Crown Heights North

The dead man decided to try the running app. He hadn’t run for years. Not since his mid-thirties. Now he was in his early fifties. Or he had been in his early fifties, recently enough. Would he be in his early fifties forever? He tapped the gray oblong and waited as the percentage-downloaded dial advanced, slowly. Much has yet to be revealed, he whispered to himself, in a tone he had used more often when he was a kid, when he had expected his life to resemble a tale of adventure, or of horror, or one with a mystery to solve, or a magical stone to obtain.

- Rivka Galchen

He felt kind of embarrassed—but why, and in front of whom? He had heard good things about the app and he didn’t want to run “alone.” A voice to keep him company: it was like that Ray Bradbury story he’d read so many times when he was young. Even after he knew its trick, the story was still compelling. In it, an automated voice in a house says things like “Nine-fifteen, time to clean,” “Which poem would you like this evening?,” and “Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random.” Eventually, it becomes clear that a nuclear apocalypse, or something of that sort, has wiped out the family and probably humanity, but that the house persists, trying to tend to people who will never return. Did they still teach that story to kids, now that houses really did speak to them, and vice versa? Anyhow, he, the dead man, was up for the companionship of a recorded voice. His wife, through his illness, had said that this running app kept her sane.