« What? » she said. Their connection was bad. He heard three short beeps and then they were cut off.
He called her again.
« Are you in a spaceship or something? » she said. « You sound all… futuristic. »
« Taxi on Lex. Is that futuristic enough for you? »
Again he heard the series of beeps, and again the connection failed.It was as if technology had gone backward. In the old days, when a telephone was a bulky thing that stayed plugged into your wall, you could actually hear the person on the other end of the line. Now you could take your phone anywhere, but you couldn’t actually talk.
But he had come to like cell phones for just this reason. The phone cuts you off and you don’t have to call back. It was as if the capriciousness of the cellular phone had enabled us to admit that we don’t want to talk to one another at all.
From the novel Breakeable You, by Brian Morton.
