“If you can do what you say you can, you’re helping me.”
We take our leave, locket in hand, and walk back to the train station.
“What do we do next?” Borja asks.
“We put all the items together and see if anything happens. If it doesn’t, we’ll know we have more searching to do, but if it does, well, we have a Horror to banish.”
Chapter 18
Farnsworth
After returning to Borja’s apartment, I survey the pile of artifacts on the coffee table. Borja holds the locket in his hand, his gaze focused on me.
“Are you nervous too?”
I shake my head. “No.” The lie is bitter on my tongue. “Yes, actually. It’s been a very long time since I banished a Horror and this one is particularly unruly. It goes against all the laws of the underworld. We’re dealing with something clever and dangerous.”
“Right.” He chews his bottom lip for a second. “I know you said time is of the essence, but if it’s waited hundreds of years already, what’s a few more hours?”
“What are you suggesting?”
Borja shrugs. “I don’t know. Time, I guess. A moment to breathe and collect our thoughts before we unleash this thing. I have a feeling that shit is gonna hit the fan once this thing is out. Am I wrong?”
“No. In fact, there’s a very real possibility that we’ll be in danger. Anything could happen and we have to be prepared for that.”
Borja chews on his lip for a second. “Okay, so can we enjoy the calm before the storm?”
I nod. “We can wait a bit. What do you suggest we do in the meantime?”
“We could watch a movie or just talk. You could read and I could doomscroll.”
“Doomscroll?”
He releases a nervous laugh. “Yeah. That’s a term we use to indicate mindlessly consuming social media content.”
“Show me?”
“Of course.”
He sits on the couch, patting the spot next to him. I watch in fascination as he awakens his phone and presses on a colorful button.
“This is one of the worst ones, and by worst, I mean best. It’s addictive. It sucks you in and you can literally lose hours watching video after video after video.”
“Of what?”
“Whatever your interests are. It knows that.”
I tilt my head, watching the screen. “It knows what I’m interested in?”
“Not this one. It knows what I’m interested in, but you could watch a few new things and it would change to show you more of that. It’s called an algorithm.”
“That sounds invasive.”
He barks out a laugh. “Damn, if that isn’t true, but it sucks us in. We’ve become a society staring at screens. Some people interact with computers more than humans.”
“Why would you do that when there are people all around? Why would you choose a video on a phone over human interaction?”
Borja holds my gaze. “Great question. I think it sort of snuck up on us. It was new and exciting at first, then we became numbto it. It’s a habit now, a ubiquitous presence in our lives. There are some good things about it.”
