I’ve started playing around with the short-short story form
just to see what happens. Here is today’s effort. I hope you enjoy it!
Alarm
Leviathan Customer Review: Slow Wake
Liquid Sunlight Alarm
by Binarystar673
I’m
extremely displeased with this product, and I’m sending it back. I need to keep
my body clock strictly regulated. I don’t like to throw my name around, but
without revealing too much, let’s just say that six years ago, I sold a very
popular start-up to a very large tech firm, and now I’m a target for the CIA.
They send spy cam drones to my compound at irregular intervals, so I need to
have my wits about me at all times. This clock claims to wake you up slowly, but it didn’t
wake me up at all. It just sat there eking
out some feeble little “beams” and as a result, I overslept by forty-five
minutes and my whole morning was shot. My Clover espresso was cold and my
neuromodulation chip misfired, so as I write this I have tremors. My Gluv Box
doesn’t get here until tomorrow, so my hands are ruined until then unless I can
re-configure my chip, and I don’t have time today because I have a text session
with my remote therapist, and I have to reorganize my bitters cabinet because
Buoz Box sent me the wrong shipment again. In short, this product in no way
lived up to its promise to “gently awaken you to the world with natural pineal-gland
stimulus.” One and half tentacles only
because I liked the brushed metal.
Leviathan
Customer Review: Professor Irena’s Apt Sleeper Smart Alarm
by Binarystar673
Another
slickly-marketed device that fails to fulfill its promise. Putting “Professor” in
its name does nothing to disguise its pathetically weak so-called challenges.
Its website says that it “smoothly brings you to peak lucidity by asking you to
solve a series of increasingly difficult mathematical equations until you are fully
alert, mentally sharp, and prepared to meet the challenges of the day.” I don’t
know what kind of moronic first-grade teacher wrote its “mathematical equations,”
but its laughably simplistic multivarious calculus is beyond a joke. Worse than
that, if you happen to have less than 20/20 eyesight (mine is almost perfect,
but not quite,) you might accidently hit
the wrong answer selection, and therefore have to endure this product’s exponentially
shrill and discordant screeching. Thanks to this train wreck of a product, once
again my entire day has been set off course. I have to schedule a remote
emergency session with my audiologist because I’m pretty sure I sustained not-inconsequential
damage to my cochlea, and instead of enjoying my weekly biome-balancing juicing
session, I spent the morning picking glass out of my foot when I accidently
stepped on the broken shards of this disaster after I slammed it onto my marble
floor. I will not take responsibility for its cheap and shoddy design, so I am
returning the pieces to the company, complete with the literal blood of my
suffering. Fortunately for them, I don’t like to mention this, but six years ago,
I sold a very popular start-up to a very large tech firm, so I could throw my name around if I wanted
to, but all I’m asking for is a refund and a sincere apology. One tentacle.
Leviathan
Customer Review: Wake-and-Bacon Fryer Alarm
by Binarystar673
Where do
I even begin? I followed the instructions exactly, but nonetheless, I awoke
choking on the stench of smoke and flawed product design. Tragically, the organic
grain-fed thick-sliced bacon I ordered from Virchew Farms Collective had been
shriveled to a black husk of its former glory, and I have contracted what I’m
almost certain is Black Lung. When an alarm clock is sworn to “rouse you into
full consciousness with the irresistible aroma of perfectly-cooked bacon at the
ready,” I expect it to do exactly that, not to transform my artisan slabs into
charred clods. I’ve had to fumigate the master suite and send all of my clothes
out for specialty dry-cleaning. Thanks to endemic national incompetence, I’m now
going on my fourth day without adequate REM cycling, and I can already feel the
deleterious effects on my neurobiology. My biofeedback data is showing a
distinct down-curve in arterial flow to my cerebral cortex, and this afternoon
I had a terrible time remembering where I put my augmented reality goggles for
my virtual spinning session. One tentacle, and I am demanding both a refund for
the clock, plus financial damages sustained by the loss of my bacon.
Leviathan
Customer Review: Loving Voices Wake-Up Call App
by Binarystar673
I try to
restrain my umbrage in my reviews, but I find myself shaking with rage, unable
to hold back. Simply put, this company is chockful of criminally incompetent
frauds. This alarm “service” purports to pipe the mimicked voices of your loved
ones into multiple speakers throughout your domicile, so you awake surrounded
by the dulcet tones of your friends, family and beloved. They promise that you
can program both the verbal content as well as finely calibrate the percentage
and audio levels of each voice. I spent the two hours leading up to my bedtime
aggressively fine-tuning and maximizing their online tools for an optimal
waking experience. Since I don’t remember the sounds of my parent’s voices, and
I have chosen a life of solitude, I selected the voice of Ariel Dean, my favorite character from the obscure and short-lived
science fiction drama, “Sage Ship.” Imagine, then, my abject horror when
instead of Ariel’s voice, I was roused by the soft timbre of Mariel Jean, that traitorous viper who
left me six years ago to the day. Mind you, I am completely over her, but the
cognitive dissonance between expectation and reality was a shock to my already
over-wrought system. Mariel, dear Mariel, and her wake up kisses. Mariel and
her sweet morning song. I can’t fathom how supposed professionals allowed such
a colossal cock-up. Zero tentacles. I shall be returning this product
post-haste for a full refund, and will have my lawyer contact the company
immediately to negotiate a settlement for emotional damages.
But right
now, I find myself fatigued in the extreme, so I’m going back to bed. I won’t
be setting an alarm.
--Kristen McHenry
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