Hold the Phone by James Rumpel

Lab accidents get too much good press. I mean, in the comics having a lab accident seems to always turn someone into a superhero or give them special powers. Well, I can tell you from experience that lab accidents don’t always work out that well. I should know. The lab accident that I was a part of ended up trapping me inside my teenage daughter’s cell phone.

It was ‘take your daughter to work day’ and despite my better judgement, I let my wife talk me into bringing Jenny to the lab. It’s not like we were doing anything dangerous. The company was just trying to develop neural links to allow people to use their cell phones completely hands-free. All they’d have to do is think to answer or send a text. It’s high-tech stuff, but it shouldn’t have been dangerous.

Well, I showed Jenny around the lab. I let her see my workstation and the prototype phones we were working on. She thought they were pretty cool, though she was a bit disappointed that they didn’t look much different from the current model.

Jenny sat down to watch me work but it only took a few minutes for her to get bored. She started interrupting me with all sorts of silly questions or complaints. I’ll admit it, I got annoyed and left her for a few minutes to try and rope one of the assistants into giving her a tour of the facility. Eventually, I got Maggie Howser to agree to take Jenny off my hands. It was only going to cost me a week’s supply of vanilla lattes.

So anyhow, my Mom insisted that I go with Dad to his work. It was some stupid ‘take your daughter to work day’ thing. I didn’t want to go, but Mom insisted. She said it would give us a chance to bond.

Well, the whole thing was pretty boring. Dad showed me his workstation. It looked like a stupid desk with some electronics on it. The one neat thing he showed me was some new type of phone he was working on. He said it had all sorts of cool built-in apps. I told him that it would be better if they jazzed it up a little. The thing looked pretty much the same as every phone out there. He said it was only a prototype and they’d try to make it look fancier when it went into production.

Then he started talking about what he was doing. It was all a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. To make matters worse, my phone wasn’t even getting reception. Imagine that, not getting phone reception in a place where they make phones. Finally, I convinced my Dad to get me out of there. He said he’d find someone to take me on a tour and show me where the vending machines were.

While he was gone, I decided to take a closer look at the new phone he was working on. I saw that it got reception and I could, at least, surf the net while I waited for him to get back. I put my phone on his desk and started looking at a list of twenty actors who had been kicked off their TV shows. When Dad came back with some old lady to take me on the tour, I forgot to change the phones back. No big deal, I thought. I’ll just switch it when I get back.

I ‘m not sure what went wrong. After Maggie took Jenny away, I went back to work. I recorded the process I was going to test in my lab notes. After attaching the neural receiver to the prototype, I placed the transmitter on my head. Someday I’d be able to make the transmitter small enough to be an earpiece. That wouldn’t be for a while. The transmitter I used looked like a deformed bicycle helmet.

I adjusted a few settings. I was just going to see if I could mentally send a command to open the message center on the phone and send a quick ‘LOL’ text. I know I had everything set correctly. I double-checked like I always do. When I hit the transmit button and everything went black.

I was in the office cafeteria drinking a soda when the old lady who was showing me around got a message. She immediately jumped up and reached out to grab me by the shoulder.

“We have to go,” she yelled. “Your Dad has had an accident, he’s passed out.”

We got back to the lab just in time to see my Dad being hauled away on a stretcher. I freaked out. A million different things ran through my mind. How was I going to get home? Was my Dad going to be okay? Was my outfit too flashy to wear on a hospital visit? Suddenly, I remembered the phone. I didn’t want to get in trouble for stealing it, so when no one was looking I put it back and grabbed my own out of some weird machine on my Dad’s desk.

I stuck the phone in my bag and went to find the woman who had been giving me the tour.

“What about me?” I asked.

“Oh, we’ve called your mother,” she said. “She’s going to pick you up on the way to the hospital.”

“Could you call her back and tell her to bring my grey sweater?”

I regained consciousness in tiny bits and pieces. First, I was aware that I was awake. Next, I realized that I could not see anything but black. I found that I could barely move my extremities. It felt like I was wiggling my fingers or toes but I couldn’t tell for certain.

Something was wrong.

Suddenly, a picture of my daughter wearing an inappropriate outfit appeared before me. It was all I could see. By the time I focused on it, the image swooshed off to the side and was replaced by a series of photos, ads, and headlines. Eventually, the barrage of media stopped on an advertisement for push-up bras long enough for me to notice that everything in the ad was backward.

The picture before me soon changed to a white background spattered with all sorts of reversed characters. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was looking at a text message screen. Soon new characters started appearing in the message box. Once again, the letters were backward and appeared right to left, but I soon got the hang of reading them.

“Hi Amy, I am so upset right now. My Dad is in the hospital. Mom is taking me to see him. I need you to do my Algebra 2 again. I’ll pay the same as usual.”

Jenny was texting her friend. How was I seeing it? What was I doing in the hospital? What was going on? Why was she paying someone else to do her homework?

I freaked out, trying to shout to Jenny or get her attention somehow. Like earlier, all I could do was wiggle my fingers and toes.

“iopuylkgipk,” appeared on the screen. I was, somehow, typing the letters into the phone. I experimented, moving what I thought was my right thumb. The letter “y” materialized. I moved another finger and a “k” popped up.

The realization hit me that I was trapped in Jenny’s phone. I had no idea how it had happened, but I was my daughter’s phone. I watched as the letters I had typed disappeared one by one. They were replaced with a new message from Jenny.

“Did you get my message? My phone is acting weird. I’m going to have to ask Mom for a new one.”

I moved more fingers and toes trying to figure out what digits created which letters.

“yuiopghjkl”

Try as I might, I could not create any other characters. Not only was I in the phone, but I was only on the right-hand side of the keyboard. I had to figure out a way to get Jenny a message. If I could let her know, she could tell someone at the lab and they would find a way to get me out.

The letters were deleted once again. I quickly typed “hlp.”

“Did you see your father pass out?” asked Mom.

“No,” I replied, “he sent me on a tour of the lab. I wasn’t there when it happened.”

“I’m so scared,” she said. “He’s always been in perfect health.”

I was a little freaked out, too, but I didn’t want Mom to get all worked up so I tried to comfort her. “I’m sure he’ll be okay, Mom. He probably passed out from overworking. I’m sure it’s nothing.” To be honest, telling that to Mom made me feel better. I was pretty sure that Dad was going to be okay.

Speaking of overworking, I realized that I hadn’t done my math homework. I turned on my phone so I could text Amy and have her do it for me. I checked twitter and noticed an ad for a neat looking bra before I sent the text.

Amy is a nerd and doesn’t have much of a life, so she usually replies to my texts right away. While waiting for her to text me back, a bunch of random letters showed up on my screen. That was really strange. I deleted them and sent a message to Amy that my phone was acting weird.

Letters appeared again. It was so frustrating to think my phone was broken. What had Dad done to it?

I was going to put my phone away when another message showed up. All it said was “hlp.”

I have no idea how long I was trapped in the phone. I took advantage of every possible chance to experiment with creating a message for Jenny. Eventually, I figured out that I could make the letters b,n,m, and hit the spacebar by blinking my eyes in different ways. I still couldn’t reach beyond one side of the keyboard. I’m sure it had something to do with the limited memory available in Jenny’s model. Her phone was not equipped to receive neural transmissions yet, somehow, my entire consciousness had been absorbed.

Then there was a stretch where I had to deal with an incredibly uncomfortable feeling in my backside. The pain made it almost impossible to think.

The stupid phone kept acting up the rest of that night.

The doctors said that Dad seemed perfectly healthy except for the fact that he was unconscious. They scheduled a bunch of tests for the next day and told us there wasn’t anything we could do. Mom insisted that we wait so we slept in one of the waiting rooms. It was super uncomfortable, but at least there was a place for me to charge my phone. Maybe if the battery was full it would quit making all those stupid mixed up letters.

I waited for my chance. Once the texting screen showed up again, I quickly typed out the best message I could come up with: “pop in phon.” I wasn’t sure if Jenny would respond or not. She didn’t at first. The letters just disappeared. She must have deleted the message. I sent it again.

After the fourth or fifth time, she typed a reply. “Who is this and how are you typing into my phone?”

I replied, “i you pop.”

A new message appeared, “Is this some kind of joke?”

“no,” I answered.

Again, I sent the message, “pop in phon.”

Soon, her new response showed up on the screen. “Listen, I did not spill pop on my phone! I take good care of it.”

“pop lk mom n pop hlp hlp hlp”

I waited for an answer but none came. I had no idea what Jenny was thinking.

Another stupid bunch of letters showed up on my phone. This time the letters actually made words but they didn’t make any sense. With Dad still in the hospital, I wasn’t going to have to go to school that day. I was trying to text Amy to have her get my assignments and do as many of them as she could.

When I went to type my message to Amy, the same letters showed up again. After this happened about four or five times, I decided that someone had to have found a way to take over my phone and was messing with me. It was probably Luther White; he could be such a jerk.

I typed a message to whoever was playing this trick on me. Maybe they could read it from wherever they were. I asked if this was a joke and the word “no” appeared. That’s when I knew I was really talking to someone or maybe the phone had some kind of artificial-intelligence. A little while later, “pop in phon” showed up again.

Now, I know Mom and Dad don’t trust me. They think I’m some sort of air-head. But, when my phone starts accusing me of being irresponsible, I draw the line. I told my phone that I did not spill pop in it.

The next message was weird. I had no idea what it meant. Before I could figure it out, Mom came and told me to come with her to visit Dad in his room. He was still not awake, but she wanted to see him before they took him to some sort of brain scan or something.

Mom and I were sitting in Dad’s room. He was just lying there, not moving at all. I felt myself starting to get worried again. I needed to relax so I pulled out my phone and was going to check out twitter but Mom gave me an evil look.

“Oh, I need to show you this,” I said. I didn’t want to be yelled at for going on my phone.

I showed her the messages I had been getting all morning.

She stared at my phone for quite a while. “I think ‘hlp’ is supposed to be ‘help’,” she announced suddenly. I was just happy she wasn’t mad at me anymore.

“But, what’s the bit in front of it?” I asked.

“You’re the one who texts all the time. Don’t you know what those abbreviations mean?”

“People don’t use them anymore. I think ‘n’ stands for ‘and’.”

“So, you think the middle part says ‘Mom and pop’?”

I nodded. “That sort of makes sense. So ‘pop’ means Dad. So, ‘pop in phon’ must mean . . .”

Mom fainted.

I was beginning to think that I was never going to get out of this predicament. How would Jenny ever decipher my messages? Even if she did, how could she help me?

“Dad, is that you?”

If I had legs, I would have jumped for joy.

“yup”

“How did you get in there? What am I supposed to do?”

“mom”

“She’s here with me. Let me try to wake her up.”

I was a little hurt that my wife would choose to take a nap at this time, but I let it go. I had to figure out the next step.

“go lb mggi”

“I don’t get that. Mom thinks ‘lb’ stands for pounds. Is she right?”

“no”

I tried again, “go mi job mggi”

“Oh, go to your lab?”

“yup”

“What’s mggi?”

“hoo”

“mggi is an owl? Are you ok? You seem to be losing it.”

I waited for her to figure it out. There was nothing else I could do.

“mggi is Maggie from your lab. You want us to go get her?”

“yup look mi nobook”

“What’s a nobook?”

This went on for quite a while, but eventually, I got my message across. By the time we were finished, I felt exhausted. Which is very strange since I no longer had a physical body. All I know is that I had much less energy than when I had been feeling the pain in my backside earlier.

“This is Maggie. We are going to try and reverse the process. I have attached Jenny’s phone to the transmitter and have placed a receiver on your head.”

As I read the message, a smiley emoji appeared on the screen.

“Here goes.”

Dad’s fine. They’re keeping him at the hospital and running some tests, but he seems normal except for the way he wiggles his fingers and toes when he talks.

Maggie and Mom are taking the credit for saving him. Mom went and explained everything. Maggie was the one who figured out Dad’s notes and set up the machine to bring him back.

I think I’m the real hero in all this. It was me who found Dad in the first place. If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be stuck in that phone. Speaking of which, they better buy me a new phone. Who would ever want to use a phone that used to be their Dad?

—

James Rumpel is a retired high school math teacher who has greatly enjoyed using his newfound additional free time to rekindle his love for science fiction and the written word.