A Foreign Call On My Answering Machine (nonfiction)

A Foreign Call On My Answering Machine is a short essay by Karl Jones. It reads in full:

Sometime in 1989, or perhaps 1990, I returned home from work to find nine messages on my answering machine.

This was unusual: I typically received zero or one or two messages in a day, or possibly three on a rare day — but never nine.

I replayed the messages. (This was back in the day when answering machines stored incoming messages on a cassette tape.)

The first eight calls were hang-ups.

The ninth call began with a woman's voice saying "Will you accept a collect call from —"

— and then a brief pause —

Followed by a deep male voice booming: "— Turkey."

No, I do not know anyone in Turkey.

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles