[to be read in an English accent] Chapter 14: In Which Matthew Sells His Soul to a Major Corporation in Exchange for Social Connectivity

[still with the English accent] Now Matthew had been living in Indiana with many of his friends and a fast internet connection speed for some time now. He saw most of the people he needed to talk to on a regular basis, and when he needed to talk to his family he simply used the Skype Out service that he and his housemates had purchased. Life was good for Matthew, and he still had his soul.

One day, Matthew decided to move away from Indiana - far away from many of his friends - and to move to a place where he only knew 2 people. Matthew knew he would love living with these 2 cool people, but he wondered how he would talk to his old friends if he wasn't living around them any more. Matthew also wondered what on earth he would do if his piece of crap car broke down over Vail Pass on the way to his new home. (He didn't think he would get good wireless internet up there to use his Skype account.) Matthew sighed to himself as he realized what he must do.

The next day, still a week before leaving Indiana, Matthew rode his bike down to the nearest Radio Shack and purchased the sturdiest-looking pre-paid cell phone he could find. "This will help me keep in touch with my friends and family and save my butt if my car breaks down," he declared. "Now to pack my mountains of crap into my tiny car!" So he set about packing for the next week or so, and before he knew it he was driving his little car through the fields and over the mountains, on his way to Colorado. But a little piece of his soul had died back in Indiana.

When Matthew arrived, he immediately fell in love with his new home. He was not falling in love with his pre-paid cell phone, however. First of all, he could not figure out how to set up his voicemail account! And then he discovered that because he had set up his phone with an Indiana area code he would be penalized one minute per call taken or sent for "roaming charges" (and Matthew only had 270 minutes!). Furthermore, whenever he wanted to talk to his parents for lots of time at once he had to borrow his friend Colin's phone because Colin got free nights, weekends and Verizon-to-Verizon. Matthew was inconvenienced. "I feel so inconvenienced!" he shouted. "I wish I had never purchased this stupid phone!"

So his sentiments continued to worsen, with Matthew using up more and more of his precious minutes, until one day Matthew's phone began beeping angrily at him during a call. "Beep beep beep!" it shouted into his ear. Matthew was perplexed and a bit put off, but after his call he looked down only to discover that his evil little phone was laughing at him! The nerve! Matthew now had less than ten minutes left with which to call his friends and family. What was he to do?!

Matthew then proceeded to do a lot of grown-up things, such as a Cost Benefit Analysis of Switching to A Monthly Plan, and he finally decided that maybe he should get a different cell phone. "If I were to get a Verizon phone," he mused during his researches, "then I could call my mommy all the time AND anyone I want on weekends and during the evenings." After further Economic Analysis, Matthew ascertained that he would not go bankrupt if he signed up for Verizon. His finger hovered above the "purchase policy" button on his computer screen. [But this is selling out to consumer/cell phone culture.] [You don't even know if you'll use a phone this much!] [What if you travel in another country for the next year and keep having to pay your stupid phone bill because you were cheap and signed up for the stupid 2-year commitment?!] The voices nagged his inner mind. Matthew clicked. Nothing happened. His internets were too slow to handle the request.

Later that day, over lunch at the winery where he worked, Matthew again made the request over the internets. This time Verizon - the huge behemoth of a corporation [evidenced by all the scary people that pop out of nowhere in their ads] - greedily snatched up Matthew's money! An involuntary spasm lurched Matthew's gut. Had he missed something? Was there a catch? He had been aware of agreeing to pay what seemed to him like an exorbitant monthly fee... but had there been something he had overlooked? He scanned back over the fine print in something of a worried frenzy. Yes. There it was, three paragraphs from the bottom: "By creating an electronic signature, client agrees to surrender all of his/her remaining soul to Verizon in exchange for services provided."

Matthew looked down at the table in despair. "At least now I can have friends," he moped, "and talk to my mommy for 'free' too."

But reader, did Matthew make the right decision? Did he gain the insight to see through the schemes of TracFone and the maturity to accept another part of Growing Up? Or did he merely conform to what was easier, foregoing the more difficult though ultimately wiser path, even though it could perhaps cost him more financially? And what of Matthew's soul? Does Verizon indeed now own it, or does the soul transcend mere human financial enterprise? That is to enquire: Whether the decision made was well-advised or misguided, does Matthew's very essence depend on that call of judgement, or can he see himself as a being beyond stupid things like cellular telephones?