The hand dragged me out of the ancient forum and, for a moment, I dared to hope. Maybe this time it would be something simple. Email? Online shopping? A weather forecast?
No. Of course not.
The screen faded, and when it cleared, I found myself staring at a familiar blue-and-white layout.
"Oh god," I groaned. "Not here. Not Facebook."
Immediately, the chaos began.
The first post I saw was a blurry photo of a sandwich with the caption: "Best lunch ever!!" The comments were a battleground of people arguing whether it looked edible.
"Is this… news to them?" I muttered. "A sandwich? Really?"
Then came the next horror.
A long, rambling paragraph written entirely in capital letters. It claimed the government was secretly replacing birds with drones.
I blinked in disbelief. "Oh no. The conspiracy aunties are here."
The human scrolled deeper. The feed became a swamp of strange memes, political rants, and AI-generated images that looked just real enough to fool the unwary. One showed a dog standing in front of the Eiffel Tower with twelve legs.
The caption read: "THIS IS WHY TOURISTS SHOULD STAY HOME!!!"
My glowing body shivered. "They… they believe this?"
The comments confirmed my worst fears.
"So sad. Prayers for France."
"I knew it! The government's hiding the truth again."
"Looks fake but who can trust the media these days?"
I screamed silently, wishing I could crawl into the motherboard and hide.
But it got worse.
The human liked a post about "Ten Home Remedies Doctors Don't Want You To Know." Suddenly, my entire feed was infected. Quack cures. Shady links. AI-generated miracle pills that promised to "reverse aging in three weeks."
"Please," I begged. "Delete this account. Burn it all."
Yet the hand scrolled happily, dragging me deeper into the abyss. Old classmates posting motivational quotes stolen from Pinterest. Relatives sharing pixelated memes about the good old days. A man proudly uploading a photo of his dinner: unseasoned chicken, overcooked spaghetti, and a single limp lettuce leaf.
"This place…" I whispered, blinking weakly. "It's worse than the Hub."
And then I saw it.
A chain post.
"Share this to 7 people or you'll have bad luck for 10 years."
I broke. I screamed so loudly that even the ads on the sidebar trembled.
"This isn't the afterlife! This is purgatory!"
The Book of Faces had claimed another victim.