Network Providers

David had just finished unboxing and setting up his new phone. The sleek device felt good in his hand. He barely felt the weight and the brown dark woodgrain back and glass front had a classy look. This one was an odd find as most of these phones came in either white or black. So when he saw a wooden one in that little store he snagged it.

Checking the built in apps he found the usual; email, browser, clock. Then he came across an odd one. Labeled “Did you know” and having a graphic that looked like a mirror or pane of glass was intriguing. He tapped the icon.

The screen displayed a box with instructions to “Go to a mirror and aim the rear camera at your reflection.” He did so and pressed the ‘Next” button. The camera activated and showed an image of the image in the mirror. “And…” he thought.

A box displayed allowing him to apply various filters. It was a long list of weird options like; Basic info, detailed info, history, origin. David was used to filters like black and white, sepia, monochrome. This was a weird app.

Pressing the basic info filter the screen displayed additional information about the image including height, weight, and race. David thought that was interesting but figured that the programmers were doing extrapolations from the image. The part he could not understand was additional information was also being displayed about his allergies, work and home addresses and phone numbers. It even displayed his full name, which he never used, David Alexander Foster.

Pressing filters then selecting detailed info displayed even more information about David. This was uncanny. There were fields that looked like they were tap enabled for his birth record, parents, education, Driver’s License, police and tax records. David decided this thing was tapping into government computers somehow.

He selected filters and chose no filter to turn them all off and what he saw on the screen was not possible. The image of David changed to a picture of a lanky, hairless creature with big eyes, no visible nose or ears and a very small mouth. The fingers were long and had big knuckles. David closed the app, sat down and tried to figure it out. The information about him was all accurate, but the image of the ‘alien’ was most definitely a ruse. A partially working app and a joke also. Cute. 

Being a natural risk taker, David decided not to turn off the phone. He figured that if the damn thing had tapped into government computers to gather the information on him he would soon be visited by some type of authorities. He could explain and maybe catch the hacker involved. He shoved the phone into his pocket and started getting ready for this date with Melissa.

David buzzed Melissa’s apartment, She responded with “Be right down” so he waited. She had the third floor of this brownstone walk-up. It was a nice neighborhood; quiet, close to bus lines and not too expensive. It was more expensive than he could afford on his county clerks salary.

He pulled out his phone and opened the “Did you know” app and started pointing it at random things. First the garbage can. He opened filters and selected basic info. Little fields opened up displaying; the material it was made of: Galvanized steel, container size: 32 gallons, manufacturer: Behrens.  He pointed the phone at the tree. It told him it was an oak and was 13 years old and it had some sort of bark disease. He heard the door open and spun around to face Melissa with the phone still in front of him. When it focused on her it displayed an assortment of information about her but David was not watching the screen. He accidently snapped a picture as he put his phone away.

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Pre happenings:

Could be part of a series of items that come from a particular man or shop, think needful things, where this shop appears and “delivers” an “item” to the “correct” person then disappears.

Continuation points.

Under the ruse of taking pictures with his new phone David finds that there are all sorts of different ‘aliens’ around. he also finds out that Melissa is a spy that is working against his employer.

he finds that by taking a picture of an individual or item the information is stored in his phone.

he finds that this phone has no dead spots, never seems to need a recharge and … has an update pending.

Communications from the phone’s provider is established and a visitation is scheduled.

history of the device and the provider. reason for the ruse.

secrets must be kept, can David keep them?

Are there any actual humans? If not what happened to them? Were there every any?

joining the providers network. meeting others.