Thursday, July 12, 2012

Philli Part 17

"With a few calls and some coded language, we'll be out of here, and fast." She pressed a button at the top, slid her thumb across the screen, drew an invisible pattern on the screen, and within a second was calling a mysterious set of numbers.
She tapped in a 1 and then ten more numbers. That seemed odd. Phone numbers today had usually fourteen digits. She must be on an old cell phone network. Illegal again.
As the dial code went through she looked at me and whispered, "Old satellites still work." I wasn't sure I wanted to hear her admit it.
She took the phone away from her ear and waited for the screen to turn on again. She tapped a button that set the phone to speaker mode. She wanted me to hear.
A garbled voice answered, "Standard Pizza Parlor, how can I help you?"
Cea answered quickly, "I need a big one with anchovies and pickles. I have your coupon for free breadsticks."
"Want any drinks with that?"
"Water."
The phone was quickly passed to another hand, then a door slammed and someone went down stairs. Static began to build and Cea switched off speaker mode. She said into her phone, "Hey, is your cheese fresh?"
She waited half a moment and said, "Make sure your delivery man carries change, and has a an insulated truck. We both want our pizzas warm. Parking might be a problem, but I figure you can work that out?"
Cea smiled at the response. "Alright, and now I got something different for you. I need you to give me the numbers for an insecure line, can you do that?"
The confusion of the call's recipient was evident even to me. "Yes, I need one that is insecure. You got one of those on hand?"
Cea whispered to me, "Remember these." Then she began repeating the numbers, "One, five eight six, three two zero, one two two six." There was no discernible pattern to those numbers, but I tried to recall them.
Instantly Cea hung up and tapped in the set of numbers then told me to repeat what I remembered. Between the two of us we were pretty sure we got it right.
An old man's voice answered, "Hello, thank you for calling the rubber ball factory."

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