“Hello, sir! … sir! You dropped…” but the man was off. The reflection of the sun glinted off of his new and expensive pair of sunglasses. Adrian Shepherd saw the tailcoat of his (also) new and expensive cream-and-gray-at-the-same-time suit jacket swish with a flourish and he disappeared from view.

Adrian picked up the man’s cellphone (he had thought the drop seemed a little unmindful, or at least that the man perhaps hadn’t noticed that he dropped it), something else of the man’s that was very clearly costly and state-of-the-art. Its screen was lit up and the phone was partially unlocked yet partially view-obstructed, but he hardly noticed this as his sure placed feet made large bounds to the same corner he just lost the phone’s owner to.

It came and went swiftly, but when he was on the other side he saw no one. Just the continued plaza that contained blackened-pole streetlights (coincidentally just turning their lights on), novelty and overpriced food shops, and benches galore resting on the cobblestones below them. The street continued just past this main plaza area, but there he also saw little. A smoke shop had a flickering neon sign he couldn’t read.. In the far distance was a mother and child, fussing over a pink balloon Adrian saw fluttering into the clouds. But the man was gone.

No, wait. There he is!

“SIR! WAIT!” Adrian bellowed with an authoritative intensity that was easy to bring forth.

“YOU’VE DROPPED YOUR PHONE!”

But the man was gone, slamming the door of a taxi. After a hesitation that only withstood the slow build up of Adrian’s run to stop him, the car zoomed with jerky gusto. Adrian’s momentum died in its throat. He looked at the phone’s illuminated but blurry screen:

February 20th, 2029, 6:31 PM

Partly Cloudy, Beckley West Virginia, 48°F

It was broadcasted along a solid red bar on the top of the phone, which simultaneously noted a dying battery at 8% charge. He touched the screen with the pad of his thumb, and the phone left the stasis mode it had entered and removed the fog from the screen. Now he could see that what before looked like an e-mail had been an e-mail.

The pang of guilt for snooping never hit him; Adrian was searching for the identity of the phone’s owner or the quickest way to get this phone back to him. The poor fellow seemed like he had been in a hurry after all, and Adrian knew all too well how world-ending it felt to tap all of your pockets and not feel that familiar rectangular bulge. The drop of your stomach, the dizziness in your head. How the hands began to feel clammy and, unexplainably, distant. Adrian knew it, as had his cellphone provider heard all about it.

This phone really was a bit of advanced technology, though. Adrian confidently colored himself as moderately wealthy and had a nice cellphone of his own to boast of, but this device in his hand looked strange in its newness and dwarfed his own possession. It looked advanced and out of its time, but it didn’t look futuristic. With a nearly subconscious thought he decided it looked like a phone built today with blueprints from the future.

This thought was nearly subconscious because it was quickly overwhelmed by the keywords and phrases Adrian saw. “What is at stake”, “safe location”, and “terroristic threat” were just the attention grabbers, but soon he was enwrapped by the rest. At the bottom it had a picture cropped off, but Adrian could scroll down to see it if he wanted. He started to read the e-mail:

Special Agent MO-GTOE Eyes

In an unprecedented turn of events, you and many of your colleagues in your division have been reassigned. We are only at the cusp of understanding what is happening and what is at stake. That which isn’t classified will be debriefed to you at a safe location. We have taken the liberty of escorting your wife and children to a designated safehouse, Safehouse 31 “Angel's Boat”, as you already are aware of. You are to arrive there with the other agents and producers promptly and wait for further instructions.

The United States of America faces a terroristic threat unlike any it has seen before. This threat may even extend to both Mexico in the south and Canada in the north.

A message of unknown origin and violent intent arrived yesterday and was just decoded this morning. It is now apparent that this great nation faces a catastrophe it may well not survive. The attached file below shows what locations the attacker is calling for as the intended target areas. Report to Safehouse 31 for further information.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

An unsatisfyingly short message for Adrian’s outsider perspective. With a thick tongue, he licked his chapped lips. Terrorists? A terrorism threat? Each passing second was a click of realization in his head, letting the unbelievable and eccentric pieces fall in front of him.

“I’m not understanding this,” he murmured. But it was written plain before his eyes. Stress and anxiety lied under his twitching fingers, danced in his shifting legs and drove in multi-veined highways back and forth, to and fro. He let in a deep breath and then let one out and easily felt that emotional pressure leave, the feeling combining with the sensation of deflating lungs. A trick he had developed throughout his life, anxiety had ever been so easy to dispel for him. Now he could accept what he saw.

He uncropped the picture by swiping gently, upward. At first he was looking at a picture of the United States that you might see on any weather channel. Several areas were enveloped with color circles that were cherry-red in the center and faded to bright lemon-yellow at their borders.

Adrian guessed that 50%-60% of America was within these circles, and he knew from basic geography that several landmarks and monuments as well as heavily populated cities were the centers of these circles. Four red stars were plopped on the map, seemingly random to Adrian.

Then he noticed the maps legend and gulped a lump of fear. The red stars were labelled as “SAFETY ZONE - VIP EXCLUSIVE”. Adrian’s head was starting to spin, but he could make out the safe zone with the biggest clearance area away from the bomb’s radiuses was in California, Santa Monica. The only other marker on the legend was for the circles, which was labelled “IMPLIED TARGET ZONE/EVACUATION ZONE”.

From here it didn't take many educated guesses. Although it wasn't explicitly stated, Adrian thought it was all but said. A wretched feeling began to cling to his guts like frost, this bout of nerves wasn't so easy to dispel... but he did. His hammering heartbeat slowed... dulled, as he controlled it to its rational and regular beat, a tactic he once heard a comedy movie refer to as “ninja focus”. But even still his mind raced, he tried with a tolerable degree of success to pick one thought out and focus on it.

“Someone else needs to know” was that thought, and the whirlwind of words shifted its current. It frantically blew a slurry of new words. Places. Names. Who should he tell? Who could he tell? He glanced around on the street. The child without her balloon was now being led to a balloon stand that Adrian previously had not noticed. The cart tender was a balding middle-aged man. There was a couple enwrapped in each other and a few years younger than Adrian that just arrived and claimed a bench for a quick snuggle. Two cars drove by each other directly to his left on the main road.

No one here would fucking believe this horseshit. Except… the phone! The phone was proof, hadn’t Adrian himself come to the conclusion of its realism? True, only he had seen the new-and-expensive man, but how could you ignore the seals, logos and signatures at the top of the e-mail that he had seen? Those were well known spy agencies and government officials. Wouldn’t that merit a fanciful glance, maybe?

The phone’s screen was black, Adrian thought with a drop of regret that the screen might of ran on an auto timer. The drop splashed, it was a regret with a rippling strength now as he pressed for the unlock button and realized the phone didn’t have one. He flipped the phone over, put it upside down and danced his fingers along its edges. It didn’t have any buttons at all. A sweaty double-thumbprint remained after trying to fast-tap it open. The phone stayed black. Ok.

So now who could he tell? Not knowing how it operated, he pocketed the new and useless phone and withdrew his own, a smaller thing that had buttons on the side. As he flipped through the list of personal contacts, his heart fluttered with panic and disappointment. Panic for the immediate danger and plan of action at hand, disappointment for the list of names who would simply laugh at Adrian's “attempt at a joke, surely”.

There were coworkers and ex-coworkers, none of which he knew on a personal level any further than the name of their kids and pets or their last vacation. Tom Middleson might listen attentively, he was actually fired for an obsession with conspiracy theories that eventually lead to an outburst against management in the workplace. But that was four years ago, and Adrian thought he had left the country. And he was weird, Adrian also thought.

He had saved the numbers of first dates that didn't make it to second dates. He'd saved the numbers of second dates that shouldn't have made it as far. Adrian's love life was not unlike the life of a simple honey bee. Once a pretty, colorful flower came along he would sample its nectar, benefiting the plant as much as it benefited him. And then he would depart the flower when the benefits were gone; taking too much destroys something beautiful, no?

Regardless. Awkward shame brushed these ghosts from his body while his thumb brushed the phone's screen, a tinge of mania seeping in.

Names of cousins, friends of friends, and several delivery pizzerias went by like a showcase viewing. With increasing speed, also went by Adrian's former car-pool buddy, his parents and many high school classmates that, even after a decade, Adrian still hadn't gotten around to deleting them, many of those people had likely changed phone numbers by now. He called his parents. Called them twice, but got no answer both times. That was nothing new. They were still on speaking terms but the ice was thin. He had noticed that they no longer had an answering machine, and that was new. A puff of a sigh slid through Adrian's nostrils. He’d try them again later (and although he would reach them, he would not convince them of the threat he knew of).

Finally he reached the bottom of his list. It was lengthy, Adrian always bristled with humble pride at that fact. He liked being known. But it was at the bottom that he remembered the one number he gloomily wished he did not remember, wished that he wouldn't call it. But he did, and the name emboldened as for the first time in months Adrian called his brother, Douglas Shepherd.

“I told you to never fucking call this number,” came a harsh voice after four dial tones.