The Voice Messages from Grandma

Georgi's phone has been dying for weeks. The battery is empty by lunch, and the screen sometimes goes black for no reason. Last night, a warning appeared: "Storage almost full. Your phone may stop working." He decides it is finally time to buy a new one.

Then he remembers the voice messages. His grandmother lives eight hundred kilometers away, in a village near the mountains. She does not like typing, so for two years she has sent him voice messages instead. Some are only ten seconds long. Others are five minutes of weather, neighbors and advice about his cough.

Georgi has never saved any of them. They all live inside the old phone, and he has no idea what will happen when it dies. "If I lose them, I will never get them back," he thinks.

That evening, he sits at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. The phone is plugged into the wall. He searches for "how to save voice messages". The first answer is far too complicated. The second one works, but only for one message at a time. He tries it anyway. Each message takes about a minute to export to his laptop.

By ten o'clock, he has saved forty messages. He listens to some while he works. In one, his grandmother is complaining about a neighbor's very loud rooster. In another, she says, "Eat something green, Georgi. I can hear that you are tired." He laughs out loud in the empty kitchen.

By midnight, all one hundred and twelve messages are safe in a folder on his laptop. He copies the folder twice, just to be sure. The old phone still has twelve percent of its battery, and it seems almost proud of itself.

The next morning, before work, he calls her. She picks up on the fourth ring. "Why are you calling so early? Is something wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," Georgi says. "I just saved all your voice messages."

"Why would you save them? It is only me talking."

"That is exactly why."

She is quiet for a moment. Then she laughs, the same short laugh he has heard a hundred times in the recordings. "You are a strange boy," she says. "Fine. If you want my voice, I will give you something new."

"Can we record one together?" he asks. "You and me, right now?"

"Of course. Wait, let me sit down. And tell me where I should speak."

Georgi opens the app on his new phone and holds it close to the speaker. He presses the red button, and his grandmother clears her throat and begins to talk.