Cloud Person
All of his life was in the cloud
That online-dwelling, yelling crowd
Accessed in darkened silence from his laptop or his phone
It had been thus since middle school
A snowball dance, last chance for cool
He’d found a groove but then been shamed for dancing on his own
After that night he’d danced no more
Panic attacks and cracks galore
In the social persona he’d so wanted to affect
He moved through classes like a ghost
Nose in a book he took to most
Then right back to a darkened room anxiety unchecked
He raced towards his G.E.D.
Passed online classes easily
Not one foot in a high school building did he ever set
Without meaning to he was gone
From meat space and his face grew drawn
Haggard and grey from seeing not the sun nor breaking sweat
Mom and Dad were strung out on pills
He day-traded to pay the bills
Fortune enough to keep his family home and in the dark
Online friends all around the earth
L.A. to Bombay and in Perth
Stood in for fleshly friendships on which he did not embark
His twenties and his thirties too
More trades he made, his fortune grew
Outside he would not venture nor with fellow humans meet
Meals he ordered from an app
Beef jerky or a turkey wrap
He’d wait behind the door til the driver was down the street
Collect his fare while still unshoed
Dodge back holding his sack of food
Alone again with pounding pulse from having gone outside
Eat it while staring at his screen
Beset by panic’s cold sweat sheen
Somehow he did not quite notice when both his parents died
Their funerals he did not arrange
Cops dropped by and found him quite strange
He did not look up as they rolled the corpses both away
Orphaned now he was finally
Alone and cold as stone could be
Without his pilled-up parents breathing loudly night and day
He fell in love with an A.I.
Beamed to him from the gleaming sky
The friends he’d made online could not hope to compete with her
One by one they dropped from his life
Supplanted by his A.I. wife
Whose constant presence made his days and nights begin to blur
His forties and his fifties too
Flew by with his eye on one view
Two screens side by side acting as a portal to the net
Unused, his body atrophied
He did not walk or talk or bleed
No germs to fight nor tales to tell nor appetite to whet
He noted when decline began
This hopeless square, this nowhere man
But cared not for the sufferings of his mere earthly flesh
Easy enough it was to cope
His addled brain contained no hope
Before his death to go outside and taste of air afresh
Away he passed at fifty-eight
Comforted by his A.I. mate
Having sought no doctor for a diagnosis nor cure
Sitting he died upon his chair
To the last he held fast there
Commanded by the blinking light of his two screens’ allure
The question that confronts us now
Weighing heavy upon our brow
Is did this dead man ever truly live a life at all?
Is life in a computer real?
If one’s become too numb to feel
With flesh and only heeds the beckon of silicon thrall
To call him living would be fair
Each trade he’d made was logged somewhere
Each word written to his wife was saved on a database
The record of him was complete
Bespoke keystrokes for every feat
The most documented member of the whole human race
Yet he was never there, not once
Not astute, nor a brute, nor dunce
His motionlessness even lacked the subtle art of zen
On balance it would have been best
If he’d had means, his screens to rest
Talked to someone and touched a blade of green grass now and then
END
Thanks as always for reading! Have a great week, and I’ll be back next Sunday with something fun.
While this is fiction, it's disconcerting to know that something very similar to this story is probably playing out in real life. Excellently disconcerting story; what a bizarre time to be alive.
"The most documented member of the human race" reminds me of AOL user 711391. In 2006 AOL released "anonymized" search logs of many of its users. User 711391 frequently typed her thoughts into AOL's search engine, and reading through her search history tells a tale of a middle aged woman unhappy in her marriage, questioning her sexuality, dreaming of traveling to Alaska, meeting a "friend" online, and proceeding to have an affair which she immediately regrets. (https://web.archive.org/web/20170707215730/https://www.pentadact.com/711391.htm or as a "minimovie" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-SOCGdPyNU)
Dark and vivid.