Free Screen by Aarti Patel

Misha sat cross-legged on the floor and examined her fingers as she always did
when she returned. One of her fingernails was longer than the rest, and this
was the first time she had noticed but otherwise all was fine. Misha’s fluffy white dog, Poof, sniffed her fingers as he
enjoyed partaking in any shared activity. His floppy ears flew up and down as
he yipped excitedly in circles around her. The amount of time that had passed
was still mysterious to her, so Misha wandered to the
small adjoining kitchen, her joints a little stiff and unyielding to her weight
as if they had taken time off from supporting her body. It was one o’ clock,
not a second too early or too late. Sometimes she wished the clock would
develop a mind of its own and fool everyone.
    Here at
home, the skies were clear and blended easily with the sunshine for a perfect
San Francisco afternoon. You could stick your hand out and imagine it on a
two-dimensional plane with the rest of the world around you, like a postcard.
Not real enough. Misha sighed and flipped on the big
screen, bypassing her inbox, task lists, and everything else so she could catch
some entertaining shows for a change. A re-run of Trivia Time aired on channel
7, three digital contestants mounted on podiums and ready to buzz in the
correct answer. India was currently in the lead, but Japan was a close second
as the dapper host flashed the next question on the Trivia screen. “Who was the
first celebrity actor to fly to the moon during the year 2013?”
    Misha stared at the digital contestants as each screen tallied the
corresponding country’s correct answers. “How boring,” thought Misha . She turned off the big screen and sat on the couch
for a second. Her nerves were tingling a little too much these days and were
keeping her up at night. A buzz ran from her neck to her shoulder blades, and
would shoot off to unexpected places from there. Rummaging through her purse,
she picked up a small bottle and ran her finger around the cap. This bottle was
illegal, but it had helped her get through the past two years of her life. The
body buzz was getting worse, and she didn’t know what it was ultimately
progressing toward. Some people fried slowly, others short-circuited abruptly. She
knew her buzz was a warning from her body, but she was scared to attend to it
and didn’t know what to do anyway. As these thoughts lingered on her nerve
endings, they seemed to fry the synapses even more. After all, the buzz had
taken the place of cancer as the leading cause of death in the world. Almost
everyone had it to some extent. She couldn’t handle too much more today, Misha thought, as she heard her phone ring on the big
screen.
    Misha followed the sound of the incessantly beeping phone toward the living
room and hovered her finger above the phone application icon on the big screen.
“Hello?” Misha’s face scrunched up with the question.
It had been close to ten years since she enjoyed interacting with other human
beings, but she had not uttered this to anyone except Poof. Misha paused in silence as the person on the other end seemed to be communicating
something with returned silence. “Hello?” Misha quickly tired of these games. She had noticed a trend starting when she was in
college and it had gotten worse ever since: People would call you and have
nothing to say when you answered the phone. The telephone seemed obsolete,
electronic mail had turned into drifted smoke never to be read or answered, and
mailed letters had died off decades ago, at least from what Misha had learned at the city’s Technological History Museum.
    It had
been months since anyone had called her, and certainly cancelling the phone app
would save her a little money; in this world, a little was a lot. Misha rolled her eyes and made one more attempt. “Hello?
Hello?” Someone cleared her throat delicately on the other end. “Can you hear
me?” Misha asked. “Yes...,” the response trailed from
the caller.