Ripples 3 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

03 Finders Keepers?

The phone was like a lost dog.

It had a home, it had an owner. It had been costly to acquire. It would be costly to replace. It had been wanted, at least at some point.

What do you do with a found phone, she thought.

Her first thought was that she would it would be easy to find the owner, just turn it on and Phone Home. As she considered this, something about the phone made her pause, something about it made her question, something made her uneasy.

Maybe Phoning Home wasn't such a good idea.

In the old days, if you found a lost dog, there was the Lost and Found section in the newspapers. The ads were generally free to place and people knew where to look.

• Found Fancy Dog. Near Corner Park. Call to identify
• Lost Fancy Dog. Near Corner Park. Please Call. Reward.

Now, there really wasn't anywhere to look or rather, there were too many places to look. There were millions of people looking in these on-line places but not necessarily the one you needed to find.

There were always plenty of people willing to claim a fancy dog that wasn't really theirs. The dog would always expose the fake owners.

Can't call the dog? Not your dog.

There would be a lot of people willing to claim a fancy phone.

A lot.

Too many.

For all of it being a "smartphone", it wasn't near as smart as a dog ....
A dog would have tried to find its own way home.

Then again, there were some who didn't want their dog back.