The Abyss: How to Deal With the Smartphone in Fiction

When one is reading a fictional story, one expects to join in the adventures of a fictional human

or humanlike character. In this fashion, the human reader can empathize with the character and

therefore properly experience the tensions of the story. However, this most common

interpretation of human interaction in a fictional universe is being challenged by the smartphone,

an entity existing in an utterly different and overwhelming reality, so much so that the inclusion

of the smartphone in a fictional story significantly demotes the story to turn it into an

undeservedly lifeless work because of the way in which the smartphone negatively attracts the

reader. This attraction is abysmal in the literal sense. It is unattractive, and particularly

uninviting, when a fictional story risks its decay for the benefit of the smartphone as opposed to

incorporating more human or humanlike characters which attract the empathy of the reader. In

order to understand precisely how the smartphone has essentially tarnished the classically

fantastic imaginary world of the fictional story, one should understand exactly where the

smartphone comes from and how it negatively invades such a precious environment, and how its

reign can be stopped, or at least delayed.

Logic and Reality:

The reality of a smartphone is much different from that in which physical humans exist. The

process of comprehending this foreign metaphysical universal artificial reality (MUAR)

(artificial because it does not correlate with the human real reality) is more complex than that,

whichever it may be, which helps human readers understand their own local physical reader

reality (LPRR.) Any fictional universe devised by an author exists within a flexible physical

fictional reality (FPFR.) Both LPRR and FPFR are based in the real reality, or physical human

reality. Local physical reality is that real human reality which is experienced by individual

human beings. Flexible physicalreality is that fictional reality experienced by fictional characters

inspired directly by LPRR but which is also formed by an author’s artistic license within a work

of fiction. (This is occasionally referred to as “the page.”) MUAR is based in a metaphysical

scape of reality, metaphysical because its logic exists just beyond that of human real reality.

Whenever a fictional character gazes into the smartphone, this character is gazing into the abyss

of the MUAR. To adapt Nietzsche, whenever a character gazes into the smartphone, the

smartphone gazes back into them. Therefore, due to that fixed perspective shared among

character and reader, the smartphone gazes back into the reader. This character tries to

understand that which the smartphone is communicating(i.e. reading a text message, an

informative news article, replying to someone’s Snapchat message, et cetera) from the

perspective of their LPRR, not FPFR. The only method of understanding these communications

is achieved by “seeing through” the screen of real reality. Even a fictional universe has its basis

in real reality. It cannot possibly be derived from anywhere else. This is why the character’s text

message also (quite minimally) affects the reader residing in their own (perhaps superior) LPRR.

Both are situated in real reality: they correlate smoothly.

Simultaneously, the smartphone communicates to the character, thereby the reader, through its

MUAR using code. One reception problem lies in the fact that humans do not exchange

dialogues in binary number chains; they speak in complex character phrases. Humans do not

think in numbers; they think in values. The smartphone is situated within its MUAR, yet it seeps

through to the LPRR. The smartphone is ultimately as real as any smartphone in LPRR real

reality. Acting as a barrier between these two realities, the FPFR (“the page”) acts no differently

than does the average phone tower.

When one, in the LPRR, sends somebody else a text message, they are texting communicative

signals to a phone tower. (There are multiple towers that stand in the way, but the reference to

only one is the simplest method of explanation.) This tower stands in the way of these words

traveling directly to the interlocutor. This is why the communications of the smartphone in a

fictional story do not pass through the FPFR to the reader: that which it tries to communicate has

to travel from its MUAR to their LPRR, while passing directly through the FPFR, that tower

which muffles the artificial communication of the smartphone to the reader in real reality. Any

information in the reader’s LPRR is compatible with that of the FPFR and not that of the MUAR.

The text message is for the character and not for the reader. It is only logical that it would not be

compatible with the reader’s comprehension. Only the character is fated to comprehend the

smartphone’s communications even if human readers ought not and frankly cannot do so. The

character and the smartphone are bound into the page together, so to speak: the communicative

signals from their respective realities beneath the page reverberate toward one another smoothly,

whereas the signal from the smartphone cannot get all the way through to the reader because of

the page. This logic remembers that the FPFR is indeed the tower which would, regardless of the

situation, receive the communications most clearly. It also remembers that the character’s text

message only minimally affects the reader.

This will help to explain why readers can solely empathize with characters in works of fiction.

One should assume that the character (thereby the reader) is human, yet theoretically it does not

matter. Outside of this analysis, there is no fruitful purpose found in a robot communicating with

the smartphone rather than with another robot. At the same time, the smartphone cannot properly

register human empathy because it does not possess anything resemblant enough of a human

form. How does one empathize with numbers? The smartphone is primarily numbers. Any

human relationship with the smartphone is artificially superimposed by the empathetic human

mind. Any entity incapable of human communication that is not aided by code is capable of

possessing infinite logic, incompatible with human pseudoinfinite imagination. The LPRR and

the FPFR share the common bond of their necessary situation in the real reality. Since human

empathy stems from real reality, and since both of these universes are also based in real reality, it

only makes sense that human readers can readily empathize solely with characters.

This also explains why it is more difficult for the human reader to empathize with the

smartphone. Not only does the signal not get through; at the same time, infinite logic absorbs

pseudoinfinite imagination, thereby deactivating it. Thus, human pseudoinfinite imagination, that

which lets the reader understand the difference between reality and fiction, is absorbed into the

abyss.

Humans like to think that imagination is boundless, yet infinite logic is the only truly boundless

system of logic. Human brains do not possess code, which assists not only the smartphone but

any computerized device. Humans think in values, not binary code. Humans can never know all

possibilities; a computer can, or perhaps already does. These separate logical spheres strongly

oppose one another to the point of death. Infinity and pseudoinfinity combined is infinity;

infinity absorbs pseudoinfinity. Since humans are incapable of comprehending infinite

possibilities, and since infinite logic is contained in MUAR as opposed to LPRR, the character’s

text message is essentially written in an illegible language. The words on the page are words of

code translated into the human’s preferred reading language through the FPFR subsequently

painted over with human artificially superimposed empathy.

The force behind those words is too much to comprehend. Therefore, the human empathy, in its

inherent connection to human pseudoinfinite imagination, can only be funneled toward the most

realistically humanlike entity in fiction: the fictional character.

The Human Consequence:

Of course, the author is (presumably) a physical human person and shall not be left out of this

analysis. The author is the mastermind behind the FPFR of the character, yet that does not

signify that communications of the MUAR are physical human creations. Those communications

stem from an overwhelming force in the real reality which is gradually making it inevitable that

the smartphone, and the Internet in general, are to be mentioned in fiction. Human existence is

gravitating toward a technological fringe existence in which legitimate human interactions will

be rarefied and the only abundant referential source of the Platonic archetypes of human

interaction will be found in written accounts. Fiction will become more legitimate in its depiction

of human interaction than will nonfiction. Fictional character interactions tap into universal

psychological models of humanity. Nonfiction accounts will be viewed as inaccurate imitations of this Platonic idealistic model. Based on this, it is only plausible that current and contemporary

fiction authors should focus primarily on the cataloguing of human interactions for the referential

convenience of future generations, human or automaton.

Say that an author has composed a dialogue exchange between Kaui, loitering on a telephone

pole in Connecticut, and a distant character Amit, texting back to Kaui from Minnesota. The

dialogue exchange has been written in a generationally realistic format (that is, containing

mention of the smartphone) that is simultaneously unapproachable in fictional craft. The

exchange is included for a specific reason, but for the cause of fiction, it may be, and ought to be,

more appropriate to incorporate this same dialogue exchange but in a less “safe” format, such as

implication of dialogue exchange through its grounding in Kaui’s actions (this satisfies the

maxim of fictional craft stating that an author should show more than tell,) or through its

grounding in Kaui’s physical interaction with a different character Manjeet, yet its reference to

this implied conversation with Amit in the same instant. Alternatively, Kaui may just possess the

smartphone as a prop of impetus for the plot but not as an object for dialogue exchange (at least

during the course of what is read.)

It ought to be easy, and beneficial, for fiction authors to solely incorporate human interactions. Fictional stories, regardless of setting, time, character count, and even plot, are

perspective-based. Regardless of how much an author attempts to diverge from the fact that the

fictional story is being composed in the “now-in-process” of the author, it is still centered in a

fixed perspective. Even if there is not necessarily a character to whose perspective the reader is

inevitably locked, such as in avant-garde works, the reader locks onto the perspective of the

author.

If the story focuses primarily on the smartphone, assuming that there are no human or humanlike

characters, the story will ultimately fail. The smartphone, as described earlier, is nothing close to

human, so it lacks perspective and slows, perhaps even halts completely, the progression of the

story simply because of its lifelessness. No human motion, progression, or perspective can be

located in the smartphone. Fictional characters once again claim a victory over smartphones as

subjects. Likewise, the hypothetical smartphone “perspective” introduces an abyss of plot rather

than a peak of plot.

Tension is human, being local and physical. Mental thoughts are nevertheless physical because

they are located in the local physical mind. Words from dialogue exchanges utilizing a

smartphone are arguably physical because they are essentially digital synapses as opposed to

ones of the human brain (and those smartphone communications penned by an author indeed

stem from a physical source,) but they still reach into an abyss of logic and reality for which

human interaction is not fit. Moreover, code is too straightforward in its numerical format, not

akin to imperfect human interaction.

None of the classics of fiction, or even nonfiction, contain anything reaching this level of

untouched territory when it comes to communication and plot progression. Newspapers are

intrinsically different and are fair to utilize. They are classically historical facets of the LPRR. A

character reading a newspaper does not identify itself as engaging in any socially and fictionally

tangential activity, as opposed to a character browsing through text messages on a smartphone

who can only claim that. Newspapers are workable entities of communication because they can

elicit human tension. A landline phone is also workable because of its similar dramatic tendency.

Completely avoiding the smartphone in a contemporary short story should still be possible.

Humans are still primarily social creatures in a physical human reality. They are born so. The

smartphones is coded to imitate that social interaction, but it will never match. Yes, it may soon

ultimately be a new reality that code will become the new page, but humans are still capable of

engaging in real reality. There are still so many untried, unheard ideas in the passing era of

physicality. Once all of these ideas are heard properly, only then should humans reluctantly

welcome the new world order of the abyss.