Lottie's First Dance

That damn commercial. It kept airing in between game shows, its sentimentality breaking up the raucous flow of applause and flashing lights and cartoonish contestants. A little girl calling her grandmother on an iPhone and telling her about a sunflower she drew at school while the grandmother looked out the window at the lone sunflower in her yard and smiled. After about its 50th airing, Lottie powered on her father’s old desktop computer and ordered an iPhone on Amazon.

She hadn’t made a call with it yet, but she had managed to download Facebook. She filled out a few of the information fields — full name (Loretta “Lottie” Finster), occupation (retired financial advisor), relationship status (single), and education (Pine Valley High School, Dartmouth). The app suggested some friends. Their faces were displayed in small squares. Lottie fetched her reading glasses. It was almost like looking at her yearbook, but the faces had warped with time. How did this little device figure out that she, once, knew these people?