By Nathan Pawelek

Isis used to love her name. Then, she changed it to what she thought was a safer option: Karen. But how things quickly change. She felt scattered: an archipelago of herself torn apart by a virtual meteor shower of data debris. People were wearing Bluetooth sunglasses! What the hell is Bluetooth? It was only recently Isis learned how to use her first iPhone. That after years of pestering from her grown daughter to “join the human race.” Astonishingly, she learned to text with an index finger but yet refused to purge her landline. 

There was something wrong; she couldn’t put a pin in what exactly. She woke each morning, and the outside looked like twilight before sunset, a daily haziness that reflected her despondent mood. Even as the sun still climbed to its brilliant, familiar zenith, Isis was left in the shade; she was left invisible. Was that why she identified with asylum seekers? 

Physically, she was fine. Her vitals at the doctor’s were normal, no weight gain or loss. Her hair was graying—to be expected. At least she wasn’t going bald. Her eyes were okay, no new wrinkles or dark circles, and no cavities at her latest dental cleaning. There! At the dentist, Isis recalled, was a perfect example of her pickle. She loved that there were actual hard copies of assorted magazines in the waiting room. Isis had picked up a Women’s Health and thought, “People don’t read magazines anymore.” She scanned the room; everyone was on a phone. She ever so enjoyed magazines: how they felt, how they smelled vaguely of cheese blended with glorious perfume samples. And the pictures were glossy and beautiful. 

How she reveled in this hardly leafed-through relic and longed for a long wait for her prophylaxis. She could not stop staring at this Winnie Harlow, the fashion model on the cover with the skin condition vitiligo. Sitting naked and stippled like a frog, even her ear was slowly bleaching away with the absence of pigment. Her breasts seemed to be implants of another woman. Without thinking, Isis pinched the glossy image to zoom in. She did it three times, pinching harder each time, then caught herself. 

“Idiot,” she said quietly, provoked by one of her mind’s many personal vultures, perpetually circling to dive bomb. She looked up to see if anyone had noticed and locked eyes with a child’s, who was maybe six, and standing between his mother’s straddled knees enjoying a lollipop. A lollipop! At the dentist’s? He’d seen and had paused his sucking to muse on the absurdity.

The email barrage was most overwhelming. She got hundreds daily from people named Talcum Powder Injury Claims, Ageless Brain, Silver Singles, Truth About Herpes, Hanging Belly Fat, and Burial Assistance. There were notices about undeliverable packages from FedEx, Amazon, UPS, USPS, and customer support alerts from Walmart and McDonald’s, and warnings of unauthorized logins to her Facebook account, which she could not remember creating. Some made her panic, like the already-processed subscription renewals from McAfee and Kaspersky. The most confusing and offensive were from Orgasm Trigger, Daily Poops, and Dead Penis.   

Her doctor suggested volunteer work. She saw a notice at the public library and joined a community group organizing a memorial 5K to honor a local teen who’d shot himself accidentally. She knew nothing about road racing, but it was a sport with bodies in motion, something simple she understood. There were four or five other in-person folks in the conference room when she entered, and one, a hefty man, was in the middle of saying, “I find that I have the perfect body for e-sports.” Isis feigned laughing uproariously with the others.

In the center of the conference table was an OWL meeting device to include virtual attendees. Isis thought it was a distinctive decoration or maybe one of those Alexas? There was also a laptop on the table hooked up to a large monitor. Several faces in Zoom boxes were bobbing quietly. Isis did not make the connection that the OWL was feeding both audio and video to these live virtual attendees. When it was her turn to speak, she leaned into the laptop and shouted her thoughtful ideas about post-race feast foods, making sure to establish assertiveness, in spite of her nerves.  

“Umm, you speak into the OWL, there,” the race director pointed. 

“Oh?” How the vultures feasted on the carrion of her self-confidence.

It was hot outside in the blistering, evil sun. Isis required iced coffee. It would come in a transparent plastic cup with a plastic straw, which, once discarded (even in a recycling bin), would no doubt accelerate the Earth’s demise. What could she do? She navigated into the Dunkin drive-thru and bypassed the menu board for the intercom board. After she rolled down her window, she was inundated by a fiery gust from the hostile outside. To avoid the radioactive swirling dust and trash, she squinted and waited for a kindly voice to save her. Isis sighed, then placed her order without being prompted, shouting, “One large iced coffee with lots of ice, a little milk and sugar, please.” 

The malicious intercom remained mute. “Excuse me? Anybody there?” Momentarily, a voice emerged from the malware of yet another mother board just a little further. “Ma’am, pull forward. You’re talking to the trash can.” 

How the vultures pecked.

Isis drove to the park and found a bench to salvage herself and the ice coffee. Soon, a put-together-looking woman sat, a generational peer. (Isis was determined not to reveal her name). “How is your day?” she asked, seeking any connection. 

The woman checked her watch twice, breathing heavily. “Doing okay,” she sighed. “Just a little scattered.” 

“Sister,” Isis began. “Let me tell you what just happened at the drive-thru.”

The woman again hastily checked her now-vibrating watch. “Rain check,” she said. “Gotta take this call.”