(Subplot) Faking It

The way Maggie saw it, she had two choices at this point. The first was to walk back towards the city where she would be guaranteed reception but was just as certain to be seen by a ton of people, with a very real chance that might include somebody she would know. The other option was to wander further into the wilderness, where she might never get her signal back but would be unlikely to have to deal with more than a couple of people at a time.

The latter option instinctively felt like the more palatable one. And now she thought of it, would Uber even be prepared to risk taking a lone, naked young female passenger? That felt like a lawsuit waiting to happen for them. Even if she had the ability to load up the Uber app right now, Maggie doubted there would be an explanation of their policy for such an unusual scenario to be found there.

Strangely, even with no signal, there was one app that was still working on Maggie's phone - Naked Ambition. It was currently buzzing to notify her that her score had already risen to 20% after her naked car journey. It was also advising her to take the city route for the greatest score increasing potential. That made Maggie's mind up for her - she was going deeper into the countryside. She knew just about everything there was to know about phone technology, and the amount of specific information this app seemed to have about her current predicament should not have been possible. It was, quite frankly, spooky. She felt like if the app wanted to raise her score she should go out of her way to lower it.

As Maggie walked, naked as the day she was born, through the grass, she rehearsed the two cover stories she had been able to think up on the fly in her head. The first was the simplest - she was a naturist. It wasn't a subject she knew much about, but for some reason she felt like rambling through the countryside was the sort of thing those people might do. But something about nudists felt a bit icky to her - like however much they claimed otherwise, there was definitely a perverted element to it. She therefore decided to go with her other story, as a large and slightly sour faced middle aged woman approached her.

"Hi, sorry I wonder if you could help me. I got robbed. As you can see, they took literally everything!"

"Well, not everything, you still have your phone" the woman looked both suspicious and unsympathetic "It looks like an expensive one too"

It was, naturally. Maggie always had to have top of the range tech with all of the bells and whistles and she could usually get the latest and flashiest smartphones at a discount.

"I know, weird right?"

"Nor so much weird as implausible" the woman clearly knew this was a lie already "Why would you even give them your clothes?"

"They threatened me if I didn't. I think they wanted me to be too embarrassed to go to the cops"

"But they left you your phone?" the woman scoffed "I don't know what prank you are trying to pull young lady, but I ain't got time for it!"

As the woman walked off, Maggie realised that she was going to have to go down the naturist route after all. The next person approaching her was male, maybe in his fifties, and quite well built. Suddenly the wisdom of wandering off into the near empty countryside while naked seemed a little more debatable. She was pretty sure that at this time of day there were just about enough people passing through for her to be safe though.

"Excuse me, sir!"

Wait, where did 'sir' come from? Since when had Maggie ever greeted anyone like that? Somehow being naked made her feel strangely deferential and socially inferior to the clothed masses.

"Anything for you, Missy!" the man broke into a grin like the cat that had just got a years supply of cream "Just tell me how I can be of assistance and I will do everything I can to make your day, like you have already made mine!"

"So I have no phone signal, and I wondered if there was somewhere near here I could make a call"

Maggie decided that nudists surely didn't need to announce the fact that they were nudists every time they met someone. It was probably pretty apparent. So she skipped the lie and just went with her actual predicament.

"Are you not going to reference the elephant in the room?" the man raised an eyebrow "What happened to your clothes?"

"I'm a nudist" Maggie answered with just a hint of humiliation.

"We do get quite a few nudists around here" the man folded his arms "But they usually have at least some of their belongings with them in a backpack. And none of them look anything like you. God, I wish they did!"

Great, was nobody going to believe her? What exactly was a plausible story for a young woman wandering around naked in the countryside with just an expensive phone?

"What can I say? I'm new to this" Maggie shrugged.

"I feel like something weird is going on here that you don't want to tell me about" the man deduced quite accurately "But there is no way I can turn down a request from a beautiful naked damsel like you. If you keep walking there is a farmhouse maybe a kilometre from here. The family that live there are a little odd, but perfectly harmless. They should be able to help you!"

"Great, thank you sir!" Maggie smiled. God, there that word was again.

Maggie continued walking. She didn't care how odd this family were, at this point they seemed like her best shot.