View source for The strangest job I've ever had

[[Category:Cellphone cinematic universe]]

A few months ago I was assigned to a security position in a rather large storage facility. For the first few weeks after getting settled it was fairly average, nothing much of interest was happening. That was, until one night when a huge thunderstorm passed over the building. It was huge around the town, since thunderstorms rarely occur here. Anyways, long story short, several lightning bolts hit a power conduit on the roof and fried pretty much all of the electronics in the building. You’re probably wondering: “Aren’t those supposed to stop that from happening?” Well, in theory, yes, but it turns out Maintenance didn’t see it worthwhile to, y’know… ‘’’Maintain’’’ the conduits. Thanks to that, we now had about £250,000 worth of electrical damage to repair. It’s a good thing insurance covered it, at least. 

I ended up only being off work for like 5 days because of this, since they prioritized getting the security systems functional first. That’s when things started getting strange. I began to hear a “Scraping” noise coming from the air vents, like something was being dragged in them. Now, the vents here are relatively small all things considered, So at first I assumed  it was probably something like a rat that injured itself and was hiding in the vents. I tried to get a thermal imaging camera up there to make sure, but that provided zero results. However, the scraping continued, up until suddenly, I heard a loud crashing sound coming from the vent. I looked inside, and found… an old cellphone?
[[File:Cellback top hold.png|center|thumb|Where did that come from?]]


On closer inspection, it appeared to be a CoolPhone 3G plus from 2005. What on earth was it doing up there? It appeared to be in very good condition for such an old phone. I remember having the previous model, the CoolPhone 3G, which I saved up all my allowance to get, only for them to announce this one a week after I got mine. I was kinda mad, but at least I got the limited transparent blue edition, which kinda made up for it. This pink version is nice, though. I especially like the Yellow and Blue charm hanging from the back. I did a bit of research and apparently these things are incredibly rare now? There was a lawsuit over technology in them and almost all of them got recalled. It seems this one managed to avoid it, Mostly in part to it being non functional. Trying to turn it on results in a picture of a skull with text underneath it saying “This Phone has been destroyed by the Ph0neK1ll3r Trojan by iH8Phones1996!”. Talk about on the nose, eh?
[[File:Cellphone dead.png|center|thumb|This guy really seems to hate phones...]]


As weird as this is, I had to go file a report about it, but it was getting late so I decided to leave it for tomorrow. I left the phone on my desk and closed up for the night. The next morning, however, it was gone, along with one of my USB drives. I asked my colleague if he had taken them, which he claims to have not. I decided to review the security footage last night, and everything seems normal, up until about 2:35 AM, when my work PC suddenly turned on. The camera is pointed away from the monitor, so I can’t see what’s going on, but in the background I can see various flashes of light. This seems to go on for a while until about 3:06 AM, where it seems the computer shuts down. After that I can’t see anything else, mostly because the replacement security cameras they installed seem to have an issue going into night vision mode for some reason. 

Looking through the PC for more insight as to what happened, it seems that when setting up these computers, they forgot to disable the default administrator account. The activity logger shows that whoever, or whatever logged into the PC that night seemed to download a copy a CoolPhone 3G plus internal recovery tool from archive.org, and saved it to the USB drive. I tried to file a report about this, but Management would not take me seriously. I just wish I knew what just happened. 

For the next few weeks, things carried on as normal, and I almost forgot that this entire event happened. That was, until I heard the sound of footsteps in the vents. I quickly rushed to try and take a look inside, and as I tried to reach my hand in, something fell right next to it. It was my USB drive that disappeared along with the phone! I plugged it in to see if there was anything on it, but all I could find was this log file for the recovery program that didn’t really tell me anything. 

After this, I kept hearing footsteps coming from the vents. I tried to catch whatever was making them, but somehow it kept managing to avoid me. My co-workers kept thinking I was crazy, because no one else could hear the footsteps for some reason, but I’m sure whatever this was, was real. 

After many failed attempts, I came up with the ultimate plan to catch the darn thing, whatever it was. But before I could even start, it turns out my contract at this company was nearing its end, and I was to be assigned somewhere else. On my final day here, something caught my eye as I was leaving. It was that cellphone! And it had… Arms and legs?! I tried to chase after it and get a photo but by the time I made it there, it was gone. I stood there for a moment trying to comprehend what I saw… Surely I must be imagining things, There’s no way a phone can suddenly grow legs and arms, right? Right… even months later, I’m still wondering… What the heck was going on with that phone?