Did Your Phone Ring?

"I tried calling Claire three times. The silence that answered wasn't just absence—it was the sound of every connection I'd ever had dissolving into nothing."

In the aftermath of violence and tears, Jamie and I found ourselves doing something neither of us had expected: working together.

No words passed between us. The silence was its own language, heavy with unspoken accusations and the residue of trauma. We moved around each other like dancers who'd forgotten the choreography, reaching for the same poles at the wrong moments, stepping back with awkward half-apologies that never quite became sound. The cardboard boxes surrendered their contents with satisfying tearing sounds—the only evidence that we were accomplishing anything at all.

It was an awkward truce born of necessity rather than reconciliation. We needed shelter. Whatever nightfall might bring in this world, neither of us wanted to face it without something between ourselves and the unknown.

The instructions defeated me almost immediately.

I unfolded the glossy sheet, studying the diagram plastered across its surface, and felt my confidence evaporate like morning dew in the outback sun. The ten-man tent spread before us in component pieces looked nothing like the cheerful image on the box. Lines and arrows spiralled across the page in patterns that seemed designed more to confuse than to guide, a puzzle meant for someone with far more patience than I possessed.

Bloody hell.

The thought arrived with a familiar blend of frustration and self-deprecation. I'd built a business from nothing, negotiated contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, managed staff and suppliers and the endless complexities. And yet here I stood, defeated by a diagram that probably made perfect sense to anyone who hadn't just been hurled across an alien landscape by an inter-dimensional portal.

I let out a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than my lungs, my shoulders rising and falling in a shrug that acknowledged my own limitations. Some men were born to build things with their hands. I was not one of them. The collapsed cubby-house in my backyard back home stood as permanent testimony to that particular truth.

Glancing across at Jamie, I noticed something that surprised me despite everything that had passed between us. His movements as he sorted poles and matched them to stakes were assured, almost graceful—the actions of someone who'd done this kind of thing before and knew what he was about. My nose scrunched involuntarily, a physical manifestation of the reluctant respect forming beneath my resentment.

At least Jamie seems to know what he is doing.

The admission grated, but there was no denying the evidence before my eyes. Whatever else Jamie might be—violent, unpredictable, cruel in ways I was only beginning to understand—he was competent at this particular task. And competence, in our current circumstances, was worth more than pride.

Luke's appearance caught me off guard.

I'd been so focused on the tent, on the simple mechanics of poles and fabric and the desperate need to accomplish something concrete, that the world beyond my immediate task had faded into background noise. When Luke materialised almost directly in front of me, I nearly dropped the stake I'd been holding.

"What are you doing?"

The question emerged before I'd fully processed what I was seeing. Luke stood there with his mobile phone pressed to his ear, the gesture so ordinary, so utterly mundane, that for a moment my brain refused to reconcile it with our surroundings. A phone call. In an alien dimension. The incongruity was almost physically painful.

He lowered the phone after a moment, his expression shifting from concentration to something more contemplative. The call, whatever it had been, clearly hadn't connected. But that wasn't what made him turn to me with that particular look in his eyes—the one that suggested he was testing something, confirming a suspicion he'd already formed.

"Did your phone ring?"

The question prompted me to reach into my jeans pocket, my fingers closing around the familiar rectangle of my mobile. It felt strange in my hand now, like an artefact from a museum rather than a tool I'd used a hundred times a day for years. The screen was dark, the device silent. No missed calls, no notifications, no evidence that anyone in the universe knew or cared where I was.

The silence of Clivilius pressed in around us, and I realised with a start how accustomed I'd become to the constant hum of digital life back home. Notifications pinging, messages arriving, the endless small interruptions that had once felt like annoyances and now seemed like evidence of connection, of belonging, of existing in a world where people could reach you.

Here, there was nothing. Just dust and sky and the terrible weight of isolation.

"No." The word came slowly, weighted with dawning comprehension. "Should it have?"

Luke's response confirmed what some part of me had already begun to suspect. "Well, I just tried calling it. I needed to check to be sure, but it seems like our mobile phones are useless here."

Useless. The word landed like a blow, final and uncompromising. I stared at the phone in my hand, this piece of technology that had once seemed so essential, so central to the fabric of my daily existence. It was nothing now. A slab of glass and metal with no purpose except to remind me of everything I'd lost.

And then, with the force of revelation, another thought struck me—one so obvious, so fundamental, that I couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to me before.

I could call Claire.

Or rather, I could try. The possibility, however slim, sent a jolt of desperate hope through my chest. My fingers moved before my mind had fully committed to the action, pulling up her number from the contacts list, pressing the call button with a mixture of terror and longing that made my heart race.

I pressed the phone to my ear, holding my breath, waiting for something—anything. The familiar ring tone that had preceded a thousand ordinary conversations. The click of connection. Claire's voice, sharp or soft depending on her mood, saying hello in that particular way she had.

Nothing.

The silence that greeted me was absolute, a void where sound should have been. Not even static, not even the distant hum of a network trying and failing to connect. Just emptiness, stretching into infinity, swallowing my hope without acknowledgment.

I tried again, fingers trembling now, some irrational part of my brain insisting that it had been a fluke, that the second attempt would be different. It wasn't. The third attempt brought the same result—the same crushing, absolute nothingness that felt less like a technical failure and more like a sentence.

The phone left my hand before I'd consciously decided to throw it.

It arced through the still air and landed at Luke's feet with a muted thud, the Clivilian dust cushioning its fall with an almost mocking gentleness. I stood there panting, my empty hand still raised, staring at the device that had just become the most useless object in either world.

Luke bent to retrieve it, his movements careful as he inspected the screen for damage. The practicality of the gesture—checking whether the phone still worked after being hurled in frustration—seemed almost absurd given that it didn't work anyway. But that was Luke, always looking for solutions, always thinking ahead to possibilities I couldn't yet see.

"You'd better write your passcode down for me."

The request was simple, practical, delivered in Luke's usual matter-of-fact tone. And yet something about it made me freeze, my eyes widening as the implications registered.

Jamie and I have only been in Clivilius for a few hours and already Luke is trying to take my phone off me.

The thought circled through my mind, paranoid and suspicious. What does he think he's playing at? We'd just discovered we were permanently trapped, just received the universe's most definitive rejection, and Luke's response was to start collecting our belongings?

My hands went to my pockets in an instinctive search for a pen. They came up empty. Of course they did. I hadn't exactly packed for an inter-dimensional expedition.

Luke was already reaching into his bag, producing paper and pens with the air of a man who'd anticipated this exact moment. The preparedness should have been reassuring. Instead, it deepened my unease.

"So, you knew?"

The accusation slipped out before I could temper it, sharp with betrayal and the accumulated weight of every suspicion that had been building since we'd arrived. Luke had suspected the phones wouldn't work. He'd brought paper and pens to record passcodes. He'd planned for this moment while we'd been struggling with boxes and despair.

"I didn't know." Luke's hands came up in a defensive gesture, his eyes seeking mine with an earnestness that might have been genuine or might have been practiced. "I only suspected they wouldn't work. It made sense. There's nothing to connect to here and, apparently, signals can't come through the Portal."

The logic was sound. I hated that the logic was sound. I wanted there to be a flaw, a hole in his reasoning that I could exploit, something that would transform my growing paranoia into justified suspicion. But there wasn't. Of course phones wouldn't work in an empty dimension with no towers, no satellites, no infrastructure of any kind. The conclusion was obvious in retrospect.

And yet.

"You know what you're asking, don't you?" My voice came out heavier than I'd intended, laden with implications I wasn't sure I could articulate. "You want us to give up. To allow ourselves to be completely cut off from... from everything."

The statement hung in the air, not quite a question, not quite an accusation. Luke's response was immediate, devastatingly simple.

"Did your phone ring?"

He held up the device as he spoke, forcing me to confront the reality I'd been trying to avoid. The screen remained dark, indifferent, offering no evidence that it had ever been capable of connecting to anything at all.

"No, but—"

"So, what difference does it make then?"

The logic was unassailable. The phone was useless here. Whether it remained in my pocket or went with Luke made no practical difference to my situation in Clivilius. It would still be silent, still be disconnected, still be nothing more than a reminder of a life I could no longer reach.

But it felt like surrender. Taking the bag from Luke, tearing into the paper with hands that shook slightly, writing down the passcode in handwriting that barely resembled my own—every action felt like a concession, a step further into the reality I'd been trying to deny.

It's not like I've got anything left to lose anymore.

The thought was bleak, absolute, and somehow liberating in its finality. What was a phone compared to my children? What was a passcode compared to the life I'd built and lost? Luke wanted to take my device back to Earth, to use it for whatever purposes his grand plans required. Fine. Let him. In the vast, empty expanse of Clivilius, stripped of connection to everyone I loved, the surrender of a piece of technology felt almost laughably insignificant.

"Your turn, Jamie."

The words left my mouth before I remembered the wall of silence between us. I'd been so focused on my own capitulation that I'd momentarily forgotten the hostility that had defined every interaction with Jamie since we'd arrived. The call felt hollow, a gesture toward cooperation that I knew would be rejected.

Jamie didn't even look up. His hands continued their rhythm—stake, hammer, earth—as if my voice had been nothing more than wind across the dust. The deliberate ignoring was worse, somehow, than an outright rejection. At least anger would have been an acknowledgment.

"Jamie!" Luke's voice cut through with an authority I rarely heard from my gentle, dreaming brother. The command in it was unmistakable, a parent calling a wayward child, a leader demanding attention.

Jamie paused, his hands stilling mid-motion. When he looked up, his expression was a storm of annoyance and defiance, his jaw set in a line that promised nothing but resistance.

"You're not having my fucking phone, Luke."

The refusal was absolute, delivered with a finality that closed the door on any negotiation. Jamie's gaze held Luke's for a moment—a silent challenge, a line drawn in the Clivilian dust—before he returned to his task, moving to the next stake with deliberate focus.

I found myself leaning toward Luke, my voice dropping to a whisper that Jamie might or might not have been able to hear.

"Why him?"

The question encompassed everything—why had Luke brought Jamie here, why had fate paired us in this impossible situation, why did I have to share my exile with someone who seemed determined to make every moment more difficult than it needed to be. The drama that had followed me from my marriage, from my complicated family dynamics, from every relationship that had ever required navigation and compromise—it had followed me here, to this world, refusing to be left behind.

Luke's shrug was eloquent in its resignation. "I'll keep this safe." His fingers closed around my phone with a gentleness that felt like a promise. "In the meantime, you should both consider what your immediate needs are. Write them down, and I'll get busy keeping you both alive, okay?"

Keeping us alive. The phrase landed with unexpected weight. We were dependent on Luke now—completely, utterly dependent. He could come and go while we remained trapped. He could access supplies, resources, the entire world we'd been severed from. Our survival hinged on his willingness to make trips back and forth, to bring us what we needed, to remember that two men waited in an empty dimension for scraps from a life they could no longer reach.

"Sure." The word came out flat, stripped of enthusiasm. What choice did I have? What alternative existed except cooperation, however reluctant?

"Good. So, Paul wants to stay alive. Jamie?"

The question was directed at Jamie's back, at the rigid line of his shoulders as he continued driving stakes into the soft earth. The response came without a pause, without even a glance in our direction.

"Fuck off."

Luke's eye-roll was visible even from where I stood, a silent commentary on the futility of anger. He simply shrugged, accepting the rejection with a grace that suggested long practice.

"I have a few things to take care of back on Earth. I'll come back for your list soon."

The casualness of it—the way he spoke of Earth as if it were just another room in a house, easily accessible, no more significant than stepping through a doorway—sent a fresh wave of resentment through my chest. For Luke, Earth wasn't lost. For Luke, home was still reachable, touchable, real.

Jamie's voice cut through my spiralling thoughts, laden with scepticism.

"What things have you got to take care of?"

The sneer in his voice was audible, the challenge unmistakable. My stomach churned as I watched the confrontation brewing, the tension between them thick enough to taste. We were stranded in a wasteland with no food, no water source except the river, no shelter except a tent still scattered in pieces across the dust—and they were squaring off like boxers in a ring.

The uncertainty of our survival hung in the air, unspoken but palpable. Would there even be a 'next few days' to worry about? The thought whispered through my mind like a cold wind, bringing with it the spectre of deaths that might come slowly, through thirst or starvation or exposure to conditions we couldn't predict.

"Oh, you know. Just things that will keep you alive. I could not bother if you'd prefer?"

Luke's sarcasm felt misplaced, a defensive reflex that served no purpose except to escalate the tension. Under normal circumstances, I might have smiled at his dry humour. Here, surrounded by dust and desolation and the weight of our imprisonment, it grated against my already frayed nerves.

"Just fuck off already, Luke."

Jamie's dismissal was harsh, final, carrying the exhaustion of a man who'd reached the end of his tolerance. I found myself silently agreeing, a bitter alignment with the person I'd been resenting all day. Luke's attempts at levity, however well-intentioned, felt like salt in wounds that hadn't yet begun to heal.

"Fine."

The word dropped from Luke's lips like a stone, heavy with disappointment. I watched his usual cheerful expression fade, replaced by a tight grimace that seemed almost foreign on his face. His brows drew together in frustration, the creases around his eyes deepening with something that might have been hurt or might have been anger.

He offered me a resigned shrug—an apology, perhaps, or simply an acknowledgment that the conversation had reached its end—before turning to make his way up the small hill toward the portal. His back was straight, his steps deliberate, the posture of a man retreating with what dignity remained.

"And put some bloody clothes on while you're there."

Jamie's parting shot rang out across the dust, a final barb aimed at Luke's retreating figure. I'd forgotten, until that moment, that Luke was still wearing whatever minimal clothing he'd had on when he'd first crossed through the portal. The detail seemed suddenly absurd.

Luke didn't turn. Didn't acknowledge the words at all. His silhouette simply continued its steady progress toward the shimmering gateway, growing smaller against the vast backdrop of rust and blue until it disappeared entirely.

The silence that followed his departure was absolute.

I stood there, watching the space where Luke had been, feeling an unsettling mix of emotions I couldn't quite name. Frustration, certainly. Concern for whatever lay ahead. And beneath it all, a deep-seated fear that our survival depended entirely on the whims and decisions of a man I was no longer sure I understood.

The desert stretched around us, vast and indifferent, offering no comfort and no answers. We were alone now—truly alone—two men who could barely stand each other's presence, tasked with surviving in a world that seemed designed to break them.

Something dark began to creep through my veins, an unfamiliar sensation that felt like cold water seeping into spaces that should have been warm. My heart, already heavy, seemed to sink further into my chest, retreating from a reality it couldn't accept. The anger that rose to fill the void was familiar—a bitter companion I'd known through years of difficult marriage, through disappointments and compromises and the slow erosion of dreams—but it felt different here. Sharper. Less controlled.

"Why do you have to be so bloody nasty all the time?"

The words exploded from me with a force that surprised us both, propelled by frustration and desperation and the accumulated weight of every slight, every shove, every cutting remark that had marked our brief and brutal acquaintance. Small droplets of saliva caught the light as the words tore through the air between us, a physical manifestation of the rawness I could no longer contain.

Some part of me recoiled immediately, that internal voice that had learned through years of marriage to measure words carefully, to choose battles strategically, to avoid confrontations that might spiral beyond control. You shouldn't have said that. You've made things worse.

But beneath the self-recrimination, there was relief. A slight unburdening, as if speaking the accusation aloud had released some small portion of the pressure that had been building in my chest. My shoulders dropped fractionally, muscles I hadn't known were clenched beginning to loosen.

Time seemed to freeze.

Jamie had stopped, his body motionless, the stake in his hand suspended mid-air. The space between us crackled with unspoken words and the weight of shared hardship, a moment of profound stillness in which anything might happen. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the rigid set of his jaw, and I braced myself for the explosion that seemed inevitable.

The breath I'd been holding burned in my lungs.

And then, without a word, without even a glance in my direction, Jamie resumed his work. The stake drove into the earth with a hollow thud. He moved to the next position, his movements deliberate and focused, dismissing my outburst as if it had been nothing more than the rustle of dust across the empty landscape.

The moment passed.

But it lingered in my mind as I stood there, watching Jamie's back, trying to make sense of the exchange that had just occurred. I'd expected anger, expected retaliation, expected the violence I'd already witnessed turned toward me once more. Instead, there had been... nothing. Silence. A refusal to engage that felt, somehow, like the most devastating response possible.

I turned back to the tent poles scattered across the dust, picking up where I'd left off, letting the simple mechanics of assembly fill the space where words might have been. The work was something I could do, something I could control, something that didn't require me to understand the storm of emotions churning beneath my surface.

Behind me, I could hear the rhythmic sound of Jamie driving stakes into the earth.

We built our shelter in silence, two strangers made temporary allies by circumstance, neither willing to acknowledge the fragile thread of mutual need that kept us from tearing each other apart.