“Sid must have hit a dead zone,” I thought after the dropped call. Waiting a minute, I punched in “7” when a string of “z’s” suddenly zoomed across the screen. I pushed the “home” icon, but the z’s changed to “y’s” until a sentence stuttered its message.

“Y-y-y-o-u-r   c-c-c-c-a-l-l-e-r  i-s-s-s   d-d-d-d-e-a-d!”