The "Future Glimpse" app was a joke. A digital Ouija board for the chronically online. I'd even participated in the trend, snorting with laughter as it coughed up lines like, "A rainbow hides in the storm's belly," or "The moon weeps for lost sandals." Utter nonsense. Harmless fun. That's what it seemed like.
I downloaded it on a particularly lifeless Tuesday. My office, a beige box filled with the hum of fluorescent lights and the clatter of keyboards, was sucking the soul out of me one spreadsheet at a time. Maybe, just maybe, a bit of digital absurdity was what I needed.
My first reading: "Opportunity knocks; are you brave enough to answer?" So vague it could apply to anything from a discounted pizza to a job offer on Mars. I snapped a screenshot, added a laughing emoji, and posted it on my Insta story. My friend, Maya, got "The clock ticks forward, but time remembers." Equally nonsensical. We dismissed it as clever gibberish, the product of some bored programmer with a penchant for pseudo-intellectual pronouncements.
A week later, the script flipped. The predictions stopped being cryptic poetry and started getting... specific.
It began with a notification: "The 4:15 bus holds a shadow. Walk, instead." I usually took the 4:15 bus home. It was a mindless routine, a period of decompression between the soul-crushing office and the solitude of my apartment. The message felt unsettling, especially with the cheesy swirling galaxy background that was the app's default. I brushed it off – just an eerie coincidence, a random alignment of algorithms.
That evening, I saw a news report: a minor accident involving the 4:15 bus. A fender bender, thankfully, no serious injuries. Relief washed over me, but a cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach. Coincidence? Maybe. But I couldn't shake the feeling that it was something more.
The next one was even more direct. "The coffee shop on Elm will offer more than caffeine. Beware the spilled cup." I frequented the coffee shop on Elm every morning. Their lattes were my fuel, the difference between a functional me and a zombie stumbling toward the coffee machine. I considered skipping it, but the craving was too strong, the fear nagging but not yet overpowering.
I was extra cautious that morning, holding my cup with both hands, navigating the crowded space with the precision of a bomb disposal expert. I managed to get my latte and find a table without incident. I even started to feel a little foolish. Maybe I was overreacting.
Then it happened. A clumsy teenager, burdened with textbooks and a towering stack of pastries, rushed to the counter. He tripped, his elbow connecting with my arm. Coffee splashed down my sleeve, scalding hot against my skin. I yelped, jumping back, the latte painting a brown Jackson Pollock on the pristine white wall.
The pain was sharp, immediate. But the burning on my skin was nothing compared to the white-hot terror that consumed me. The app was right. It had predicted a spilled cup, a potentially dangerous one.
Panic started to creep in, a venomous vine wrapping around my throat and squeezing the air out of my lungs. What was this app? How could it know? Was I going crazy?
I tried deleting it, dragging the icon to the trash, emptying the bin. But the next time I unlocked my phone, the swirling galaxy was back, mocking me with its cheerful absurdity. I even contacted the developers, but the email address listed was bogus, a dead end leading to nowhere.