Can You Hear Me Now?

“Hello? You still there?” Pete pulled the phone from his ear and stared at the display. It was dead.

“No, no, no! This can’t be happening!” Pete ripped through his bag, searching for the one thing that might make everything okay, but to no avail. The charging cable wasn’t there.

“Fuck!” he cried, drawing stares from several women walking their grocery carts across the street.

“There’s got to be one around here somewhere...” he murmured as he started up the street. Taquerias, Jewelry stores, restaurants; none of them had what he needed. He had to get her back on the line. He couldn’t leave things like that, not without knowing what she’d said.

He ran. Sweat poured down his arms, lubricating his hands. His phone slipped, for just a moment, tumbling through the air towards the sewers, but he caught it, just in the nick of time.

2 Years, 3 Months and 17 Days

In space, no-one can hear your lonely cries. They used to send teams up to counter-act the solitude, but they discovered there was a cheaper way to handle it. They gave us the Internet. Inadvertently, they gave us dating sites.

She’s lovely. I type into the chat box and pressed Send.

“Hey.”

“Hey back.”

Whoa, ‘Hey’ never works! Maybe she liked the picture of me skydiving... Maybe there’s something wrong with her.

“So... I kind of stink at this part.”

“What, chatting?”

“It’s not chatting, it’s the first chat. I never know what to say.”

Really. Never. I hate starting with some interest she mentioned because everyone does that. It never works for me. ‘Hey’ never works either, but it’s a lot less to type.

“You’re doing fine. I usually just look at the guy’s interests and find something to talk about. You work in photography?”

It must be different for women.