Hum

The thing is, May," the hum said, "the goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any other materials that can be yanked out of the earth and, after brief sojourns as objects of desire, be converted to waste.

We are all villains,” the hum said. “The system only gives us villainous options.

But were the words his own, or were they an option offered him by his phone? He never called her “love” and was generally meticulous with commas and periods. Then again, he could have been in a rush, which would explain the poor punctuation and the uncharacteristic term of endearment, shorthand for tenderness he didn’t have time to express. But Jem’s phone knew that the occasional dropped piece of punctuation was typical of his texting tendencies at times, the error evidence of authenticity, and so the phone might reproduce the error, in order to reproduce the authenticity.

Their time here was brief, yes, slipping through their fingers: but it occurred to her that every day was not twenty-four hours, it was actually ninety-six, each of the four of them living in their own twenty-four hours side by side.

A vision flashed through her, of Jem aging, bad morning-and-coffee breath, his body sagging, his body a sack, a conveyance device for his intestines. But this vision yielded to another: under the covers, pressing her own sack of blood and bones against his sack of blood and bones, arms and legs interwoven, two flimsy bodies safe together.

He was gazing down at his phone, his shoulders tense, his spine curling toward it. She had the urge to call out to him, startle him with her voice: What’s in your phone that isn’t right here in front of you? There is a naked person in your bed. There is a breeze in the yard. Yet she knew there was plenty in his phone that wasn’t right here in front of him. The entire universe.

Incredulous, she took hold of his hand. Despite the distance that sometimes grew untended between them: she was known by him.

The thing is, May,' the hum said, 'the goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart, so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any other materials that can be yanked out of the earth, and, after brief sojourns as objects of desire, be converted to waste.

The hum paused for the programmed amount of time. Long enough to gesture toward thoughtfulness, not long enough to stall the conversation. "Please have a regular day tomorrow, May.

She had used her money to wrap good things around her family, while in the city outside these walls millions of people craved those good things. In no time at all, she would be a craver again.

they had agreed to give the children small, quick names, names that could disguise themselves within other words. Solution, sudsy. Synthesis, lullaby.

To think that humans, once prey in the wild, had arrived at this. These glazes and sprinkles.

Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy. —PARACELSUS

she sacrificed herself to one of the ready-made replies: All good! A prickle of regret. That artificial exclamation mark.

And besides, hadn’t she herself—spotting a cam on a lamppost or in a tree, reminded that the air around her was abuzz with data—sometimes had the urge to hide her face or peel it off, to do the same to the faces of her children?

The thing is, May,” the hum said, “the goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any other materials that can be yanked out of the earth and, after brief sojourns as objects of desire, be converted to waste.

You feel disoriented, May," the hum said. "You are unsure how to be in the world as it is now. You know the world is damaged, but you don't know what that means for the lives of your children. You want to prepare them for the future, but you are scared to picture the future. You are seeking inside yourself the scrappiness, the courage, that will power the rest of your life. Am I right, May?

She had forgotten so much of it, those early years, this or that picture taken by a tree, in the bath, on a swing, on the subway. They had been so cute at so many moments that had just washed over her. Lu and Sy standing on the coffee table, holding hands, gazing gravely at the phone, both naked but for transparent ballet skirts. If not for these pictures, these sturdy images pulled out of the blur of her memory, her life would have no solidity. She hated to glimpse herself in the pictures though. Her face raw with exhaustion and raw with love. Hard to look at.