iPhone Antenna Issues
The man’s face glistened in the firelight as I approached him through the underbrush. I’d heard that this was the man to see; that he had all the stories to tell; that he’d heard them all. As I came closer to him, I saw that the damage had taken it’s toll. The skin around his eyes was loose and dark, and his thin emaciated face told me more about his past than I perhaps wanted to know. I sat down. In an old, cracking voice, he began to speak.
“Antenna Issues? Ha! What are they talking about? What do they know? Oh, when these recent troubles kicked off they ran into the desert like they didn’t know what had hit them, but I’ve seen worse. Far worse. People are associated these problems with the iPhone 4 - nonsense! I have problems of my own.”
He leant forward.
“It was worst a couple of years ago - it was what finally drove me into the state I am now. I lived in a house outside most signal coverage, a fact that some would argue was my own fault. How could they say that? It was fate that brought me to that house in the first place. And it was cruel fate that taught me of The Spot. The single spot, where, hunched next to the window, holding the phone close to the wall, I could receive from the blessed hands of the Gods one meagre bar of signal. But this was only the beginning. Suppose I wanted to send a text. First, I would have to type in the message outside of The Spot, which filled me with a deep fear that it would be deleted by the time I came to send it. Then I had to walk to The Spot, and, holding the phone up like an offering, hope that my prayers were answered and the signal would trickle down into my phone. Of course, it took longer than expected, longer every time. Just when my knees began to hurt, and I got up to go, would I see the signal flash once, then disappear. So, prostrate, I would offer it up again to receive it. When I opened the SMS app, the signal would go again, and would only re-appear - would only re-appear - if I tilted my head to one side and closed the app. Once that happened, I could safely open it again and breathe a sigh of relief.”
A muscle in his left eye twitched.
“And then it got worse. I found that the signal would be more likely to disappear the closer I was to the phone. I could not let it fall to the floor, because that would be outside The Spot, so I continued to hold it to the wall with the pad of my outstretched little finger, and then moving my body as far away as I could, I would hit the send button with the finger on my other hand.”
“And then, and only then would it send. My troubles would be briefly over.”
He fixed me with a gimlet stare.
“Don’t talk to me about Antenna Issues, my boy.”
