Here’s a free story idea for y’all, taken from real life.
There was a “bleep!” It was quite a loud bleep, and Kevin and I both turned our heads to see where it had come from. Neither of us recognized the tone. None of our computers had messages on them. None of our mobile phones are in the room. I even tried turning on the Asus to see if it was complaining about a low battery. Nothing.
Conclusion: somewhere in our office is a ghostly electronic device. It bleeps, but we can’t see it. It wants our attention. Why?
It has been happening in my household as well. We think we’ve traced it to the Tivo, but we’re unclear what the Tivo is trying to tell us.
What if we’ve never noticed the aliens trying to contact us because it just manifests as domestic electronic bleeps?
We don’t have Tivo, and even if we did it would not be in the office.
Maybe the aliens just take over any convenient device.
When this happened in my house, it turned out to be the smoke detector.
Oh no! The guy who closed in the hole in your wall dropped his pager in there!
Some things – such as smoke and gas detectors and burglar alarms – have batteries so that they are still operational during electricity cuts. And they let you know when the battery is running low. It will keep on doing it until the battery finally gives up.
This happened to us when my sister-in-law was house sitting. She totally freaked out, sure it was some kind of modern-day ghost…
The smoke alarms are both securely attached to the ceiling in the hallway, and the noise came from in the office, somewhere between Kevin and me.
Gary: Lovely idea but it doesn’t fit. (Also he had a mobile phone that played the Spiderman theme – we would have recognized that instantly.)
Glenda: That’s why I fired up the Asus – even though it is off it might have been giving a battery warning, but the battery was half full.