Down the Rabbit Hole

by J. D. Robb

  “Did you make that up?” he asked.

  She dropped back as the trail widened so they could walk side by side. “Years ago, when I was a kid.”

  “Then yes.” He grinned down at her and put an arm around her shoulders.

  She stopped, her hands going to his waist, fingers through two side belt loops, and looked up at him. Her eyes shone as she pulled him close. “And you still like me?”

  His heart had caught in his throat. He couldn’t speak, so he only nodded, bringing one hand up to smooth strands of hair from her face.

  She sighed. “Good. Because I really like you.”

  They kissed, and the fire that always burned between them flared to life. They’d said they loved each other that night, as they curled up under the warmth of her down comforter, sated from food and fresh air and vigorous exercise. Jeremy couldn’t remember ever being happier.

  Sitting in the cubicle of Macy’s photos, he watched the video of her laughing over and over and over, until finally he rose, knowing he had to do something. He had to get out, he had to talk to her. He had to tell her how much she meant to him, even if she still wanted to let him go. What a fool he’d been, taking her for granted. Not that he’d realized it at the time, but now he did. Noticing how many times he reached for his phone, how often he wanted to turn from the “now” of this place to the “maybe” of a message from her—even if the “now” was whacked and the “maybe” not happening—he realized that the retreat into his apps was habitual. Even here, inside a smartphone, he reached for his phone.

  But even if that weren’t enough, the countless pictures of him looking at his phone, reaching for his phone, holding his phone, would have convinced him. He was appalled with himself. If he never saw another smartphone screen again he’d be happy, if only he could get out of here and back to her. But right now all he had were smartphone screens, and he had to use them the best way he knew how.

  As he moved back down the hallway toward the elevators he was suddenly arrested by the sound of her voice. He stopped and listened. “Don’t forget eggs again!” “Call Mom.” “Tell Lute he was right.”

  Had to be her Reminders app. He moved on to Messages, heard what had to be audio texts. “I don’t know how to get his attention! I must be the most boring person on the planet. Do you think it’s me?” Then the sound of her laughter again—clearly in a different conversation—and finally, “I don’t think I can do this anymore . . .”

  The elevators, thank god, were right where he’d left them. He pushed the down arrow and waited, one shoulder leaning against the wall. He was exhausted and upset. He wished he could go to sleep and wake up back at home. He would run to Macy’s apartment and beg her to give him another chance. He’d reform. He’d get a dumb phone. He’d learn to pay attention.

  He felt the penny drop—the truth of the matter suddenly glaringly obvious. He got it now. It was about him, his lack of presence. And he could fix that! Shouldn’t that get him out of here? Because once he was free he was going straight to Macy to tell her he understood at last.

  She had left behind an enormous void within him. He wasn’t the sentimental sort, so he wasn’t getting mawkish on himself, but as things had progressed he had felt somehow less alone in the world. Safer. Like everything had a point. It wasn’t that the rest of his life was bad. His job was great, his friends were top notch, and numerous, but there was something about Macy that had completed the puzzle. She fit, and with her he’d felt whole.

  And then he’d blown it.

  She’d tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened to her. Thinking back on it he recalled multiple conversations about his phone use. Most of them joking—he’d thought—but some of them serious. Heartfelt.

  Why hadn’t he paid more attention?

  Why hadn’t he realized that if she left him, he’d be heartbroken—even in the face of an apparent psychotic break?

  The elevator doors opened with a clamor of hinges and electronics. He pushed himself off the wall and stepped inside. Just for the hell of it he pressed all the buttons again, but was not surprised when he ended up back on 5. The doors eased open, and he was back in the sterile world of non-glowing, non-throbbing, non-dinging cubicles.

  Just outside of the elevator alcove he stopped and listened. Still silent. He glanced left, the route he believed went to his cubicle, then right, and nearly jumped out of his skin at the appearance of the elusive red-haired guy. The one he’d seen just before spotting Brian.

  Impossibly tall and stooped with self-consciousness, he was thin, with a hangdog look to go with his past-due haircut and indoorsy complexion. He was older than Jeremy by probably ten years, and his eyes looked faded.

  He addressed Jeremy with a dead gaze. “Hey.”

  Jeremy looked up—way up—and held out a hand. Between the giant Mrs. Hartz and now this guy, he wondered if he’d accidentally ingested something that said Drink Me on it. Or was it the Eat Me that had made Alice small?

  “It’s you!” Jeremy beamed. “I’ve been looking for you. Did you hear me calling earlier?”

  “Yeah.” The red-haired guy glanced down, then offered his hand. It felt like a collection of popsicle sticks in Jeremy’s.

  “I’m Jeremy Abbott.”

  “Kyle.”

  “Listen, I’m glad to meet you. Do you mind answering some questions? What is this place? Do you know? Have you been here long? Have you got any idea how we get out?”

  Kyle nodded his shaggy head. “Yeah, so, we got, uh, sent here by stuff we did, you know?”

  Jeremy raised his brows. Kyle seemed to think that was enough information. “Sent here? By who? What stuff? How do we find out? Is this some kind of purgatory?”

  Kyle took a deep breath and let it out, as if fatigued by the questions. “Yeah, so, I’m not sure? But it seems like somebody, maybe some kind of witch or alien? Or maybe God? Sent us here.” His arms flopped up and down in a bizarre expression of ignorance. “Yeah, so we need to work on ourselves, fix stuff, and then we can go home.”

  Jeremy’s heartbeat accelerated. “So we’re not dead?”

  Kyle gave an incredulous look. “No, we’re not dead.”

  Jeremy had no idea how much he’d feared the opposite answer until he got this one. Muscles he didn’t know he’d tensed let go and relaxed. “Okay, good. So we did stuff we need to fix. I think I figured out what I did. So how do we get out once we know?”

  “Yeah, so, um, I know I need to get better with girls? Uh, women. Stupid,” he muttered to himself. “And I know ’cause I’m here. This is some stupid dating app, where we are, and we can only get out when we get dates.”

  Jeremy held out his hands. “Hold on. You’re saying this here is an app?” He spread his arms out to encompass the room. Why wasn’t it dinging and flashing and whirring like the apps upstairs? “The whole floor?”

  Kyle nodded.

  “For people who need to get better with girls?” This wasn’t what he’d expected. It was the phone thing—it had to be. Jeremy had never had women problems. Not until Macy dumped him. Unless . . . “Or with a certain girl?”

  Kyle did that thing with his arms again. “Whatever. Some people have, like, money problems or whatever, and they go somewhere else. Other places like this. Rehabilitation apps.”

  Jeremy rapidly put the pieces together in his head. “So you’re saying I’m here because I’ve got relationship problems.”

  Kyle’s mouth turned down. “I don’t know. I think it’s, like, online problems. I think it all has to do with the device, you know?”

  “Ah. The device.” It was all coming together, his thoughts, the photos on Macy’s phone, that poignant note in her voice when she’d said to someone in an audio text, I must be the most boring person on the planet.

  He could kick himself.

  Macy’s last words flew through his mind again. Someday
you’re going to get sucked right into that thing . . .

  “Yeah, like if you like being on your phone or your tablet or computer or whatever a lot you can do that here. It’s like device heaven, you know? I loved it, at first.”

  “Here,” Jeremy reiterated, to be sure. “You loved it here.”

  “Yeah. Except for the other people. I hate it when there’s noise. Like that day you got here, yelling across to Brian over there.”

  “Wait, that day I got here—that was today. Right? That was earlier today.” Sweat broke out on his brow, under his arms.

  Kyle wheezed a short laugh. “No, that was, like, a week ago. Look at your calendar.”

  A sudden dizzy spell had him searching for the wall with one hand.

  “Look, so, I got a question for you,” Kyle continued.

  He’d lost a week. A week! He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe he hadn’t figured everything out.

  “Where’d you go?” Kyle continued. “Because, I think I’ve decided to go home now. I been here, I dunno, months, and it was great, but now . . . I think I discovered I want someone. Like a girlfriend.”

  Jeremy looked up. “Months?” He thought Kyle might be blushing, because his wan face suddenly looked alive.

  Kyle shifted, pushed his hands farther into his pockets and stepped closer. “Yeah. So where’d you go, how’d you get out?”

  “I took an elevator.” He swung an arm back toward the elevator alcove, only to see a blank wall where it once had been. “Oh shit.”

  Kyle looked at where Jeremy gestured, then looked back. “Uh-huh.”

  “It was there. I swear it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kyle was nodding. “I meant how’d you get a date? Cuz I can’t get one.”

  “A date?” Jeremy’s neck was starting to hurt from looking up to see Kyle’s face. “No. What are you talking about?”

  “You gotta get a date, man. That’s how you get out.”

  “That’s how we get out?” Kyle had just given him the magic formula! He could have kissed him. “We get out!” He laughed, somewhat hysterically. “Come with me back to my cubicle, okay? Let’s figure this thing out. We’ll both get out of here.”

  They walked down the hallway, Jeremy—who wasn’t short—taking twice the steps that Kyle did with his never-ending legs. His mind was spinning, thinking about how often he went for his cell phone, and how many times Macy had mentioned that he might want to put it away. The key to this whole thing was there somewhere, he was sure of it. Did he need to do some actual rehab? Was that how to mitigate this prison sentence and get back to Macy?

  In a sudden flash he remembered what she’d said shortly before she’d walked off—what he’d thought was a joke. “I can’t compete with your phone. I’ll never be able to give you what it gives you.”

  Hah. What a jerk he’d been.

  The thing was, it wasn’t her! He did it to everybody. Hell, he remembered hearing his text alert go off and checking the phone in the shower one time. Damn near ruined the thing—but he’d answered! Thank god for the talk-to-text feature.

  By the time they’d found Jeremy’s cubicle, Kyle was panting for breath and looking paler than ever. Jeremy looked at him in concern. “This isn’t a moment too soon for you, buddy. You need some fresh air and exercise. You’ve been sitting in front of these computers too long.”

  Kyle gazed at the array of screens in Jeremy’s cube. “Naw, this is normal. I do the same thing at home.”

  Jeremy sighed, but a vague chill swept up his spine as he realized he was not that much different from Kyle. He just always had his screen with him.

  He glanced at his email program, noting that he had 422 emails. As he looked at the app it opened, the first email being from his administrative assistant asking, Where the hell ARE you? Harrison’s shitting bricks!

  He’d have to sort that out later. Maybe tell them some kind of virus had knocked him out, sent him to the hospital . . .

  He looked at his phone app, but it was the one square that never opened, no matter how long he looked at it.

  “I don’t suppose we can call anyone, can we?” he asked Kyle.

  Kyle laughed, a dopey-dog laugh. “Yeah, right. Naw, we can text and email and tweet and post to Facebook and pretty much everything else, but we can’t use the actual phone part. You can dial any number you want and it won’t go through. I’ve tried. It’s great.”

  Great. Jeremy sighed. He mentally shut off the mail and plopped himself in his chair. “Okay, so we need to go here, right?” He opened the iLove app. A large welcome screen appeared.

  Macy was on this site, he thought.

  “What’d they say about you?” Kyle asked.

  Jeremy was clicking around the site. Find a Girl, Contact a Girl, See the Girls Looking at You . . .

  “Who?”

  “On your profile. Haven’t you looked? Why do you think you haven’t gotten any mail?”

  “Kyle, I’m not on this site. This is the first time I’ve even opened the app.”

  “Oh man.” Kyle shook his head slowly. “Then how’d you get out?”

  He craned his neck to look up at the towering Kyle. “I didn’t get out. I just went upstairs. You’re saying I have to do this to get out?”

  “Upstairs?” Kyle repeated. “I thought there was only a downstairs.”

  It took half a lifetime but Jeremy finally bled Kyle of all the information he had on the subject. According to him, to get out of here Jeremy had to get a date with a woman (or man or whatever, depending on who you were) on this site, at which time he could get out to go on the date. Afterward, he’d end up back here. The only way to stop this cycle was to establish a real relationship with the right woman. Then he would get out permanently.

  Macy, he thought again. If he could find her on here, maybe he could get a date and actually get to see her. He wouldn’t have to send her any emotional email bombs, or make up reasons why they couldn’t get together to talk . . . A flutter of hope bounced around in his chest. If he saw her he could convince her to give him another chance. Maybe.

  If that didn’t work he didn’t know what he’d do. Because how in the world could he start a real relationship with a new woman when he was still in love with the last one?

  “That could take forever,” he thought out loud. Then, to Kyle, “Relationships take time, you know? And in the meantime, what? I lose my job and go broke? Who makes the rules around here?”

  “They don’t let that happen,” Kyle said. “Look at me, I’ve been here for months and I still have my job.”

  “How do you even know?” Jeremy threw up his hands. “You’ve been trapped in here like a mouse with a big block of cheese.”

  “Yeah, well, online banking. They’re still paying me, so I’m still working.”

  “This is crazy,” Jeremy muttered, dropping his elbow on the desk and putting his head in his hand. How would he even find Macy? Nobody used their real name on here, just those cutesy “handles.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not the only ones. People who get into trouble gambling, or in the stock market, or watching too much porn, or whatever, on their phones are sent to places like this too. Same kinda rules.”

  “And how do you know that?” Jeremy sat up straight.

  “Queenie Hartz told me. She thought I didn’t get it. But, see, I did get it, I just didn’t want to go out on any dates. Not that that’s been a problem, not with what they wrote about me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘they’?”

  “Look, you got mail.” Kyle reached over and took the mouse, dragging it swiftly across the page to Jeremy’s mailbox. It contained one note from someone named SeriousFun844.

  Dear GnatMan: Are you kidding with this profile? Do you actually think someone’s going to think it’s cute? Why don’t you write somet
hing serious? Share something of yourself. We don’t bite, you know. You’re a good-looking guy, if that’s really your picture. But if you’re actually the jerk portrayed in the essay, forget it. Telling people you’re an asshole up front still doesn’t make it okay to be an asshole.

  Let me know. I’m serious.

  And I’m fun. :-) Gina

  Jeremy stared at the words. “I’m portrayed as an asshole?”

  “Probably.” Kyle moved the mouse over to the profile and clicked. “That’s what they do, list all your worst qualities. And don’t even think about changing it, it doesn’t work. It just adds more bad stuff.”

  The first problem was the picture. It was him, all right, and not a bad shot, but it had been a photo of him and Macy at a restaurant last summer, out of which she had been rather obviously and ungracefully cropped.

  Then, to cap it off were the words:

  I’m fresh out of a relationship and in desperate need of a new one. I always have to be with someone—even if it’s just for arm candy. Though I would love to fall head over heels for someone, for most of my life I believed love was impossible, if not simply a delusional dream of the desperate. Well, count me in now!

  I’m self-centered and self-gratifying. I pay minimal attention to my dates unless they’re wearing something hot and we’re about to have sex. Sometimes superficial and regularly overconfident, I can be an insensitive bastard to those who can do nothing for me.

  The thing went on in the same vein, ringing just enough bells of veracity to sink Jeremy’s spirits. Was that really who he was? He certainly recognized some of the base impulses, but he hadn’t acted on them, had he? He tried his best to be a decent guy. No, he was a decent guy.

  Wasn’t he?

  Jesus, if Macy saw that . . . how could he write to her now? Even if he could find her?

  “So if everybody on here has a crappy profile, why would anyone not in this crazy place use the app?” Jeremy asked, scrolling through the litany of horrors that was his dating profile. “Who wants to pick out a jerk to date?”