The Garment Tag¶
Posted Notice: All unclaimed devices must be wiped before disposal. Violators subject to disciplinary review.
I still have the tag. It’s plastic, cream-colored, the kind that hangs from store-bought shirts to list care instructions. I found it in my kiosk drawer three years ago, nestled between a cracked Samsung and a phone case stamped Property of M. Ruiz. The tag wouldn’t stay thrown away. I’d toss it in the biohazard bin, and there it’d be the next morning, hooked to my lapel or fluttering near the charging cables. Eventually, I stopped fighting it.
Now I work the night shift in the hospital supply corridor, reshelving gauze and restocking IV drip bags. The tag rides my uniform sleeve, a tiny white ghost. Nurses joke it’s a badge of shame. They don’t know.
The phones started pinging two months ago. Not the unclaimed ones from my kiosk days—new ones, hospital-owned, left charging in the docks. Screens lit up with messages from forums dissolved before the collapse, avatars whispering in shopping carts abandoned since 2003. I watched a man argue with his 2017 self over a Reddit thread about mortgage rates. The tag pressed cold against my collar as I watched.
“You’re late on the rent again,” said Leticia, my supervisor, cornering me by the linen closet. Her name badge was lopsided, a crack down the middle. “Third notice this month. You got a problem, you talk to HR. Not me.”
I nodded. The tag twitched.
That night, I pulled a hospital phone from its charger. It showed a profile I recognized: my sister’s, though she’d died in ’19, her Facebook memorialized with a photo of her at the Seattle Mall, hair frizzy from the food court’s humidity. The tag dug into my wrist as I scrolled. She’d left a message in a group called Parents of the Cloud.
“I know you’re still out there,” her avatar wrote. “I kept your favorite jacket. The one with the tag that wouldn’t fall off.”
I dropped the phone. The screen cracked, but the message stayed.
Leticia found me at dawn, slumped beside a pallet of urine cups. “You’re accessing the old networks,” she said. Not a question. She held up her own phone—same model, same crack in the screen. “My brother’s in there. He’s a child there. Easier that way.”
The tag burned against my skin. “You don’t tell anyone,” I said.
“Never.” She handed me a voucher. “But you’re covering the late fee. Twenty-three fifty.”
I didn’t ask how she knew the amount.
Last week, HR sent a memo: All staff to undergo digital hygiene training. Compliance mandatory. The tag has grown heavier, its edges sharpening. This morning, it latched to Leticia’s badge as she passed, and she yanked it free, her face pale.
Tonight, I’ll bring the Samsung from my drawer. The one that still smells like mango lotion and has a note taped to its back: “For M. Ruiz, who forgot more than his phone.”
The tag will attach itself. It always does.
When the training officer asks what I’m hiding, I’ll say nothing. But the phone will hum, and the tag will shine, and maybe, just maybe, she’ll see the message I can’t bring myself to delete:
“We’re not ghosts,” it reads. “We’re just still here.”
The officer’s name is Marjorie. She has a son. I’ve seen his picture.
I think she’ll understand.
I think I’ll hate her for it.