It was a miracle that Moira hadn't driven over the damn thing. Not that it would've made a difference, as the BlueBerry Soothsayer III was virtually indestructible, but she didn't know that. All she knew was that when she pulled into the driveway up to the side entrance of her house, she opened the car door to find an expensive-looking smartphone sitting on the ground just a few feet in front of her. Assuming it belonged to Mitch (as he was the only one of her children old enough to be able to sign a contract with a service provider) she grumbled in annoyance and picked it up. She stuffed it in her pocket before retrieving the groceries out the trunk and carrying them inside.
She forgot about the phone over the next ten minutes as she put her groceries away. Following that, she headed upstairs with the intent of taking a shower. At the top of the steps, she was confronted by her daughter.
Rae had just exited the bathroom and was crossing to the other side of the hall to her bedroom. "Hi, Mom!" she chirped innocently.
Moira was about to respond, but as her eyes laid upon her daughter she gasped. She was completely topless! "Rachel Anne Jenkins! How many times have I told you not to run around without any clothes on?!" However, Rae was already in her room with the door closed before she could get a response out of her. At that moment, a door opened from the other end of the hall and Mitch came briskly out. Since he was shirtless as well, Moira was about to say something (though not at harshly) but stopped short when she noticed him rubbing a rather obscene bulge in the front of his pants. When he finally noticed his mother standing there, Mitch's cheeks went beet red and he hustled into the bathroom. "Mitchell, for heaven's sake!" she said, exasperated by her k1ds' rambunctiousness.
Shaking her head in frustration, she headed for her bedroom and closed the door behind her. She was about to undress and ready herself for her shower, but suddenly realized she still had that phone in her pocket. She fished it out and turned it over in her hand. Her thumb accidentally brushed across the touchscreen, and the thing suddenly came to life. A simple message appeared on the screen: Calibrating new user. Please wait.
"Aw, poo," she muttered quietly, hoping she hadn't just screwed something up. Not that it wouldn't have served Mitch right for leaving it outside where anybody could steal it (if it did indeed belong to her son), but she still didn't like the idea of messing up something he'd paid a lot of money for. But a few seconds later the main screen popped up, and for all intent and purpose it looked normal and unharmed (not that Moira really knew what it was supposed to look like). There were a few apps preinstalled on the device, most of them standard and self-explanatory.
The exception, of course, was the icon for the Soothsayer app. When opened (she was simply too curious to resist), a welcome message popped up: The Soothsayer app allows for reality alterations based on the user's input. By default, only the current owner will be aware of such alterations. Even though Moira's tech-savviness was practically nonexistent, she knew enough about how to interpret the English language and read between the lines to understand what it was trying to say: If she typed something into the phone, it would come true!
"Yeah, right..." she muttered, disbelieving of the phone's delusions of grandeur. Nevertheless, the temptation to test it out was rising within her.
Thu Feb 23 02:46:38 2012
2 comments Last updated: Tue Nov 7 22:13:01 2017