The Luno Device

    “Please, continue Mr. Cooney.” said the judge.

Henry Cooney sighed, and gathered his thoughts together. He continued his speech.

“Well, like I was saying, I had noticed a physiological change within myself when I had first bought the phone. I had noticed that the device Luno had became a very popular social accessory, similar to the early Droid and Apple systems in the beginning stages of wireless, or smart cellular society. But then again, that was fifty years ago, and those systems evolved at a simultaneous rate, multiplied rather gratuitously and were downgraded by the trillions. 

“And then the Luno brand appeared. Does anyone really know where this device came from? Who is Luno? Who manufactured these devices? Did anyone question the sudden appearance of these phones on the market? They appeared literally over night, without a word of warning. What we had with Luno was a device that was able to connect to our minds, and allows us to use thousands of applications just by simply looking into a blank white screen.”

The silver eyed court reporter coughed, and Henry Cooney made eye contact with her from the bench. It was only brief, for she looked immediately down back into the optic writer screen. Her eyes danced across invisible cerebral keys, and printed the telekinetic text from a scroll printer nearby. Henry watched the printer cease production, for the paper withheld its inky tongue, his tongue, he thought, which was being transcribed by the flicker of the court reporters eyes, and ultimately onto the scroll of legal government script. 

She looked at Henry because he had stopped talking, had bit down on his tongue to observe his situation, and was quiet for a good two minutes. The jurors stirred impatiently. Henry made eye contact yet again with the court reporter, saw her eyes clear of the hydrogen words and receive his own eyes.

“Anyway,” said Henry, and the court reporters eyes fell back onto the optic writer screen, “I had bought one. A Luno phone, that is. Before that I was still using an iPhone 9Z."

Giggles from the courtroom. Henry laughed himself. His face then fell and the court became silent again. Henry leaned forward on the bench.

“I had only a fragment of awareness of the phones capabilities. For so long I had held a kind of prejudice against anything cellular. From a semi early age I watched from a disagreeable perspective as phones consumed everything and everybody. It had occurred during my generation when these cellular phones started to bloom everywhere like damn poppies. I watched it all unfold through blank eyes, tried to keep away from it all. In fifty years our techonolgy advanced greatly, and at the same time, everyone became devolved immensely. I couldn't do anything about it though; either I bought one and kept up to date with the world or I didn't, and remain in a fake reality of my own where there were no cellular activities.”

Henry had lost his train of thought, was thinking back to the day it happened. 

“I bought an iPhone-U around 2022, I believe, and was content with its features, though archaic as they were already, compared to the Luno device.”

He roused himself and said, “But I digress. The day I bought the Luno phone I had used it for about a day before I became terrified of it. It wasn't anything that could have been developed by mankind, no, not at all. The fact that it was reading peoples minds without an SES chip implant was beyond any logic. The Apple corporation was even dumbfounded. They were the ones who produced the chip, and its mechanism was entirely plausible. I studied Apple's SES chip for years, became acquainted with its processes and its effect on people. Of course  nobody has used an iPhone or an Apple product in a decade. When Luno came around I thought it was just another rip off of the iPhone-U, another Apple imitation product. But when I started seeing Luno everywhere I knew something was out of place. People were being changed by this device.”

Henry smiled. 

“And after Apple went bankrupt I inevitably was forced to buy the Luno. I was legitimately horrified of the device. I could feel it move around in my head, electrifying my neurons, evaporating my ability to think for myself.”

Henry looked at the court reporter. Her eyes were almost completely white.

“And that was when I broke it open to see what was inside.”

Two months earlier...

Henry stared at the phone. It vibrated on his palm, yes he heard it and felt it on his hand, but it also rang inside of his skull, a little tickle behind his eyes. It was a message from his ex-wife. He looked at the blank screen, misty almost, or rather fogged over, and the screen grew colorful and became vividly present in the fibers of his brain. He was looking at a blank screen on the phone in his hand, yet somehow was also seeing the display in his conscious mind. It was nearly superimposed onto his vision, transparent, but not actually there. He didn't understand. He read the message on the surface of his eyes. It read: I have to leave tonight.

Henry sighed. He thought to himself, Fine, you good for nothing w***e, go back home to your rich bluebird Billy...

He stopped his train of thought mid-sentence, for it was being typed out on the private cerebral screen of the Luno phone. Jesus, he whispered, it's reading my f*****g mind.

On the subway he looked at everyone around him. People were all using Luno. Some held it in their palms, not even looking at the screen but out the window or at another person, but simultaneously scrolling the web or having a conversation with someone else miles away, just by holding the phone in their hands. Few people actually held the phone and gazed into the screen traditionally. An older man next to Henry did just that, but Henry had no idea what it was he was doing because he could not read the screen. All he saw was the foggy hydrogen.

Something happened when Henry got off of the subway and ascended the steps to the street. He looked around and saw everyone before him, and saw that everyone's minds were being warped around the Luno device. For a brief second Henry's mind was seemingly stretched open, and like a magnet, he received millions upon millions of data; conversations, web articles, cerebral music, old SES footage still lodged in the older generations skulls.

But as soon as it happened it vanished. Henry vomited onto the sidewalk and then went home.

His microscope was in his closet. He rarely used it anymore but he revealed it because tonight he was especially curious.

He set it up, plugged it into the wall (it was a very old microscope), and found the proper slides. He took the Luno phone out of his pocket and set it next to the microscope. Its blank screen became subconsciously visible to him, and he tried to ignore it and walked into the kitchen, where he got a knife and some iodine. 

When he placed the blade against the phone he felt a tingly sensation in his head, similar to when his foot or hand fell asleep from a lack of blood flow. He became lightheaded for a second, and set the phone down. 

What the f**k is this thing? he thought to himself. He got up and went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of rum. He swallowed it and felt the magnetism in his brain fade. He went back to the counter where the phone sat. 

He picked it up and immediately the screen came alive behind his eyes. The blank screen he was looking at superimposed the screen he saw with his minds eye. He felt like vomiting again, but he didn't.

Henry looked all around the exterior of the phone for the contours of assembly. He looked for a ridge or an outline to see where the phone was put together, he looked for a microscopic screw or a hole or a button to reveal the battery, but there was nothing of the sort. The phone itself was entirely one thing; there were no traces of mechanical production. It was almost as if it was grown rather than created. As if it was organic instead of electronic. He laughed, and thought it impossible.

He put the knife on the bottom of the phone, just below the hydrogen screen, and pushed down. The blade slid in when he increased the pressure, and he felt his mind clear immediately. He broke the intangible connection and was able to think clearly.

Twisting the knife and moving it in various motions he was able to split the phone in half and look at its innards. It looked like any phones guts he had seen before. The memory board was just like that of the iPhone-U he had. The microprocessors were similar, if not exactly the same type. The only thing that was different was a small plastic section near the top of the phone. It appeared to be the the liquid hydrogen capsule, for it had veins running out of it and through the phone. Looking at the screen from the opposite view, from the interior, it was completely transparent, like clean glass. 

Another thing he noticed as he continued to probe the phone was a small series of small glass domes, half the size of an ant, running around the perimeter of the phones interior. They appeared to glow almost, and Henry had to strain his eyes to see if this was what he was actually seeing. But it was. And then he noticed that the domes appeared to change color, or that's what he thought he saw. Maybe it was just the hydrogen being processed, he thought. He didn't know what to think.

Henry poured a droplet of iodine on a slide, and with his knife, punctured the plastic bubble that contained what he thought was liquid hydrogen. It made a small hiss, and he turned the phone around so he could drip some of the liquid onto the slide.

Once properly executed, Henry put the slide under the eye of the microscope and looked into the eyepiece. He adjusted the knobs until the slide became visible. Looking at the liquid under the slide he noticed little particles swim around and spin in place. He couldn't tell exactly what it was, so he increased the focus and zoomed in.

Under the light of the microscope, the small particles that danced around seemed to disappear entirely when he would focus on an individual one, and then appear somewhere else in the corner of the slide. Henry determined that these were live organisms, and concluded also that he had pissed his pants.

Henry left the kitchen and walked in a daze to his bedroom to change his pants, and when he came back the phone was gone. He looked in the microscope and saw the organisms convulse in frenzy; they revolved in circles around each other, moved in zig-zags and weird unnatural motions (even for microscopic cells) until they had stopped moving. It looked to Henry as if they had arranged themselves in some sort of shape. 

Zooming out of the focus, Henry nearly fainted. From a more broader perspective of the slide, he traced the angles and shapes of which the organisms had formed. He was completely astonished. The organisms formed themselves into the shape of words, and they spelled out the phrase: Now you know

There was a loud noise in the kitchen. Henry nearly fell out of his chair, and he looked over and saw a pile of glass on the tile. The phone was floating in kitchen, had knocked over his glass of rum, and was hovering in the air. It had put itself back together somehow and was reverberating a soundless vibration. He felt it on his skin, on his bones. Another loud crash, and he shot around and found his microscope on the floor, in pieces. 

The phone hovered motionlessly. Henry thought to himself, in the privacy of his mind, 'Where did this come from?' and almost instantly his question was answered. There was a terrible noise that vibrated the air around him; it was channeled into his ears and hummed against his skull, and he could make out what the vibrations were saying: We've been here long before you have...

The phone slowly hovered over to the window, slower than the speed of a falling leaf, and when it made contact with the glass the window shattered, and the phone continued out into the evening.

Henry opened the front door and followed the phone. He stood in his front lawn and watched it gain altitude, it was floating up to the sky like a balloon. He watched with his mouth open, completely astonished but absolutely enlightened at the same time, for it all made sense to him now.

Henry heard voices around him. He just thought it was his neighbors watching his phone float up to the clouds, watching it become a pixel on the screen of the sky. The voices grew louder and louder, chatter enveloped the atmosphere, and he looked around. 

Everyone was outside of their houses, and everyone was yelling, for everyone was chasing their phones out of their houses, and Henry watched as the little dot of his phone was joined by a hundred other little dots, and then a thousand, and then a million, until the sky was nearly blacked out. 

Author's Note

Cell phones need to disappear.

Reviews

[Haley Wilson]

This was a really cool read. And it gives an ominous vibe as to what the future of technology could hold for our race. We could be made extinct and replaced by robots, for all we know!

[Mr_M]

A scary version of the future. It frightens me. I have wrote a story of a similar stand point called the voice. I think we are seeing a peek of what is going to happen in the near future. Great imagination and story. From your poem I read, I should of seen this sooner.

[Nadia Gerassimenko]

You are well beyond this time, decades later, perhaps even centuries later. You are a Y3K Nostradamus. This story sent chills down my spine just thinking about what awaits us. It is dreadful.

It has its perks, like in the movie Her, when an operating system develops a supra-conscious mind you can communicate with on a deeper emotional level. But it can be a very scary thing when it backfires, when computers start ruling the world and people will be just simple nothings. Brrr *shudders*!

[Chadvonswan]

I agree it is probably the most terrifying thing about the future hahah. All I can do is fantasize about it. Thanks for reading, Nadia (:

[Ariana Omnomnom]

It was amazing, just like everything else you produce in that crazy little mind of yours. Or should I say crazy massive mind because your creativity is endless. For some odd reason, in hindsight I really don't know why, I wasn't expecting the ending of this story. Regardless of my guessing skills it was awesome.

[Chadvonswan]

You mean you did expect it??
Thanks for the read doll (:

[Ariana Omnomnom]

No I really didn't expect it. I might just be out of it or something. I really love reading your stuff.

[Gaston Villanueva]

This was great Max
What a thought-provoking idea this was...

[Chadvonswan]

Thanks for reading all this Gaston 🐓

[ZackOfBridge]

Haha Iphone-u. Liked the story, as you know I approve of about anything that criticizes Smart phone technology, but the end seemed somewhat rushed and left me with more questions. Here I am willing to accept technology created of organic material and even the organic material drifting into space, but I am not prepared to accept that that is the end of the story. Unless, maybe they were angels come down to rid us of material distraction or angels that are aliens, which my dad would be much interested in. Oh and I dug the big "P at the start of the story, very ascetically pleasing.

[Chadvonswan]

This was probably the most rushed story I've written, it needs to be painted more. And I never finished it either; but the phones end up going to the moon. Lol. Tell your dad that there is indeed a door up there. Thanks for the read, P.