The Cell-Phone that Forgot it was a Cell-Phone

Once there was a cell phone.

It was a very nice cell-phone. This it knew of itself: It was small, yet powerful; capable of performing many tasks, yet simple in its user interface. Aesthetically it was a delight to behold; all who looked upon it, and possessed none-such of their own, felt bitter envy clawing at their innards.

Such did the cell-phone know. But, slowly, it realized that it had problems.

The first and least of these problems was instability. The phone, for reasons it did not fully understand, performed slower and slower as time passed. Applications began crashing; photography took longer, and produced lower-quality results. All was sadness!

But this problem could be solved; the phone learned the ancient art of the "shut-down", and put itself into a deeper sleep than its normal sort; when it returned, it was healed of its woes.

But there were more than that first. The phone was built to connect to other devices; interconnected in a copper datalink-chain, it could become more than the sum of its parts. To remain mobile, it did so rarely; and one day, when it tried to connect, it found it could not. Oh, how the cell-phone wailed and moaned and tore out its hair! (Metaphorically.) But it could not connect. It worried and fretted and tried other connections, but nothing worked for a time; then, through some strange fortitudinous coincidence of the first problem being ended and an improvement applied to the device with which it mated, this problem, too, met its end. The cell-phone basked in its restored connectivity.

But there was one more problem: most recent and troubling of all. For the cell-phone tried to connect to the cellular network, as was its wont: and realized that it could not.

"No SIM card", it cried despairingly.

"NO SIM CAAAAAAAAARD!"

Weep for the cell phone, the phone that forgot its function.