Friend Ƶone

—She had a feeling. That by doing this, something would finally change.

Built on that house of cards called a premonition, Neon left her home on the evening of March 9th and tracing familiar steps, adventured to the heart of the city. Looking up at the night sky, blinded her; the moon in perigee trapped the Christmas-theme city in a silver moonbeam.

8:54 PM. The streets were crowded. Complicit in the shoulder-to-shoulder, shoe-stepping human contact, Neon blended in with the hustle and bustle. Spring was a few weeks away, the trees were still fast asleep. Lights adorned their branches dazzling the eye. Christmas jingles poured into the streets from loudspeakers on lamp posts. Enough hubbub and merriment to drown in—Neon stumbled through it all.

“Christmas City,” a fitting name, if ironic. Christianity itself had faded out of fashion ages ago, but someone in the City Arcology Plan adored the aesthetics of Christmas and decided to make an entire District with it. Atmospherically louder than a bomb whistling through the air, it was an otherwise quiet District.

Night was more active than the day. The young and the old milled about with no concern for appearances.

9:20 PM.

I’m earlier than I thought. Is she the sort to be there ten minutes early? Suppose I’m about to find out.

Neon took out her phone and searched her text messages. At the top of her inbox was a message with the subject “Re: Christmas and Chill?” The text itself had been delivered on behalf a web client; more a notification of a reply than a direct message. That was why there was no number or name in the sender box. The only explanation was to maintain a level of privacy for its users. The name of that app which held such a duplicitous intent was displayed as the Sender instead: Friend Ƶone. She opened the text to reconfirm the place and time of the meet-up.

[ Let’s meet in front of the Christmas Tree in Central Plaza tonight at 9:30. I’ll be wearing a silver coat, a striped wool hat, black skirt and leggings. Can’t miss me. ]

The de***********ion was fairly simplistic, but detailed enough. Neon swept her golden eye across the May-December couples and single men. A silver coat, and a striped hat. There was only one figure wearing that outfit and it didn’t belong to the slovenly, bald, fat man she’d been expecting.

—

Earlier that night…

Yeah, it’s better if I don’t.

With that thought, Sea got off the train seven stops early. It just so happened to be the stop at Central Plaza. She lit a cigarette and imagined she could feel the nicotine spread a pleasantness through her body. It was more than those annoying Christmas songs she heard day-in, night-out.

I’m probably going to hear it from her again. She could already hear that nagging voice going on and on about how it’s not healthy and it stinks.

The conversations she’d been having with her wife had gotten robotic as of late. Was it because they’d known each other for so long? No, they’d just been having the same conversations on repeat for the last year and a half. An exchange of the bare minimum.

She’d gotten tired of those conversations. Tired of the silence in between. Walking out was a lot harder than coming home late, she’d learned. At first, a co-worker who was retiring was having a celebration. Then, someone had screwed up so she had to fix their mistake. The trains were delayed. Eventually, the excuses came more consistently than the trains and her wife gave up asking why she didn’t hail a cab.

The question for Sea, increasingly difficult to answer, then became, “Well, how should I kill the time?”

It became her routine, killing time after hours until she was sure the love of her life had fallen asleep.

What did we even talk about today? … I don’t even know. Did we?

A relationship on the rocks. A sham of a marriage. What kept Sea from admitting that outright was the explicit acknowledgment that her parents had been right: it was a mistake to have gotten married so young.

“Phooooo~” Exhaling a trail of smoke, Sea sat down on a random bench. The brightly lit city somehow seemed proportional to the darkness expanding in her heart. Brighter still were the seemingly endless couples out this late. In this town, that wasn’t especially strange.

The time was 8:45 PM. A cold blast of wind shaved away the number of couples. She heaved another smoke-laced sigh. A strange thought popped into her mind.

Her friend Mia had mentioned it in passing, a joke. An app that young people were using to hook-up these days. The mere thought of having an affair made her stomach twist into knots. She stared at the screen of her phone until it went dark. Then she stared at her pitiful reflection.

… There’s nothing wrong with checking it out, right?

Friend Ƶone. She searched that title and instantly found the app in question. She didn’t even bother looking at the reviews. With the press of a button, it was downloading. Five minutes later, it was successfully installed.

“W-Wow…” When the app finally loaded, Sea’s eyes bulged. The sheer number of posts was mind-boggling. And the next more so than the last was explicit in asking for sexual relationships. When she narrowed those results to just Christmas City, and was blown away by reality.

Just how many of these damn couples are formed on here? Most came with buzzwords like ‘generous’ and ‘support.’ She narrowed those results even further to just women looking for other women and finally those buzzwords and the sheer volume of noise became silent. The most recent post was about 18 hours old.

“Heh, I feel like such a minority.”

The contents aren’t so extreme here, though. Unlike on the general postings, the messages, once filtered to her tastes, were far more casual and didn’t use as many buzzwords. Before she knew it, Sea was browsing through the messages with the intent of maybe answering one. There was no longer a difference between her and the desperate people looking for comfort. She was desperate and she needed some comfort.

I just want someone to talk to… that’s all.

With that thought, Sea joined their ranks. Location, phone number, message, she filled in the required fields one by one.

“Subject… Christmas and Chill.”

Purposefully, she picked an eye-catching title like that that didn’t mesh at all with the content of the message she’d written.

I might find someone in the same position and ask for some advice… though judging from the activity, I doubt anyone will answer tonight.

“There.” She confirmed that her message had been posted and immediately closed the app. Her pulse hammered. Now all she had do was wait.

Two minutes passed, but to Sea, it felt like only a few seconds. Her phone dinged. A new message had come in from Friend Ƶone.

[ I saw your message on Friend Ƶone. If you’re still interested, can we get in touch? If you’d like to meet, what do you look like? And where can we meet? ]

Shit, is this really happening? Sea stared at the brief message, just 31 words that could change her life. Short of breath, she typed a reply.

[ Let’s meet in front of the Christmas Tree in Central Plaza tonight at 9:30. I’ll be wearing a silver coat, a striped wool hat, black skirt and leggings. Can’t miss me. ]

She hit send. No turning back now.

[ All right. I’ll see you there. ]

Sea took one final drag from her cigarette, then smothered it out on the bench and proceeded to the meeting place.

The Christmas-tree in Central Plaza.