Page 40 of Soros
Shortly after the phone in his hands lit up and made an incessant sound. We stood, three men from technologically advanced civilizations, and discussed how to answer the device.
“Maybe you need to physically touch it,” I suggested.
A teenage woman passed us and frustrated with the situation, I asked her, “How do you answer one of these?”
She pulled away and crossed the street, hurrying to get away from us.
“It says ‘slide’, but what does that mean?” Nerix asked while moving from one side to the other.“I’m sliding but it doesn’t help.”
“Where is Zobran when we need him? I bet he would know how to make that thing work,” Lios said.
“Let’s just ask for help,” I suggested. “We can easily mind cloud a human and have them help us.”
“Don’t even think about it. You can’t use mind clouding on a protected species. Not unless you’re defending yourself or protecting your identity.”
“But this is an emergency,” I pointed out.
The phone stopped ringing and now it said missed call on the screen.
Two large men with orange vests came walking down the street toward us. One of them was talking and the other was drinking from a colorful can in his hand. Again, I reached out and asked, “Can you help us?”
“Sure, what’s up?” the one with the drink asked. He was large around his belly with muddy shoes and tattoos on his neck.
“Someone tried to contact us on this phone.” I pointed to the device in Lios’ hands. “We didn’t know how to answer and now it stopped ringing. It’s important.”
Lios raised the phone for them to see.
The two men exchanged glances before the smaller of them asked, “And you didn’t know how to answer the phone?”
“No. We haven’t had that model before. Do you know it?” I said, trying to sound casual.
Reaching for the device the man asked his friend to hold his drink. When he touched the phone, it lit up. “Okay, let’s see. So basically, you just press on this symbol right here and you can see the missed call. If you want to call them back, just press on the number. It’s pretty simple.”
“It said ‘slide’ when it lit up the last time. What does that mean?” I asked, to be prepared if the same situation occurred again another time.
“Slide. Oh, I see, you must have had one of them old phones with buttons… nah, these new ones have a display and what you need to do is just slide your finger. Let me show you.” Turning to his friend, he said, “Hey, AK, hit me up real quick, will ya?”
They both pulled out their phones and the friend moved his finger around on his screen. Right away the other man’s phone played a tune.
“Okay, see how my phone says ‘slide’?” he asked.
Using his thumb, he pulled horizontally from one side of the screen to the other. “And just like that me and AK can talk.” He pointed a finger between their phones.
“Thank you.” I gave him a grateful smile. “You were a big help.”
“No problem, man, have a nice day.”
As the two men continued on, Nerix expressed his frustration. “It’s ridiculous that we can’t figure out this low-tech device and have to ask humans for help.”
“Just do as he said and call the missed number,”I told Lios with impatience.
Lios pressed and quickly there was a connection when a deep male voice sounded. “Hello.”
Cutting straight to the point, Lios explained, “Ko’roz kidnapped two women. He’s here in your city for certain and we need to find him fast.”
“What is the word?”
Remembering the instructions our contact person had given us, I burst out, “Federation.”
