Three seconds passed by after Shanice posted the photo. Nothing. She waited for ten more seconds. Absolutely nothing.

It was a neatly cropped up close shot of a jade figeater beetle. Almost National Geographic level. Last year, she was awarded Macarthur Fellowship, or as popularly known as the ‘Genius Grant’ for ‘authoritative and outstanding contribution in the field of entomology as well as for her leadership as the sole female voice in African-American community’.

Shanice poked her glasses back and leaned forward on her laptop. The feeling of satisfaction she derived after clicking POST was now quickly fading away.

She once laughed when Barry, her Swiss-German colleague, mentioned that kids nowadays are using affirmations on Youtube to ‘manifest’ likes and subscriber count wishing to go viral. A strong Southern woman who later moved to and grew up in central Chicago had to take the helm of her single-mother family diagnosed with brain cancer at thirteen. Only a few months ago, her mother kicked her out of her house for being pregnant. She forgot the nasty, volatile fight and swallowed her pride to return home from the streets after cursing the wretched shrew to ‘spit on her grave when she dies’ tormented by a guilt-torn ten nights on park bench and Sandy’s couch.

Five years later her mother would die. Alas! She never got to see her daughter graduate as the class valedictorian and zoom through to graduate magna-cum-laude in biological sciences to an upward trajectoy of a thriving career as an intern.

A full minute passed. Nothing. Nada. Not a drop of silence. Stillness. Absolute stillness.

She scoffed. It was more of a self-contempt than anything. Com’on Shanice! You possibly can’t be like this. She chuckled at herself.

There is ton of work to do. Not only does she have to finish editing five more pages of LaTex- a goal she gave herself- but also has to create a PowerPoint presentation. She decided to quickly warm up a frozen linguine and went to the kitchen.

The bell chimed after exactly 3 minutes 45 seconds of the package instruction. She took out the wrap and poured the paltry portion on a plate with a mark of Martha Stewart and prodded her food. As it happens, the food was only partially heated. Annoyed, she didn’t want to put it back and reheat, but just decided to go with it and came back to her bedroom of her loft apartment, a minimalist studio with carefully arranged ikebana touch and terrariums.

A blood-red single notification was awaiting for her when she came back. Shanice was mildly surprised. She only has 14 followers and if she worked out the ratio, it is uncommon to receive such attention in the slurry of the digital landscape among a sea of information.

Curious, she clicked. It was Mikey. The Boston kid. The gray-eyed assistant with dark, ruffled hair like mop and freckles. What the… Shanice thought. Was he into her or something? Eww, no. She quickly brushed away the discouraging thought. Mikey was 10 years her younger and a reliable confidante who always got her Xerox done as well as the morning coffee at work.

Two minutes later there was another notification. Again curious Shanice clicked on the profile. Ugh. Shanice barfed. Dear uncle Fred left her a like with the assuring comment: “Brilliant!” Go to sleep uncle Fred. She thought of commenting, then decided against it.

A bluestocking of her time and highly respected among her colleagues, it was not even a question that Shanice did not take social media seriously. Yes, she thought of opening a YouTube channel and throwing a blog. But those were just passing thoughts. That’s all. Last thing she wanted was to be the butt of all the ‘Only Fans joke’ as a perky influencer. Being social media famous is akin to being blackballed by her peers with scarlet letters. Tipsy and tired from the day’s events she fell asleep. A long day tomorrow. She has a seminar to attend.
~~~~~~

There were ten notifications waiting for her the next morning when she woke up. Shanice groggily reached for her phone, the first thing like an automatic reflex. She likes to check her Gmail as well as latest alerts, especially research work pertaining to Scarabaeidae. She also revs up the day with Words With Friends and checking other social media apps.

It was quite strange that she received ten notifications. Looks like the photo gained some traction among naturalists interested in research grade observations in her locale. Almost all comments were positive save but one, which seemed to be from a Gen Z girl with an anime profile pic and handle CuteXC2ohoh9.

What kind of bizarre username is that. Shanice pondered as she prepared the ground coffee in Keurig. She went to pee still checking her phone. Barry was supposed to send the track changes for her new article, which she is desperately trying to get published on Nature.

Is it 2009? Is that what it means? She was born in 2009? No but that can’t be. Shanice was nonplussed with the fact that her beehive reservoir that dealt with such highbrow materials as Kafka, Fabre, Latreille and papers of Dr. Bloomquist is now buzzing with such low-tier shenanigans and moot trivialities.

She has to take the subway because her car is in the garage as a result of a fender bender from a crazy violinist with French accent, who newly got his license after his first two years here in America. Pauvre garçon! He was running late for a job interview and was profusely apologizing every three syllables. Shanice was in an exceptionally forgiving mood that day and decided to settle the matter sans hassle of insurance.

Shanice got dressed after powering her laptop on. Phone has limitations. Unless she is wired to her workstation, she cannot fully get dialed-in and start the day.

The laptop was on her dining table. She left the flap open and went to brush her teeth. She hates brushing and always does so after her first cup of Joe to avoid the ‘yucky’ minty flavor. Her mind already forgot about the post and was now cranking and racing like an engine breezing past the to-do list for seminar and her daily activities in mind’s eye.

She hurriedly returned ready to slam the cover shut and head straight for the door. She just does not want to be late for the seminar plus she has no clue as to when the next train is. Not only does she need to download the app to find out the timetable, but she has to feed Lamaz, her cat strolling on her balcony. I got it under control. You got it Shanice. She breathed to herself.

There was slight anxiety of fret in her heart, but that was now soon to be accelerated. As she reached to close the cover of her laptop, she noticed a number on the logo of the app from the corner of her eye. In bold font, it quietly read 43.

Shanice was already late, but she decided to spend 5 minutes taking a gander at it.

Wow!

Amazing!

Genius!

Wholesome content.

Great job.

Good one.

Love it!

She scrolled through the comments as quickly as she could, pleased with such a positive reaction. Faith in humanity restored. Of course, there were those occasional trolls with inane memes inserted here and there — mostly in gif- but other than a ‘Yawn. No one cares.’ comment from YungBucknakedNapoleon300 in Marcus Aurelius avatar, there was nothing home to write about.

Shanice glanced at her watch. Her heart was filled with an aura of feel good positive orb. She could literally feel the glowing positive energy fill her to brim.

What a good way to start the day! She did not have time to reply to every message, but wanted to quickly acknowledge Marty, her neighbor from Louisville. In fact, she was actually close with Martinique who helped her out during some credit problems she had during her visit to Kentucky three years back.

She did not finish writing half of the stoic ‘Thank you!’ when she noted that another round of notifications started pouring in.

56…

63…

92…

As she soon as she cleared a set, she was handed another plague of notifications.

And then it stopped. Just like that, the deluge of notifications suddenly came to a halt. Phew! It will give me some time to catch up. She thought.

She carried the laptop with the cover half-open to the stairs thinking she will check as many as possible. Before she took her first step casually looking down the dizzying stairwell, a flagrant and vile message caught her attention.

“Eat shit bitch. Can’t even pay my rent…”

Shanice balked for a few seconds, but brushed it aside as quickly. Just an anomaly. She told herself. Probably some lonely virgin momma’s boy. She compartmentalized.

But then the next comment stung her ribcage like a dagger. “Nowadays anyone can post a photo and call herself a photographer huh?”

At first Shanice thought of professionally replying with “Thank you for commenting. If you don’t like it feel free to ignore.” But she herself ignored the opinion, having regained her composure.

Then it began. All of a sudden. Tcling. Tcling. The pleasant sound of the chime kept on tuning. No. It just keeps coming. Is there a way to turn the darned thing off? Oh gosh. She slid down the wall and bent her knees sitting on the stairway floor looking for settings.
~~~~~~

Shanice was in a state of trance like a Balinese dancer devoid of any space-time. For the last four hours she sat on her stairway and combed through each and every notification. Compliments, memes, gifs, one word response, witty zingers which in turn themselves started offshoot of threads, occasional death threat or abuse written so casually as ‘someone needs to tie you up and brutally rape you’ from faceless, random psychos in her DMs to outpouring wave of mostly positive compliments… She read every single one of them.

By the time it finally dawned on her that she missed her seminar, she came to realize she read over more than 400 comments.

And then she noted all the texts from Mikey — repetitions of “Where are you?” “Hello?” “Shanice?” “Are you okay?” “Hey Shanice looks like you missed the event… just texting you to see if you are okay.” to all five missed calls and voicemail.

She dawdled back to her apartment, the door which was still open. Upon regaining her senses she suddenly noticed how she was ravaged from hunger pang.

I need to eat. I need to eat. Her hand was shaking. She is not exactly prediabetic, but the ‘adrenaline’ she got from being glued to her laptop reading every umlaut and syllable of the mechanics of prose as well as litany of nonsensical memes left her heavily drained.

Shanice hovered to her fridge like a distraught and traumatized victim, poured herself a glass of orange juice throbbingly, headed straight for her bed and collapsed. She almost felt as disgusted as if having an inappropriate night in a Seville motel with Mikey of all!

~~~~~~

Shanice woke up from a two-hour nap. The siesta seemed to reset her and she felt quite refreshed. She turned on the tap and sloshed some cold water on her face and opened the laptop.

The notifications were now 923.

The whole afternoon passed by and the room had all the eeriness of Whistler’s Mom in an arrangement of gray. Shanice finally regained her consciousness and closed all the curtains turning on the lights shut off from reality.

The phone kept ringing non-stop all evening. Shanice was bitter and irate. If she heard one more ring, she would go and murder a cat with a bludgeon. The phone was tethered to charge and she swiped the home screen to open the settings and slid the tab to Do Not Disturb and Airplane Mode.

Finally at 12:30am she crashed on her sofa.
~~~~~~

It was 3:30 when Shanice finally woke up in the middle of the night. And then the penny dropped as to what has transpired. She missed the seminar, missed her submissions and the powerpoint presentation. Not only that, she hasn’t eaten for the last 9 hours. She thought of pouring some cereal, reactivating her phone and dispatching a quick memo of apologies to Barry and other colleagues via Gmail. She just needs to make something up.

She still couldn’t believe she missed work for the first time in 8 months — the last one being tested positive for Covid.

After she was done sending the emails for work, she thought of checking her phone. 1.2k likes and there were additional 93 notifications — most clustered.

She carelessly browsed through a few, before falling asleep. Forget about today, Shanice. What is done is done. You will bring your A-game tomorrow.
~~~~~~

Shanice got up, got dressed, quickly prepared herself an oatmeal breakfast along with a vegan frozen food and gulped down a shake with chia seeds. She went to Google Play to download the app for the train and tucked her laptop in the bag and stormed out.

Today there will be an informal meeting going over the local laws pertaining to pest management. Gary, Dr. Helmut and Dr Kohl will be there among others.

She coasted past the meeting in a daze with occasional “Uh-huhs” “Hmms..” and “Yeahs” intermittently checking her phone. In fact, she doesn’t have the slightest clue as to what was being said nor the time when Mikey asked her three times as to the location of the key for the files in the drawer.

Shanice frankly felt relieved after the whole meeting was over and her route back home in the train was actually a great solace. She can now finally concentrate on the messages.

The post grew. Every hour she was going through hundreds of comments. Shanice came home and spent the whole evening scrolling past the comments. The updated docx link to the track changes for Nature article was sitting in her email. Shanice simply forgot to check it if not just willingly ignored. At exactly 11:32 she decided to call it a night. Today was weird; she even forgoed the vacuum.

For the next five days, Shanice shut herself in her room. Occasionally, she sent a one-line text to Mikey. Something emergency came up. Has to do with family matters. Mom’s will and stuff. Will circle back later.

A glint of a smile was on her lips. Cannot believe how creative I am with my lies. Or excuses. She thought.

Shanice was out of office for two weeks, if not out of any human contact. The clothes were soiled day by day and her dishes started to pile up.

~~~~~~

It was Friday, the third of next month. Shanice was awakened by a thud on her door. She ignored the rapping and reached for her phone. The notifications kept coming. Bigger and bigger pages than her picked up on her post and it was near viral. Her followers were increasing by the minute at the rate of 10 to 30. She received an email with customized stats report and analytics. It must be the landlady. She forgot to pay her rent. And lo and behold! Sure enough there were unread emails, texts, and calls from her for missing out on the rent. What she gon do? Evict me? But the next minute, her sanity got the better of her.

“I will send you the money order this evening, Miss Vinh!” Shanice shouted.

“Okay, but today is the last day. Make sure you do!!” Miss Vinh said in a sweet-broken English and left her to solemnize in peace.

When the CAT team finally arrived after 28 days, they were met with a middle-aged African-American woman in nightgown with disheveled hair that covered her face like cobweb. The young, blonde EMT who looked like the Greek Achilles himself calmly looked at her. His hair was pristine and his uniform was sharp, free of the slightest crease, much less wrinkle, which was a stark contrast to the brilliant lady who even a month ago was working on her dissertation.

“Are you okay ma’am?” The man asked her politely as his buddies were unwrapping the velcro pad for blood pressure while another was bringing in the gurney. The whole room was filled with radio waves and Miss Vinh peered from behind the door. “Your landlady was concerned about you, so they called us in. Is everything okay?”

The studio apartment was reeking with the stench of urine. There was a smudge of feces on the teak varnish floor. The paramedics were trying to be professional but they had to cover their nose retching from her body odor. There were clothes strewn everywhere and piles of unkempt dishes and frozen food boxes were stacked high on the sink. Flies were buzzing over Lamaz, which almost melted to a stew of goulash from the beating of heat in the verandah. The scattering pattern of ants and some infrequent roaches started to scurry disappearing back to the cracks as the curtains were pulled aside.

“Are you okay? Can you talk?”

Shanice looked back at them with a hollow stare. As if her soul herself has been sucked out through the hole of an Anasazi ritual vessel.

She looked around furtively. The itching has gotten worse over the past few days. Shanice was furiously scratching herself to the point her long nails dug in her flesh, as if to fend off a blanket of million bugs that seemed to crawl over her. One of the first responders gave a sharp look at the other acknowledging the symptom of formication, a form of tactile hallucination.

Then she uttered in a raspy voice clasping her phone slowly: “I… need….to….. check… my… phone.”

“Okay, we will do that. But first, I need to check your pulse. Also he will take your vitals.” The god-like technician reached for her hand pointing to his assistant.

She recoiled. “I…. need…. to… check…my phone….,” she hissed.

“I understand ma’am. Is there something important you need to check? We can sure do that. Here…I will take this away from you for the time being. Can you tell us what day is today?”

Shanice snatched her hand away from the man like a protective hyena. “I need to check my phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” She exploded with her eyes about to pop off.

“We have a possible 51–50. Stand by.” Another impeccably dressed female technician just walked in with her blonde hair brushed back to a ponytail as she relayed via her lapel radio. The room was now full of paramedics as well as curious neighbors who craned their necks like passersby.

Shanice muttered something inaudibly. Even the quiet recess of her mind that seemed to be so ravaged could make out that the personnel could smell her breath. Good. So what. I hated brushing teeth anyway. She evaluated.

As the first technician reached to take away the phone, Shanice spat on his hand. She thought of throwing her hands around. The lady technician firmly interjected: “Okay, ma’am. You need to calm down. We can’t have you doing that.”

Soon a social worker and a behavioral specialist walked in. The room was now brimming with activity. Within ten minutes, the entomologist was carried away in a gurney after being sedated with injection to the fading sound of Doppler.

The room was empty again as if not a single whisper’d soul arrived nor nothing was taken away. Stillness enveloped the room yet again.

Save but the soft chimes of the phone. Another 304 new notifications were waiting for Shanice, all clustered and grouped for her ease of reading.