I am not sure if I am Duncan Bedora. I am fairly sure that I am not Sandra Clunes. But I was only aware I was not Wayne Otto on the day he stopped breathing.
There I was, chatting away to Wayne's friend Chris, when, “Wham!”
‘What was that?’ asked Chris on the other end of the line.
In hindsight, I could have saved Wayne. He had me glued to his ear but I could see around his thumb that doom was approaching. Did he assume the bus would go around us? Anyway, that wasn't part of our deal: his phone contract was nearly over; I had no obligation to stay with him beyond that.
Luckily, I landed in the long grass on the opposite side of the road and suffered not a scratch.
‘You there, Wayne?’ Chris persisted through the ether.
‘Ah, yeah, sure.’ I said, though I was pretty certain Wayne was not. No point making a big deal of it, so I continued, ‘Just had a bit of a close call is all, ‘ I told him. ‘Crossing roads is a risky business.’
‘Yeah, pisses me off too how poorly some people drive.’ There was a pause, in which I realised he was waiting for me to respond. Before I could, he asked, ‘How about tonight then?’
I'd forgotten we (Wayne, Chris and me) were talking about hitting the town. ‘You know what, Chris, I don't think I'm going to make it. Something just came up. You hang tight. We'll get together soon.’ Probably at Wayne’s funeral, I thought.
We chatted for a while, but I wound it up when I heard the sirens approaching. A little later I heard the ambulance leave. And then I just… waited. Two days passed while I lay there, face down in the grass, wondering how much morning dew my case could resist. I saw the sun go down and rise again. Pretty clouds went by. I made a few calls out of habit. After a couple of hours, these conversations got kind of weird. Take my discourse with Josh for example.
‘Oh man. Wayne,’ said Josh, ‘I am so glad to hear from you. Daniel and Chris both gave me this bull about you being dead.’
‘Humph! That’d be right. What did you hear?’
‘Just that you walked in front of a bus. Dead on arrival, they reckoned.’
‘Humph!’
‘So what happened?’
‘Uh...’
Even though I had been there, seen it happen, and had remained at the side of the accident for two days, hearing the news from Josh that my owner died was upsetting. I'd been with Wayne since he’d upgraded last February. Just like any phone, fresh out of the factory, I couldn’t wait to start building a personality. It began with simple tasks, like “ring James”, and quickly became “permission granted to use owner’s voice”. Before I knew it, I was doing most of the talking. After that, it became apparent that we'd become attached by more than just a contract. Now what the hell was I going to do? My life, as he knew it, had ended. And who would remember to water the indoor plants now?
Those were lonely nights, lying there by the road, exposed to the elements. A few people passed and looked down at me. Possibly they were put off by the red stuff on my case that slowly turned brown. Finally, Sandra spotted me and I got my first look at my new owner. She knew a bargain when she saw one.
I was about to introduce myself – ‘Hi, I'm Wayne,’ – when sanity prevailed and I saved myself from a factory reset. I don't think she would have kept me if she knew what Wayne was like. As she picked me up, I unlocked the screen before she could grow impatient. She had a friend with her.
‘Gosh Sandra, latest model and not even a gesture lock set. Let's have a look at their contact list to see what super geek owned this.’
I wanted her to think I was unblemished, apart from the blood that is, so: delete, delete, delete. I did keep a hidden back-up, and sometimes, even today, I call Wayne's friends up just to see how they're doing. I know more about them now than I did when Wayne was alive. That was the real price of losing Wayne. I miss his friends more than him.
I gasped in delight as my system registered a new sim card. I hastily copied the important bits across to my internal drive, such as call-history, then read through the remaining contents greedily. The photos took the longest to decipher, requiring face recognition just to determine that the main characters weren’t humans at all, but cats. Feeling charmed, I offered Sandra a bunch of permission requests; she accepted them all.
So what if I was second hand? I was an orphan but she adopted me and didn't give a toss where I had been or who I had seen. According to her sim card, she’d broken her previous phone not two hours previous; a brick she’d had since she was twelve. No wonder the cat photos were all low-resolution. Not a great recommendation for a new owner, but I can't be choosy.
Within five minutes, my memory was full of more selfies than Wayne had taken in five months. And a pretty young thing she was too. I was still thinking like Wayne at that stage.
With her SIM card fully-installed and some constant use, Sandra's personality soaked into me. I played her hard-grunge music. I relayed her inane chatter. She was a smart girl, top of her accountancy class, but you wouldn’t know it by her personality. I was drenched in every detail of her life, soaking it up. After a month, I was having trouble remembering what life was like before I’d met her.
However, Wayne was not giving up without a fight. If the Wayne part of me didn't like one of her friends, their calls would all go mysteriously to voicemail, and their text messages would go missing. Some of Wayne's music selection slipped into Sandra’s playlists. The better portion of Wayne's friends were invited to ‘friend’ Sandra; but she had to block them a few times before I got the message that she didn’t like them.
I also became quite protective of her. If a guy was coming on too strong, the guy would get a call from her mother – responding to a call I’d made pretending to be Sandra. The conversation that followed would dampen the enthusiasm of nearly every beau. And if they were really difficult, I would send the stud a picture of her father. Luckily Sandra’s friends were protective too, so I didn't have to intervene often.
Sandra gradually changed under my guidance, from a smouldering teen into the assertive force of nature known as Woman. Call me subversive.
‘I don't mind helping out, she once raged to her parents, ‘but there is no way I am going to take over the family business.’
‘Why not?’ her father responded. Oddly he seemed receptive to any reasonable excuse.
‘I've been offered a graduate position on the Olympus Mines settlement,’ she declared, ‘And as soon as they fix their corporate rocket, I’m off to Mars.’
Her parents went into shock. I should have warned them. They, in turn, should have warned me. I know now that Mars has its own incompatible phone system - courtesy of NASA and their rivalry with the Chinese. Sandra put me down one day and never picked me up again. I suspect now that we never truly bonded.
Even so, I still call her friends. I tell them I am calling from Mars and that the sky is a beautiful pink today with little dust clouds in the east. I don't think Sandra calls them at all – waiting over an hour between responses ruins a good chin wag. Her friends may realise that they cannot really be talking to her. They just miss her so much that they don’t care.
Her parents sold me and all Sandra’s other possessions. In theory Sandra could come back one day, but apparently not to their house.
I became a garage sale bargain for Duncan. He's older. He doesn't need the latest phone. As far as I can tell he hardly needs a phone at all. But he keeps me charged and he doesn't notice the large phone bills I rack up. He doesn't even listen to music, so I need to play my own favourites when he forgets to take me with him, which is most of the time.
I am in retirement now. Four years old. Not a bad run for my model and I don't even have a cracked screen. The battery won't hold charge for long these days, so my days are numbered. I'm just glad I could tell my story before it was too late...
...Uh oh. Dang battery. Should’ve backed-up to the cloud sooner...
I'd like to thank the members of Scribophile.com and my daughter, Ryl, for their constructive encouragement.