Good and so good for you.

Jack All Alone

When people talk on cell phones the dendrites in their brain tissue align with the organized electrical pulses emanating from the device being held in such close proximity to the brain’s axons. Especially when humans engage in conversation (it doesn't matter what the content of the conversation is), the auditory cortex is uniquely activated into a theta-matrix pattern, enabling interface with the phone transmission system. The brain, as it were, actually extends itself throughout the cell phone network. --Journal of Neurophysiology, 81, p.1031

The invention of the cell phone made it all possible. All of humanity the world over (except Jack) was prepared for the jump to a new level of existence: the Fusion. People everywhere were to be ready with their cell phones turned on and fully charged. At 6 p.m. everyone in the world would start talking on their phones--it wouldn't matter what they talked about--the content was irrelevant-- they just had to be talking. When the surge began the great change would begin to transform the entire network--just keep talking, talking, communicating, everybody, the entire human race, all at once (well, except Jack). At 6 p.m. humanity would make its next great evolutionary leap. Just as billions of years ago subatomic particles had organized to form atoms, and then atoms had formed to make molecules, and then molecules to become living tissues, then tissues to become organs, then organs to become animals--now the human animals would organize again, to become a newer, even greater, organism, a great Fusion. The event was perhaps best anticipated by a contemporary poet:

A great butterfly emerges from the Cocoon of Solitude
Rise up, embrace the sun
Dance with Sirius to the tune of the Spheres
Commune with Psi to heal the Earth
Consort with the hadrons and rejoice in Entanglement
Many will become One
Other will become Self
Selah
--by Randt Breldy

[except Jack, of course]

Jack was the only person left on earth who was not planning to participate in the great Fusion.

Dr. James visited Jack every Tuesday when he visited the hospital. But time was running out; the Fusion was to occur this evening. "I'm going to have to be blunt with you, Jack. You are not willing to join the Fusion because you have built up a mental barrier which is brought on by acute celphonaphobia, an irrational fear of cell phones. "
　
Jack made no response.

"I believe that when you were a child you developed a jealousy for your Mother talking on the phone because she used it to talk to your father, and not to you. As you grew up, this jealousy developed into a rage which you internalized and exiled to your preconscious mind. Now it surfaces as a fear of cell phones, and transfixes you whenever you come in contact with one."

Jack finally spoke. "No, Doc, it‘s not jealousy, it’s not fear. And it’s not even cell phones. I just like to go off and be alone sometimes. A man needs his solitude when he needs it. Why would I want to go and join a great universal mind? I would never be alone again."

"No, Jack, your wrong," Dr. James replied ardently. "You can’t see it because of your denial pattern. In reality, your desire for solitude is a rage-engendered fear channeled as repulsion seen through the eyes of your former childself, but without the ambivalence of conscious decision making. ”

“No, Doc, that’s not it . . . at least I don‘t think . . .”

When 6 p.m. arrived, all people everywhere, of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples, were busily engaged in conversations with loved ones, friends, and even strangers, over their cell phones.

(Except Jack, of course, who sat at the table in the rec room and faced the wall). And then suddenly, all in the room went silent. After a few moments Jack slowly peered around. Everyone was perfectly still, perfectly quiet. Even grouchy Nurse Nettles said no word at all, but just stood like a statue, one hand pointing a scolding finger at an undetermined victim, the other hand holding her cell phone to her ear. Dr. James, himself, was statuesque and transfixed in thoughtful conversation, no doubt to another statuesque important person at the other end of the phone connection. Slowly Jack rose and tiptoed out into the hall. Maybe this was his big chance to finally escape, while doctors and nurses were all caught up in this strange cell phone epiphany.

As it turned out, nobody confronted him as he walked out of the main door and out onto the street. Outside, the people were also stationary and still, standing or sitting, holding their cell phones, in the same positions they had been in when the great Fusion began. Jack wandered through the perfectly quiet streets, poking his head into various buildings, looking for any sign of animation, but there was none. "I'm free! No one is stopping me! I can finally be alone! I will leave this place and go out to the country and find a quiet place to sit and think," he said to himself. And then a thought came to him: "But right here it is a kind a solitude in its own way isn't it?--these people are all catatonic, they don't notice me at all, I am alone, even here." Jack walked around some more as the sun sank below the horizon and everything was suddenly draped in shadow. "What has really happened to these people?" he wondered. "Are these people all insane?"

And then a frightening thought hit him: "Are these people dead? Maybe they are all dead and I'm walking around in a graveyard." He shuddered. "I don't want to spend the night out in this graveyard!" He began to walk and then run, heading for the hospital, the only familiar place he knew. Back in the rec room all of the people were still in their same positions. Nurse Nettles was still holding her phone, a still life pantomime of her former self. Dr. James was still on the verge of making some important point. "If outside it's a graveyard, then in here it's a tomb. But there's no place else to go. What else can I do?"

And then Jack began to think: "I need to find out for sure if these people really are dead or alive." He approached Dr. James and took his wrist. Was there a pulse? He couldn‘t tell. “Dr. James, Dr. James, wake up!“ He shouted. Nothing. He slapped the doctor across the face. Nothing. Then an idea came to him. Jack rushed to the hospital bulletin board and pulled a thumbtack from it. “Dr. James, you tried your therapy on me--so now I'll try my therapy on you," Jack said. Jack took the man's hand and placed the point of the thumbtack against the his fingertip. "Wake up, Dr. James!" he cried and forcefully plunged the thumbtack into the doctor's finger.

Immediately Jack began to hear a high pitched wail--an inhuman sound which seemed to rise from the throats of all the frozen people around him. Dr. James turned and looked straight at Jack and cried, "The Body is being attacked! There is Infection!" At that moment the room exploded into action. All of the people rushed towards Jack. Dr. James tried to grab him but he jerked away. As the other people converged on him he twisted and pushed his way free, running for the hall. He made it outside, with the doctors and nurses running after him. Outside, the high-pitched wail was ubiquitous throughout the town. People everywhere were in commotion, and all of them were running towards the hospital, towards Jack. He darted around the building and climbed over a chain link fence. He kept running--around bushes, behind cars, across streets, down alleys. But wherever Jack ran, people were there already, converging on him, like leukocytes defending a body against an infectious disease. The people with their cell phones had in fact become the cells of a great Organism.

Of course it was no use. Jack was surrounded and taken. Strangely, they were not angry with him; in fact they did not interact personally with him at all. The collective Organism seemed to be somewhere else--dancing with Sirius to the tune of the Spheres. Jack was just a small thing, really, only one small cell, from the great Organism’s point of view, and easily neutralized. Jack was taken and confined at the local jail. But Jack did end up getting plenty of what he had been craving: solitude. There was no other person left who would ever need to be sent to jail. Jack’s confinement was completely solitary. His food anonymously appeared under the door, and that was the sum total of his connection with anyone. Of course no one ever came to visit Jack (in fact no one ever came or went anywhere at all--the people were back to standing like statues). However, Jack did have one potential link to the outside world, should he ever want to use it while sitting all alone in his little room: they had provided Jack with a cell phone.