All Along the Watchtower

It was sunset at around the time I had made it back to my house. I put my sling backpack in my room and headed for the shower. Mom was sitting on the toilet when I came inside the bathroom. I began undressing in front of her as she got up and pulled her long frilly dress back up and flushed.

“You look like a right mess, Cliff. Did you jump into a mud pit? My goodness…” Mom says with concern, looking over my dirt-covered arms body.

She picks up the sooty clothes that I had laid on the counter, irritated at the condition of my garments. Her forehead creases to her usual frown. I entered the shower and turned the cold water on.

“Heavens, Cliff. What on earth were you doing?” Mom asked.

“I just tripped over a tree branch in the woods and took a bit of a dive into the dirt. No big deal,” I shouted over the pouring shower water.

“The woods? Oh Cliff… you really need to straighten up, darling. I-“

“Yes, I know. You worry.” I interrupted.

Mom pouts and crosses her arm. She makes a bit of a 'humph' as she leaves. I sighed as she left the shower room.

Cleansed, I ate my meal afterward. We had a salad of beets and carrots along with some seared tofu steak. I played with the food with my fork. It was better than the gruel the miners ate, but somehow, meals like this just sapped you of any morale.

“How was your day at work, Sophia?” Mom asked, trying to spark life in the dead silent dining room.

Sophia shrugged. “We had a lot of paperwork today. The upper managements want us to send orders to reroute some miners to help dig in some of the sinkholes that have been appearing in the woods.”

That caught my attention, and I straightened up a bit in my chair. Better not say anything or they'll get suspicious.

Sophia stretched and yawn and then went back to her plate. Mom nods and frowns, sensing she can get not much more from her daughter and turned to me. “Cliff. What did they teach you at school today?”

“Just a bunch of fluff I won’t ever use,” I said bitterly.

“Cliff, I know how you feel about the miners and power plant workers, but they do an essential job keeping this community together.” Mom said.

“I know, but… I don’t want to just do enough to survive. I want to explore the world and actually do something I want,” I said, taking my frustration out of the vegetables with my fork.

“Work hard in school, and maybe they will place you on the recon teams,” Sophia said with a mouth full of veggies.

“I don’t want you to be part of the recon teams. Very few of them ever make it back,” Mom says with concern.

“Beats being stuck in a mine. Rather live outside than down in those tunnels,” I said.

“Rather live anywhere else,” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that, honey?” Mom asked.

I sighed and responded with nothing. I’m sure I would get a lecture about how fortunate I am to be part of Yellowfield, but this just wasn’t living. At night I would power up the little artifact I found, and maybe it’ll show me a bit about the old world when people actually lived and not just survived.

Night arrived, and I was in my room. It was around midnight, and Mom and Soph were probably in bed. I was anxious about my discovery and just couldn’t wait. The only electrical powered thing in my room was my single lamp, powered by an incandescent lightbulb, by my bedstand. The cable of the lamp ran to a power outlet with two ports, a single one open. I locked the door to my room and took out my sling bag. Inside the bag, the artifact was wrapped like a mummy in a scarf I carried. I connected the cable attached to it to the open electric outlet and waited.

I clicked the circular button on the bottom center of the little playing card-sized tablet in anticipation. Nothing happened. I sighed. Figures. I got my hopes up for nothing. But then something I noticed about the little device changed. A red circular light the size of a pin lit up near the top. I gingerly pressed it with my thumb, fearing it would burn me. Nothing happened. It must be an indicator light.

A little while later, the phone lit up with a small icon in the center. The icon was a large rectangle in the shape of a large battery filled with green. This must mean it was charging up. I was getting more and more excited. Yes. It’s working. It just needed a charge. I waited for what seemed like an eternity. Unable to take it anymore, I pressed the small circular button on the artifact. The screen went black, and I nearly crashed my head against the wall.

Stupid stupid stupid. You just couldn’t wait, could ya, Cliff?

Then some text showed up in bright letters – “SAMSUNG.” What in tarnation did that mean? Was Samsung the name of the guy who owned this phone?

Later, A blue background is displayed on the device with little squarish icons. I clicked one of them, and it opened up to a bunch of numbers. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 -7 – 8 – 9 – 0, in three verticle columns and line. Clicking a bunch of them did nothing, but I heard a female voice say later, “The call you are trying to place is not in service. Please try your call again.”

This must have been a mobile phone, I heard the ancients use. I clicked on the power button again, and it went back to the initial blue screen.

I clicked on the icon with a musical note in the middle next. A list of titles came on.

• 1901 – Phoenix
• 1999 – Prince
• A Day in Life – The Beatles
• All Along the Watchtower – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd
• Another One Bites the Dust - Queen

This was a list of music, I assumed. We at Yellowfield had music, of course, but nothing like what I would imagine the epic orchestral music the Ancients must have had. Our music amounted to playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on woodwind pipes. When the school visited the miners, they sang, poorly, little diddies and hymns while they worked. There were also the songs of the Wizard of Oz. However, it always sounded muted, as if it was sung underwater, when we watched it in the run-down old theatre.

I clicked on All Along the Watchtower, and a little wail came out of the little artifact. I glanced around nervously, wondering if anyone else heard it. The melodic wailing came from small holes on the tablet device, which I assumed acted like the PA systems they had around town, carrying voices. The agonizing wailing sounded like a wounded animal making its last stand. I tried covering it, so it barely came out as a whisper. The wailing kept going on, and it pulled me into a trance. I felt like I had a religious experience. This is what heaven must sound like.

A baritone voice comes on through the device singing,“♪There must be some kind of way out of here,’ said the joker to the thief♪”. I closed my eyes and listened to the lyrics. I think I must have shed a tear. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. I had no idea what this music was about or what the lyrics meant, but it rang inside my head, burrowing itself there.

I must have stayed up for an hour listening to more and more of the titles. I had learned that if I flicked on the screen in verticle motions as if I were turning a page of a book on its side, it would scroll down and show more and more tracks.

Most of the titles always sang about more or less the same thing. Something called love. People were always saying they loved someone. What was love? And why did the guy singing want his baby to stop hurting him? How could a baby hurt a grown man?

However, this was the thing that was missing from the stories I read. It was… passion. Desire. All the songs sounded how I felt. Lonely. Not just being alone but… the feeling of wanting to be with someone else or desiring their companionship for some reason or goal.

I needed more information on everything, I wanted to soak up everything I learned from the artifact.

I clicked on the home screen again and click on another icon that had 3 blue dots on it around a cloud looking shape.

Verification code? Emergency Alerts? Your COMCAST bill of $63.79 is due? More verification codes? What did it all mean? I finally clicked on one that seemed familiar, and it had the header – Jill

It was apparently a communique, like tiny code messages to each other. It read:

Jill – Do you want to come over?
Adam- Busy, maybe tmr
What the crud is tmr? Is that an acronym? Jill must be the sender and the person replying would be the previous owner of the phone.

Jill – My pussy is so wet right now. I need to fuck you.
Adam – ON MY WAY
Her pussy is wet? Why would that be important in this conversation? What the crud is ‘fuck’? This must be ancient jargon. There was more.

Jill – I’m pregnant.
Adam – Is it mine? The baby?
Jill – Of course, it’s yours >:(
Adam – What should we do?
What did pregnant mean? The baby?

Jill – Do you think what’s going on in the news is true?
Adam – It’s a big fucking nothingburger.
Adam - Did you get an abortion?
Jill – I want to keep our baby
Adam - …
Adam – I don’t think having a baby is good at this time IMO
Jill - …
Adam – Jill we need to talk
Adam – Jill shit is going down. Come to my place ASAP, I have a shelter
Adam – Jill? Please talk to me. I’m still in my shelter, COME RIGHT AWAY
Adam – My battery is running out. It’s at 10%. I used up the last of my power bank. I’m running out of water, so I’m heading out there to see what I can salvage. I’ll leave this phone here waiting for your reply. Till then... please call me if you can. I love you, Jill. I will find you somehow… wait for me.

The messages end there. I could roughly understand some of it and why the phone had no owner. Some words still made no sense to me. Pregnant. Fuck?

I couldn’t decipher most of what these messages were saying, so I clicked on the next icon that piques my interest. It showed an image of a film reel. I yawned. It was getting late. My eyes were growing heavy. When the next screen popped, there appeared a couple of text lines. The first one was titled:

Blowjob – Jill