Outgoing calls are barred.
You hold the device in your hand, this sleek rectangle of glass and metal that promises the world, and you realize that access is not a right, but a privilege. Connection is a toll road, and perhaps you have run out of the currency required to pass. outgoing calls are barred
The phrase sticks in the throat. Outgoing. It implies a direction, a movement away from the self toward the other. To be barred from outgoing is to be locked inside. It is a state of radical isolation. You can receive, perhaps—you can be a vessel for the world’s intrusions, for the spam and the alerts and the casual check-ins—but you cannot initiate. You cannot cast the stone. You cannot start the war or beg for the peace. You are rendered passive, a ghost in your own machine. The phrase sticks in the throat
