A World Without Email Novels & Stories

Adrian's thumb hovered over the screen. Whatever the message said, he understood, sitting there in the fading afternoon light, that the next few seconds were going to divide his life into two permanent halves. Before this email, and after it. There would be no version of tomorrow that looked anything like today, not anymore, not once he knew. He opened it.

Marcus had always understood that the first hour of the morning was Alexander's most vulnerable hour, the one when he was still assembling himself into the person the world required him to be, and Marcus had always scheduled his non-urgent communications accordingly. Subject line: Just checking in. He opened it. The body contained no work content. This was the first notable thing — Marcus, who had organised four years of Alexander's professional life with a precision that still occasionally surfaced in Priya's inherited systems as a benchmark, wrote emails that were efficient and purposeful and contained only what they needed to contain. Alexander had received thousands of emails from Marcus

“Why did I never see any of this?” He leaned back slightly in his chair. “Because you were already gone by the time the report was finished.” I gave a short laugh. “Phones were invented hundreds of years ago.” “I know.” “Email too.” “I know.” “Planes. Couriers. Smoke signals. Pigeons. We’re rich, Sebastian. You could’ve bought a satellite and written JASMINE, I DIDN’T SLEEP WITH MY SECRETARY across the sky if you were motivated enough.” His jaw shifted. I pointed at the folder. “So don’t sit there and act like technology betrayed us.” “I’m not saying that.” “Then what?”

Sophia woke up to a barrage of emails from unknown addresses. It was an unusual sight; the only emails she typically received were work-related. She sat up in bed, her curiosity piqued, and opened the first one. It was from a well-known cosmetics company, offering to send her free products in exchange for a review. She quickly skimmed through the next few emails, which turned out to be similar offers from other beauty brands. “I don’t even have a functional social media account,” Sophia muttered to herself, bewildered by the sudden influx of attention. As she pondered the emails, she went about her morning routine, her mind buzzing with questions.

I drafted a new email, pouring everything into it, the vision for Cristainternational and then I sent it. A moment later, a notification popped up. Message not delivered.

My eyes went wide. I had thousands of email notifications. When I logged into social media, I saw months of unanswered DMs on different sites. My hand dropped to my pocket. I’d been home for a week, and I hadn’t even realized that I didn’t have my phone anymore. If I had this many emails, I couldn’t imagine what my texts looked like.

The body of the email is two sentences long, which is the kind of email that is two sentences long because the person who wrote it does not want to be writing it, and the person who is going to read it is going to read it on a Friday morning, in a Koreatown apartment, in a candle that is finally lit again, because the candle is a thing I light when I am a person who is okay, and I am a person who is okay, or at least I am a person who is going to pretend to be a person who is okay. There is a PR email below it. The subject line says We need a joint statement. The body of the email is one sentence long, and the sentence is a question, and the question is the kind of question that has a yes or

Luna waited for the other party to reply for more than an hour, and finally, when she almost fell asleep, the notification beep on her laptop sounded again. This time the other party sent her an email using a different email address. ‘The person you miss day dearly.’ Luna frowned fiercely at the sentence. The person she missed dearly? There was no one whom she missed dearly. If she had to name someone whom she missed dearly... There was no one else but Neil. But Neil was dead... She closed her eyes, treated the email as a prank, deleted it, and turned off the computer. Because of this email, she was reminded of Neil again.

The storm, when it came, did not materialize from where one would expect. It did not come from Wall Street or the media barons. It came from a single, seemingly harmless email that landed in Jonah's personal mailbox with a gentle ping. He stood at the large oak table in the great room, sunlight streaming through the windows to illuminate dust motes whirling above a spreading out of schematics for the Aegis's water purification system. Clarkson was on video conference in the next room, his deep, authoritative growl a background hum with which he was comfortable. The universe was in its place.

I wasn't sure what part of it was worse: at school or at work. More often than not, the words blurred together after a while. Homewrecker. Rogue trash. Cheater. I'd just logged out of my social media so Arielle's tech wizard team could do whatever they needed to do. The only thing I still accessed regularly was my school email which was spam free for some reason. I couldn't get to spam free campus though. And it seemed like the rumors had only grown, just like the message promised.