By Prospero Dae
“Hello!” yells Testosterone, banging belligerently on the telephone apparatus before attempting to listen again. “This doesn’t work.”
An old man looks on bemusedly, pipe in hand, ensconced in a rocking chair, wool blanket draped over his knees. The smoke from his pipe is doing the sort of tricks you’d expect of a contortionist. Testosterone is entertained, but not by the ecstasy of conversation!
Meanwhile the telephone cord is wrapped around Testosterone’s neck. He is red with anger. “I’ve no patience left.”
“Give it a chance,” says the tobacco enthusiast. “Alexander Bell only invented the trinket last week. Growing pains are inevitable.”
The last line (“Growing pains are inevitable.”) says it all. Great little story!
I am quite certain this story will be quite incomprehensible in the near future, as we will probably be listening and speaking into a microchip embedded into the palms of our hands–and the telephone, together with the cell-phone, will be a distant memory.
The name “Testosterone” (I pronounce it in Italian, to rhyme with calzone, and mascarpone) is a stroke of genius for your main character….or is the pipe smoker the main character….or is Alexander G. Bell? I guess it’s Bell, since that’s the title of the story. As always, wonderfully written.
But ‘mascarpone’ is a wonderful subject for a trilogy: two books could not possibly do it justice.
I expect that if the story had been called Testosterone, some other meaning would have risen to the top–so, as any cowardly faux-author would have done, I embraced the telecommunication aspect.