Elder Martin entered the yurt. "Dr Rose, where's my cellphone?"
Dr Rose administered the vaccine into Yavi's arm, and sent her out. "I couldn't do anything with it. I gave it to one of the kids."
"You did what?" His glasses almost fell off his face. "Why would you give one of them my phone?"
"Those aren't phones anymore, they're toys made for rich kids to figure out. I haven't seen a television in years; why would you expect me to know how the thing works?"
"I take it you couldn't fix the alarm?"
"Oh, I figured out how to set the alarm. I just couldn't figure out how to adjust the volume. So I gave it to... Nuni, I think."
Not far from the yurt, Martin found Nuni in a huddle of children. As Martin approached, the children scattered. Nuni ran the fastest, tossing the phone back like a rock. Martin managed not to fumble it, but by the time he gathered himself from off the ground, all the children had disappeared.
Martin looked at his smartphone; no new scratches, just smudges from all the fingerprints. He wiped it off - and accidentally found himself at the settings screen. He saw the clock was set on Vancouver time, exactly 12 hours off - mystery solved!
He checked the call list next (not that anyone in his phonebook could speak Turkmen.) The last call was three days ago, on the truck to Tsibili. He remembered the dropped call, remembered where he was, remembered how useless this gadget had been for communications or GPS. The phone was a very expensive bon voyage gift from his sister, so he was determined to have a testimonial of utility to report to her.
As he returned to the main screen, he noticed something had changed. Onscreen, one of the tribal children was smiling broadly at him. Martin went to the pictures program, and saw a battery of photos taken by the children, who had quickly mastered the art of selfies. Picture after picture of the kids, clustering their faces together, or posing in their tribal clothes and their recently received DENVER BRONCOS 2014 SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS t-shirts. Someone had taken a panoramic view of the hills and the kids. In the distance, the peaks of the Himilayas could be seen. Someone else had commandeered a sleeping yak's tail, and took a picture of himself with a yak mustache.
There was a new video clip. Martin pressed "play", and heard the kids singing one of their game songs. The singing was loud, cheerful, and prone to interruptions of laughter. They waved and messed up each other's hair and carthwheeled. And they smiled, like he had never seen.
inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Neanderthals Prove Crafty"
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