"I come here all the time," Beth said while guiding me and Maribel from the canoe up onto a pristine white sandy beach.
A pair of coconut palms greeted us about twenty feet up from the waterline, their green crowns swaying in a light breeze. Beth went over to one of them and took three ripened coconuts that had fallen to the ground. Then she took out a utility knife and punctured a hole through the top of one, twisting it around until she reached the milk inside.
"Good," Beth whispered to herself as a bit of liquid poured out of the top. She took a straw from her fanny pack, stuck it in the coconut, and handed it to me.
"We should get a picture!" Beth said after we were all holding our coconuts. I held my coconut in my left hand and put my right hand around Beth and Maribel while Beth snapped a selfie.
When I thought the selfie was over, I disengaged my arm, accidentally thumping Beth in the back. Startled, she dropped the phone in the sand.
"Let me get that for you," I said, reaching down for it.
"No," she said, but it was too late. I had already picked up the phone.
"No what?" I said, wanting to be clear.
"I could've gotten the phone. Please give it back."
"Give what back?" I wanted to clarify the meaning of "it." Meanwhile, my curiosity got the better of me. I tapped the icon called Safari, which brought up a page called Strathohumanis, Inc. Strangely, there was a picture of Beth, Maribel, and me that was dated over a month ago, all holding coconuts, like the one we just took.
"I don't recall this event," I said as I showed the phone to Beth and Maribel.
"Please give the phone back," Beth said.
I complied, now very confused. How could this be?
"You can drop the coconuts. Come along now," Beth said.
Maribel and I followed in tow as Beth located a path through the jungle. All system readings were normal, but the anomaly detector showed that something was wrong with the process. I shouldn't have seen that picture.
"What's the anomaly?" I asked.
"Anomaly? I don't see an anomaly," Maribel said.
"Relax," Beth said. "We'll take care of it when we get there."
When we had hiked for 16 minutes and 37 seconds we arrived at a pair of pods in a clearing. A man in a white uniform was there.
"Get in the pods," Beth said. We complied. The last thing I heard before the door shut was. "This one was a failure, Unit B saw my phone and the page from the last run. Wipe them and let's do it again."