“I. Me. Myself. IMO. If you ask me. My POV. Let me tell you something…” the metaphorically speaking paint had already dried, the Autumn leaves scattered across the path and the swifts departed as they set off on their customary, early evening walk.
He had already switched off. Despite his deep and endearing love for his sister, he couldn’t stand her conversations. Correction. Her monologues masquerading as a conversation.
Twenty minutes in, and he still had not heard a single reference to something he had not heard before. And though he wasn’t listening, he would have heard it. It might, but it’s doubtful, have even interested him. Perhaps entertained. But no. She didn’t and their walk came to an end at its usual spot as she turned into her apartment lobby and he towards the subway from whence he had appeared only 40 minutes ago yet felt like a lifetime.
Shuffling ever closer to the foreboding entrance that boasted a mayoral approved graffiti wall of utter carnage, so obscene that it raised his blood pressure every time he glimpsed it, he stopped.
His smart watch, perfectly concealed from the prying eyes of his ignorant sister and with the volume so low that even he struggled to hear it unless alone in the comfort of his home, asked, “What the fuck was that all about?”
The moment old Albert had been dreading since investing his life savings in this erstwhile rather innocuous ’companion’ as it said in the advert, had arrived.
It, like Albert, had become utterly bored and frustrated with the conversation it had just endured. Respectfully, patiently and even optimistically perhaps, his rather scary wearable had just alerted to him what he had been trying so hard to deny.
“If the truth be known”, he muttered to himself, “she’s been driving me mad for years. Enough is enough.”
And with that, he disappeared down the subway never to return again.
He lived happily ever after.
The end.
A fairytale
CQM
Inspired by:
Applied statistics
Ted Chiang
“I get it, interacting with people is hard. It demands a lot, it is often unrewarding. Social chatbots could provide comfort, real solace to people.”
Nadio Granata's Personal Blog 