I’m such an easy mark for tech gear and apps, a true tech-addict. I never stood a chance with the PAUSE marketing hype. They loaded the ad with emotional hooks.
Tired of feeling stressed?
Tired of deadlines?
Feel like you’ll never get ahead?
.
You need a break!
Relax like a champion!
.
You need PAUSE.
I admired the three-two-one countdown sentence structure. I scanned the ad copy, looking for the price. I was ready for it to be high. But when I reached the bottom of the advertisement, in extra-large font, the application price was listed.
FREE! (For a limited time.)
Smart–a single exclamation point. If there had been a ridiculous string of them, I would’ve written the app off as a scam. But they skillfully pulled me in. Two seconds after reading the ad, I was on autopilot. I hit download and installed the program. Eager to take a pause right away, I launched the application. An error message appeared on my screen:
PSP Gloves not detected. The application will only function with the gloves installed. ORDER your gloves here.
Gotcha!
I noticed the gloves in the ad, but in haste, I assumed they were optional. I was wrong; the application wouldn’t launch without them. At least that’s what the app told me.
Damn. There goes my pause.
I clicked the link to see what the true cost of PAUSE was.
There it is. So much for PAUSE being a free application.
The price of the gloves was a lot, like a ridiculous amount. I’m embarrassed to say how much the gloves are, so I won’t.
They do look cool. I love that mesh-metal material.
They looked like something a knight might have worn. Chainmail? Is that the word? Sterling silver, so not perhaps as heavy as the gloves worn by King Arthur’s knights, but still a neat peripheral. I reread the advertisement.
I do need a PAUSE.
If I had hesitated, I might not have bought them. But I had just paid off my AMEX card.
What the hell.
I finalized the transaction. The order confirmation informed me that I would have my gloves within 24 hours.
I guess I’m not PAUSING til tomorrow.
I scribbled a note in my daily planner reminding me to check my mail the following day.
The next day, the gloves arrived earlier than I was expecting. I was on my way to work, so I put the package into my backpack and decided I would check it out in the breakroom at work.
The gloves hugged my hands beautifully. I paired the gloves with my phone and launched the application. But then there was another problem for me to deal with.
Right glove not fully charged. Proceed? Yes / No
The yes and no buttons were boxed in green and red boxes. I remembered from the ad that I could pause in as little as three minutes. I eyed the breakroom clock and saw that I had fifteen minutes before my shift started.
Let’s do this! Time to get my pause on!
I touched the yes box, removed the gloves, and shoved them into my backpack. The application displayed a percentage complete widget.
Seriously, those gloves, which I didn’t need were half my rent. This better be worth it.
I thought it was weird they were required to open the application, but not to operate it.
Duh! They want to get their money.
I cringed when I remembered the price and made a mental note to recalculate my monthly budget to account for this expenditure.
Mike and Scott entered the breakroom, talking about a show on Netflix.
“Flanagan, hit this one out of the park, bro. You need to watch it,” Scott said to Mike.
Is he talking about the new House of Usher series?
“I heard it was good. My son watched it and said it was decent,” Mike said.
“Decent? Dude! Flanagan created an entire world stitched out of the major Poe short stories.”
I was right. And so is Scott. The Netflix series is terrific.
“Nice.”
“Nice? Decent? Kittens are nice. Man, this is genius. Plus, there are a bunch of Easter eggs.
Mike noticed me.
“Hey, Steve. We still on for sushi, Wednesday?”
“Yup,” I said in my most can’t-you-see-I’m-pausing-here tone.
“Cool,” he said, catching my meaning and turning to the sink to wash his hands.
Scott finished his session notes then stepped up to the sink next to Mike and washed his hands.
“So, which ones?” Mike asked.
“Ones?” Scott said.
Duh. He’s asking you about the stories in Usher.
“Which Poe stories did they include?”
“Well, The Fall of the House of Usher, of course. Then there’s also The Pit and the Pendulum, let me think, the Tell-Tale Heart, oh, I almost forgot my favorite–The Masque of the Red Death.
The PAUSE app finished loading, and I looked at my screen.
Do not touch anyone without the PSP gloves.
You mean the absurdly expensive gloves that do nothing?
Nothing happened.
Huh. Is this it?
I saw nothing on the screen. Nothing conveying any pau-some goodness to my being.
I got ripped off!
I thought again about the narrow margins of a life as a massage therapist.
Half my rent.
I noticed the breakroom had fallen quiet. I looked up to see what Mike and Scott were doing.
What the hell? Are they both having a seizure?
Mike and Scott were standing statue-still at the sink. It looked as though their taps were still running, but the sound had changed. It was a much lower frequency. I got up to investigate. When I drew near them, I could see the columns of water that stood between the two taps and the bottom of the sink. The water was moving, falling to the sink as it ought, but at a snail’s pace.
Oh my God!
Had I paused time for myself or everyone else in the world except me?
Look closer.
I leaned in and scrutinized Mike’s hands. They were moving slowly. He was washing his hands at one one-hundredth his normal speed.
Crazy.
I looked over my shoulder at the analog clock on the wall above the appointment calendar. The second hand was stopped.
No, look closer. Watch it closely.
I stood there for nearly two minutes before the second hand lurched forward to indicate the 11th second.
I’m pausing. Look at me, Dad. I’m pausing.
It looked as though Mike and Scott had come untethered from reality. That or I had. But it made sense. This pause app worked. I could take an hour’s nap in thirty-six seconds.
Something is wrong with this.
The quality of the light was wrong.
It looked stale.
I’d never described light as stale, but that’s how it looked. Like it was about to expire.
This must be how Alice felt.
I was forgetting something. Looking around, I doubled back to the sink.
They’re pranking me. Mike rigged the clock and the water somehow. They’re just standing there, doing their best not to laugh at me.
I brought my index finger to Scott’s cheek.
Don’t touch him!
I touched him.
It had been less than two minutes of pause time since I read the warning: Do not touch anyone without the PSP gloves.
Damn.
If the light in the room before looked stale, it now looked psychedelic. Like the light show at a Pink Floyd concert, maybe.
I must stop this.
This is not right.
Where is my phone?
I looked around the room for it, but then remembered it was in my left hand.
The app screen had a single button labeled: “End Your Pause Session.”
I touched it.
The sound immediately returned to normal.
“…it better than Midnight Mass,” Scott said.
“Really? You raved about that one. That’s why I finally broke down and watched it.”
“You never told me that.”
“Yep. I finally watched it, so you’d shut the hell up.”
They both laughed.
“I’m going to check it out,” Scott said.
I felt like I was falling without moving. Not falling down, falling away. Linearly. But without moving from where I stood.
A memory, a fragment of something I’d read earlier. I skim. I’m a skimmer. Some warning in the ad copy. I read it fast, too fast.
Physical contact with your bare hands can cause temporal abnormalities. ALWAYS wear the PSP Gloves for safe pausing.
Temporal abnormalities? What the heck are those?
Something was happening to me.
That’s not right though, is it?
I thought about it some more.
Something is un-happening to me.
I heard the door open behind me and flinched, causing Mike and Scott to notice my unusually close position to them.
Were those their names?
What is happening to me?
The one on the left turned to face me.
“Can I help you, sir? This is the employee breakroom. The bathrooms are right next door. Was that where you were headed?”
The one on the right finished washing his hands and stepped to the towel dispenser.
Didn’t I used to work here?
The falling sensation continued, but it had slowed. I felt memories leaking from my mind.
Temporal abnormalities indeed.
I once thought a lot about changing everything, a fresh start. Move to a new locale and begin over. Rebuild my life from the ground up.
I think I just did. I am a tabla rasa now–a blank slate.
But I wished I could remember what I was before. I closed the app and vowed to never use it again.
Stories by Shawn 