Be everywhere, anytime. Everywhere. Anytime. Every where, every time. Your portal to everywhere, every time. Your portal to the world. Your portal. Portal.
The thing about copywriting, thought Fin, as she typed out potential slogans for the launch of the new TRK6, was that if you stared at the words long enough, you could convince yourself they meant something. “Beep. Beeep. Beee—” Fin hit send. They were given 20 minutes per slogan batch, and delays were not tolerated. Fin was one of 11 copywriters hired to work on the TRK6 campaign, and they were all, in effect, competing against one another, as well as the clock. Fin shifted in her seat. It was getting stuffy. She tapped a button with an icon of a closed umbrella on it, and the smooth, grey walls of the WRKSPC cubicle retracted. Time for the first of the hour’s two mandatory 10-minute breaks. It was a core requirement of the recent Sustainable Work Act 2089, ensuring screen workers had regular time away from the glare. More often that not, Fin made up the missed minutes in overtime. Outside, Fin inhaled deep on her FreshNow air filter; on a whim, she’d recently upgraded to the Snow Day version, and the cold still took her breath away. She slipped her TRK5 out of her pocket — despite what the anti-TRK propaganda said, she never got the new version until everyone else did — but it was blue. No one was trying to reach her, not on any platform. She was halfway through an exaggerated sigh when it turned green, right there in her hand. She almost dropped it. “Bzzzzz...”
”Oh em geee! You have a messsssaaage!” Three weeks ago, Fin’s best friend had set her vocal notifications to “Perky American Teen Circa 2012” and Fin kept forgetting to switch it back. “Okay, okay, okay,” she said aloud, flipping open her TRK5. The screen lit up and video footage of dolphins dancing in the surf started playing. “Hi Fin,” said a digitized voice. Urgh, another ad, she thought. “This is not an ad.” They always said that. “I repeat: this is not an ad, Fin.” What? They didn’t usually say that. The camera angle shifted, pulling back from the dolphins to reveal the speaker. They were stood aboard a small boat covered in potted plants, and their whole body, including their head, was wrapped in what looked like a turquoise wool blanket. “Fin, you have an opportunity to make history. When you are ready to start asking questions about TRK, call me. This video will now delete itself and a new number will appear in your contacts. You’ll know it when you see it. Goodbye.” The turquoise figure gave a quick wave, and the video ended. Fucking hell, thought Fin, marketing is finally going guerrilla. “Beep. Beeep. Beee—” Break was over. Fin headed back to her WRKSPC. Before she got stuck into the next batch of slogans, she dropped a line to her project coordinator to remind him she was always down for any extra shifts that might be going. That script needs a lot of work, she thought. Make history? That was over-egging it. No one was going to go for that, no one! Fin laughed loud enough to make her WRKSPC shush her. It was going to be a long night.
Ruth Saxelby
The TRK’s micro-propellers had flipped into action. Phones didn’t break anymore. Instead, they were recalled every six months as standard, and replaced with an upgrade. Most people liked it — a shiny new phone with shiny new features, for free, just when you were getting bored with the old one. Grandparents would talk about the queues there used to be when a new smartphone came out back in the ‘00s and ‘10s, but no one Fin’s age could truly believe it. Back in the late ‘20s, she’d learned in school, had come The Smart Revolution. The government at the time had found that competing smartphone companies were creating vast disparities in consumer access. Everyone should have the right to a smartphone, they proclaimed, and in one fell swoop they deprivatized an entire industry. Of course, all the smartphone companies had known about it for months. Their cooperation had been bought, and their best people funneled into positions at TRK, a new public service charged with distributing government-issued smartphones and maintaining consumer relations. It was a great equalizer, said the politicians, everyone had the same phone, at the same time. By the late ‘30s, TRKs were issued at birth; parents were given the opportunity to have their baby’s first TRK encased in silver as a keepsake — after its data had been retrieved, of course. By the early ‘50s, it was illegal to not have a TRK. There was some serious backlash to that decision at the time, but Fin had slept through that history module in school.