The Digital Dead

Miranda sat at the edge of the apartment complex pool, legs submerged in water that had grown too cold for August, watching her husband of seven years drift through the chlorine-blue water like something that had already washed ashore.

Mark surfaced near the opposite edge, slicking back hair that had started thinning at thirty-five. He didn't look at her. Instead, he reached for the iPhone balanced on the concrete—his third since their wedding, each upgrade seamless, each forward momentum in his career matched by backward erosion in their marriage.

"The Joneses invited us to their Labor Day party," Miranda said, her voice sounding flat even to her own ears. "Should I tell them we're coming?"

Mark's thumb moved across the screen without pause. "Sure. Whatever you want."

The worst part wasn't his indifference. It was that he'd become a zombie of the person she'd married—not undead, exactly, but living by rote, animated only by the ping of work emails and the dopamine hit of social media validation. His job in corporate communications had consumed him gradually, the way depression does, until all that remained was this shell that performed husbandry between conference calls.

Miranda remembered when they'd bought this place, the pool a selling point— imagined evenings swimming together under string lights, conversations that lasted until the water grew cold. Instead, she mostly came here alone, watching other couples fight or make up or simply exist together, phones tucked away, hands touching.

"Mark." When he didn't respond, she said it again, louder. "Mark, put down the fucking phone."

He finally looked up, eyes unfocused, like someone waking from anesthesia. "What?"

"We need to talk about us. About everything."

He sighed, the sound echoing across the empty pool deck. "Can we do this later? I'm waiting for an email about the merger."

Something inside Miranda broke—or maybe, finally, woke up. She stood, water dripping from her legs onto the concrete. "No. We can't."

She walked toward the apartment without looking back, leaving him there with his glowing screen and his shrinking life, understanding finally that some zombies don't want to be saved.