Ripples 21 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.

UPDATE 10/2018:

I am invoking the No Guarantee to Finish option

I've not run out of ideas but there is a definite lack of incentive to continue.

Such is the end of all serials.

The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

There will be a break in publication
until the author writes new episodes.

21 Leaves on Leaves

Mild. Warm. Hot.

Cool. Cold. Frigid.

Dark. Dim. Bright.

Silent. Silent. Silent.

The noise of the outside world ended as the doors closed behind her. The soft swoosh separated the outside and from the inside.

Inside the light was different. The colors and hues a monotone. She looked behind her through the dark glass panes designed to change bright into dim and hot into cool.

Turning she passed down the hallway into a cavernous room. Bright lights and cold air redefined the outside and nullified it.

She was still welcome here. Just.

Tables and chairs, a few scattered couches, their cushions sagging from use, kiosks with pamphlets and row upon row upon row of the most valuable thing on the planet. More valuable than all the physical wealth of the world, yet only a small fraction of what had ever been.

There was so much and yet there was so little. What seemed like endless rows ended. Shelves that might go forever halted. Spaces. Empty Spaces. Places where things ought to be; yet were not.

There were those who believed that the most valuable thing on the planet was theirs and theirs alone. Theirs to do with what they wanted. Theirs to constrain. Theirs to control. Theirs to obscure. Theirs to obliterate.

There was a hunger there. A gnawing hunger. A covetous hunger.

When they claimed it was More. They provided Less.

When they claimed it was Better. They offered Lesser.

When they claimed it for All. They gave only Few.

It was Nothing. It was Petty. It was a Lie.

The building devoured the rows. An empty shelf, the carcass of its latest feastings. The building ground its way through the rows and shelves granting wishes to those who believed it all belonged to them.

But of course it didn't.

The digested leavings, a compost of nothing, were what was then offered. A goulash without content or context. The texture, substance and weight removed. The aromas of spices and nuances of flavor sanitized into a dreary gruel. Visible only under the proper circumstances.

Teased, tempted and threatened, the custodians yielded up what was Everyone's. Abdicating the rights of the world to those few who claimed it. Permissions granted by physical possession; then jettisoned. A deliberate action of abandonment.

The most valuable thing on the planet lay chained to a future of instability. The engorgement lasting the span of months or at best years and then lost. Some would be lost forever.

A civilization burning its heritage. No need for flames this time. The building would devour all and there were many who would help it do so.

Foolish hubris.

Yet what was lost, might be found again. The most valuable thing on the planet was still there.

She made her way towards a desk to seek answers from what remained.

Ripples 20 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.]

20 Paper Only

Shadows dancing.

The tall trees swayed with the air currents, their ballet inscribed on the grass. Free to all.

No one watched.

Well, almost no one, she thought. I am watching. I am one. One is All.

She watched the shadow play and admired the tall trees striving for sunlight.

The trees moved in their own rhythms, seemingly unaware of their admirer. Survival when surrounded by concrete was difficult, sometimes impossible. Their daily struggle never ceasing. Their wind dancing an infinite expression of life.

A visible manifestation of: I AM.

She understood.

With some regret, she turned towards the building centered on a concrete base with its attending pools of asphalt, ringed by the dance of life.

She wondered, did the building ever watch? Did it feel the cool of the shade? Did it notice the leaves when they fell or when they swirled around the doors? Did the building sense the life around it?

So many modern buildings had been imbued with technology and sensors. They could tell time and weather. They could heat or cool themselves. They could open doors or lock them. They could summon assistance as needed. They could count what was inside. They knew those who entered and tracked them until they left. They had eyes to see and memories too.

Did the building notice the sky dance?

Perhaps.

But what did it make of the graceful arcs and swirls, the swaying in the sun and the cool grass beneath, the smell of damp earth and the fragrance of pine, the feel of soft leaves or the crunch of dried ones? It lived in a different way. It had no need of air or nourishment or love.

She thought it might be resentful.

She entered the building. Looking for answers. She knew inside there would be many answers. Many answers to many questions.

But would there be answers for her questions?

She would have to ask.

The doors closed behind her.

Ripples 19 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.]

19 Zoning

M/D/1
Infinite arrivals, limited service: M/D/1

Along with the many others, she waited her turn in the in The System. Nothing new had changed. The M/D/1 queue, defined in the 1900s, worked the same way then and the same way now. The math might look intimidating but the essence was simple:

The milkmaid can only milk one cow at a time.

The Wait gave everyone a chance to zone out. Sometimes when the TV functioned, it would display vapid programs as dull and senseless as the colors selected for the walls. Its only function: distraction and perhaps a chance to sleep under a roof, however temporary.

She looked around the room. Rather she stared.

She smiled to herself at the admonitions against staring.

Don't stare! It's impolite.

But if I don't stare, how will I notice anything?

Don't ask questions!

Why not?

Because I said SO!!

The was something to be said about staring. It all depended on the context. "Because I said SO!" wasn't very helpful. Staring is more complicated and often dangerous.

Staring at a lion is like inviting it to lunch ...
on you, as the hors-d'oeuvre.

She stared anyway. So much to see.

People tried to hide or pretend but if you looked, you could see. It was there on their faces. The way they talked or didn't. The way they stood and moved.

The slow slide into invisibility

Stripped until you became a ghost. No longer a person. No longer a citizen. Like an orca stolen from their family pod, recognizing the calls of relatives but no longer acknowledged as a member.

You might still have a paper declaiming your citizenship and birthright, but its value declined with fortune. You might try to exert your claims but no others will tolerate you. You become less and less of a citizen, a person, a life, a being until you are nothing: an untouchable.

Money made it. Money defined it. Money removed it.

Along the downward passage was fear.

• They might be like you
• They could be like you
• They will be like you

They were so close;

she was so close;

she could taste the fear.

A prick and done.

It took less time to traverse the corridors on the way out, or at least it seemed that way.

A curious function of memory-time.

Such as thou art, sometime was I. Such as I am, such shalt thou be. Epitaph of the Black Prince

Ripples 18 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.]

18 Cold Front

The car parked, she gathered her important items.

The blue tag placed in the window, a public statement of plight. Set so anyone could determine if The Queen for a Day was a righteous queen.

The cold winds swirled as she made her way towards a building constructed of monotone concrete slabs. Dreary-Grey, forbidding and ugly. Some esthetic's idea for combining permanence with healing. A tribute only to the ignorance of the architect, builders and worse, those that commissioned it.

The building oriented to catch every gust of wind: sheering cold and rains in season; heat and dust on the change. A concrete sarcophagus confronting nature, oblivious to those that sought sanctuary away from the elements. She grimaced with a cold chill as the wind sliced through her coat and hurried towards the glass doors marking the entrance. The doors slid open. The inside appeared even bleaker although the exterior warned there would be no welcome.

Poorly painted walls with attempted splashes of subdued colors surgically selected to dull the senses. Smells. Old smells. Stale smells. A nasal cacophony of decay. She wrinkled her nose as she made her way through the halls and corridors.

She passed others traversing the corridors, like ants meandering to some destination known only to themselves. The currents here were erratic, turning people this way and that almost on a whim, rip tides flowing in opposite directions. Whirlpools collecting the unwary, in an unceasing vortex of wrong directions.

She came at last to her destination.... many others here before her.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting is what one did.

Especially if you were Queen for a Day.

Ripples 17 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.]

17 Pereō ante Perdō

A waterfall of papers, notes floating like mist, swirled to the floor.

She glared at the empty folder, the crease fully ripped, the contents now patterned the floor. Her sorting useless.

One by one, she collected the pages and placed them on the table. The torn folder sheets, doubled up, now served as a poor man's clipboard, sans the clip. Like many things, in her life, sans was more often the case.

She shuffled the recovered pages into a slightly tidier pile, the new top page drawing her interest. She tabbed through the new pile selecting like pages. Reading each page, adding to her notes. Reviewing the earlier pages.

Back and forth she went.

The pages she carried away from the Fruit Stand Store, their shiny surface reflecting the poor lighting, declaimed many things. Then they declaimed the opposite.

Lost is not Lost.

Found is not Found.

Theft is not Theft.

Or maybe it is...

Like the jetsam she picked up on the beach, phones were also thrown away. While recycling was often touted, recycling often meant "sending it to a dump in China". The majority of phones ended up in drawers. Some got resold. Some donated.

The news that even old phones could be harnessed against their previous owners, extracting old contact lists, old photos, music/videos, stored messages and emails made them gold mines to those so interested.

The phoront separated from its human host could no longer pretend to protect the host's interest, and regurgitated it's contents readily. Subjected to indignities, lies, and mistreatment, the phone had little chance to survive intact. Or rather, survival was re‑determined by the extent of the compromised chips that allowed the phone to function.

The unique identifier that every phone carried could be turned off by the telecom carrier, blacklisting the phone, but depending on the circumstances of how the phone got separated, this often didn't happen or it didn't matter. Much of what the phoront did or didn't, was independent of having an active connection.

Smartphones, she reflected, were a lot like James James Morrison's Mother:

LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!
JAMES JAMES MORRISON'S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.

Because it mattered very much

"how she got down to the end of the town".

Ripples 16 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.]

16 Slight of Hand

Too much information, not enough answers: Life.

She peered over the documents, comparing notes to pages; pages to notes. The Fruit Fone certainly could do a lot of things.

She liked puzzles and games but this wasn't an ordinary puzzle. Or perhaps is was. Just a more complicated one, with lots of waffle in play.

The Fruit Fone had loads of gizmos inside that could detect and tell what was happening to it. It had a gizmo that could tell compass direction. It had a gizmo that could tell how fast the phone was moving. It could tell if the phone was being held in a hand waving it around or if it was moving in a car across town. It could tell up from down, right from left and flipped from flopped.

There was a gizmo that could tell exactly where you are on the planet. Or rather, exactly where the phone was on the planet. This gizmo worked by connecting signals from a host of satellites orbiting the planet.

The idea of so many satellites flying around space was just an accepted part of life. That the number of man made objects being rocketed into orbit just grew and grew over time. She remembered when there was only one satellite: the moon. Now hundreds crowded the area above the Earth creating massive space jams; not without a few collisions, as one satellite might kilter into the course of another.

There was no one sweeping up the debris.

It all fell to Earth.

Eventually.

The Fruit Fone could do just about everything except move on its own. It needed a human to move it. What horses and oxen did for humans, now humans did for robots: a new symbiotic relationship.

The human belief in supremacy, effectively marshaled by robots, assured cooperation. The new human hosts were easily trained to carry the robots to destinations indicated by pixels on a screen. The hum-droid, dutifully hauled the robot, believing that the relationship was of sole benefit to the host: the human.

Of course, that is what all parasites need to accomplish: convincing the host to carry them without complaining too much. By enticing the human into thinking the relationship was beneficial, that they were

eating at the same table

or even at

a table for one

guaranteed the robot phoront, would be mechanically transported by its host without issue.

Hum-drafts hauling billions of silicon robots in their pockets.

Billions and Billions

7 Billion and counting.

Nearing the equal of the 7.5 billion global human population; with 2 billion more every year.

But the robots were vulnerable, with a life cycle of just two years, maintaining the herds of hum-ports was essential. A phone could not survive without its human ... not even a Fruit Fone.

Rule 1: Don't let the Humans know.

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.

Ripples 14 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.]

14 Comfort Zone

Comfort flowed through the air.

The simmering pots bubbled and steamed an enveloping serenity.

She placed the discounted chicken pieces in a large pot and covered with water, a bit of salt and a few herbs. She let it simmer until the liquid had absorbed all the flavors. She removed the pieces from the soup and pulled the meat from the bones. Setting this aside, she cut the few vegetables she had procured: potato, carrots, onions, celery and added these to the broth. In a nearby plastic container were a few green beans and sliced cabbage for the finish.

Another pot, she filled with 1 1/2 cups of water and some salt. Once boiling, she added the cup of basmati rice that she had rinsed and set to soak earlier that morning and turned the heat to a slow simmer. 11 minutes on, 10 minutes off: perfection. The cooking rice added its subtle perfume to the bouquet of aromas.

Happiness rising.

The dinner safely in progress, she sat a the worn table watching the steam swirling from the soup. The mist rising, swaying and shifting direction, influenced by imperceptible portents.

A much used and often recycled folder, extracted from the stack of at hand papers, its previous contents replaced atop the precarious pile, now enclosed the brochures and assorted printouts she had carried away from the Fruit Stand Store. She opened the folder, briefly scanning each item, arranging and grouping them in her own ordering. Satisfied with her arrangement, she returned to the first item in the folder.

It's generally best to start at the beginning, she thought.

But then again, she reflected, it was clear, this wasn't actually the beginning.

Ripples 13 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.]

13 Antipasto

She entered the market; the driftwood would buy meals for a week.

What was discarded and swept away still had value, if one could see it. Most people did not.

What was trash to one, was a meal to another. As long as the trash was out of sight, the originator could pretend it no longer existed, that somehow, like magic, the item had vanished, but of course, magic doesn't work like that.

You cannot make nothing into something.
You cannot make something into nothing.

The trash remained, transformed by time, decay or perhaps lingering for millennia. You can cover it, bury it or hide it but it remains. A heúrēka for the future.

She started her customary circuit of the store. Moving from one end to the other. Passing much. Selecting little. Stopping at the various gleaning bins, placed in far corners or lesser used pathways where "final mark down" items awaited their dispersal into yet other bins and then to dumps. The poorly placed and peeling 50% Off stickers still hoped to entice buyers too poor to buy in the better lighted areas.

The items were the same, only the lighting was different.

Although now, she noticed that more people hovered over the discounted meats and vegetables. People with jobs but not enough food. People with shelter but not enough nourishment. People dressed well but not dressed in fashion. Gleaning was bargain hunting. Those struggling to stay abreast sheltered their minds from reality. Bargain hunting made reality less bitter.

She riffled though the bins finding some treasures. Meat she could turn into broth. Vegetables to turn it to soup. Dented cans turned pasta to marinara. Magic.

In her pockets, shiny brochures and jumbled printouts also described a magic.

Magic dark. Magic sinister. Magic of a different sort

Ripples 12 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.]

12 Glare

The glare was intentional.

Shiny display tables, shiny glass cabinets, shiny polished floors, shiny gizmos bedazzling shiny faces.

Shiny, antiseptic, clean, sterile, dead: an advertisement of flawlessness.

Schools of eager buyers moved through the store, looking at assorted plastic holders and tastefully designed technobabble cards. She followed the circling press until she found a break point and stepped towards a white shiny display cabinet letting the current carry the shoals of buyers along the infinite loop of wants and desires.

An eager shiny face appeared moments later.

"Can I help you?", asked the shiny face.

She smiled and nodded in reply.

Pointing at a Fruit Fone, she began to ask the questions that needed asking. Taking time between each to listen to the eager dialogue and probing softly for what she needed to know most.

Not too fast. Not too slow. Steady on.

She played the "What happens if" game and the "Show me how" game and the eager shiny face happily played along. A few times, she had to replay her lines, hardly comprehending what she heard in response. "Is that so?", "Really?", "How does it do that?" were followed by enthusiastic explanations the shiny face had memorized; designed to convince wannabe shiny faces.

There it was. Right there. Right in front. A colored bull's-eye.

FIND ME

The shiny face explained that: if this and that, and this over here and that over there, and this other thing with this option, a Fruit Fone could find itself. It could say where it was. It could reach out and tell.

There is no such thing as a lost Fruit Fone.

Ripples 11 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.]

11 Malling

Like water flowing down hill, people flowed into the mall.

Flood tides of people washed along from one store to the next, swirling eddies swept up and deposited in front of store windows then washed away again. An unseen current propelling shoppers along walkways and inlets in hopes that at some will grasp for That Door as a toehold before being swept along to the next embankment of opportunity.

She often wondered how the driftwood branches she collected got to the beach. Unlike the shifting waves of shoppers who flowed into The Mall by choice, the branches often started far away, high in the mountains. Washed down streams and rivers, most of which ended in dammed waterways. Artificial lakes, attempting to hold the power of rain and harness it for human use. The wood, floated down the water ways sometimes to sink, waterlogged into the muddy bottoms, yet always seeking freedom to follow the water. Water: nourisher and reaper.

How the branches made it over the dams she didn't know. Perhaps some sudden rainstorm allowed the branches to continue their journey. Perhaps they managed to find an alternate path, inching along drainage ditches, attempting to avoid the glare of human eyes and crushing machinery.

She followed the schooling shoppers was they flowed thru The Mall, easing her way towards one of the larger eddies. A large pool formed in front of her destination. Slipping free from the rip tide, she entered.

The Fruit Stand Store gathered more that its share of dead wood.

Ripples 10 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.]

10 Branching Out

Phones flashed in the sun.

Clustered around her, they displayed their treasured assets. Enthusiastic descriptions and exchanges about features and functionality ensued. Goal line arguments about best and better as they pointed, punched, and stroked at screens. An eager game of one-upmanship.

Carefully she looked at the proffered examples.

Do this to get that.

Push here to go there.

This plug fits this socket.

That works this way.

Ports and connection points, shape and surface size. She asked about different aspects; listening to the varying explanations.

The litany and demonstration of techno-prowess implied all you needed to do was: Click your heels 3 times and repeat, "There's no place like home".

"So," she asked, "what happens if you lose your phone?"

The avalanche of information continued.

"Well... "

"Just buy another!"

"Yeah, the service companies can recover your information and put it on the new phone quick."

"That! Plus you can get a better phone at a discount if you buy that upgrade package."

"Totally worth it! I got a better one. See??? I got a Fruit Fone!"

She reached out and took the Fruit Fone and looked at it closely. Turning it over in her hands several times. Smiling, she handed it back to it's proud owner.

She didn't even need to take the folded drawing from her pocket to know the many benefits of fruit.

Ripples 9 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.]

09 Fleas

The car parked discretely in the dirt lot, she began transferring her wealth.

Nearby, noises of others doing the same. Soft bangs and crunches as crates, boxes and bundles were transported towards the street. Arrays of colorful tents and awnings ringed by chalk, lined the gutters. Folding tables unfolded. Contents staged according to each seller's hopes of a buyer.

Vendors carefully watched as their neighbors and competition set up stalls.

What did they bring?
What would it be priced at?
Will a buyer stop there first?
Did they get a better location?

Jealousy. Fear. Envy. Subtexts swirling through the circuit of tables.
Wealth is only wealth, if it brings the price of a meal.

She did not move towards the colorful street marked with chalk outlines, choosing instead a corner just beyond the traced boundaries.

Already, others were there. Mimicking their counterparts just a few steps away. Cautiously unpacking their limited wealth. A few items here and there. Worn packaging, thrift store treasures and dollar store notions set on upended cardboard boxes.

She placed the blanket in an open spot, marking it as hers, and began arranging the driftwood sticks. Cardboard placards with neat lettering described the names of the woods: Oak, Madrone, Redwood and Pine. Satisfied with her arrangement, she opened a battered tool carry, recycled from other projects, now holding a few tools and a stack of sandpapers. Selecting a sandpaper and one of the driftwood sticks, she rubbed away the rough splinters.

She mused about who might come to buy today and what price she would place on various woods. Each type appealed to different buyer. Long straight pieces might be selected as walking sticks. Twisted and gnarled ones were preferred by wood crafters who fashioned them into lamps or turned them on lathes. Pocked marked pine might be selected as a home accent, a testimonial of bark beetle ravage tastefully placed in a flower arrangement. Then there were some who didn't want the wood at all but would slip a banknote in her hand before moving on.

Curios for Gentrifiers.

The early morning parade of lookers passed by. There were the Early Birds, determined to Get There First scanning for their specialty items then hurrying towards the next offering, fearful that another might get there before them.

After the first wave, came other vendors. Not looking to buy but to check pricing; a quick survey of the competition. Rivalries subdued under faked smiles and false wishes for A Good Sale Day.

By mid-morning the Early Birds had fled to other venues and vendors had retreated to their own stalls. Trickles of potential buyers moved slowly through the lanes of merchandise. The calls and chants hyping various items droned in the background.

The pace slowed.

The morning gone, she knew there wouldn't be many more sales this day. The funds she secured in her purse would provide fuel and food for the week. A victory .

Now she could visit. The corner proffered a combination of survival with companionship. Casual friendships lasting from one week to the next, bonded by the weekly gathering, severed when even the cheapest notions became too dear or misfortune forced departures to elsewhere,

Her good friend was sitting nearby. An Old Timer of the corner.

Sales over, her friend was now squinting intently at a phone. Watching her friend's fingers stroke the glass surface, the screen shifted left, right, up, down. A mysterious ballet of choreographed movements; an arabesque performed by Touch under the vigilant direction of Sight.

It was a starting place. A good starting place.

Ripples 8 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.]

08 Ties of Time

The phone and Whatsit chip joined the residues of a different time.

The plastic containers holding the reminders of her life now held the reminder of another's life.

Outside, along the slim walkway, she sorted through her harvests of driftwood. Tangled heaps in varying states: wet, drying and dried, inversely mimicking her hopes: today, tomorrow and the next.

Selecting pieces of the dried wood, she tied them into a bundle using a worn rope. She didn't think much of the rope. Unraveling and frayed, a pale yellow betraying its age, yet still strong enough to be useful. She had found it on the beach. Another piece of jetsam brought in with the tide along with other trash, much of which, would be washed away on the turn.

A continuous cycle of: Trash in. Trash out.

She placed the bundle of dried wood in the back end of an old car. The car had once been new ... for someone else. Like herself, it had traveled the roads and turnings that make up time coming to rest, at least for a short while, in her possession. It would remain for only as long as she could pay the costs: fuel, license, insurance and the never ending repairs needed to keep an old vehicle running. While you might get a modicum of moral support or token financial allotment for caring for an aged person, caring for an aged car was unique and there wasn't any support for that anywhere. Old cars, like old people, just died. Few cared either way.

Collecting a jacket, a blanket and a recycled plastic baggie with some food in it, she placed these in the car too. Intended as lunch, the baggie was secured with a mangled green twister saved from a grocery visit. Verifying she had already stowed a folding chair, she returned to the kitchen.

Taking the paper from the worn table she folded it neatly and placed it in her pocket.

She picked up her purse; locking the door as she left.

Ripples 7 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.]

07 Whatsit

The stub of a pencil traced the new information on the paper.

She compared her drawings with the phone: front and back. Arrows pointed to the location of tiny connection points. She did her best to copy the stenciled patterns.

She set aside the phone and reached for the tiny plastic container.

Tipping the contents into her hand, she examined the tiny black and red object.

It was certainly small. One side had some symbols on it and the other side had golden stripes. Avoiding the golden stripes she turned it over. She knew what it was or at least she thought she knew. It was old school now. She smiled, rather like herself. Old School.

Using the magnifying glass to see the tiny symbols, she copied them onto the paper. Funny looking symbols. Broken circles, buckets, numbers and stylized lettering crowded the tiny surface. Notches, dog-ears and crop outs formed its irregular shape. These she carefully added to the paper.

Satisfied that she had copied all correctly, she dropped the tiny object back into the container and snapped the lid tight.

She examined the finished drawing.

Something was odd.

Her eyes scanned the drawing several times.

Something was not right.

She picked up the phone, compared it with her drawing. Turing the phone over and around, looking at it from all angles to confirm.

She hadn't missed anything. The drawing was correct.

There was still something wrong.

The golden bars on the object, now locked inside the plastic container, were there for a reason. They allowed the object to be slipped into a matching slot. But this phone had no such opening. None. The tiny object had been sandwiched between the protection case and the phone. It had fallen out when she pulled off the protector.

It wasn't part of the phone.

Ripples 6 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.]

06 Peppers and Pins

From a drawer, she retrieved a small plastic container and lid.

The kind you get at fast food places for holding hot peppers or dressings. Once washed, they become useful for holding the miscellany that seem to accumulate in every drawer: odd coins, paper clips, brads and push pins. Packaged with cork boards, now long discarded, the colorful pins never seem to get thrown away. Lingering on in drawers; loose pins waiting for an unwary finger.

Carefully, she placed the tiny black and red item in the container and snapped the lid on. She placed it next to the phone.

Now she had two items to consider.

She frowned to herself for a moment then returned her attention to the phone.

Big dogs first, she thought.

With the protective cover removed, she could see more details. Faint engravings. A logo. A manufacture's name. Stenciled patterns. On one edge, neatly hidden in the stenciled stippling, some barely discernible text.

Through a scratched magnifying glass, retrieved from the drawer while avoiding some colored pins that had escaped their repurposed container (the lid having popped off), she peered closely at the minuscule text.

She could see:

A name followed by a mixture of numbers and letters.

Ripples 5 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.]

05 Opening Move

She put the emptied chipped mug, in the tiny sink.

A quick turn of the tap, a quick swish and the mug was set on a towel to dry.

Washing the mug was easy.
Finding the owner of the phone still eluded her.

Returning to the table, she picked up the phone and examined it again. A rubbery protective cover enclosed most of the phone. She looked carefully at the cover and began to pull at a corner. Pulling here and there along the edges, twisting the phone as she went, she worked at loosening it. She worried that she might damage the phone trying to get the cover off. Still, she thought, if the cover had been put on, then the cover could come off.

With nervous fingers she worked the cover over the edges of the phone. It seemed as if the cover resisted her attempts but like a reluctant jar lid, once the vacuum seal was broken, the cover slipped easily into one hand, the phone in the other.

Something fell on the table.

It was small. Tiny. The red and black color nearly lost on the surface of the worn table. Not even as big as a postage stamp.

She wondered, how many still remembered postal stamps.

Ripples 4 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.]

04 By Any Other Name

Plastic bins, holding the fragments of what once was, were stacked along a wall. Remnants of the past. Harbingers of the future.

She got up and crossed the room and began to shift the stack of plastic bins. Rummaging through one of them she returned. An old pad of paper and stubby pencil placed on the table, she sat down, picked up the hot coffee and considered the phone.

It couldn't hurt to try to find the owner, she thought.

Brushing aside a small counterpoint of doubt, she placed the found phone on the paper and traced two outlines: one front and one back. She began to draw in all the features she could see. Buttons here and there. Plugs and connection points. She noted the colors that she could see but an enclosing protector covered the back and sides obscuring parts of the phone.

After labeling the outline drawings with what she could see, there still wasn't anything there to indicate the owner.

She frowned slightly.

She remembered long ago, losing her wallet while riding the municipal bus. She had gotten home with a small plastic bag of groceries only to find that the most important item she owned, the wallet, was missing. Her I.D. and a tiny amount of cash were in the wallet. Losing the money would mean a few extra dinners of peanut butter, but losing the I.D. was far worse.

Dread thoughts of having to stand in line after line at numerous offices waiting for bored and exhausted employees to help her fill out the required forms and obtain the official replacements, generated tears of frustration and anger at her own stupidity. Losing the wallet was just another step on the rung downward. No amount of peanut butter could fix that.

It was to her surprise that the door bell rang. Wiping her still damp face, she opened the door to see a person she did not know, standing there. Polite and well dressed, the person stood there and in broken English spoke her name. Yes, she nodded, puzzled as to what this person wanted of her. Then, as if in response to her expression, the person held out her wallet.

Almost like a dream, she reached for the wallet and opened it. There was all her money and her I.D too. A joy of profound relief flooded her. She stuttered her thanks and gestured for the person to remain. She hurried inside to find something suitable. Taking a small knitted lap robe from one of the plastic bins, she returned to the open door to give her thanks and the gift. Stepping outside to share her happiness, she looked around.

The person had gone.

The wallet, the only testimony that the person had ever been.

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.

Ripples 2 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.]

02 Cowboy Coffee

The twisted wet wood tossed into the slim walkway for drying, she entered the house.

Not really a house. Not really a place. Not really much of anything at all. Just a somewhere that provided partial shelter from the elements. The roof leaked; a stack of plastic catchalls awaited in a nearby corner. The gap under the doors, providing icy drafts in winter and humid hot draws in summer, had lumps of old towels pushed aside from the nights usage.

A worn kitchen table with two mismatched wobbly chairs, the highlights of the kitchen, held various cooking implements and on one chair, a stack of important papers. The kind of papers that never get sorted or put away, the kind one needs to have at hand but are rarely looked at once they are dropped on top of other equally important at hand papers. A listing pile in constant threat of slipping on to the worn flooring.

She placed the found phone on the table.

She turned to the cabinets, the paint worn from use, and began to prepare a cup of coffee. She smiled at the thought about how she would make the steaming liquid.

Long times past, percolators were the rage, with their boiled and brewed results. Later came drip coffee makers were the hot water was poured into a paper or sometimes gold filter holding the ground coffee. But before that was Cowboy Coffee. Boiling hot water poured directly over coarsely ground coffee. Using a tea strainer made it possible to sip of the dark brew without getting a mouthful of grounds.

She placed a glass measuring cup of water into the secondhand microwave then spooned the coffee grounds into another measuring cup. Glancing at the phone on the table, she waited for the water to bubble. Once bubbles formed along the glass sides, she poured it over the waiting grounds.

Setting her favorite, slightly chipped, mug on the table, she waited for the liquid to darkened and then she poured it through the tea strainer into the mug. She tapped the grounds from the tea strainer into a compost bucket at the sink and sat down.

Hot coffee in hand, she considered the phone on the table.

It was an expensive phone. It looked new.

Whoever had lost the phone didn't drink Cowboy Coffee from a chipped mug.