Jesus in 5G
by Airan Wright
A chorus of faceless analogues where each, taken individually, could be associated with someone from the “real world” that he may or may not have met physically but for which he had nonetheless made some acquaintance with over his long history of interacting with the nebulous realm of opinions generally labeled as “the Internet”, all combined to become a wash of white noise that erased the details he knew to exist for any one of those individuals should he have the desire to pry open each social platform he belonged to and suss out the exact specifics of zeroes and ones equating to their wide variety of witty responses, calls for advocacy, or rants about the weather. And, stuffed between all of his “friends’” photos of food and cat memes and celebratory images of the first days of school, existed a vast array of advertising, ever expanding out into his feeds like baking soda touching vinegar to the point that he now frequently found himself investing more in the effort of flicking his finger upward to bypass unwelcome diversions than actually getting to read the status updates he so desired. Indeed, at some point he inevitably started to wonder, after scrolling past ten advertisements in a row, whether he had the digital equivalent of any real friends at all. Ads for clothes, virus protection software, and drugs of all varieties replaced his extended family’s political ravings and his high school colleagues’ ramblings about this or that, leaving him sitting on his couch alone and unsure of what the point of any social app was to begin with.
The constant noise was too much, he determined at length. A shotgun aimed at a target half a mile away would be more successful at delivering to him a desired outcome than the constant blanket of noise that came from the apps that had rooted themselves like ticks deep within his phone. Disgusted at the engineered experience of it all, he hammered his finger hard against the screen, abruptly shutting off the most recent app. He flipped his phone face down on the sofa to banish it from view and looked across the room to where the TV sat, it’s thin black pane looking back at him expectantly, inquiring about the next few moments of his time and whether he would like to see something that would almost certainly feature even more advertising, the likes of which would inevitably ask about whether he was using the right body wash or if his personal data was secure. He returned the stare with one of his own, his eyes equally blank but his mind clouded with indignation from the obvious manipulation of it all. Sitting in his slightly darkened living room where the only light being supplied came from the cloudless sky streaming in through half shuttered windows, he felt unable to grab on to any real thought of significance that wasn’t colored by this anger with one small exception; a tiny voice above and to the right of his brain which seemed to whisper over the din “you might have a new email…let’s pick up that phone and check!”
When babies are born they emerge into a world of light and sound where enormous whale-like shapes swim into and out of vision, the results of which yield the frequent supply of warmth and sustenance and comfort. He’d read (or perhaps heard on one of the many available national public radio stations for which he could easily find streaming on his phone, computer, or smart speaker) a story some time ago detailing how babies built connection with their parents through the repetitive action of eye contact and how iterations of games like “peekaboo” taught that the returned gaze of these giant caregivers equaled love and safety (and, conversely, that their disappearance enforced the concepts of abandonment and loss.) They learned desire, trust, and fear all in the same tiny heartbeat of time. He suspected that this was why eye contact was held in such high regard by the living. Personal contact meant you existed within the eyes of those who beheld you — nobody wanted to be abandoned and forgotten.
Some animalistic dependency woke within him now, craving to be seen by his carefully cultivated digital network and sensing that that would not happen while his tenuous connection to the world continued to lay sullenly face down on the couch. He flipped it over, feeling the weight of the phone measured in sound and vibration as it landed solidly by his knee with a thick thump, the earthy neutral cotton polyester blend of the couch soaking up the reverberation like a sponge. These things used to be smaller and lighter, he thought, absently dwelling on the weight of the device at hand and wondering where his old flip phone from years ago had ended up. It had featured significantly less in both form and function, a downside these days, but it had been simple and easy to use and, the older he got, the less he found himself wanting to lug around bulky, heavy, and complex things.
His current phone, perhaps sensing his reverie about this long since neglected technology, pushed an alert about a pending system update seemingly in order to pull him back to the present, all the while matching the same eyeless glare that the television cast (the two now fighting for his affection). He keyed the phone open where it lay with a quick swipe up and the sequential poking of his finger in the general pattern of his passcode, not caring to pick up the device long enough to enable its facial recognition. Its screen lit up beside him in a tiny pool of light and, before he could register he’d done so, he found himself opening and staring askance at the same app that he’d been so determined to hate not a minute prior. He immediately felt ill and ashamed at the mindless muscle memory that had led him back to this moment and grabbed the cursed object in blunt reaction, tossing it at the opposite end of the couch hard enough to make a sound but not so hard as to damage it. The TV laughed at the phone, sensing some short-lived victory.
Somewhere in another room his smart speaker chimed an alert, letting him know a delivery had arrived.
He groaned. He’d forgotten the various texts and emails detailing the expected delivery of this new item and a dull and unforgiving pain in his lower back now argued against any movement he might make to check on its arrival. He knew this particular package to be valuable though — more valuable than his phone even — and so, laboriously lifting himself out from the crevasse of cushions, he stood and grimaced. He really needed to move more, he thought to himself. To get out of this rut he’d found himself both physically and mentally. Besides, his smartwatch had been yelling at him to stand up for the last few minutes anyway and he had no counter argument to its passive aggressive nagging. He shuffled over to the end of the couch to retrieve his cast away phone, swearing at it under his breath while pocketing it before moving toward the front door.
Through the screen leading out to his north-facing porch he could see his delivery sitting in the sun, the vaguely shoe box-sized mass waiting for him to save it from its own state of boxy loneliness. Its label showed crisp and bright white against the light brown cardboard, the ubiquitous tech logo of his cellular provider large and shining in bright corporate blue in the upper left corner. It smiled at him, happy for his company and excited to show off its generative AI-designed curves and safely focus-grouped lines and angles. He picked the box up, pulling the whole thing back into the darkened cave-like safety of his home. It radiated the noonday sun’s heat against his hands, the feeling both comforting and alarming, causing him to wonder whether the contents would be okay after having been baked by nature but simultaneously happy to pull it closer and simply soak in the warmth.
After a brief moment of peace, the birds chirping outside and the house blissfully quiet, he held the box at arms length and proceeded to implement its disassembly. With one quick rip he rendered the packing tape from its hold on the top of the box, discarding it on the floor by his feet. Moments later the remainder of the cardboard shell fell to the hard foyer floor, forgotten. The contents of the package now sat in his hands, dazzling in its newness: a smaller box, crisply shrink-wrapped, featuring the slick high-production imagery one might expect from an ad agency working with a client of “great financial value” and a budget of “money to burn.” Against a clean background that must’ve started its life defined on an art brief dictating the heavy use of white space sat cold, calculated product imagery of the world’s newest phone, its face resplendent with a barrage of camera lenses and a slightly larger screen, its color rose gold.
Any frustration for which he’d so recently had when he’d been sitting on his couch before now faded away, leaving him standing with this new and glorious thing; his savior of social contact. A bright, new, shiny Jesus in 5G. He knew he would be okay. He knew he wouldn’t be alone. His smart speaker chimed again from the other room, announcing the second coming while his old phone pitifully buzzed an objection about this in his pocket. The TV sat silently; it could weather the change in status quo from the safety of its perch. His smartwatch gave him a high five for standing up.
– End –
