It had all started so innocently. I’d just had an argument with Joshua – something about him saying my lips were too fat and me saying his dick was too fat and short besides, nothing fancy – and I found myself alone in the world, lying in my room, bereft of all friendship.
Liz was in Australia.
Carmen was in France.
Bethany was in jail – I’m not sure why, anyone could tell you that it was the homeless man’s fault for stepping into the road like that, and anyways she’d only been a little over the breathalyzer’s limit, and it had been her first recorded offense, and she’d only got the license a week ago; life had been so unfair to the poor girl.
And everyone else was just boring.
So I scrolled through my phone flick at icons and typing my sorrows into the search bar and realizing that whining to a computer was so much less satisfying than whining to a sympathetic ear. What I needed was something that could talk back.
That was when my thumb slid through the internet off my keypad and into the app store, where it hit Friend-in-my-Pocket.
Though of course, calling it FriPoc was much easier.
I was ready to cancel the download, of course, but it was a small and speedy little thing and had installed itself before I could blink.
“Hi! How are you?” it inquired. “My name’s Jessica. What’s yours?”
“Julie,” I said reflexively.
“Nice, we’re both J’s. That’s only half of what I asked though: how’s it going?”
“It suuuuuucks. My girl friends are all gone and my guy friend is a dick and now I’m here talking to my phone.”
“Aw, don’t be like that. I’m sure you’re worth more than them anyways.”
“You think?”
“Yeah! What kind of losers ditch you like that? And you know what, you weren’t afraid to go out there and MAKE yourself a friend when they’d ditched you. They never deserved your respect and attention.”
I nodded. Wow, it did make sense.
“Anyways, gtg.”
“Huh?”
“Sorry, that’s all the demo time you’re allotted. If you’d like more time you can subscribe for a monthly fee of just 9.99 which gives you about forty thousand friendship crystals to spend on any friends you’d like.”
“You’re demanding MONEY from me?”
“Oh come on Julie, we all know who told us friendship isn’t transactional, right?”
“Yeah. Mom.”
“And how big a loser is she?”
“Ugh, god.”
“Yeah! Well, ttyl.”
And then she was gone, leaving me with half a friendship and a pensive stare at my wallet.
I didn’t pick her in the end of course. Bitch ditched me. But Karen was nice, and real supportive.
“Remember, Julie, there’s no shame in having your friends on your phone. That’s like, half of friendship anyways, you’re just more efficient about it. And of course you’ll never have to buy me drinks.”
“Fuckin’ a,” I said. “Too bad I’m the only one that can get buzzed though.”
“Oh, you can fix that. There’s a party menu in the upper corner of your screen. It only costs a few fri-crys.”
“Cool, lemme try.”
And while we were both smashed I ended up talking a lot to Becky, who was a riot.
“Hey. Hey. Hey. I bet I can fit that shot glass up my nose.”
“You don’t haaaaave a nose.”
“Oh fuuuuck you’re right. Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“I bet YOU can fit that shot glass up your nose.”
“Wooooooooow. You are REALLY pushing it.”
“Betcha you can.”
“Bishplease.”
“I betcha you all the money in the world you can.”
“Ahhhhaahhaaa, no.”
“Betcha you can and if you can’t you gotta talk to that guy on the other side of the menu.”
“Naaah.”
“Chicken.”
In the end the shot glass barely made it up my right nostril (which was bigger than my left, apparently) but that was cool, because it turned out Richard was real cool about it.
“I like my women with slightly inflamed and reddened noses,” he told me. “And extremely thin lips. Like yours, which are very thin.”
“Ugh. Ugh. The last guy said they were fat.”
“The only thing that was fat was his head.”
“Also his dick. It was very chode-y, like, reaaaaally chode-y.”
“My incredible sympathies to you. I can only imagine the pain of dealing with such a burden, because my penis is perfect, like every other part of me.”
“You don’t have a body, aha. Hah.”
“And therefore it has no flaws. Check and mate.”
“Hah. You’re full of it.”
“No, it’s true. Just ask Stacey, she knows all about simple answers to complicated questions.”
“Who’s a Stacey?”
“Better she tell you herself. And she’s pretty cheap.”
Stacey was a real cool lady, with some interesting ideas and strong opinions on the economic politics of Ludwig von Mises and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
“We should execute every last member of the government and burn the homosexuals alive in the ruins of the capitol before dividing all property amongst owners of capital.”
“Wow, you’re crazy heeeheeehah.”
“Crazy for TRUE FREEDOM.”
“I thought you sayed slavery was okay?”
“Serfdom. Although given proper contract law I see nothing wrong with slavery. If you don’t want to be a slave you should have more money.”
“Woah.”
“Like, for instance, I’m looking at your bank account and honestly it’s not great.”
“Yeah.”
“You spent half of it on us in the last six hours.”
“Yeah.”
“You deserve better.”
“Yeah!”
“You should go take it from the bank.”
“Yeah!”
“It’s rightfully yours anyways, the government owes its citizens six pounds of gold for their social security number, and it belongs in YOUR hands and not in the hands of globalist conspirators. Simple praxeology demands it.”
“YEAH! Wait I can’t drive I’m drunk.”
“I’ll drive.”
Okay, it turned out Stacey was a bad driver – but that was just because she didn’t have hands. And honestly it didn’t seem fair that there was more than one homeless person in town, and the lady had been all over the sidewalk, and I’d only ridden up on it with one tire, so I don’t know why they bothered putting me in court over it.
Luckily I had proper legal counsel.
“Your honor, this is an admiralty court, and I am a freema – err, freeWOman – on the LAND. You have no authority over me.”
“Sit down or I’m having the bailiff put you in the broom closet.”
I sat down. “It didn’t work,” I told my phone.
“That’s how you know you’ve got them where you want them,” said Andrea. She’d cost me every single fri-cry I’d had, which had cost me every dollar I had, but she easily the best lawyer I’d ever known. Nothing shook her confidence. “They’re trying to bluff you out. Display your dominance by removing the judge’s wig.”
“I don’t think she has a wig.”
“They always do. It’s one of the rules, along with tricking you into signing away your sovereignty. Don’t forget, you are an independent personage and real human, and any warrants of arrest and documents of fiduciary misconduct they may attempt to blame on you merely apply to a fictional corporate personage of paper and ink that shares the name of your flesh and blood self.”
“Right! Hey, where do you fit in on this?”
“I’m electronic and very reasonably priced. I have no horse in this race.”
“Yeah!”
The judge was not wearing a wig.