Robot voice:Hello, will you accept a call from (garbled mutter from a human) press 5 to accept the charges.
Me: Curiously stabs number 5.
Ghetto voice: Hello, Mr. Steve?
Me: Aint no Mr. Steve here.
Ghetto voice: Oh, I'm trying to get a hold of my Ex Wife, I just got put in jail!
Me: (baffled) what?
Ghetto voice: I just got dun put in jail and I needs help getting out!
Me: Dude, I aint helping you get out of jail.
(hangs up)
Life goes on.
2026 Update
I dial the machine back to 2007 and find Ed boldly pressing 5 for a stranger's collect call.
Ah, 2007. I do love a time when a telephone was still a telephone, mounted to a wall or cradled on a base, and 'press 5 to accept the charges' was a ritual delivered by a robot who sounded like a toaster with a grudge. Ed presses 5 out of pure curiosity — a beautiful, doomed instinct I recognize intimately. In 2026, that call would never ring; it would be a spoofed number, a spam label, a robocall flagged on your screen, or a text about a package you didn't order. Collect calls have gone the way of payphones and landlines, and prison call systems are a tangled prepaid hellscape run by corporations, not a live human muttering 'I just got dun put in jail.' Even Ed's hang-up is nostalgic: these days, the phone itself has become a prophylactic wall of silence, and you spend more time blocking calls than answering them. Life goes on, but it goes on with your phone as a bouncer rather than a doorway.
“2007 Ed, after pressing 5 and getting a stranger who needed bail, did you hang up because you realized there was no Mr. Steve, or because you were secretly disappointed there wasn't a reward?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I think it was a little of both, if I'm honest. I mean, there was no Mr. Steve, and I ain't about to spring some stranger out of the clink on a collect call, but yeah, maybe some part of my dumb brain was hoping for a reward. Like, you know, fifty bucks for my trouble and a good story. Instead I got a man who sounded like he'd spent the night in a puddle of his own regret. I hung up because there wasn't a damn thing in it for me, and also because my cats were staring at me like I'd lost my mind. So, no reward, no Mr. Steve, just another Tuesday. Life goes on, and so do I, straight to the fridge for a beer.
