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 “It’s you this time.” 


Look at everyone. All the staring faces. So many wide, watching eyes trying to mask their terror. The macabre interest hidden just behind is all to obvious— because you’ve done the same thing when the Calls came. It was you a few days ago, watching the Selection, feeling the strange thrill spasm through you. Fear from the potential, arousal from the promise, and all of it mixed by relief when someone else was chosen. You too had been part of the many quiet whispers and loaded, meaningful wordless looks. Thinking. Who would it be this time? Who? Why? Why were they chosen? 


Someone coughs and all your thinking implodes. That was then. This is now. It’s you. The stares, the quiet whispers and exchanged glances; a solar system of human emotion all about what you will undertake. You lower your gaze to the Phone. 


That’s just what it is. A Phone. Sharp, elegant glistening black. It should be worn, scuffed from all that usage, it’s paint changed from how many gripping sweating hands have held it tight to their faces. It seems almost embryonic. Fragile. Too small for the transaction it undertakes. But that’s the power of it, you think, isn’t it? That’s why all of this happens, why it all comes through. Because the thing itself is part of it, because— 


The Phone rings. The hand holding it trembles. Slightly. The presenter has been holding it too long already, you should’ve already been holding it, already waiting and prepared. Suddenly you are drenched in sweat, slick like something caught in a downpour, needing to be shaken and dried and cleaned. Your suit is your tomb. It clings to your skin, mummification robes prepared. Completed. 


The Phone rings. A second ring is unheard of.  Sacrilegious. Anger and fear splits the clustered crowd across so many watchful faces, dances from expression to expression. You study each finger clinging around the receiver. They are bone-white. Will they even let you answer?, you think, seeing each finger curled around them like that. So tight. 


A blink and the Phone is in your hand. Your fingers are the ones tight around it, gripping, sweating against the impossible paint that refuses to wear. Flesh against cool, black metal. Everyone is watching. Holding their breath.

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