Down the Rabbit Hole

by J. D. Robb

  “Oh dear,” Alice said, raising her hands to her cheeks. “I see why you would rather the coin be somewhere else.”

  “Thank you,” Weston said with real relief. He felt as though he were somewhere between a fool and a coward.

  “I would suggest that you give Martha some financial support. Quietly, so no one thinks unkind thoughts. It may be a while before she is able to find another position.”

  “An excellent notion. And a letter of reference from my soon-to-be countess would help as well.” He took her arm. “Let’s find her now and prepare her for an adventure so that we can begin on our own.”

  Arm in arm, they left the library. Weston felt the coin warm his hand and knew they had made the right decision. They no longer needed a magic coin and, for more reasons than one, he would be happy to share its magic. He was certain that he and Alice would have quite enough adventures without it.

  ILOVE

  ELAINE FOX

  For Enrique. And Siri.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It happened so fast. The dumping. Jeremy and Macy were sitting on the patio of their favorite café, on a strangely balmy day in November, when Macy stood up, said she’d had enough and left.

  Well, maybe she’d said a little more than that, but Jeremy couldn’t remember exactly, and the gist was the same.

  At first he’d thought she was kidding. In general, women didn’t dump Jeremy Abbott, though that wasn’t why he’d been floored. It wasn’t until he saw her shoes heading past the table—he’d been looking at his phone at the time—and glanced up to see her striding toward the patio gate, curls bobbing, shoulders straight, purse bouncing off her hip, that he realized she’d been serious.

  He looked back at her seat, half expecting her to still be there because the other scenario was too weird, but the chair canted outward exactly as if somebody had abruptly stood and ended a relationship.

  She’d finished her omelet, he noted blankly. In record time. His was still half-eaten on his plate. And moments before, he’d been laughing at some joke she’d made.

  Although in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t a joke.

  The most damning part was that he’d thought things were going well—really well. Well to the point of thinking, Holy shit, maybe this is IT.

  No so for Macy, whose thoughts apparently ran more to the Exit, stage left end of the spectrum.

  He’d have said he couldn’t have been more shocked, but that was before the next thing happened.

  He kept an eye on her auburn head as it moved through the crowd, and he tried to stand to go after her. Because it was ridiculous—you don’t just end a nearly seven-month relationship with an I’m outta here over brunch. Where was the explanation, the It’s not you it’s me, at least a freaking apology for potentially, maybe, possibly hurting his feelings?

  But he couldn’t. Couldn’t go after her, couldn’t get out of the chair, couldn’t, in fact, do anything except grab hold of the table while the most unbelievable feeling of suction rose through his legs to his torso and up across his chest like a flood tide.

  Could he be having a heart attack? He was only thirty-four! Headlines and Facebook links and Sponsor My Walkathon email pleas flooded his mind with details about unexpected deaths, early-onset illnesses, it-could-happen-to-you disasters.

  He looked at the people around him, obliviously chatting and eating and sipping coffee. He glanced at the breakfast congealing on his plate, the fork quivering beside it, his coffee jumping in the cup as if electrified.

  His fingers ached as they clutched the edge of the table. His body compressed in on itself—collarbone into ribs, ribs into waist, waist into hips—like a giant wave pressing down on his shoulders, squishing him into a smaller and smaller square, like the paper-covered blocks his parents used to get out of their trash compactor.

  Except he got smaller still, down to a shoe box, then a milk carton, until finally . . . finally . . .

  He was inhaled by his smartphone. Into his smartphone.

  It was like getting flushed down a toilet, or being sucked out an airplane window at thirty-five thousand feet.

  He could only tell what was happening because, while everything else shrank, the cell phone got bigger and bigger, eventually looming like a skyscraper in front of him, until finally he was drawn into its center, tumbling down a darkened hallway until he ended up where he was now: an enormous cubicle-filled room.

  The carpet beneath his feet was of the gray industrial type, the exact shade and texture of the cubicle walls, which were fabric with thick plastic supports. They were just like the cube he’d had in his first job out of college as a copyeditor. He tipped his head to look into the one directly in front of him. Just like those at his first job, a desktop wrapped the inside of three of the walls, a rolling chair in front of it. There appeared to be nothing else there, no computer, no printer, no in- or outbox, no paper, pen, nothing. It was a brand-new cube waiting for a brand-new employee.

  It was so far from the sunny café patio, from the clatter of plates and the honking of horns, the slamming of car doors and the passing of pedestrians, the exodus of Macy . . . that he thought he must have passed out and be dreaming.

  Except it didn’t feel like a dream.

  For a moment the floor seemed to dip beneath his feet. Then he remembered to breathe, and shoved aside the ache in the center of his chest brought on by the thought of Macy. His hand reached for the phone holster at his belt and found it empty.

  What had happened? Had he died?

  He turned his head, looked down a mile-long hallway lined with cubes, the doorless entries expressing nothing, and saw only a row of cavities in an oversized mouth. He walked a few steps over and peered into the next cubicle. An Asian guy wearing a plaid shirt and a thick black watch was hunched over his desk, gazing at a wall full of screens.

  Thank god, he thought, the human presence calming him.

  “Excuse me,” he said, moving toward the opening. “Hello? Excuse me.”

  The guy didn’t respond, just moved his head fractionally from side to side as his gaze jumped from one screen to another. Had he not heard, or had he heard and decided to ignore him? Jeremy’s attention shifted to the wall of screens. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before. They had no edges, no glass, no seeming substance at all, except for the myriad images, charts, documents and moving pictures they seemed to be displaying. And there were dozens of them, some larger than others; a few were as large as televisions.

  “I’m sorry,” he said louder, unnerved by the guy’s absorption. “Can I ask you something?” Ordinarily he wouldn’t bother someone so deep in concentration, but panic was building inside him. What was this place?

  Still no response. Jeremy moved to the next cubicle. Another guy, this one heavyset and impeccably dressed in a medium-gray suit with white shirt and blue tie. He wore fashionable glasses, and he too stared at his wall full of screens.

  Jeremy cleared his throat. “Hi,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask you something?”

  Same thing. No response. Could he be invisible? Was this some kind of Ghost of Workplace Future–type experience? He touched the man’s shoulder. It felt real. But the suited man did little more than blink and reach up to brush the spot that Jeremy had touched as if ridding himself of a spider.

  Jeremy moved on. A woman inhabited the next one, brown hair, business attire, good posture, deaf as a post. Two more men, equally oblivious. He halted then, listening more closely. There seemed to be people in every cube, but there was not a sound to be heard. He walked the outer hallway created by cubicles on one side and a wall of the room on the other, passing one cubicle after another, all of them occupied by someone—man or woman, young or old, black or white, fat or thin, neat or messy—none of whom paid him one iota of attention. It freaked him out.

  After walking the length of the hall—which t
ook no small amount of time—he stood on tiptoe, only to see a static sea of zigzagging cubicle walls. Above them lay an endless expanse of rectangular fluorescent lights; in front of him, an endless gray hallway. It was dizzying.

  His heart raced, and sweat broke out along his hairline. He turned to go back to where he started, hoping to find the way out, but all he discovered when he arrived back at the empty cube was a name tag attached to the outer wall.

  Jeremy Abbott

  The sight of his own name caught him in the solar plexus like a punch.

  He gasped, then forced an exhale.

  He was in hell. He had to be. Or some really, really weird dream. But he hadn’t fallen asleep and he felt more lucid than he had in years. Also more terrified.

  His hand reached again for the cell phone case on his belt, but the moment he touched it he remembered it was empty. He’d only wanted to know the time. He looked around the room again, this time for a clock, and realized with a sinking feeling that there was none. In hell, he thought, time probably didn’t exist.

  His heart climbed into his throat, deciding to pound furiously there and block his windpipe. Fearing he might faint, he grabbed for the chair in “his” cubicle and plopped into it. It rolled and struck the desk with its back. Jeremy planted his feet and put his head between his knees, breathing deeply. A sound like a computer booting up had him rising nearly as swiftly.

  Suddenly, on what had been the plain gray fabric walls of his cube, appeared the same collection of screens he’d seen on the other people’s walls.

  His eyes took in the sight, flicking from one to the other, and only a moment passed before he recognized what he was looking at. Apps! More specifically, smartphone apps. There were the calendar, settings, maps, messages, email, phone, web browser. The stock market. And then there were Redfin, Facebook, Twitter, TV Guide, NFL, Soccer, Tennis Channel—all the personal apps he had on his phone—and as he looked at them, they opened. He was controlling his iPhone with his mind! He looked around, wanting to tell someone, because this was freaking awesome. A mind-controlled smartphone!

  But of course all those other people already knew it. No wonder they’d been too absorbed to hear him. Either that or they had literally been absorbed.

  Was that what had happened? Had he been transported into the future, where—where what? He was his cell phone?

  Novelty turned into nausea.

  Then he remembered the words Macy had said just before standing up and dumping him: Someday you’re going to get sucked right into that thing and nobody will ever see you again.

  * * *

  Macy strode down the street, swallowing over the lump in her throat and blinking to stop tears from overflowing her eyelids. She paused and looked up at the sky, willing them back into her tear ducts even as another wave of regret washed over her.

  She was crying, on the street, over a guy. What had become of her?

  She remembered the first time she’d noticed the problem—or rather, noticed how big of a problem it was. She and Jeremy had taken a hike to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. The air had been soft with summer’s last breath and the leaves were falling, crunching under their feet as they walked. They made it to the top, bursting out of the woods onto a rocky outcropping that showed nothing but rolling hills and a carpet of trees transitioning from green to orange, yellow and red. The breeze had kicked up, gently moving her hair from her forehead, and she’d gasped at the beauty before her, feeling as if the whole world was a magical place. It was a moment of such sublime happiness that she couldn’t think of another place on the planet she’d rather be.

  This is it, she’d thought. This is the guy. This is what I’ve been searching for my whole life.

  She’d turned to Jeremy, buoyant to be sharing it with him, convinced he had to be feeling it too, the profound connection, the certainty that this was something special, only to find him looking at his phone, thumb pushing screens aside, eyes riveted.

  It struck her so hard, she couldn’t help it; she’d wanted to cry. She felt crushed. Had she fallen into the classic trap of believing that because she felt something, he did too? Was he here just to placate her? Was this the kind of moment, the kind of shared activity, that would disappear completely as the relationship aged? Would they end up at the same kitchen table inhabiting completely different worlds?

  After a minute, perhaps sensing her silence, he looked up with an oblivious grin and said, “Can you believe it? I’ve got a signal up here!”

  She’d turned away quickly, blinking back tears of disillusionment, and said something about the view, at which point he had joined her on the rock. But she could tell he wasn’t where she was, that he had no conception of the magic he had squelched.

  By the time they’d gone to their respective homes, changed clothes and gotten back together for dinner that night she’d shaken most of it off, and the next morning he’d been charming at breakfast. Though he’d been checking work emails when she came downstairs, he’d put the phone down the moment he became aware of her.

  “She’s alive!” he’d joked, and those sleepy gray eyes of his smiled. He wore a faded sweatshirt and well-worn jeans, his wavy hair tumbled wildly on his head like he hadn’t even glanced in a mirror, and she felt her heart lurch at the beauty of him.

  She, on the other hand, had scrubbed her face, applied emergency makeup from her purse, and tried to casual-ize the outfit she’d worn the night before by going barefoot in her black skinny jeans and leaving her white shirt untucked.

  “We’ve got to get you a pair of sweats to keep here,” he said, rising to wrap her in a good-morning hug.

  She put her arms around him and breathed in the laundry-fresh scent of his T-shirt. The feeling of rightness returned, and she pictured them sitting around in their pj’s on Sunday mornings, reading the paper and sharing the interesting bits. She didn’t need to hike; they’d find other things to do together, things that he found special.

  “How did you sleep?” His voice was intimately low, vibrating against her cheek where her face pressed against his chest.

  “Like a coma patient.”

  The sound of his chuckle, and the feel of it against her body, made her toes curl. She squeezed him tighter.

  “Let me get you some coffee.”

  “Coffee,” she breathed, starting to let go of him.

  But he held her tighter and said, “Nope, we can do this. Trust me. Follow my lead.” And he shuffled her over to the coffeemaker, where he poured her a cup one-handed and then prepared it exactly the way she liked it: dollop of cream, spoonful of sugar.

  Laughing, she took it from him with one hand and sipped. “Perfect. But this could get awkward when you make me breakfast. How are you going to peel the potatoes for the hash browns?”

  He laughed. “Madam, you underestimate me.” He shuffled them over to the freezer, pulled it open, extracted a box of Bob Evans breakfast sandwiches and tossed it toward the microwave. “Voilà. Breakfast.”

  She laughed, her smile feeling unquenchable, and said, “Mr. Abbott, you’re an amazing man.”

  Those ridiculously lashed eyes gazed down at her for a long moment, making her feel every kind of beautiful. “You’ve got it backward,” he said softly. “I’m an amazed man, Ms. Serafini. Every day more amazed, by you.” And he’d kissed her. Kissed her with the gentle finesse of a man falling in love.

  She had swan-dived off the edge then, and felt herself willing to give everything for the man who made her feel like this. He was present for this magic, she’d thought, and that was enough.

  She’d been so happy she hadn’t even minded when, three minutes later as she was opening the box of Bob Evans breakfast sandwiches, he’d been back at the table, absorbed in his iPad.

  Now, remembering how she’d duped herself made her feel even sadder. She was just like all the girls in those anti-smartphone videos, the
girls looking lost as their boyfriends ignored them for their phones. The girls she’d chalked up as having chosen to love rather than be loved, like wallflowers satisfied with a wink from the cute guy, or spinsters secretly in love with their married bosses.

  She wasn’t like that. She refused to be. And so she’d made the only decision she could: to leave the man she cared about because she’d rather be alone than love a man who was not in love with her. Because since that lovely morning it had become increasingly clear that what she felt was a thousand percent more intense than what he did. How else to explain his ever-decreasing attention, the diminishing eye contact, the dwindling ability to pay attention to the moment for more than five minutes at a time? How else to reconcile that instead of her presence in his life lessening his phone/tablet/screen obsession, he had instead gotten more comfortable indulging it around her?

  So she steeled herself, willed the tears away, and reminded herself she’d done the right thing. As she turned up her street, eyes on her apartment building, she remembered countless other times she’d tried to talk to him, only to end up addressing the top of his head as he scrolled through his phone’s many offerings. And she knew that more and more lately she’d found herself talking more quickly, so as to hold his interest long enough to finish her story before he reached for the holster at his belt. And then there was the fact that she’d started making it a point not to ask any question that could be looked up online, so as not to lose him to the Internet for the next five minutes. And how many zillions of minutes had she wasted waiting while he searched for some answer, some inconsequential detail, before the conversation could resume?

  The evidence was overwhelming.

  He didn’t even look at her anymore. The soulful eye contact from their early relationship was now a thing of the past. She would estimate fifty percent of the time they were together he was looking down at the phone in his hands. It was like competing with another woman who was always with them, inertly smug with her ability to know all, provide all and triumph over anything Macy had to offer.