iThink the App

Chapter 3

Beacon Street, usually filled with college kids looking to get drunk, laid, or both, had been transformed into a war zone. Tippi navigated her orange Prius C through the overturned couches, derailed MBTA trains, burning cars, and swirls of airborne garbage, while David clung to the passenger seat. They swerved around a man who was staring at his phone while taking a shit in the middle of the street.

Gunshots rang through the air. Tippi stepped on the gas.

Tippi shook her head. "I knew it. I knew it! This app would be the end of the world."

"Look out!" David shouted.

Tippi jerked the car to the side, barely missing a couple having sex in the middle of the road.

"Holy lord," Tippi said. "It really is the end." She glanced at David; he was sending a text to Mitch. "Call him again."

"I just did. It went straight through."

"Then try him again!" Tippi shouted.

"Okay! Okay!" David barked as he dialed. He dialed and put the phone to his ear.

Several rocks flew at the Prius' windshield, sending spiderweb cracks across the center. Tippi floored it, glancing over her shoulder as a group of teenage boys and girls hurled more rocks, denting the Prius' rear bumper.

"Damn it!" David said. "Voicemail again."

"Can't they just shut off the app?" Tippi said.

"You'd freaking think."

***

Two armored trucks escorted Professor Mearsteen's Tesla Model S through the military blockade outside of the iThink Corp. Building. Soldiers in body armor threw tear gas grenades at crazed people on the other side of the barricade, sending them running.

Mearsteen ran into the server room, fuming. "What the hell happened, Boyd?" she yelled, then bumped into something heavy dangling from the ceiling.

When she realized what it was, she shrieked.

In front of her, Professor Boyd hung from a noose made of computer wires and cables. His eyes bugged out, and the tear streaks running down his cheeks were still fresh. A handwritten note was pinned to his chest: "I'm sorry."

***

Mitch slept face-down in his bed, snoring. Rachel sat on the edge, in her blouse and underwear.

She picked up her phone and left the room.

She walked into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. She sipped it, reading her phone as she drank. The iThink brain spun, and flashed a message.

She paused, mid-sip. She looked at the set of Wüsthof knives in a block on the counter next to her.

Rachel grabbed a nine-inch steel knife from the block.

***

Tippi's Prius pulled outside of Mitch's apartment building. The building's facade was covered in splatters of wet garbage, and broken glass peppered the ground.

Tippi and David leapt out of her car and ran towards his apartment. The front door was wide open, the lock broken. As they neared it, rocks smashed Tippi's rear windshield, spraying glass on the back seat. She screamed.

They ran inside.

***

Mitch twitched in his sleep, smiling. Rachel opened his bedroom door, casting a silhouette on the bed: the rectangular shape of her phone in one hand, and the long, pointed shadow of the knife in her other.