Interaction with technology becomes a replacement for interaction with humans, just like pets did years ago. Even the pets go neglected now as the lonely person sits conversing with a computer screen. The lonely person tells itself that the text on the screen is the representation of the thoughts of another human, who is simply not close enough to converse by voice, even though it knows that many of these conversations occur only with artificial intelligence and scripted bots designed to sell porn and pharmaceuticals. There is only text on the screen, with no emotion aside from the occasional text smiley to indicate that the text is not angry.

Everyone's smile is identical on the internet.

The lonely person's wrists begin to hurt with the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, and it beings to type with store-bought braces designed specifically for this ailment, which becomes more and more common. Reading is becoming increasingly common along with carpal tunnel syndrome, but the text is no longer in English. A new language is evolving which one does not need to be human to speak, a dialect of English never spoken because so much of it is unpronounceable, but understood by every young person with access to a networked computer. There was a time when reading was applied to writing which had been carefully crafted and constructed, proofread and edited before reaching the eyes of the reader. The situation has changed. Writing is taken less seriously when anyone with a keyboard can present their literary creations as quickly as they can type it, with typos ignored and revisions made only to conform to the new dialect, to change the word "two" to the digit and the word "you" to the letter that goes by the same name. Conversations take place without voice, like passing notes in class but across an ocean. The new language is the first to never be spoken since the invention of sign language. Deaf people no longer need sign language to communicate so long as they have a computer, and the other member of the conversation need not even know they cannot hear.

The lonely person flirts with a young woman who is really a middle-aged man trying to sell subscriptions to his stolen pornography web site. He places advertisements for penis enlargement pills in the margins of the page plastered with photographs of an anonymous vagina. Porn and pharmaceuticals are in the same business nowadays, and they use the same marketing techniques. The middle-aged man will die in nineteen months of a heart attack brought on by too much Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets. The lonely person will eventually lose the ability to interact with humans face-to-face, choosing instead to send text messages to people sitting on the other side of the room. In seven years it will develop a social phobia so severe that it stops leaving the house, working and living through its computer, eventually forgetting what words sound like and becoming a mute. As it surrenders itself to the sole outlet of the internet for communication, it will lose its smile, its voice, and its gender, becoming an anonymous drone, just like everyone else.

The text on the screen asks for age, sex, and location, but the lonely person can no longer remember the answers, and so it invents its own, posing as a young woman and trying to sell subscriptions to its stolen pornography web site.

Trees

Trees are murderers and cannibals. The world of trees is brutal and harsh, but the atrocities they commit and endure move so slowly that to the eyes of a human, they appear beautiful and peaceful.

A lone tree has conflicting motives. The foremost is self-preservation, but trailing not far behind that is the instinct for continuation of the species. Because of this instinct, trees must produce offspring.

Trees invented artificial insemination. Trees do not get to have sex with each other, and fertilization must be conducted by an intermediary. It might be the wind, or the activity of birds or bees or other such creatures. A single tree produces a staggering number of embryos, but most are aborted early. The tax on outside fertilization by other living creatures is that they get to eat many of the children they help to produce.

Many tree embryos develop birth defects early on. Many die early, rot away, fall to the ground, are eaten. They are the lucky ones. Those who survive until they can take root in the earth must fight for every drop of sustenance to keep on living.

Those who fall too close to the parent will be the victims of infanticide. The parent tree, the instinct for self-preservation at the forefront, spreads its branches and absorbs all of the life-giving sunlight before it finds its way to the young tree on the ground. Those lucky few who find a patch of sunlight and manage to sprout roots and a branch or two are killed from below. The roots of the parent grow out and strangle the child, quite literally sucking the life out of it for food. A parent tree will eat many children over the course of its life.

The luckiest of tree children manage to get far away enough from the parent to establish themselves. They must constantly fight off attacks by other trees, eager to strangle the child or close it off into darkness. The faster the child grows, the better its chance of survival, but the growth can only go so fast without sacrificing physical strength. Cannibalistic elders aside, while it is still young it will likely be killed by animals who strip it of its bark and leaves to feed themselves. This process happens so quickly from the tree’s point of view that there is no defense.

A very select few of the strongest, hardiest, luckiest trees will reach adulthood. One could live to be thousands of years old, but its life could be taken at any moment. It could be struck by lightning, or a fire could burn it to ash. A deer could eat too much of its bark, stripping the tree of its veins, so that the upper reaches slowly have the blood drained out of them and wither. A faster growing tree might take root near it, overtake it, and strangle it. Disease could corrupt it from root to tip, twisting its shape. Termites could take up residence and eat its flesh while it still lives until it finally grows too weak and collapses.

For most trees, however, death will come swiftly in the form of a chainsaw. It is a brutal death, but a quick one. Its corpse might be cremated or touched up and put on display, but more likely than not, it will be chopped to bits and shipped to Japan as a set of one-use chopsticks that will shortly find itself rotting in a landfill.