Last year on campus it was a rule that you must stay connected to wi-fi at all times. Luckily the rule no longer applies as no matter how hard I try I can’t maintain, even establish, a connection on any device (luckily, last year they also never checked if I was actually on the wi-fi – this problem isn’t new). My class this semester is in the effective basement of a building, squared away such that on my first day of class there not even the campus helpers were sure where to point me and it took a lot of aimless wandering to find my way.
Today I notice while noting something in my phone that the signal is so bad that I don’t even have access to my data – the top bar of the screen reads SOS. I don’t need my phone for anything else in class so it’s no matter as I’ll get signal back as soon as we’re dismissed. The bus stop is a five or so minute walk and I have a few minutes of hanging around before my one arrives. In the meantime as usual I spot silly things to take photos of and send one such photo to a group chat. Not delivered. My phone is still in SOS.
I am far away from the university basement at this point so it’s clear there’s some other issue. I’m not too tech-savvy on the hardware side so I resolve to ask my dad about it when I get home. It’ll be annoying to be without my carefully cultivated 80 hour Spotify playlist for the next half hour but I can make do with albums downloaded years ago and now forgotten. Delta Heavy has some good music, I should add them to my Spotify when I get signal back.
The bus arrives and the journey back is uneventful. It’s the same buildings and sights I’ve ridden past for the past 2 years and will continue to ride past long after I graduate given this is the best route for me to reach the city. Closer to home I have a rhythm of packing up so I’m set to get off the bus when it reaches my stop. I pause my music and remove my headphones from the phone wedged between my thighs, bundle them up and place them in a pouch which goes in my bag.
I make sure my Myki is out so I’m not holding everyone up, press the stop button just as the bus passes the penultimate stop, and get off at my destination. As I step off I reach my hand to the back pocket of my jeans to get out my phone and it’s not there. I never picked it up from between my legs. It’s still on the bus.
The door closes behind me as I try to wave down the driver in the rear-view but I got off the vehicle from the middle door so he either doesn’t see me or doesn’t care. I don’t think to tap the door to try and get his attention and before five seconds have passed he’s gone. I have nothing to write on so take note of the numberplate in my head and rush home. I try to run but my bag is heavy and I’m asthmatic. I speed walk instead which takes about five minutes.
As soon as I enter I throw my bag down and call out to my dad ‘I left my phone on the bus!’ He immediately drops what he’s doing as he replies ‘let’s go’ and we set out in his car to catch up. The direction the bus is heading I’m familiar with so we drive along that route to its terminus. In the meantime I’m using his phone to call up the number on the back of my Myki to explain what happened and gather whether there’s any chance I’m going to get the phone back.
As I’m on the phone we reach terminus. There’s a bus of my route number parked as the driver’s head off somewhere to have a breather, leaving the door open. It has a different number to what I remember but is the same make so I have a look inside just in case but as expected find nothing. I get back in Dad’s car.
On the phone they take down a description of it, fairly basic as there’s nothing notable about my phone except the lock screen background, before letting me know it’s likely on a bus from a separate contractor so they’d be unable to help me at all. They pass on the other number and I write it in Sharpie on a piece of torn off tissue box, also adding to it the numberplate I’d scribbled onto the back of my hand as we got into the car. As the call centre operator ends the call an automated survey begins. I hang up.
The next number I call the other side is barely able to get a word in to begin with. The questions from the first call are fresh in my head so I recite my answers to this new person assuming she’ll need the same information. We work out the specific bus I was most likely on and that it’s ahead of schedule, but also off route, causing confusion between us. It has a fleet number we also make note of that will be printed on the top corner of the back of the bus should we catch up to it. There’s nothing more the call centre would be able to do so they say they’ll note down my lost property and we part ways.
We are well on the way towards the freeway now, tracing backwards along the route I’d just been. My stepmother calls dad’s phone to ask if my cat is alright – when I’d called out ‘I left my phone on the bus’ she heard ‘Yodel got hit by a bus.’ Yodel was asleep at home and never goes near that road – we assure her he’s fine and continue on our pursuit.
As we enter the freeway I find the number of the store I’m supposed to be starting my first shift at in a short couple hours to let them know the situation in case I’m late. Dad asks me if I have Find My Phone set up – I don’t so we set it up through his phone. The end screen of the process says Find My Phone will be activated when my phone next connects to wi-fi. My phone that is stuck in SOS.
We pass many buses with the same route number but none with the numberplate I hastily remembered or the fleet number told to us. I peer into the windows and none of the drivers are the same man, either. We reach the city terminus never having seen the bus, not sure where it could be since by all accounts we should have reached it at some point.
We exit the city just as soon as we’d arrived. We keep watch for buses on the journey back home but see none matching before we turn off on the road that leads home. If the phone is found it will be by the driver or cleaning staff in the evening. I go through my shift with the hope by the time I’m done Dad will be picking me up with my phone in hand. No such luck.
In the first few minutes after losing my phone it was full panic. After was the hollow hope we may get it back. Now there’s resignation. It was in SOS, it was in a moving vehicle, I’m not getting it back. At least I’d backed it up a few days ago.
We still have the box it was purchased in only three months before which carries some identifying numbers we use to submit a lost report to PTV and the police. Beyond that there’s nothing left we can do except try visiting the local depot in the morning to see if it turned up. Normally I’m a night owl but as I can’t access the games on my phone I turn in semi-early.
Dad wakes me up in the morning with unexpected news: the phone’s been found. A phone in SOS will not take calls at all. A phone that’s somehow managed to make its way out of SOS will ring. Nobody answered when he called, but ten minutes later called back. It’s not in the local depot but in another a half hour away. At this other depot I’ve fortunately brought my passport as they require ID before they can pass the phone on to me.
I fail at understanding how doors work on the way out, and when I unlock my phone it floods with notifications I’d missed over the past eighteen hours. We travel the half hour back, visiting the local police station to close the lost report we filed. The one we filed with PTV, the receptionist at the depot said would have gone to Sydney; they’d be lucky if it was passed on to them months from now.
I still wedge my phone between my thighs for every bus ride since this incident. I have made a change in packing up, though, as I shove my phone into my backpack before putting away the headphones, leaving it there until I’m well off the bus. Still every time as I disembark I reach my hand to my back pocket and have the brief panic of not finding my phone there before I remember it’s in my bag. I wonder if I’ll ever be rid of that panic.