"Hello...?"

I sighed gently as I put the old phone on speaker and set it back on the table. The magnetically charged generator hummed quietly in the corner, struggling to keep juice flowing through the charger cable and maintain my last bid for sanity.

On the old plastic table was an array of trinkets I had found that day. I only ever went out for trinkets these days. The greenhouse pretty much ran itself, and the spring-water salinity distiller had not had a breakdown in almost five years now. I had scavenged just about everything I needed for survival, so all that was left were trinkets.

A purple piece of glass. A nearly spherical pebble. An intact spider-web leaf--I liked that one; the brittle leaves usually crumbled the second they hit the ground. A rusty belt buckle missing the tongue. A crinkled piece of plastic that might once have been a candy wrapper.

Trinkets.

"H-Hello...!?"

All there was to do these days was sit on the pedal-seat in the corner by the generator and pedal all day to recharge the old piece of junk. And I only ever used the generator to keep the old cell phone running, so I did not have to recharge it every day.

The only other thing there was to do was go out and collect trinkets.

"Oh my God, hello!?!"

I sighed. Even the age-old voice recordings were losing their luster.

"This can't have been a mistake, it can't be, not after twenty fucking years of conserving the last twelve percent of this damn battery, and I turn it on for the first time in twenty years and I immediately get a phone call, and that’s just too fucking ironic to be real, so this is a mistake, isn't it, and..."

I finally looked up from my meager bounty and frowned at the phone. The voice on the other end devolved into flustered muttering, just a warble from the old speakers.

That's not a voicemail, I thought, staring and staring and staring at the phone.

The sound coming from the speakers grew muffled for a moment, and a harsh clop issued forth, as if someone on the other end had dropped their phone mid-call. A rustle, static. A deep sigh, that kind of sigh one makes when one is alone, and all they have to hold onto their last grip of calm is their own breath. Someone, alone, breathing, alone, relying on themselves to remain calm. Someone on the phone.

Someone.

That's not a voICEMAIL.

The truth of reality finally sank in, and I lunged for the phone.

Snatching it up, I shouted, "Hello! Hi! Hello!?"

"Don't screw with me, phone," the voice replied, but it was distant, as if the other person held the phone away from their face. "I save you all this time, and this is how you repay me--"

"Hello! I'm a real! I'm person! I'm--!" I inhaled, choked on my own saliva, and coughed until I could not breathe. "I'm... I'm..." I wheezed, sucking air through the cough lodged at the top of my esophagus. "Hi. I'm Dakota. Hi."

The voice was quiet, almost comically suspicious. "You're not a mistake?"

I contemplated the question for a moment, and a sudden, unexpected swell seemed to balloon inside of me. It was laughter. I teetered on the edge of laughter, something I had not heard in over a decade. I had asked myself that exact same question for years. How was I alive even after all this time, just to suffer in solitude? What had I done to deserve it? It had to be a mistake. I had to be a mistake.

But all I said was, "No."

And then I finally laughed. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.

And she laughed, too.