2024 Competition

Damen O’Brien

The Stigmata of Apple Mac

I’ve got nothing but this image of a man watching TV,

sobbing over his wine and Swedish detective dramas

with English subtitles. His apartment contains

at least four different kinds of chargers, three of which

are being made obsolete in favour of the fourth.

The coin in his pocket has passed through thirty-six

different hands since it was first minted. The man watching

TV doesn’t know any of them. He has two phones:

a work phone with a bright screen that keeps trying to

engage him in conversation and a personal phone which

has a crack as big as metaphor across its front, which

he calls his ‘burner’. What is going on in this scene?

What does this man want? What, in the words of

Dustin Hoffman, is his motivation? The popcorn in his

microwave pirouettes like an overweight ballet dancer

toasting his kitchen in a light blast of radiation which

a dozen engineers have confirmed is within safe limits.

When he can be bothered to think philosophically

he imagines radio waves washing through his head,

the occasional ping from a cell tower brushing his skin,

a shower of electromagnetic sparks tunnelling through.

Each time he receives encrypted messages on the computer

set up on the dining room table, he feels a hook scything

through an invisible net of data, nicking into his brain.

But he’s not given to expansiveness. Who is this man?

There’s nothing else in the file, beyond the Swedish

detectives rushing around in sleek Volvos and designer

suits, taking out terrorists. He is crying a little for the

beautiful protagonist who has just lost her partner

to a particularly well-choreographed shoot out.

In moments, the man will be raided by sombre, close-

mouthed police. I still haven’t worked out why he exists.