Ripples 15 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.]

15 Ring Tones

The empty dinner dishes, a summary of her life.

The old pad of paper was filled with notes, the stubby pencil resting along side.

She rested her eyes. Thinking.

So much. So little. Too much. Not enough.

Thoughts spinning and weaving: the magic of neurons.

Cataracts of images, concepts, ideas, spinning, turning, foaming, battling, plunging and merging. The magic of the mind. Unlimited space for thoughts. Limited only by the self.

She let the wilding currents flow, following the ideas as they bucked and plunged into dead ends, tight corners and then converging into a calmer river. Myriad streams coalescing into new understandings, new visions, new pathways.

There were some answers but not the ones she expected.

While it was true a Fruit Fone could find it's owner, it was true only in a limited sense. Too many restrictions. Too many options. Everything had to happen "just so". If even the smallest detail was missed, a lost Fruit Fone was just that: lost.

To start: the battery cannot be dead.

There were lots of reasons why the battery might fail. A bad battery. The battery may not have been charged in a long time or had a full charge. The Fruit Fone may have been in use, doing what Fruit Fones do, the battery draining away. The battery might be damaged along with the entire phone by water, like falling in the ocean.

She considered this last part. Thinking back how she had found the phone on the beach.

• She had picked up a driftwood branch.
• She had seen the phone in the sand.
• She had picked it up.
• She remembered brushing some sand from the phone.
• The sand was damp but drying.

The phone had not been wet.

The phone had not been in the water.

The phone had not come from the ocean.