Land Line

“Johnny! Come and see what I got at the Antique Mall!”

“It sure is funny looking. What is it, Mom?”

“I think it’s a phone, Johnny. They weren’t quite sure at the Mall. But I remember my great-great-grandmother talking about how they used to have these things called ‘phones’ when she was a kid, and I think this might be one of them.”

“A phone? But what does it do?”

“I’m trying to remember. I think you used it to call people”

“Oh – like you program it, and it yells out their name really loud, to get their attention? Is that how it works, Mom?”

“Not exactly. See that cord on it? You plug that into the wall. Every house had one of these things plugged into the wall. You could use your phone to talk to someone on their phone in another house, because there were wires that attached all of these things together.”

“That doesn’t make any sense Mom. How could a thing in my house have a wire that went all the way to Ryan’s house in Tokyo? There would have been so many wires everyone would have gotten all tangled up in them! Why wouldn’t people just use their iComs?”

“There were no iComs back then.”

“No iComs! You mean babies were born without iCom implants in the palm of their hands?”

“Yes, that’s right Johnny. People were strictly organic back then – it wasn’t until after the Internet became sentient that we all had iComs. This came after Microsoft lost World War IX to Apple.”

“Oh, I know all about that. We just studied that at iSchool. Microsoft used to run the whole world until Apple invented nanoPeople Booster Bots – you know, those microscopic DNA computers they injected into people. It started our CompuEvolution, back in 2012”

“You’re exactly right, Johnny. After that people were no longer just bags of random DNA. We became proper iPeople. Once we had iDNA, it was easy to make sure every baby that came out of a test tube had their iCom right there in the palm of their hand.”

“But, Mom, I still don’t get how you use this phone thing. What are those funny buttons for?”

“Ummm…let me think. Oh yeah! See how there is a number on each button? You punched in a series of numbers, and the phone would make a noise in someone else’s house.”

“What kind of noise, Mom?”

“A ringing noise. It was very loud. Back then, people were giant brutes who were three or four feet taller than us. The houses had to be really big, and you had to be able to hear the ring from anywhere in the house.”

“That seems silly. Why didn’t it make music, or send out a pulse of endorphin like our iComs do?”

“Oh, phones were primitive. They were separate from people back then. They couldn’t even make music – not even ring tones – there was just a loud brash ringing sound.”

“What did you do if it made that sound, Mom?”

“As I understand it, you picked it up and said ‘hello’ and then you could talk to the person who was on a phone at his house.”

“Could you play games, or take pictures, or store music, or do surgery like with our iComs?

“Nope. All you could do was talk to the other person – nothing else. You couldn’t even see him.”

“Gosh, Mom, life must have been so horrible back then. I feel so sorry for those poor primates who had nothing but these barbaric ‘phones’.”

“Yes, me too, Johnny, me too. Now put the phone away until tomorrow. It’s time for me to give you your iUpgrade so you’ll be ready for iSchool tomorrow.”

“Okay, but I don’t think I’ll be able to settle down after all this excitement!”

“Well, turn your iCom on and watch a few episodes of iLassie on the inside of your iLids. I’ll get you a bowl of chips to eat while you’re watching.”

“Okay, Mom, but only if they’re new chips. The last ones were a week old and they reverse-evolved my Eye Mechanism – I didn’t have iVision for two days!”

“Sorry about that kiddo. Now go get in your iCase and I’ll bring in the chips.”

“Thanks, Mom! iLove you.”

“iLove you too, Johnny.”