Bubblegum

Belt Magnet, a 38-year-old writer living with his widowed father, is writing a memoir about a life lived out of step with the world around him. In his alternate-present America, the internet never existed; instead, people bond with Curios, flesh-and-bone robot companions that have become culturally ubiquitous.

Belt’s life is shaped by his strange ability to hear inanimate objects, his dependence on others, and his uneasy relationship with his family, especially his father and the memory of his mother. As he recounts childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, the memoir moves through flashbacks, digressions, and long reflective passages that build a portrait of his inner life and the world he inhabits.

A routine errand escalates into a broader chain of events that pushes Belt into deeper contact with his past, his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, and the social world he has tried to avoid. Along the way, the story explores Curios, the culture built around them, and the uneasy boundary between companionship, control, cruelty, and care.