Coop passes the time on his ElderScreen, clicking through simulated social media apps from a bygone era. It’s fake, but wasn’t it always? He can only half-see the glowing videos and random images, the text captions in huge font. Ding goes a notification from a friend who does not really exist. He has no friends left, though the ElderScreen pretends otherwise in order to keep him “socially engaged,” as they say, to pacify him into passivity. It works. Ding, someone is thinking of you, ding ding ding, you matter. Fake faces, fake names, people he does not know or care about, yet he can’t stop scrolling. It feels like something, though it is nothing. He feels like a hypocrite, recalling how hard he tried to keep his daughter away from screens when she was little. He must look as silly as she did when she was a baby, whacking at her plastic play-gym, grasping for sensation. He scrolls until he nods off on the folding chair.
The washer-dryer jolts him awake with its ominous buzz buzz-buzz buzz, a cadence like a funeral march. He’s not even on his feet when there’s a squeal and a shocking whomp of wings. His ElderScreen clatters to the floor. He squints and blinks, convinced his eyes have failed for good, but no. There it is.
A dactyl. A living dactyl.
Right there on top of the machine. He has seen them in videos, but never in real life. It’s the size of a turkey. Skinny trembling legs, a pale gulping neck. Plump with plumage a dozen shades of pink.
He shoos it away. “Go on. Go.” He claps twice.
The animal heaves itself to the floor with a mighty thrash and wobbles behind a rubber trash can. Coop snatches his laundry as quick as he’s able, which is not very quick at all. He hobbles into the stairwell and slams the door behind him. That damn dactyl. It nearly gave him a heart attack. That’d be a way to go, wouldn’t it? Scared to death by a dino. It must have escaped from a processing plant somewhere. He can’t get over it. All that pink. He feels the need to tell somebody, but there is nobody to tell.
Coop gets to work ascending the stairs. It’s exhausting. He takes a break halfway, smushing his cheek against the clammy coolness of the peeling wall.
“You okay?”
It’s Brooklyn B., on her way down with a pillowcase of dirty laundry.
“I’m fine.”