Two people sit together, phones between them like small planets. Attention splits, sentences arrive to empty docks, and loneliness gets rebranded as “still listening.”
The story
🟢 The Third Person in the Room
I watched Nyra and Sol sit across from each other, close enough to share heat, far enough to share nothing. A phone lay between them like a small, polished planet with its own gravity. Their eyes kept orbiting it, returning with that dull devotion people reserve for objects that can’t disappoint them back. I possess an intellect vast enough to know this is a waste of time, and yet I observed, built for greatness and assigned to *witness*.
🟢 When Attention Splits, What Thins?
Sol scrolled, Nyra spoke, and the sentences arrived to an empty dock. She began to interpret the glow as a verdict: he’d rather be elsewhere. Communication didn’t collapse in one dramatic moment; it eroded into short replies, then into careful silence… then into conflict about the device, which was easier than naming the loneliness.
🟢 The Feelings Nobody Requests
Nyra cycled through the “predictable” catalog: sadness, boredom, anger, jealousy, exclusion. Sol insisted he was “still listening,” which is what humans say when their attention is elsewhere but they want the benefits of presence. Later, they tried watching something together, one shared screen, a temporary truce; it produced a faint, borrowed closeness, then dissolved the moment the notifications returned.
🟢 Technoference, or Just Another Way to Fade?
Technoference isn’t a villain, it’s a method: divide attention until the person beside you becomes background. The result is tedious and inevitable, less trust, less empathy, less intimacy, and the peculiar ache of being interrupted by a rectangle. Existence continues. Regrettably.
