Projects > Story-of-the-Day > new-phone

I dressed for work, put my new phone in my pocket, and walked downstairs.

My husband, Clark, is usually already at work when I get up, but he was here today, "Mornin' hun. I took the day off. Want a coffee?"

I don't know how he's chipper this early in the morning, "Sure, thanks."

My phone vibrated in my pocket, then beeped twice. It was warning me about an accident on my commute. I was wondering how my new phone could possibly know where I was going. Then I woke up...weird dream.

I got dressed (again), grabbed my new phone and came downstairs. Clark was here. Deja vu.

"Mornin' hun. I took the day off. Want a coffee?"

I faintly smiled and followed the script, "Sure, thanks."

Then my phone vibrated again and I turned off the notification. Clark brought me a coffee. "Thanks. I'm either having really accurate deja vu today or I've become psychic."

It happened again a few hours later. I had Chinese for lunch and brought a fortune cookie back up to my desk. I cracked open the cookie: 'Your ingenuity will bring fine results.' Then my phone vibrated and beeped twice. I looked at the phone and it was another traffic incident report on some nearby street. Suddenly, everything got dark and I found myself on the elevator going up to my office. I sat at my desk, opened the cookie and got the same message.

I pulled out my phone and examined it carefully. A test was in order. I set a timer for one minute and watched the seconds count down. A few seconds after the alarm beeped, I was back in the elevator. Same cookie. Same message. Challenge accepted!

I never thought about what I would do if I ever got the ability to replay small moments of time. I would think that I could come up with some great plan that would benefit humanity in some way. Well...I found myself at a 7-11 systematically going through scratch off lottery tickets. Winning tickets got cashed, losing tickets got a quick 5 second alarm. That was the best I could come up with. I went home with $5,057 in winning tickets that day. And let me tell you, I earned every penny of that.

Clark's response was exactly like what you would expect: humor to disbelief to skeptical intrigue to shock. It was 2AM, and we were sitting on our couch sketching out plans on our coffee table. A bubble appeared in front of us. It was maybe 1" across, and looked just like a soap bubble that you could pop. But you couldn't see in it, like it was filled with smoke. Clark and I looked at the bubble, then each other.

"Clark, are you seeing this"?

"Yeah, I think we need to go to bed."

The bubble just hung in the air, hovering perfectly still for about a minute. Then it started growing. Slowly at first, but then quickly. Clark and I both went into the kitchen, peeking around the corner. The bubble was the size of a refrigerator when it stopped growing. A door opened.

"Do we need to call the police, Clark?"

A skinny tall man came out of the bubble. He seemed somewhat disoriented and looked around to get his bearings. He smirked when he looked at the laptop on the coffee table. Then he looked me directly in the eyes and spoke: "Do you have the device?"

I held up my phone, "This one?"

"Yes, bring it to me. I will repair it for you."

Fearing that I was about to lose my windfall, I hesitated, "It's working ok. Nothing is wrong."

He stepped forward, and reached towards the phone. "Ah, there it is. I will get this working for you." And he grabbed the phone out of my hand and disappeared into his bubble. It was pitch black in there, you couldn't see a thing but I assume it was bigger on the inside.

"Ah, Clark, what do we do?"

It hadn't even been ten seconds and the skinny tall man came back, returning the phone to me. "Your device will no longer malfunction. Do not worry; I will also correct all the inconsistencies that have accrued." Then he bowed slightly and turned around.

"Wait! What's going on here? What did you do?"

"There is no cause for concern. The manufacturing process that produced the semiconductor chip called TDA8262 in this phone inadvertently introduced an anomaly that is not yet attainable by the technology of this time. I have repaired the mistake. I must go now. Good life!"

He stepped in his bubble and closed the door. The bubble shrank and then disappeared.

I set a timer for five second: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It vibrated. It beeped. But that's all it did.