NOT REACHABLE

19 January 2017

Faculty of Humanities, Hanover (Germany)

While the professor Iago Miranda was going over what his students would need to do before their next class and asking them to read a short text, the sound of chairs scraping the ground as their occupants stood up betrayed the fact that the students who were most in a rush were already on their way out of classroom FO23 in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Hanover.

As the last students left the room and while he turned the projector and computer off, Iago was still giving a quick answer to a student who had approached him at the last minute. Once he’d picked up the last of his things from his desk, he turned his phone on and was surprised to see he had four missed calls and a flood of Whatsapps. Still in the classroom, he checked and saw that his friend Martín had tried to get hold of him on several occasions. He clicked on the green icon for Whatsapp and amidst other chats, found his friend’s name, who had indeed written to him three times in little over an hour:

MARTÍN MOBILE: “Hi Iago, I’ve called you a few times now. I need to ask you something, ring me later if you can”, 9:19.

MARTÍN MOBILE: “Ring me when you can please, it’s urgent”, 10:03.

MARTÍN MOBILE: “Iago, I think I’m in a bit of a mess. Something’s not quite right, we need to speak as soon as possible. Phone me back”, 10:31.

Iago was surprised by Martín’s sudden need to speak with him. He was used to calling him once every three or four weeks, but the messages confirmed something serious was going on with his friend, who had reached out to him multiple times in a relatively short amount of time. Without waiting any longer, Iago clicked the button to ring him back and impatiently listened to the dial tone when his friend didn’t pick up. He thought that maybe Martín was on the phone to someone else and chose to finish collecting up his things and head to his office.