[21/26] Unbox
This story is part of the A-Z challenge that I’m doing.
Bilal was alone at home on a Saturday evening, and on such occasions, he preferred watching porn. He bolted his room from inside and turned his laptop on. Plugging in his earphones, he played porn on the internet. After a while, his eyes fell on a sparkling, glittering ad that seemed to dance on the right side of the screen. The ad had one huge word — UNBOX — written over it. And below the huge word, had, “Imran recommends this to Bilal” written.
Imran was Bilal’s best friend. For a minute, Bilal couldn’t believe how an ad could know about his friend. While there was nothing flattering to attract Bilal to the ad but the mention of his best friend’s name made him click on the ad regardless.
The ad took him to a web page that listed an app with the tagline, “Unbox your future”. He scrolled down the web page and found another mention of Imran. This time, besides the phrase, “Imran recommends this to Bilal”, there was a testimonial from Imran as well. It read, “Have heard of such things only in stories. What this app does is a miracle. You’ll have to try it yourself to believe it.”
This evoked a storm of curiosity in Bilal. He didn’t read any further and directly clicked on the ‘Download’ button that triggered a download on his phone. Within minutes, a new icon sat on Bilal’s home screen staring at him. The icon had an image of a spooky-looking crystal ball. He clicked open the app.
The first screen read — “Unbox shows you a video. One video.”
He tapped. The second screen read — “The video contains a thirty-second clip from your future.”
He tapped. The third screen read — “Once you watch it, you can’t unwatch it. Proceed only if you understand the consequences of knowing your future.”
The screen had two buttons — “Close app” and “Watch”. Without a second thought, Bilal tapped the button to watch the clip from his future.
A countdown of ten seconds began on the screen with a button below it that said, “Bailout”. Bilal didn’t bail out. He waited patiently for the countdown to run out. A blurred video started playing. In the video, Bilal could identify himself. He saw he was running after a couple of goons and shouting, “Stop you bastards! You cannot kill my mother and run away.” The video became clearer and Bilal could see himself clearly. He was sweating, had teary eyes and was relentlessly running after the goons. Before he could register what the clip was about, the video clip ended.
A thank you message popped up on the screen, “Thank you for watching. We wish we could tell you when this video clip will take place in reality, but we’re afraid, we cannot.”
He tapped. And another message greeted, “Have a great day!”
Bilal called Imran only to realize that Imran had never heard of the Unbox app. He was left with a knowledge of future that he wished he didn’t know.
