It wasn't my idea. It was my brother's. Maybe I should have told him it was a bad idea, but the majority of the blame rests on his head.
He got so fed up with having to talk to people that he came up with a way to avoid it. "Nobody thinks you're rude if you have to answer a phone call," he told me. "An app that calls you whenever you don't want to talk to someone would be so nice." I told him it sounded interesting and that he should to give it a try. In my defense, it was better then his ideas that involved hacking the Pentagon.
I regretted it in the chaos of phones ringing non-stop the next morning. I plugged my ears and left for work, hoping that life (preferably his) would end before I had to listen to that much noise again. When I came back, the ringing was gone and was replaced with excited chatter about reviews. I nodded and "ok"ed my way through dinner before making a dash for my room and sanity.
The next day seemed normal. He was sleeping when I woke up, and I darted out the door before that changed. It was another uneventful day at work: peace, quiet, and keyboards clicking, with only the occasional phone call. I dragged my feet on the way home, hoping that he had decided to stop the ringing. I pressed my ear against the door before going inside, where I was glad to find my brother talking on the phone.
"... and I need you to get it ASAP." He looked up at me and motioned for me to be quiet. "Thanks a lot! Bye."
I stared at him as he hung up. "What are you doing?" I asked. He grinned. "Well, some people want the added realism of the voice on the phone, so I'm charging extra for that. That call was for some poor guy that needed to get away from his wife for a few minutes." I looked at him, trying to tell if he was joking, then turned around and walked to my room. I'd deal with this tomorrow.
Behind me I heard a phone ring. "Hello, your wife had me call you because she's on the way to the hospital..."
The next morning, between phone calls, I told him that we were going out to eat breakfast and talk about his future. He rolled his eyes and started to say something when his ringtone cut him off. I motioned towards the door and he nodded. After five minutes of waiting in the car, he finally came out of the house and jumped into the passenger's seat. I glanced at his phone suspicously, waiting for it to ring. He saw me looking and winked. "I had a friend take over for a while. I've thought about outsourcing to the calls to China but the accents kinda ruin the believability." I tried to look as unimpressed as possible.
We need to talk about this whole thing. Isn't a little deceptive?" He rolled his eyes at me. "No questions before breakfast. Oh, since we're going this way, I need to run a little errand at a house a few blocks down." I shrugged and complied. It'd be better to save my breath for the actual argument. He punched something into the GPS and I followed its directions. In a few minutes we arrived in front of a dingy looking house with several cars parked out side. As he opened the door I asked, "You're friends with someone in this part of town?" He slammed the door and called back over his shoulder "Nah, they're just paying me to stop by."
My mind connected the dots as he reached the door. I pulled open the car door and ran after him. "Stop right now!" I yelled. "This is not a good idea!"
He stuck out his tongue at me then opened the door and stepped inside.
I ran up to the door, opened it, stepped inside, then stopped.
"Hands above your head," the police officer behind me ordered. "Please stand very still."
Five minutes later, I found myself being led out to a police car with my hands cuffed behind my back. I glared at my brother as he was led past to another car. The officer guided me down into the back seat of the car and I sat down next to the house's resident. He glanced over at me and whispered, "Sorry, I opened the wrong app."
I ignored him.
This is just a random something I had a crazy idea for and decided to write. Back to some sad serious stuff now...
