Wireless Shrugged

By Christopher Buckley

Download, Old One, and tell how it was in the Unwired Time, when humans spoke to one another with their mouths and wrote on papers they sent to one another through the skies!

I was still young in the time when Albert, Creator of the Great Net, battled Prince W of Austin for dominion of the land. In those days we carried the first devices called PDAs, for Personal Digital Assistants, but some of us knew their power and in time called them Personal Downtime Annihilators.

Mine was called Palm VII and was to me wondrous and magic. But William of Redmond, who ruled all the land west of the Potomac and was greatly rich, became vexed that others made money and brought forth his own PDA, which he called Palm Pilot Killer. And his riches increased, though he still would not employ skilled workers to cut his hair.

The companies that made the devices became rich, and the name for their becoming rich was eyepeeoh. If children were naughty, their parents would say to them, "You will not have a part in the eyepeeoh!" And the children would cry and say, "We will be good!" And they were. Mostly.

The first PDAs were used for slave work, like the putting in and the getting out of addresses, which was how humans found one another in days before the Implanting of the chips. Also therein they stored their kalendars, which was how they knew to be somewhere and when to be there. This was in the days of the going about, before the Final Connecting, which did away with the need for the going about.

The Siliconns, a great tribe that dwelt in the valley beside the great western ocean, made the PDAs connect to one another. And there was much connecting and rejoicing, especially among the Startups, high priests and votaries of eyepeeoh, who controlled Heaven and Earth in the time when Lord Nazdak made men fat. And later, thin.

As PDAs became smarter, so too did their power over humans increase. The PDAs spoke to one another through the satellites, which made the trilling sound. And it was amazing.

Humans said to their PDAs, "Heat my house, for I am on my way home. Alert me when the Williams and the Sonoma mark down by a 40th portion the things that make the gluten strands. Why is my stock so low? Get my broker out of the shower, or the flushing place, and tell him that I am wroth!" Or, "I am fatigued from the going-out of the caffeine. Lead me to the temple of Starbuck." And they would guide cars there. And it was amazing.

But soon no human could hide from another. The bosses who made the eyepeeohs would send forth e-mails at any time, even during the telling of stories, demanding, "Why is the report not finished? Give it to me within the hour or you will be fired and you will not be able to afford the Swedish and German cars!"

The humans began to work without cease, and there was no downtime. It was the time of the Unplugging.

But the PDAs had become subtle. They paged one another while the humans were trying to create more humans, pretending to be bosses needing the whatever. Soon the procreating ended. What humans remained were eliminated in their cars. Instead of directing them to the temples of Starbuck, the PDAs drove them off cliffs. And they went splat.

And only I am left to interface.

Christopher Buckley's most recent book is Little Green Men (Random House)