iPhools

(Scene: The bridge of a 23rd century starship just after a huge pop bang boom!)

Captain Kirk

My god, what was that Spock?

First Officer Spock

We just went through some type of antimatter hurricane in space. We are presently following the heels of a giant hurricane on your home planet.

Kirk

I could use a weekend back home.

Spock

The computer indicates that it must have also been a time warp. The year is 10 iP.

Kirk

Ten years after the first iPhone?

Spock

Apparently. I’m picking up images of humans with earplugs visually submersed in the tiny screens they hold before them and follow.

Kirk

It must be the late teens of the twenty first century when the computer companies gave up on robots and decided to enslave their customers instead.

Spock

I’ve read that it took less than a decade. 

Kirk

The amazing thing is how blatant Apple was. They literally called the master bot iPhone. The small i was the customer who was surrendering himself to the capitalized super gadget. 

Spock

Yes, it was marketed as a useful tool when in reality it was turning the customers into useful tools. 

Kirk

App and plan buyers. Apple had competition but with people lining up for hours to sacrifice themselves there were more than enough suckers to go around.

Spock 

Smartphones and idiot buyers.

Kirk

In no time the foolphones were replacing human interaction.

Spock

Every one of the meager cognitive abilities humans had evolved were being replaced by apps.

Kirk

My grandmother told me her grandmother couldn’t add or subtract, had any idea where she was without GPS. She didn’t even have any idea what to feel or where emotions might come from outside of emojis. 

Spock

Perhaps it was senility.

Kirk

This is when she was twenty six and at the top of her class at Harvard Business School.

Spock

Didn’t a tycoon run the United States with Morse code in that period?

Kirk

I think Morse code was in the war century. Tweets. He ran the free world with Tweets.

Spock

Like Tweety Bird?

Kirk

Yes, the symbol was a bird. He must have been Tweety Bird or Twitter Bird. Blond fellow. Big pants.

Spock

Within a generation the eyesight of children was closer to a mole’s than that of their parents. The four fingers on each hand began to web and thumbs developed an extra joint. The memory area of the brain shrank from a baseball to a peanut. 

Kirk

People constantly documented their activities and tried to seduce their phones with naughty or humorous photographs of themselves to prove to their masters that they were worthy of them. 

Spock

From the images I’m collecting presently it appears that we are at the lowest point for the humans of Earth. Sensors are picking up what appear to be electronic mating calls. Apparently humans couldn’t even mate without their phones. 

Kirk

That was a long time developing and for many phone procreation was as far as they progressed.

Spock

Frankly Captain, I am surprised your species survived.

Kirk

The citizens of every country handed over their entire lives, relationships, finances, education, sanity and sovereignty over to Internet computers.

Spock

How did they ever free themselves from their phony fetish?

Kirk

Something newer and shinier came along.

Don Arrup

Satire1