Jerry awoke the next morning, thirsty and hungry. He scoured the raft and found a plastic box the same orange color as the raft. Inside were six meal servings of bottled water, peanuts, crackers, and biscuits. He consumed one serving while watching ads from the multi-national conglomerates that manufactured each item.
“Not the breakfast I’d hoped to be having this morning.” His thoughts returned to the attractive girl from yesterday’s breakfast. He accessed the forty-eight-hour video memory buffer of his implant and replayed their meal together. Then he sat and scanned the horizon for signs of a rescue ship or helicopter.
In the late afternoon, he consumed another set of snacks and re-watched his breakfast with Chloe. His hands were covered in crackers and biscuit dust, so he washed them in the ocean. “And now my hands feel sticky… and slightly oily. Gross.”
An advertisement for liquid soap played. As the actors played out their little story to sell soap, he had a revelation. He replayed the cruise ship breakfast.
‘I’m a short-form video producer.’
He fast-forwarded to the end of the breakfast.
‘She’s the best short-form scriptwriter in the business.’
His heart sank. She doesn’t make short films. Chloe and Allison make advertisements. The highlight of my trip was teaming up with people responsible for the bane of… everyone’s existence!
Jerry sulked until dinner time and then watched the sun set until he fell asleep.
When he awoke, the rage and disappointment were gone. He prepared another meal of snacks and decided to replay the cruise breakfast.
It was gone. Video of the last forty-eight hours in the life raft had entirely overwritten his memory buffer.
No record of the sinking. No Chloe. Who's going to believe my story when I’m rescued? Jerry opened the settings menu and enabled the highest levels of ad intrusiveness. He spent the day watching ads for movies, tv shows, and video games. To add to the cruelty, many of the ads were associated with water and sailing. His ad-free time credits increased as his sanity decreased.
* * *
On the third day, he ran out of food and water. His list of constants grew from boredom and sunshine to include hunger and thirst. Soon, every ad was for food and beverages. He tore apart the discarded food wrappers and probed the creases with his tongue for crumbs. By the evening, he was chewing his fingernails. Desperate for something to ease the emptiness in his belly.
He awoke on the fourth morning to see a seagull staring at him from the back of the life raft. Slow and steady, he moved closer and then nearly leaped out of the raft to catch it. The bird flew to the other side of the raft. They repeated the desperate dance until the seagull got bored and flew away.
Jerry stood at the edge of the raft; arms outstretched. “Come back. I need to give you a note for the Coast Guard.”
Something in the water caught his eye. There in his shadow. “Fish!”
He dangled his fingers in the water, praying a fish would confuse them for worms. “Here fishie, fishie.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Old sailors speak wistfully about the smell of the sea. With his nose so close to the sea, Jerry found it nauseating. He vomited and slid down to lay in the fetal position. A loud splash startled him. He sat up and saw fish fighting to nibble at his vomit. One leapt from the water and landed in the raft. He tried to catch it, but his hands were too wrinkled and pruned. He watched it flop around until its gills stopped moving and its eyes went dark. When his hands dried out, he picked up the fish to inspect it. “How do I turn this into a fillet or fish fingers?”
An ad ran for the Fish-a-Matic Fillet Knife, showing customers cutting up their fish. He searched the raft again, but found nothing sharp.
“I don’t suppose you have any ads showing how to turn plastic bottles and wrappers into a knife?”
A warning message scrolled through his vision.
REQUESTING INFORMATION THAT MAY BE USED TO HARM OTHERS IS A VIOLATION OF THE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Jerry put the fish down. “Your death was meaningless because I couldn’t afford $100 for the sea survival app to tell me what to do. A raft I can’t operate and an ocean of fish I can’t eat. This is hopeless.”
Like the water in a coffeepot left to boil too long, his sanity evaporated. The walls between fantasy and reality collapsed. The only constant in both worlds was the never-ending sound of ad jingles in his head. During a mid-day heat and hunger induced hallucination, he stuck his face into the ocean and drank deeply. For a moment, the thirst and hunger pains were gone.
Sanity hit him like an iceberg impacting a cruise ship. His body was wracked with pain as he vomited until he thought his insides would come out.
“Oh god, am I going to die? What do I do?” A dark cloud came over him. His implant echoed the morbid thoughts in his mind. It showed ads for estate attorneys promising to minimize the taxes paid by his heirs.
“Thanks to my expenses for this ‘free’ cruise, I don’t have an estate to leave behind.”
His pounding headache competed with his stomach for attention.
Scattered clouds rolled in, and the seagull returned to squawk at him. Jerry was too resigned to his fate to scare it off. The bird hopped into the raft and made happy sounds while eating the fish.
“I, Jerry Sanderson, being of unsound mind and body, do bequeath my only fish to you.”
His implant switched to ads for funeral homes.
“Hey, sign me up for that one. Tell them they’ll need to send a boat to retrieve my corpse.” He laughed until he cried, but he was too dehydrated to shed tears.
Somewhere deep inside of him, an unfamiliar, defiant voice proclaimed, “I refuse to die this way.” Strength and determination radiated out from his chest. He stood and shouted at the heavens, “I refuse to die on a company-paid vacation!” The effort made him dizzy. He stumbled and lowered his head to avoid fainting.
He blinked. Is that?
He rubbed his eyes. It is. Land!
Sticking an arm and leg in the water, he paddled toward the thin green and brown line on the horizon. I’m going to be rescued. As the only survivor, they’ll have to award me the license. Maybe even all three… in honor of Chloe and Allison.
His newfound optimism gave him strength to keep paddling. However, after an hour, the thin line had only doubled in height. Spent, he rolled onto his back. His every nerve fiber tingled. A seizure thrashed his body about.
The implant tried and failed to take control.
Something popped inside his brain.
A bone-chilling cold crept from his toes to his chest. Jerry knew what was coming, and so did his implant. His implant played a new advertisement on the corneas of his unseeing eyes.
A somber man in a dark suit strode across a sun-dappled fresh-cut lawn. He spoke to the camera. “Why not make Sutherland Cemeteries the final resting place for you and your loved ones?”
The world went dark. Before succumbing to the infinite darkness of eternal sleep, Jerry heard the sweet sound of a woman's voice beckoning him to stay.
“Mr. Sanderson, this is Melanie from your Internet and Implant Service Provider. Your implant has informed us you are canceling your subscription. Before I submit your request, I have been authorized to increase your roaming minutes allowance and a license for three-months of ad-free time. Please acknowledge if you’d like to remain a loyal customer.”
Jerry’s unconscious body exhaled a final, deep breath that sounded like an exasperated sigh.
“Mr. Sanderson, failure to provide an answer is interpreted as an answer of no. Therefore, I have processed your account termination request and activated the implant location beacon. A technician will arrive in 12 to 24 hours to retrieve your implant. Thank you and have a nice day.”