<Short-Short> The Earth Without Telephones
"Next is 'The Earth Without Telephones'."
The AI's voice echoed.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a plaza in front of a station.
People were coming and going.
Shops were lined up, cars were driving by, and information signs were glowing.
As far as I could see, it was not much different from our Earth.
I took out my smartphone.
There were several notifications left on the screen.
Work messages.
Advertisements.
News.
And below that, it displayed 《Mother 3 days ago》.
I didn't open it and closed the screen.
I tried to check my current location, but there was no connection.
I called out to a man nearby.
"Excuse me."
The man turned around.
"Is there a public telephone around here?"
The man tilted his head in confusion.
"A public... what?"
"A telephone. It's for talking to people who are far away."
"Talking to people who are far away?"
The man didn't seem to understand what I was saying.
"You send your voice."
"Your voice?"
"Yes. To someone in a distant place."
The man looked even more puzzled.
"Voice is for talking to people who are here, isn't it?"
Saying that, the man pointed to his own mouth.
I looked around.
Indeed, no one was on the phone.
No one was holding a device to their ear.
No one was talking through earphones.
Text was scrolling on the station's information board.
Images were playing on the TV in the shop, but there was no sound.
Only subtitles were displayed.
No human voices were used in video advertisements either.
On this Earth, it seems the idea of sending a voice to someone far away does not exist.
I activated the local AI.
"Does this Earth not have telephones?" The AI replied.
"We do not."
"How do you communicate with people far away?"
"We send letters."
"What about when it's urgent?"
"We dispatch an express messenger."
"What if a family member collapses?"
"Someone nearby goes to fetch a doctor."
"What if a fire breaks out?"
"We activate a nearby alarm device, and someone notifies the fire station."
I couldn't believe my ears.
"Did you never think of sending your voice far away?"
"It was considered that a voice should not be separated from the body of the person speaking."
"But you know that sound is vibration, right?"
"Yes."
"Then you could just transmit the vibration."
The AI paused for a moment.
"Separating a voice from the body has long been considered bad manners."
"Bad manners?"
"A voice is accompanied by the speaker's facial expressions, posture, and breathing. Separating those and delivering only the voice to another person was considered an act that lacked respect for the other party."
It wasn't that they lacked the technology.
The very act of carrying a voice to a distant place has been avoided in this society.
I walked through the town.
There was a long line at the post office.
People were writing letters, putting them into envelopes, and writing down addresses.
Express delivery workers were driving off in their dedicated vehicles.
At the shop, there was also a service for ghostwriting short messages.
A girl who looked like she was on her way home from school was writing a letter near the entrance.
I sat down at the desk next to her.
The girl was rewriting her sentences over and over again.
"Who are you writing to?" I asked, and the girl looked up.
"My grandmother."
"Does she live far away?"
"Yes. She is in a town three mountains over."
"It must be hard to go see her."
"It takes two days one way."
The girl returned her eyes to the letter.
"I heard she got sick recently."
"In that case, you must want to hear her voice soon."
The girl tilted her head.
"Hear her voice?"
“Don't you think it would be reassuring if we could talk from far away?”
“Is such a thing possible?”
I told the girl about the string telephone.
Two paper cups. A single string connecting their bottoms. The girl's eyes lit up.
We got paper containers and string at a nearby shop.
I poked a hole in the bottom of the containers and threaded the string through. We moved a little apart.
“Please pull the string taut.”
I brought my mouth close to the paper cup.
“Can you hear me?”
The girl held the other paper cup to her ear.
The girl's expression changed.
“I can hear you.” Her voice was small. It was trembling slightly.
Even so, it had certainly reached me.
The girl brought her mouth close to her own paper cup.
“Hello.”
This time, I heard the girl's voice from my end.
The girl tried it many times.
Moving away.
Moving closer.
Loosening the string.
Pull it taut. Soon, people gathered around.
"Where did that voice just come from?"
"It's this child's voice."
"Is it inside the container?"
A man who looked like an engineer touched the string.
"Are you transmitting vibrations?"
The man understood the mechanism immediately.
However, his face showed more bewilderment than surprise.
"You've separated your voice from your body."
The surroundings went quiet.
The girl said, still gripping the paper cup.
"But, I heard it."
"Just because you can hear it doesn't mean it's right."
An elderly woman said.
"Voices are meant to be shared in person."
"What about when you can't meet?"
The girl asked. No one answered.
The engineer took the string telephone back to the laboratory.
Experiments to convert voices into electrical signals began.
There was much opposition as well.
With just a voice, you can't see the other person's expression.
You can't confirm if it's truly the person's voice.
It's also hard to convey whether they are angry or sad.
People might appear who save or steal voices. Even so, the telephone was created.
The first ones were installed at hospitals and fire stations.
If an accident happens, you can call for help immediately. You can also quickly notify family members who are far away.
Telephones gradually spread.
At first, people held the receiver with tension.
They were not used to talking only by voice. Some did not know what to say and fell silent.
Because they could not see the other person's face, some checked repeatedly.
"Are you smiling right now?"
"Are you angry?"
"Are you really there?"
Conversations by voice alone were incomplete.
Even so, they reached the other person.
Even when you could not go to meet them.
Even when you might not make it in time.
Even when you desperately wanted to hear their voice.
After a while, I reunited with the first girl.
The girl was waiting in front of the laboratory.
"I was able to talk to my grandmother."
"On the phone?"
The girl nodded.
"At first, I didn't know what to talk about."
"And then?"
"Grandma was silent the whole time, too."
The girl smiled slightly.
"But I could hear the sound of her coughing."
"Not her voice?"
"No."
The girl took a letter out of a paper bag.
"After that, she wrote this."
The letter read as follows:
"Telephones are for when you are in a hurry."
Below that, there was one more line.
"But for the people who matter, please go and see them."
I read the letter again.
"Even though you could use a phone, you still write letters, don't you?"
The girl looked at me as if she found it strange.
"Phones don't leave anything behind, do they?"
"You can save them if you record them."
"Even if the voice remains, everything you were thinking at that moment doesn't."
The girl traced the letter with her finger.
"With a letter, you can think about it many times before you write it."
"And what about phones?"
"It is something I want to tell you right now."
"How about going to see them?"
The girl thought for a moment.
"A voice alone is not enough."
The time to return to the original Earth had come.
The AI's voice echoed.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing in front of the station as before.
People were walking while looking at their smartphones.
Some people were on the phone.
Some people were sending short messages.
I took out my smartphone.
A notification still remained on the screen.
<<Mother 3 days ago>>
I opened the message.
<<Are you doing well?>>
I typed characters into the reply field.
<<I'm doing well. I'll contact you again next time.>>
After staring at it for a while, I deleted it.
I tried to make a call.
Just before pressing my mother's name, I stopped my finger.
I put my smartphone into my pocket.
And then, I headed to my mother's house.
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Please also enjoy this world without them 🌏
Please also enjoy these proposal stories for the current Earth 🌏 and SF prototyping.
This is the origin of my writing.