Let's make another story on mobilism.



Following the positive reactions and downloads of the first story - The story of John (created here and released here) - we decided to make a new story on mobilism. Everyone may participate, by adding something of his/her own. There's no plot, just the adventures of a smartphone with a will of his own. We'd like this story to be fiction, and not science-fiction. Meaning Mr. Smart Phonie - that's the name we gave the device - is expected to do everything a modern mobile device can do: listen, see, read, speak, communicate, etc... Meaning that - except a mind of its own - it can not bite, pee, jump, run, etc... though we believe the features it carries - when used thoughtful - can push a man to help a little with those... Well, don't know about the 'pee' thing...

Anyway. Grab that keyboard and let your imagination do the rest. Don't forget Mr. Phonie needs to be charged from time to time: adventures burn energy! That way, every post will lower the battery level with 10 % of its total capacity. If the battery goes empty, the last poster won't be allowed to contribute to the story any more before ten new parts are posted! So if the battery level goes down to 10%, it's time to find a charging plug!

Enough for the talking, let's start WRITING!

Note: If you plan to write a next part in the story, it could be someone else is posting something in the meantime, making your reply out-of-context. To solve this you are allowed to post 'reserved' so you're sure what you're writing comes next. Please post your part within two hours you 'reserved' a reply.

Note (2): To keep this topic clean: please no comments and no signatures. Thanks!

Battery status: 90 %

G & a - Services and Contests
(Anything you want, you got it... - R. Orbison)

 

Chapter 1:
Mr Phonie's destiny.
Darkness was falling over the alley. Only the barking of a dog on a balcony one high was breaking the silence, replied by more barking a few blocks away. A smartphone lie hidden by some bags of garbage in a corner. Earlier that day his owner lost track of it while participating to a 'mobile-throwing' competition on the beach, where competitors have to throw their mobile away, as far as possible. The best thrower wins a bright new one. Problem is, it's not always clear where the mobiles 'land'... This one got lost between some stuff that washed ashore the night before, picked up by the cleaning team, and dumped in the alley while waiting for the garbage van. Smart Phonie - that's the device ID his owner gave him - wasn't sure anybody was looking for it; throwing your precious away to win a new one doesn't feel very like you care for it... Such a waste! Mr. Phonie is a highly-equipped mobile device - top of its generation - with most advanced features on-board...

Battery status: 80 %

Though it isn't able to smell, using the build-in camera and installed OCR it took a few seconds to scan the inscriptions of the bags laying around to find out what they are: garbage! He had to get away from there before the truck would come and pick it all up to be destroyed. Using the build-in GPS learned he was in 'Ostend', and a visit to the local town hall's website - using a free hotspot signal covering the alley - told him the van could come any minute now. On the balcony, the dog stopped barking when a door opened right beneath it, and a man came out, carrying a leather case. Time for some action, Smartie! The man headed for the end of the alley, not intended to throw a glance at the garbage. Just when he past alongside, Mr. Phonie came to life: he initiated a buzzing sound, and lit up his screen, which caught the attention of the man. Carefully pulling away a bag of garbage with his foot, he discovered the smartphone...

Battery status: 70 %

The man picked him up and after a brief glance slipped him into a pocket.Now Mr.Phonie was blind but accessing his gps it showed the man was walking towards the Church of Peter and Paul.
Another wifi hotspot allowed Mr.Phonie to search that locale only to discover that it was Paulusfeesten a music festival.A little while later and Mr.Phonie could hear accordion music and singing.The man had stopped and was leaning against a podium.The gps put him at Pauluspleintje.
Suddenly as a new song started the man took Mr.Phonie out of his pocket and took a photo. The band was Lady Angelina singing "Adieu Le Monde" (goodbye world)
A reflection in the chrome on a drum allowed Mr.Phonie to see a woman tap the man on the shoulder. The man put Mr.Phonie down on the podium kissed the woman and walked away with her leaving Mr.Phonie abandoned again!
Battery status: 60 %

Though the couple were leaving fast, Mr. Phonie was able to take a picture of the reflection of their faces on the chrome. Fortunately Mr. Phonie was equipped with KGB's latest cutting edge face recognition technology, and using a public hot-spot, he was able to log in to their database (He still remembered the password what his priveous owner entered. Smartphones have very long-term memory. Unless they don't discharge of course!), where he learnt, that the man's name was John, and the woman was called Suzy. He googled their name, and after hitting the "I'm feeling lucky!" button, he found himself on a site named Mobilism, at the release post of an ebook called "The story of John". Luckily, his priveous owner purchased a Premium Account for MobilismApp, so Mr. Phonie could download the PDF file from popular filehosts directly without waiting! Wonderful! After he read the book (didn't took more than 3 seconds...Computers are fast at reading!), he turned on his vibration function, and tried to follow the couple... Well... Since this isn't the most effective method of moving, hours later, he only moved a few centimeters. Eventually his G-Sensor alerted that it detected altitude change, but he couldn't do anything (What could a phone do in such a situation?), and he fell off the podium, and Mr. Smart Phonie was lying in the rain...

Battery status: 50 %

Nearly an hour later, after the rain stopped, Mr. Phonie rebooted and reloaded all systems. Looking around, he saw that the rain had stopped, Lady Angelina had stopped singing, and that no one was in Mr. Phonie's small proximity. Laying there on the ground, Mr. Phonie started thinking to himself about his adventures on this charge. "I have been thrown" he thought, "And now, I'm laying here slowly being frazzled by the rain drops on me." After a quick search, Mr. Phonie figured out that the only way to remove all liquid from a device is place it in uncooked rice. Mr. Phonie is so very happy after learning this and quickly reads on! After a few minutes, he also learns that the "Do Not Eat" packages in pill bottles do the same exact thing. "But where can a find this stuff?" he wonders. But then, in the heat of excitement, he realizes that everything is dark, and that he is in someone's pocket! Over the next couple of boring weeks, in a dusty room, Mr. Phonie had a weird feeling that he should search the Internet for his make and model. After a couple hours he runs across Mobilism again, but this time in the Buy and Sell section! After looking at the pictures he realizes it's him! As fast as lightning Mr. Phonie jumps on a proxy, creates an account on Mobilism, and tries to send the seller, Mr. FuFu, a Pm! Just as soon as he typed out his letter, the contest ends, and finds that he is to be shipped off to someone by the username of, "Tattle", after reading his profile, Mr. Phonie thinks to himself, "He dosn't look all that bad, maybe I will like my new owner." So after a long wait, Mr. Phonie is laying in a nicely packaged box, sitting at Tattle's front door.....

Battery Status: 40 %

Mr. Phonie is laying in a nicely packaged box, sitting at Tattle's front door..... But Tattle lives near a dumpster and dumpsters attract .... Seagulls who scavenge and steal. Who hasn't seen the youtube clip "Seagull stole GoPro"?
Welllll it just so happened that 5 minutes after Mr.Phonie had been left on Tattles door step Scuttle the Great Shearwater was flying past.Seeing the package Scuttle thought it looked like a packet of baby squid his favourite meal so landing he started attacking the package tearing the wrapping off with vicious strokes of his razor sharp bill.Finally Mr.Phonie was exposed, hmm not the nice baby squid Scuttle had hoped for but he had always wanted a smartphone.He could send text messages and photos to Ariel the Little Mermaid and when he got it back to his nest wouldn't the other Shearwaters be surprised. It would cause a lot of tittle tattle amongst his neighbours.
Seizing it in his claws he sprung up with the raucus cry " off to my nest".
Mr Phonie had quickly accessed squawksarah's mobilism page and then downloaded Aviasoft Nature Explorer which enabled him to recognise Scuttle as a Great Shearwater Gull which nests on the uninhabited islands around Tristan da Cunha.
Recording Scuttles cry as he flew away with Mr.Phonie in his claws, Mr Phonie accessed Bird calls and their meaning to discover that Scuttle was taking him far away and he was going to need a charging plug very soon. Oh well if I ever get out of this I am going to have some magnificent eye in the sky film to put on youtube.
Scuttle flew higher and higher and soon they were hundreds of miles away from land.
Suddlenly they both heard a peculiar nois coming from behind. A stange silvery object was approaching them at high speed on a collision course.Scuttle let go of Mr.Phonie to swiftly dive to one side to avoid that collision.
Mr.Phonie was falling falling falling..............

Battery Status: 30 % and falling falling falling

... towards the sea, where it got instantly swallowed by a great white shark just before it touched the surface. Now, call it coincidence, call it luck, suspect us to use all writer's rights to manipulate this story... Fact is the shark got spotted by Jay's fishing boat. Jay happens to be that kind of guy that doesn't want to follow his old man's carrier. Jay's father had been working his whole life in some mine on Java, digging Sulfer from the deep and bringing it to the surface for trading. That's not what Jay wanted to do! One day he bought himself a fishing boat, and since then he sails to the open sea every early morning to catch big fish. Today he spotted a white shark. He had been following the large fish for hours, and then a lot of things happened very fast. He saw a Grey Parrot flying over the water, on a collision course with a seagull. The seagull must have been holding something in his claws, as it suddenly - frightened by the parrot - dropped it and the moment the object hit the water the shark jumped out of the water and swallowed it. At the same moment Jay shot his harpoon and hit the shark on his side... Then it was only a question of patience to watch the shark get tired of fighting against the rope and slowly pulling it on board. With a big smile Jay turned the boat and headed to the coast. Sure he would find a customer for this big fish...

Battery status: 20 %

....And after watching the seagulls flying away from his window, Tattle thinks of the nice beautiful blue ocean. Which of course Tattle likes to eat good slightly pink, lemon seasoned, great white shark meat, meaning, that Tattle is already on his way down to the meat market. Meanwhile Jay is off with his prize catch, the great white, and Mr. Phonie inside the shark! Tattle arrives a little late, and Jay has already sold off most of the fish, only the head is left. "Well at least it's shark" thinks Tattle, so he buys the last bit of shark. But wait, where's Mr. Phonie?? Well, it just so happened that while the shark was in Jay's boat coming back in, Mr. Phonie got so nervous and scared that he couldn't help but just turn on vibration mode. So as the great white gave out it's last breathe, it coughed up Mr. Phonie, into it's mouth! As soon as Tattle brought this fish head back home, he grabbed a knife and started chopping the head up savagely! Mr. Phonie is sooo scared, so turned on the ringer full blast! Tattle of course, saw the phone and, suddenly, it hit him! It was the phone from Mobilism!!


Battery Status: 10 %

Tattle woke up from his dream. Scary! It felt so real... finding a phone in a shark's head... They should write books about dreams, he thought, and went back to bed. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Jay reached the port and as soon as the boat stopped some people from the fishing company took care of the big shark. The fish would be loaded in a pickup truck, but first they had to 'clean' it. 'Cleaning a fish' means open it up by cutting trough the belly, and removing the inside to 'give it back to the sea', as fisherman say. This brings luck to the fishermen and their family. When this job was done, the truck prepared to drive away. Jay had been cleaning his boat and prepared also to leave. One of the men was waiting for him when he left his boat, and handed him over a bag. 'Here, Jay, the stuff we found inside the fish while cleaning it. It's your fish, so it belongs to you.' Jay wasn't surprised. He knew there's lot of stuff that can be found inside a shark. Nothing really valuable, but sometimes there's a nice piece of jewelery. Jay got a weird feeling in his stomach while thinking how it got there. Which made him think he was thirsty. He would go for a drink and check the bag's contents later. He went to a local cafe, where some nice Jazz music was playing. He saw a woman sitting at a table behind her laptop - she didn't even notice him coming in - and some fisherman sitting at a table drinking something that looked like brandy. They looked up and he nodded at them. They went on talking loudly to each other, telling those stories that always happen when there's no-one around to witness them. Jay sat at a small table, and put the bag on a chair beside him. He ordered a Mojito and looked trough the window into the busy street. Exactly the moment the waitress brought his drink, a voice screamed loudly 'BATTERY LOW!'... from inside the bag. Everybody stared at him and quickly he looked inside the bag... where he found a smartphone with a flashing screen showing a message: 'Battery low, please charge!'. 'What the hell is this?' thought Jay, and he put the phone on the table in front of him. What's that for a thing? A playstation? A portable TV? Jay was clearly not at all familiar with this kind of devices... Then he caught some movement in the corner of his eye. The lady with the laptop had left her table, and stood right in front of him. 'Excuse me, Sir' the lady said, 'my Name is Merry', and you seem not to know what you have to do with this', while pointing at the phone. Jay didn't have time to reply - or maybe it took to long - but the lady went back to her table, reached for something in her bag, and returned with some wired device that she plugged into the wall. 'This is an universal charger' she continued, looked up the device and plugged the other side of the wire into it. As soon she'd done that as the phone's speaker came to life: 'Thank you so much, sweet and tender Merry, for this warm and steady flood of energy...' and a big winking smiley popped up on the screen, and blow a kiss in her direction, having them both look surprised but amused. What a strange device! 'Err... Sir?' she turned towards him, 'Jay' he said, 'my name is Jay'. And she continued: 'Jay, would you mind I take this phone to show to some of my friends? I'm sure they will be curious to see it!' Jay said it was no problem. He had to go anyway, so he left Ms. Merry with the device and went home. Soon Mr. Phonie would be fully charged, and Merry would take him to her friends...

Battery status: 100 %

Along the way home Merry couldn't wait to show her friends her her phone, so she started to call up all her friends while driving. It just so happened that where she lives there's a hands-free cellphone talking law, so in a flash lights and horns started blaring! Merry pulls over and quickly hides all the beer she already bought for the party, and slid Mr. Phonie into her pocket. The officer walks up and says "Good day ma'am! I'm officer Phex, Have you been drinking today?". "Why yes!" replies Merry, "I had 3 lattes, and 2 cups of water!" After searching the car and finding all the beer, officer Phex decides to take Merry down to the Police Station. After searching Merry and finding Mr. Phonie, Mr. Phonie searched over youtube and started playing German videos. Phex is so overjoyed at this, and decides to keep the phone, and show him to his friends that were coming over that evening!


Battery Status: 90 %

Phex put Mr.Phonie in his pocket and walked off to find his friends in the bar.
On the way he was attracted by the sound of a man shouting" new gadgets for old, new gadgets for old."
Walking up to the shouting man Phex saw a table loaded with all the latest gadgets.
"Who are you and how can you make that offer, what's the catch?"
" I am Prof Ali D Loyas and I represent the Green Gadget foundation which tries to ensure that all mobile phones, PDAs and ebook readers are recycled not just thrown in the dumpster. Have you got something you would like to swap ? look at this latest Kobo , touch screen, wifi and today only two 32gb cards loaded with the very latest books"
Phex handed over Mr.Phonie and wandered off looking at his new acquisition only giving a brief thought to that stange man.The Kobo flickered and Phex found himself looking at the story of Aladdin from 1001 nights.
Mr.Phonie vibrated in fear he knew who Prof Ali D Loyas was , the anagram was a simple 3 word solution. He had fallen into the possession of the trickster god , the name and sex differed throughout history and location whether it be Loki, Anansi, Coyote, Veles or Sun Wukong.
Suddenly Mr.Phonie felt strange some weird piece of software was being installed in him.
What Mr.Phonie did not know in addition to 99.999% of humanity was that the old gods of legend were in fact alien visitors with superior technology having a bit of fun. Now that mankind had some technology of their own they had to be a little more careful. No more transforming from an eagle to a humanoid or landing a flying saucer in someones back garden,no more flying carpets or emerging from an oil lamp in a puff of smoke, there were just too many cameras about.
back to Mr Phonie what was going to happen to him next and where would he end up? What software had that nasty alien installed in him?

Battery Status: 80 %

While it's not unusual for a smartphone to be 'injected' with some kind of software, it bothered Smarty this upload like 'tickled' him, checked his battery, analyzed his components, verified his ports were working well, and overruled his own will, making his screen flicker with all kind of patterns. Then he felt how his memory got emptied to the bottom, and immediately filled again with a code he didn't recognize at first. If Mr. Phonie's creator hadn't foreseen the eventuality of being completely wiped, and burned some vital software in an unused part of the display memory, he would have been lost for ever. Now this little piece of code allowed him to activate his wifi port and contact the cloud where his life-saving software was backed up. After downloading the necessary applications, he was able to analyze the software that the weird professor had infected him with. First he needed to be sure he wouldn't fail on battery power. So Mr. Phonie activated his buzzer and blinking power led, and soon he was feeling a fresh power flow towards his batteries. Then he waited until the professor went to sleep, and powered up. Although equipped with a powerful processor, using all the speed and mathematical power his components could provide, it took Mr. Phonie the whole night to analyze and decode the alien contents of his memory. Many times his circuits locked up, many more times he had to reset himself, many times he feared his heart would burn as he felt the power cord was having difficulties catching up with the power he was asking... When in the morning he heard the professor was getting up, he quietly shut down, but not before removing all the traces he could have left from the work he did during the night. And most important; with the satisfaction he discovered the secret behind the coded software that he was uploaded with: he discovered his 'infection' was nothing more than the recipe for making some good old traditional Belgian mayonnaise...

Battery status: 100 %

The following days, the strange salesman - unaware Mr. Phonie regained control of his own will - continued to upload regular knowledge to his internal memory. Mr. Phonie got used to this, and discovered there was a system behind it. Whenever his memory was full, a wired connection transported the data to a satellite antenna, mounted on the roof of the man's house. The antenna receives signals from a satellite, and sends back an acknowledge sign so the satellite. The salesman managed to stick the data from Mr. Phonie's memory to the outgoing signal, and transport it to the satellite. Mr. Phonie found out there were other places from where information was send that way to the satellite, where the information was kept encrypted and hidden, and every few days transmitted to a place outside our galaxy. Meaning there was someone - or something - spying on us, gathering information. Mr. Phonie found out this has been going on since many thousands of years. Of course the transmission hasn't always been done trough smartphones. In the early days they used the 'lightning' technique, which is still used nowadays. Mankind has always been troubled by lightning. Though fascinated, we've always been afraid of lightning, and without ever really knowing why. It never occurred to our mind that lightning has always been a way to extract information from our civilization. Information gathered by aliens in human disguise, and concentrated on some location to be grabbed by their 'people'. Generally the information was stored on some electronic device, that they brought with them from their homeland. Today, they use smartphones for that purpose, as they generally go by unnoticed nowadays. Once filled up with knowledge, the device was placed as high above the ground as possible, on a rooftop, or a tree. So it stayed out of view for everyone, and it was more easy for a 'collecting' alien ship flying by - hidden in a packed of clouds - and pick it up by sending a lightning. To clear the area from traces or witnesses of the transmission, the location was usually struck afterwards by another lightning, destroying the roof or the tree. Hence probably our fear of lightning. Nowadays this technique isn't used much any more, since lightning chasers make it difficult to make invisible knowledge transports. Though we know now what those spotters really chase, and why old scientists always have been interested in lightning.

Knowing all that, Smarty made a decision: he would try to 'manipulate' the files that were temporarily stored in his belly. First he 'corrected' the recipe for the mayonnaise. He replaced the words 'salad oil' with 'Nitroglycerin', and replaced 'mix' with 'heavily shake'. Then he hoped he was not around when that recipe was tested...

Battery status: 90 %

Because it was a warm and peaceful evening, one could pretend a storm far away caused the sky to lighten up for a second. Not a single soul would have imagined the gentle flash was caused by the explosion of an hostile planet far away, due to some modified mayonnaise recipe tested by alien residents, in an attempt to create that cosy and warm atmosphere one can only find while visiting a Belgian city... With the home-planet gone, there was no aim for satellites to send their uploaded data to any more, so they silently turned to their new duty as it was to be they would for ever float trough our higher atmosphere, where they would occasionally be hacked by some computer wizz-kid to spy on the whereabouts of some Libyan leader... But that wasn't of Mr. Phonie's concern. A much more important task awaited him. It was now time to eliminate the aliens on Earth, those gathering the information on-the-field. He would start with his own host, the weird professor. While he was thinking about a plan he felt the power cord and communication wire were unplugged, and he disappeared in the man's pocket. Because the satellite had become useless, the salesman had decided to use the lightning technique to send the information to his home planet, while he was still unaware it didn't exist any more. Though it was already dark, the man headed quickly to a forest nearby, looking for a tree that was high enough to have the phone hit by a lightning. While shaken around in the professor's pocket, Mr. Phonie discovered a little hole he was able to look trough. When arrived in the forest, he saw some hunters, hiding in the bushes alongside the road, patiently spotting the area for some animal to shoot. Then the professor came to a brief halt. He found a tree that suited his task. So he left the road and worked himself a way trough the bushes towards the tree. Suddenly everything went quiet... The birds stopped whistling, the wind held his breath... there was not a single tremble of a leaf... The weird salesman felt the tension, stopped moving and got down to hide in the bushes, concentrating on the silence, elaborating what caused it. Just that moment Mr. Phonie jumped to live, and with his volume set to 100%, he emitted the sound of a rutting boar, making the professor jump up, reach for his pocket in panic, shaking the bushes in a way someone would think there was an animal hiding. Well, that's exactly what the hunters thought. Hearing the screaming boar, while watching the bushes shake heavily, they didn't wait for the boar to jump out and charge on them. Two hunters fired nearly at the same time, and their shot didn't miss! A bullet hit the professor in the head - taking his breath away - and the other went straight trough his stomach - taking everything else away - while leaving a big hole in his back... He fell backwards with his eyes wide open, like in a last attempt to send the information kept in his brain to the black hole that used to be his home planet...

Battery status: 80 %