Fiction Story: The Hold Line Never Ends
It started as an ordinary day at the call center. Jack Monroe, a 29-year-old customer service representative, sat at his cubicle, headset on, waiting for the next call. The hum of ringing phones and clicking keyboards filled the air, punctuated by murmured conversations with customers. It was just another shift of troubleshooting billing issues and helping people reset their passwords—until the first strange call came in.
"Hello? Can you hear me?" The voice on the line was crackly, distant, as if it were struggling to push through layers of interference.
"Yes, this is Jack from Orion Communications. How can I assist you today?" he replied, adjusting his headset.
"Jack, listen carefully. This is important. You have to stop them before it’s too late. The system—it's compromised. They’re listening. You—"
The line went dead. Jack stared at his screen. The caller ID was blank. No record of the call appeared in the system.
The First Sign of Trouble
Jack frowned, checking the logs again. Calls were supposed to be recorded and tracked automatically. Yet there was no trace of the conversation. He shrugged it off, chalking it up to a system glitch. But as the day went on, similar calls trickled in—each more unnerving than the last.
"You don’t have much time, Jack. They’ll come for you next."
"The past is bleeding into the present. You must find the origin."
"They know you’re listening. Stay off the system."
Jack reported the strange calls to his supervisor, but he only received a dismissive chuckle. "Probably just prank calls, Jack. Happens sometimes. Just do your job."
Yet something about the voices lingered in his mind. The urgency. The fear. And then, there were the timestamps—some calls were logged as coming from dates decades in the past. Others bore timestamps years into the future.
The Echoes from Another Time
Curiosity took hold of Jack. He began tracing patterns in the messages. Some callers referenced events that hadn't happened yet. Others spoke in archaic language, describing an Orion Communications that didn't exist in his time.
One evening, after his shift, he accessed the company's archived call records, something only IT had clearance for. What he found sent a chill through him.
A call from 1978.
A call from 2032.
Both featuring voices that had spoken to him today.
Jack’s heart pounded. Was this some kind of elaborate prank? An AI glitch? Or something far more sinister?
Unraveling the Conspiracy
Determined to get answers, Jack confided in Mia, a tech-savvy colleague from the IT department. She listened skeptically at first but agreed to investigate.
Hours later, she called him in a panic. "Jack, something's seriously wrong. Those calls—there’s no way they should exist. Our system only archives calls up to ten years back. But these... these logs go back further than Orion itself."
Jack's gut twisted. "And the ones from the future?"
Mia hesitated. "They shouldn’t be there. But they are. And worse, every time I try to copy the data, it vanishes. It’s like someone—or something—is erasing them in real time."
That night, Jack received another call. This time, the voice was familiar.
His own.
"Jack, listen to me. You have to stop looking. You won’t like what you find. And if you dig any deeper, they’ll know. And once they know, you can’t escape."
His blood ran cold. How was this possible?
The Truth Comes to Light
Determined, Jack and Mia uncovered a hidden subroutine buried deep in Orion’s system—a program called "Echo." It appeared to be an experimental AI-driven communication tool designed to predict and respond to customer needs before they were even voiced. But something had gone wrong.
Instead of predicting, it was receiving.
Receiving calls from across time.
Jack theorized that Echo had somehow tapped into a quantum network, one that stretched beyond the limits of time itself. But why? And who was behind it?
Their digging triggered alarms. Within minutes, their system access was revoked. Security guards appeared at the office doors.
"They know," Mia whispered. "We have to go."
The Final Call
Jack's phone buzzed. An unknown number. He hesitated before answering.
"Jack, run. Now."
It was the voice of his future self again.
That was all the warning he needed. He and Mia fled the building just as security swarmed their floor. On the streets, breathless and terrified, they realized they had uncovered something far beyond their understanding. Orion wasn’t just a telecom company—it was part of something larger, something that had been manipulating information across time for unknown purposes.
Jack didn’t know what would happen next. Would they be hunted? Would the past change? Would the future collapse? One thing was certain.
The hold line never ends.
