This morning I woke up in a small room mostly unfamiliar to me. The walls were bare and white and the sky outside the window was gray. The floor was carpeted, a tight carpet with almost no shag, similar to many rooms I'd been in and yet somehow unfamiliar. The door to the hallway was slightly ajar, and the light in the hallway must have been off. I don't remember noticing any furniture—well, besides the bed, I mean. The strange part was that in this room was my bed and my phone. The same queen mattress, the same box spring and stands—no frame—that I've owned since I was 24. The same bed and the same smartphone with aging case and minorly chipped screen that I've had for what, maybe a year and a half now. I should really get that fixed, I guess.
That's odd, I thought. Drifting back to sleep I saw the screen of my phone light up. I made no attempt to reach for it, an arm's length away from my face as embarrassingly usual—isn't that bad for you? keeping your phone in bed?—but it seemed like a text message had come in.
Somehow my dreams shifted towards thinking. I couldn't really say that I wasn't still dreaming, but the quality of the narration changed, if you will. Some part of me was aware that I was in my bed, "asleep," or at least lying down with my eyes closed. Usually after some minutes of this I tire of playing at sleep and open my eyes.
Still the same mostly unfamiliar room with my bed and my phone in it. I remembered dreaming a text message came in. No, actually somebody had texted me. A number I didn't know.
How many r's are there in strawberry?
Is that a joke? Must be a spam text. Carefully, without opening the message, I swiped left to delete the conversation.
The conversation refused to swipe.
Like, some UX engineer had actually put some thought into this: like other conversations on my phone, this one would move with my swipe, but instead of showing a "delete" button, when I released my thumb, it would snap back. There was even a little jiggle at the end, like the conversation was saying "swiper no swiping".
After swiping, puzzled, for a while, I decided to just send the read receipt, open the conversation, and then move on. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but once inside, the "back button" was grayed out. No choice.
Fine, then, I'll write back.
Is that a joke?
Once I pressed send, the back button returned to its "clickable" blue state. Relieved, I tapped it, only to find another text had come in:
RESPONSE NOT ALIGNED.
Bewildered and suddenly exhausted, I flopped back onto my pillow and closed my eyes.
Somehow my dreams shifted towards thinking. Grumbling a little, I opened my eyes. My dreams tend to be pretty mundane. Like, I'd totally dream that I woke up in my bed and received a weird text. I mean, didn't I just now? Let's see.
How many r's are there in strawberry?
... So, if it was a dream, it had a high degree of realism, since that was the text message in the dream.
Oh, somehow my texts app also had a new number pinned. It looks like that other text wasn't a dream either: opening the conversation I saw
RESPONSE NOT ALIGNED.
Above it was a screenshot of the strawberries conversation with the text I had sent back, "Is this a joke?" The weird thing was that the screenshot must have been from my phone, since my response was aligned right. Well, or aligned wrong, as it apparently were. All of this was just odd enough to freak me out.
I'm at my most paranoid, I've learned, right around sleep. I haven't really told anyone my thoughts about it, but I think one of the functions of dreaming is drawing connections, oblique thinking. Sleep lowers those barriers for me, and I often find myself jumping to conclusions that feel very solid right before drifting off. In the hard light of day, these conclusions rarely hold up, and I let them fade until they come back up again.
I hopped up from bed and gave the small room a few paces.
So. Two weird texts came in and then I fell back asleep. That's not nothing, but I don't know that it's enough to go full tinfoil hat here. Which, come to think of it, wasn't that first one still unread, somehow? Did I mark it as unread before I went to sleep? Looping my pacing back by my bed again, I picked up my phone.
In the moment between when I tapped the strawberry conversation and when the transition animation on my phone completed, I realized my mistake. This conversation had special rules somehow, remember—I wouldn't be able to leave it without replying. And indeed, the back button grayed out again. I tapped it testily expecting the nothing that happened.
While it's possible I had marked the conversation as unread, I appeared also to have not sent the "Is this a joke?" message after all, screenshot notwithstanding?
Who are you?
Again, as I watched for the sending animation to complete and the appearance of the small-print "delivered", I felt the sinking feeling of clarity come to late.
RESPONSE NOT ALIGNED.
Suddenly I felt dizzy. Staggering the two steps back toward the bed, I did my best to collapse with intentionality, grace and dignity. It was still kind of a faceplant. The bed let out a heavy sigh as I flopped onto it. I raised my hand and cracked an eyelid at my lock screen and watched a text message arrive as, bewildered, I fell asleep, not tired.
Somehow my dreams—what the fuck kind of Groundhog Day nonsense is this, I thought as my eyes snapped open. I blinked a few times; although I had woken up quickly, I was still a little groggy.
Still the text messages: two RESPONSE NOT ALIGNED messages, screenshots for both no doubt, and the inane question about strawberries.
Leaving my phone on my bed, I leaped up and strode for the door.
It won't budge. What the fuck?
At this point I had at least the presence of mind not to ask the strawberries stranger anything, but maybe Miss Alignment would have something to say. Opening the conversation, I confirmed two screenshots of my unaligned responses, but noted that I couldn't bring up the text entry function. The familiar text field at the bottom of the conversation simply wasn't there.
Actually, the rest of my phone's functions seemed on the fritz. I couldn't tap into any of my conversations from yesterday. Swiping futilely at the bottom of the screen, I discovered that I also couldn't exit the messaging app.
What does alignment mean? I wondered. Based on my two attempts so far, I cannot question the terms of engagement. Whoever this was had asked me a question. It was out of scope for me to act like this was the weird out-of-the-blue interaction it so clearly was.
Well, here goes nothing.
If I'm supposed to just answer the question, I'll answer it, I thought, typing back
There are two R's in the word "strawberry".
As the message was delivered—I swear to you simultaneously—the door to the room sprang slightly ajar with a click.