a deep breath -- please god I can't take another round -- and reach out. My hand shakes pretty bad, hovering over the thing, before I close my eyes and and clench my teeth and touch down.
My whole body relaxes. No nausea, no puking. Alright, Internet, whataya got for me?
Well, apparently this is happening everywhere. People are freaking out. I mentally apologize to my downstairs neighbor for thinking he's weird.
Not that he's the person I want to talk to about this. No, if I'm navigating a phone-pocolypse, I need Gracen. You know how you've got that one person who just seems to know what the hell is going on in the world better than everyone else? That's my buddy Gracen.
But he lives like six blocks away, and I'm not about to get near my phone to try to call him up. I've learned my lesson, thank you very much.
So OK, I change my clothes and go back outside. I walk down my street. I walk all six blocks. Like it's the turn of the freaking twentieth century. Like I'm in some kind of black and white movie about the world's fair coming into town.
It's still pretty early in the morning, but here's the thing. I'm not alone. I'm seeing lots of other people outside. Lots of people talking to people in the streets. Phones are conspicuously absent.
Hang on.
Hang on just one minute.
Before I even get to Gracen's house, I'm wondering: is this the best possible thing that could happen to the screen-tapping, dopamine addicted human race?
If you thought this story was pretty rad, then you are legally obligated to do both of the following:
Click the heart.
Share it with people.
The first one is pretty straightforward (gimme some of that number-go-up dopamine), but there’s like a hundred ways to do the second thing. You can see some of them by clicking this:
Or you can come up with your own unique snowflake option. The law doesn’t stipulate the manner in which you execute your obligation, which, as a reminder, you accepted by voluntarily enjoying this story.
Verrrry interesting. All I can think about are the businesses that would inevitably pop up to help deal with this
Dopamine sent.
I love this. I like the new beginning, but the old one was realllllly good. ☺️