Please Hold

PLEASE HOLD

When the World Forgot How to Remember

By 10am, there were forty-seven people in Evelyn Carter's house, and Evelyn personally knew only thirty-two of them.

This irritated her.

Not the forty-seven people.

The fifteen strangers.

Evelyn took a slow pull from the blunt between her fingers, exhaled toward the open kitchen window and pointed at the young man standing beside her refrigerator.

"Who are you?"

The young man looked around like maybe she was talking to some other unauthorized motherfucker standing next to her refrigerator.

"Me?"

"No. The Holy Ghost behind you. Yes, you."

"Andre."

"Andre what?"

"Wilson."

"Who are your people?"

"My people?"

Evelyn lowered her glasses.

Andre immediately understood that he had fucked up.

"My mama is Lisa Wilson."

"Big Lisa or Little Lisa?"

He blinked.

"She's five-four."

Somebody at the kitchen table choked on their drink.

Evelyn stared at him through a thin ribbon of smoke.

"Get away from my refrigerator."

Andre moved.

At seventy-eight years old, Evelyn Carter had survived a husband, two hip replacements, menopause, raising three children, burying people she thought would outlive her, and forty-two years of those same children eventually becoming grown and deciding that somehow meant they could tell her what to do.

She was not about to be defeated by a Friday.

Even if Friday had apparently defeated everybody else.

"NEXT!"

A woman hurried forward clutching a black smartphone like it was a sick child.

"I need to call my daughter."

"Number?"

The woman froze.

Evelyn waited.

"I don't...know it."

"Then who exactly were you planning on calling?"

"It's saved in my phone."

Evelyn looked at the useless rectangle in the woman's hand.

Then back at the woman.

"So ask your phone."

"Miss Evelyn."

"I'm serious. Y'all keep bringing me these dead phones like I'm Jesus."

The room erupted.

The woman didn't laugh.

"I'm scared. She works downtown."

That softened Evelyn.

Just a little.

She put the blunt in the glass ashtray beside her telephone.

"What's your daughter's name?"

"Danielle."

"Danielle what?"

"Brooks."

Evelyn reached for the battered red book sitting beside the phone.

"Who's her mama?"

The woman stared at her.

"I am."

"I know you are her mama. Who is your mama?"

"My mother?"

"Lord, give me strength before I start smoking something stronger."

That was how the most important communications network in the city operated.

Not through satellites.

Not through fiber optics.

Not through artificial intelligence.

Through a seventy-eight-year-old Black woman knowing everybody's damn mama.

And somehow, it worked.

Hours earlier, Jordan Mitchell had knocked on Evelyn's door hard enough to make her think somebody had either died or brought the police.

Neither had happened.

Yet.

Evelyn had been sitting at her kitchen table in her purple housecoat, drinking coffee, smoking her morning blunt and minding every bit of her own damn business.

Then Jordan started beating on the door.

She opened it.

"What?"

"Miss Evelyn, you got a phone?"

She looked at the smartphone in his hand.

"Looks like you do too."

"It doesn't work."

"Then you got a problem."

"No. I mean everybody's doesn't work."

Evelyn took a pull from her blunt.

"Everybody who?"

"Everybody. Like...everybody everybody."

"That don't make no damn sense."

"I know."

The morning news had said something about smartphones failing around the world, but Evelyn hadn't paid much attention.

She had coffee.

She had weed.

She had The Price Is Right.

Whatever Apple had going on was between Apple and the Lord.

"I need to call Maya," Jordan said.

"Then call her."

"I can't."

"Clearly."

"Can I use your landline?"

Evelyn stopped.

Now that was interesting.

For fifteen years, her children had been trying to convince her to get rid of that telephone.

Ma, why are you still paying for a landline?

Ma, nobody calls that thing.

Ma, you have a cell phone.

Apparently Evelyn had been preparing for the apocalypse by being stubborn about her phone bill.

She stepped aside.

"Go ahead."

Jordan practically ran toward the beige telephone mounted between the kitchen and dining room.

Then he stopped.

Evelyn watched him.

Jordan stared at the phone.

Evelyn took another pull.

Thirty seconds passed.

"Well?"

Jordan scratched his head.

"I don't know her number."

Evelyn slowly removed the blunt from her mouth.

"What?"

"It's saved in my phone."

"The dead one?"

"Yes."

"The phone you can't turn on?"

"Yes."

"The same phone that's the reason you're standing in my house?"

Jordan sighed.

"Yes, Miss Evelyn."

"So you came over here to use my telephone to call somebody whose telephone number you don't know."

"When you say it like that"

"How the fuck else is there to say it?"

Jordan shut up.

Evelyn stared at him for a second.

Then something occurred to her.

"You don't need my telephone."

"What?"

"You need your memory."

Jordan frowned.

"I remember Maya."

"You remember her. Your phone remembers how to find her."

That shut him up.

Evelyn walked into her kitchen.

She opened the junk drawer.

Expired coupons.

Birthday candles.

Three pens, only one of which worked.

A screwdriver.

Soy sauce packets from a Chinese restaurant that had closed six years earlier because throwing away perfectly good soy sauce was wasteful.

Two AA batteries of questionable origin.

A rubber band.

And underneath all of it

The Book.

Red leather.

Cracked spine.

Thirty-seven years old.

Jordan frowned when she placed it on the table.

"What's that?"

Evelyn looked at him.

"Google."

"What?"

She opened it.

"What's Maya's last name?"

"Richardson."

Evelyn flipped through the pages.

"Little Keisha Richardson's daughter?"

Jordan's mouth fell open.

"You know Maya?"

"No."

She found the R's.

"But I know her mama."

There it was.

Richardson, Keisha.

Three addresses crossed out.

Two old work numbers.

One cell number.

Her mother's house.

Evelyn picked up the receiver and dialed.

A woman answered on the fourth ring.

"Hello?"

"Keisha, this Evelyn Carter."

"Miss Evelyn?"

"Your daughter's little boyfriend is standing in my kitchen looking pitiful because apparently this boy has been dating your child without bothering to learn how to contact her."

Jordan covered his face.

"Miss Evelyn!"

"Hold on."

She handed him the receiver.

"Ask her mama."

That should have been the end of it.

It wasn't.

Jordan told somebody.

That somebody told somebody.

Somebody walked three houses down and told somebody else.

A child got sent to somebody's auntie's house.

A teenager named Kayla rode a bicycle six blocks to deliver a message and came back twenty minutes later looking personally betrayed.

"I didn't know bikes hurt your ass like this."

Nobody cared.

There were larger problems.

Human beings had rediscovered an ancient communications technology requiring no password, software update or monthly subscription.

Telling somebody.

By noon, Evelyn's porch looked like the DMV.

Uber was gone.

DoorDash was gone.

Cash App was gone.

Mobile banking was gone.

Digital boarding passes were trapped inside dead phones.

Two-factor authentication had become a practical joke.

People couldn't scan QR-code menus.

Some people couldn't get into their work accounts.

Others couldn't remember where they were supposed to be because their calendars had apparently been keeping their entire lives for them.

At a coffee shop three blocks away, someone taped a handwritten sign to the door:

CASH ONLY.

Underneath it:

NO, THE APP DOESN'T WORK.

Then:

YES, WE KNOW YOUR POINTS ARE ON THERE.

Finally:

PLEASE STOP ASKING.

By one o'clock,

America was discovering that smartphones hadn't merely been phones.

They had quietly become wallets, maps, calendars, cameras, televisions, radios, mailboxes, alarm clocks, photo albums, boarding passes, newspapers, libraries, flashlights, translators, babysitters, dating services and emotional-support rectangles.

And every last one of them had become a brick.

Meanwhile, Evelyn had become Google.

Need your dentist?

Evelyn might know his wife.

Need your child's school?

Evelyn knew the secretary.

Need your sister?

What's her married name?

Need your boss?

Where does he live?

Who are his people?

People who had spent years voluntarily telling algorithms damn near everything about themselves suddenly discovered the most sophisticated search engine in the neighborhood was a seventy-eight-year-old woman in a purple housecoat asking:

"Now, who is her mama?"

By two o'clock, somebody had created a system.

Yellow legal pad.

Name.

Number requested.

Urgency.

Evelyn reviewed the categories herself.

Medical emergency?

Yes.

Missing child?

Absolutely.

Need to tell somebody you're safe?

Yes.

"I just wanna see what he's doing."

No.

"I need to check whether my ex is okay."

Evelyn looked over her glasses.

"No, you don't."

"But what if"

"Next!"

One woman wanted to call the man she'd been secretly seeing.

"What's his name?" Evelyn asked.

"Derrick."

"Last name?"

The woman hesitated.

Evelyn waited.

"I don't actually know."

Evelyn put down her pen.

"You sleeping with a man whose last name you don't know?"

"Miss Evelyn!"

"I'm trying to locate him. I need information."

"I know where he lives."

"But you don't know his last name?"

"No."

"You know his dick better than his government name?"

The entire kitchen exploded.

"MISS EVELYN!"

Evelyn picked up her blunt.

"I'm seventy-eight, not dead."

The woman left the line.

"That's what I thought."

Outside, the world was becoming analog.

Gas stations wrote prices on cardboard.

Restaurants took handwritten orders.

People walked into banks.

Actual banks.

Bank employees looked genuinely surprised to see them.

Police officers directed traffic while drivers who had depended on navigation apps discovered they had been living in the same city for twelve years and didn't actually know how to get anywhere.

Children appeared outside.

At first, they stood around awkwardly like newly released zoo animals.

Then somebody found a basketball.

By four o'clock, twelve kids were playing in the street.

Two teenagers discovered a disposable camera in someone's basement.

"How do you see the picture?"

"You don't."

"What do you mean?"

"You get it developed."

"Where?"

Nobody knew.

"What if the picture is ugly?"

"You find out later."

"How much later?"

"Whenever somebody gets the damn pictures developed."

They stared at the camera in horror.

Apparently their ancestors had lived like fucking animals.

At 5:11, Evelyn finally sat down.

The line stretched through her living room, across her porch and halfway down the sidewalk.

Somebody brought fried chicken.

Somebody else brought bottled water.

A folding table appeared.

Nobody knew who owned it.

People were talking.

Not posting.

Not recording.

Not photographing.

Talking.

Jordan sat beside Evelyn.

"You tired?"

"My house got forty-seven people in it."

"So yes?"

"I didn't say that."

She reached for her address book.

A folded piece of paper slipped out.

Jordan bent to grab it.

"I got it."

But Evelyn moved faster.

She picked it up herself.

Something changed in her face.

Jordan noticed.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine."

Jordan knew enough about women over seventy to understand that I'm fine was not a medical diagnosis.

Evelyn unfolded the paper.

Ten digits.

Nothing else.

No name.

She didn't need one.

She had written those numbers so many times she could've written them in the dark.

"Whose number?"

Evelyn was quiet.

"My husband."

Jordan had never met William Carter.

William had been dead eleven years.

"Oh."

"He worked nights thirty-two years."

She smiled.

"Every night around ten-thirty, I'd call him."

Jordan looked toward the beige telephone.

"You still remember his number?"

Evelyn looked at him.

"Of course I remember it."

It was the first stupid question Jordan had asked all day that she didn't punish him for.

She looked around her living room.

All these people desperately searching for numbers.

Numbers stored inside dead phones.

Numbers nobody had bothered learning because machines remembered for them.

"My children keep telling me I ought to throw this book away."

Jordan said nothing.

"Everything's in their phones."

She ran her thumb across the folded paper.

"I kept telling them memory ain't the same as storage."

For once, nobody had a smart-ass answer.

Not even Evelyn.

At 6:04, somebody came running up the porch.

Phones were still dead.

The news came through a battery-powered radio.

Scientists didn't know why.

Governments didn't know why.

Manufacturers didn't know why.

Nobody knew whether smartphones would ever work again.

For the first time in decades, billions of people heard the words "We don't know" and couldn't immediately Google somebody who claimed they did.

Night came.

People stayed.

Someone lit candles.

A neighbor dragged over an old radio.

A deck of cards appeared.

Then dominoes.

Then somebody brought liquor.

Evelyn objected.

"Y'all ain't turning my house into no damn bar."

Four minutes later, she requested ice.

Jordan handed her a cup.

"You know you've been smoking weed since this morning, right?"

Evelyn looked at him.

"And?"

"But liquor is where you draw the line?"

"I have standards."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It doesn't have to. It's my house."

Fair enough.

At 9:27 that night, people were still sitting together.

Jordan looked around.

"Crazy, ain't it?"

"What?"

"Nobody's looking at a phone."

Evelyn sipped her drink.

"Don't get sentimental. Half these people would sell your ass for a charger right now."

Jordan laughed.

Then the landline rang.

Everybody stopped.

All day, people had been calling out.

Almost nobody had called in.

It rang again.

Evelyn answered.

"Hello?"

"Is this Evelyn Carter?"

"Who's asking?"

"This is Michael from St. Joseph Medical Center. We're trying to reach the family of Patricia Lewis. Your number was listed as an emergency contact on an older record."

Evelyn stood.

Patricia lived three streets over.

Her daughter lived across town.

Her daughter's number was in The Book.

"Is she all right?"

The room went silent.

Evelyn listened.

Then reached for the red address book.

Nine minutes later, Jordan was on his bicycle.

He carried a handwritten message in his pocket.

Patricia was stable.

Her daughter needed to get to the hospital.

No smartphone delivered the message.

No notification appeared.

No app tracked him.

No blue dot moved across a map.

A twenty-six-year-old man simply rode through the dark carrying information another human being needed.

And somehow—

it arrived.

Three months later, smartphones still didn't work.

Nobody ever figured out why.

People adapted because people always do.

Paper maps returned.

Landlines returned.

Watches returned.

Cash returned.

Photo labs reopened.

People started writing appointments on calendars again.

Teenagers discovered that asking somebody for their number required having something to write it on.

Entire industries collapsed.

Others appeared.

And on Evelyn Carter's block, every household received something for Christmas.

A small red address book.

Jordan complained immediately.

"Miss Evelyn, nobody wants this."

"Write Maya's number in it."

"I know Maya's number now."

"Then write it."

He did.

"Hospital."

He wrote it.

"Work."

He wrote it.

Evelyn nodded.

"Now write mine."

Jordan looked up.

"I already know yours."

Evelyn smiled.

"Good."

He started toward the door.

"Jordan."

"Yeah?"

She held out a folded piece of paper.

Ten digits.

William's number.

Jordan looked at it.

"I want you to put this somewhere safe."

"Why?"

"Because one day I'm gonna forget it."

His face changed.

Evelyn looked toward the beige telephone on the wall.

For eleven years, she'd remembered a number that couldn't connect her to anybody.

The world had spent decades teaching machines to remember everything so humans wouldn't have to.

Maybe that hadn't been entirely wrong.

Some memories were too precious to trust to a machine.

And some were too precious to trust to one aging mind.

Jordan carefully opened his address book.

Under C, he wrote:

Carter, William.

Then the number.

He closed the book.

"I got it."

Evelyn nodded.

"Good."

Outside, somebody yelled for Jordan.

He opened the door.

"Coming!"

Evelyn called after him.

"And answer when somebody calls you!"

Jordan laughed.

"On what?"

Evelyn looked at the useless black rectangle still sitting on her kitchen counter.

Then at the beige telephone hanging on her wall.

Then at the blunt sitting in the ashtray beside it.

"Boy, get the hell out of my house."

Jordan disappeared through the door.

Evelyn picked up her blunt.

The telephone rang.

She looked at it.

"Now everybody know my damn number."

And for the first time all day, Evelyn considered getting rid of the landline.

A Note from Dakota Denise

Every story I write carries a little truth. Some I lived. Some I witnessed. Some were trusted to me. Others were born from imagination but inspired by something real. Names may change, circumstances may shift, and creativity may take the story somewhere unexpected but somewhere between the first word and the last, there is always a piece of truth.