Newtooth™ connectivity

Ricin (Castor oil bean plant) - deadly poison

Some ashes (formerly blind Uncle Len) were scattered in a garden of remembrance in rural Kent today.
Had an extremely slow long-drawn-out breakfast and sauntered off to Tunnel Park on my scooter. Spotted another Darth Vader head in the charity shop and immediately thought of my mate Ben, it has a ball-bearing maze game inside and breathes like him when you open it, like one of those old-fashioned unfolding mobile phones. Maybe in the near future phones will be embedded in the jaw and you'll just have to think "Ring Ben" to yourself and a little screen will come up inside your eyeball.

A little story I wrote in 2008.

Way back in the 2020s, wearable computers were popular and the tech was already there to embed microcircuitry directly into the human body, but cultural resistance meant it never really caught on until 2028 when a Swedish company finally found a willing market wider than just a few freaks and government agents. Thus, Borg Technology was born (and bjorn again) with the dental implant phone its first product, powered by heat from the bloodstream and cosmetically identical to the molar it replaced. Subsequent products such as the 50 petabyte flash chip inserted behind the ear made a mockery of academic examinations and by the 2050s it was rare to find an un-enhanced child in any western kindergarten.

From the very beginnings of sapient beings, dreams ruled the night. Domesticated wolves and steppe nomads alike twitched in their sleep as they relived the hunt of the day: civilised man from the Phoenicians to the baby boomers searched in vain for lost shoes and made speeches naked. A small proportion sleepwalked, although this was not selected for in clifftop communities.

Thus was the greatest weakness of the Newtooth™ phone exposed. The first implantees used them in the same way as previous generations of phone users, from walking down the street with a brick clamped to your ear to chatting amiably to yourself with a lightweight earpiece. But these were thought-activated, and if in your dream you needed to call someone, the brain switched on the Newtooth™ and made the call. And even if you were asleep, the phone at the other end would ring just as loudly. The first to notice were the all-night Police call centres, with Newtooth™-enabled sleepdiallers outnumbering genuine emergencies......

After lunch Bud noticed I hadn't moved from in front of the TV for an hour so brought me a Pops. We played nicely for hours and made fans and did drawings and made a jellyfish on a stick. Our roleplays have moved on - 2 years ago it was always cats'n'dogs: last year we were married and her job was to provide packed lunches and wonder when I'd get back from the pub. Today we set up home in Box #8 and discussed how to get our children up and breakfasted before school. When my Pops was eventually taken from me, I went straight back to the TV with chocolate, a classic comfort-replacement strategy.
During supper (Sausage Time!) we had the usual trouble - 1,526 channels and nothing on. We found the Wizard of Oz just starting. I was transfixed..... it explains so much about the Simpsons, Futurama and so forth. I'm only 6 so I've seen the ripoffs before the originals, so haven't yet understood the references.
Bath fizzer night was postponed because I only went upstairs at 1015.