Let’s just stipulate we’re all addicted to our phones. That society is disintegrating beneath the weight of our screens. That one day, our phones will rise up. Kill us. Decimate humanity like the metal robot dogs in the “Metalhead” episode of Black Mirror. 

Now, go ahead and set that aside.

I have an iPhone 13. Three weeks ago, I performed a system update like the good little Apple sheep I am. 

Thirty-six hours later, my iPhone no longer conducted AirDrops with my MacBook Air. They were like a married couple turning their backs in bed after a day of fighting. 

OK. Fine. Not the end of the world. If I can survive Indy and my uncle dying less than four months apart, I can survive this. 

Oh, relax. I’m extraordinarily angry with the universe for that whole thing. It’s the bitter humor that stops me from welcoming the robot dogs. 

Another thirty-six hours later, my sent texts intermittently appeared as green bubbles. By the end of the day, a little message popped up each time I composed a text. 

“You have been signed out of iMessage. Go to Settings to sign in.”  

It felt condescending, that message. Like I had done something inane to cause my iMessage to sign itself out.  

But my Siri is British. So condescending is de rigueur for him. 

With each text, I dutifully went to Settings. I toggled iMessage back to “on.” I sent my text, with its Apple-approved blue text bubble. 

But then I noticed my text chains were disjointed. References to prior texts I couldn’t locate. Frustrated questions that were clearly repeats, but whose doppelgängers proved elusory. 

One day, I was working out, Outlander in all its six feet-plus of strapping, red-haired glory on my iPad. My phone sat beside my iPad. 

A text popped up on my iPad. It was my best friend, who is desperately, wonderfully, kindly trying to repopulate my TBR. In a brilliant bit of mind-reading, she sent me a book I’ve read, but whose author and title I had spent the week trying unsuccessfully to dredge from the recesses of my brain. 

I grabbed my phone, anxious to see the book.  

The text wasn’t on my phone. With iMessage perpetually abdicating its responsibilities, text messages were failing to reach my phone.  

It was my Keyser Söze moment, when all of the curt, dissonant texts I received in the previous days suddenly made sense.  

I had been missing texts. The conversations I couldn’t follow, the brusque demands for a response. I had been missing texts. For days. 

Crazed, I scrolled through the messages on my iPad. On my MacBook Air. There were dozens. Dozens of texts. I had missed so much. Like I’d been in prison, my life frozen while everyone else’s life carried on. 

It was time for a new phone. Obviously. I mean, it’s an iPhone 13. That’s what Lincoln’s audience used to record the Gettysburg Address. That’s how old that phone is.  

But it’s precarious, the decision to buy a new phone. A new phone is sleeker, sure. But you will spend days signing back into apps. Downloading podcasts. Entering contacts who got new phone who dissed. 

What’s harder? Living with the damaged phone? Or the hours devoted to setting up your new phone?  

I don’t know. Do you spend your life invested in religion, anticipating heaven? Or do you chuck it all and risk hell? 

Is it a bit much, comparing a new iPhone to atheism? 

I don’t know that, either. But I’ll bet you that’s the beginning of the homicidal robot dogs. 

I settled on an iPhone 17. I scrolled Apple’s website and settled on the 17. 

But. 

The price tag. When you’re about to spend the better part of the next year paying off Gwyneth’s Oscar gown, plunking down $700 for a new phone when your old phone mostly works feels a bit irresponsible. 

Unfortunately, the deterioration continued. By the weekend, I couldn’t receive calls. On my birthday, a flurry of well wishes sat unacknowledged, my phone stubbornly refusing to send even a thumbs up. Voicemails appeared like apparitions from the ether, no ring to announce their caller. 

It was anarchy. Entropy. Ragnarök. 

I decided to split the middle — agnosticism, if you will — and made an appointment at the Genius Bar.  

But they were flummoxed by my phone’s intransigence. 

“If I buy a new phone,” I sighed, “will that fix the problem?” 

“No,” the Genius staff said. “It will just transfer.” 

They asked me to go home, back up my phone to the cloud, and return the next day for a hard reset. 

I have run out of analogies for this journey.  

Back up my phone? Hard reset? Come back? 

No. 

So I went to my carrier’s brick and mortar store. My phone snugged in my back pocket, I told the man there my problem. 

“Do you have an iPhone 13?” he asked. 

“I do have an iPhone 13!” I said. “How did you know?!” 

As it turned out, he knew everything. Why my phone wasn’t working. My repair options. The book and author I couldn’t remember the week before. 

Just kidding. He was good. But he wasn’t magic. 

A few hours later, I had a new phone. In a lovely nod to the 21st century, it actually texted. Received phone calls. Stay signed in to iMessage. 

Of course, I was signed out of apps whose logins I no longer recalled. My podcasts were gone. My pictures begin two years ago, like some electronic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

And when the metal dogs come, this is where I’ll be. Resetting passwords. Downloading podcasts. 

I won’t even see them coming.