The year was 2002, and your life was in shambles.  Your father had left, and you and your mother were to live alone in your small apartment.  Your father, who drank daily and nightly and daily, would yell and hit your mother, while she cowered and whimpered; all you could do was watch.  The frequent shouting was so recurrent that quickly his shouts seemed no more than mere whispers.  At night, you would cry for yourself and cry for your mother without letting anyone ever see, without letting anyone ever see because your father would curse at you and yell at you and make you feel ashamed.  Then, without warning, he left you.  You and your mother were destitute and poor.  Nights of yelling turned into nights of silence, but you quickly realized the silence hurt more than the yelling.  Your mother would cry and your mother still cries for everything she failed to give you, for everyone that had left her, for everything except herself: she would never cry for herself.  Your mother then got a job: it paid only a few bucks an hour, but she would work all day and all night.  Your days were spent alone, and the silence of the cramped apartment seemed tighter than ever; you had hours alone, hours to think, hours to regret, hours to madden, hours of quiet, hours of silence: the silence made you so strong yet so frail, so stern yet so broken.   You began to steal and cheat, began to try drugs and to drink alcohol, always alcohol.  Your words were constantly slurred like your father’s, but you still drank the booze to quiet your mind, to numb your pain, a pain that never went away.  Your life was unfair and lonely, and you were only in high school.
The television cracks to life.  You sleep on the couch; the couch - stained and torn and covered in crumbs - slouches underneath you.  The room is dark - the shades are drawn shut, the walls are empty and close, and the carpet is faded and used.  The year is now 2022.  The television, once dark and blank, activates.  Its dull noise wakes you from a long sleep.  Drowsy at first but instantly alert, you scramble off the couch, looking for your phone.  Your phone, your alarm, didn’t alert you, and again, you are late to work.  Searching and crawling, your phone remains unfound.  Your head hurts from another hangover, and the dim image from last night begins to clear in your mind.  You were at your friend’s house across town, drinking beer and shooting up something.  What drug was it?  Even though you can’t remember how long you stayed, you can still picture the lonely walk home; you haven’t driven a car in years. 
Pissed and tired you sit back down on the couch to explore why the television had turned on.  The screen projects a newscast urgently and crucially.  The headline reads Technology Turned Bad.  The man on the screen explains that everywhere technology - once so innovative and futuristic - is now leaking people’s darkest and most precious secrets.  The forming theory is that a person’s phone - it seems to be harmless, stationary, and quiet - watches you, listens to you, learns about you.  Its eyes and ears are always open.  What had once seemed so powerful was what would turn humanity against itself.  The man on the screen announces to destroy your phone, before it can leak anything and everything about you.  The man is cut off mid-sentence by a video of a department store.  A woman is shoving supplies into her pocket quickly and furtively.  Her name is in the bottom right corner.  The screen shifts to a man, he leaves his house, his wife, to meet up with another woman on the corner, and they kiss passionately.  People keep appearing on the screen, each one exposed by their secrets and crimes.
You lunge at the television and overturn it onto the ground.  It smashes in a loud crack and glass flies everywhere.  What does your phone know about you?  Does it know about your secret?  You scramble again looking for your phone.  What will it reveal to the world about you?  You keep looking for your phone - your secret must never escape, but, again without success, you realize it must still be at your friend’s house.  You slip on your aged shoes and rush out your door.
Outside, madness ensues.  People are commencing in the streets; no one is driving.  The scene is chaos - people yelling at neighbors and close friends, people crying and accusing others, people pointing with disapproval.  The world has been pinned against itself.  None of the accusatory eyes were upon you yet.  When you arrive at your friend’s house, the door is unlocked as usual and you let yourself inside.  No one seems to be home, and you immediately see your phone lying on the ground overturned.  It isn’t until you pick it up, that a video appears on the screen.  The projected image is of you twenty years ago, and the scene is one that you have spent every day trying to forget.
The video is at night - your mother was working late again, and you were leaving a party, hopelessly drunk.  Your vision was skewed and your mind was stumbling, but regardless you got into your car and began to drive home.  And there I was.  Seven years old; a young girl who was walking home from her play practice at the school: my production was only a few days away.   You quickly gained speed, barreling through the stop sign and veering a wide turn around the corner.  I began crossing the street, humming a tune from the musical.  You swerved down the road at a high speed, and your blaring music was deafening.  I turn to look at the growing light coming toward me in the street.  Your eyes were drooped and your breath smelled of alcohol.  I never performed the play.  The car smashed into me, and my frail being was killed instantly.  You slammed the brakes and rolled down the window slowly.  You saw me, lying on the ground unmoved and lifeless.  You yelled out a curse, stared, and drove away.  Despite my tragic death, you were never caught, and you never confessed.
The phone finished playing the video, and began repeating it.  You shatter the phone on the ground, storm out of the house, slam the door, and slowly walk home.  The crowded streets seemed blurred and people’s yells seem muffled in your clouded ears.  You walk back into your small apartment, and shut the door.  The room was still dark and compact; the couch, torn and tattered; the rug, ruined and frayed.  The television still lies in a smashed heap on the ground, surrounded in a sea of broken glass
You opened your fridge and grab a few bottles.  You slouch back down on the couch, and begin to drink.  The memories of the day soon fade away.