[UA] A strange occurance

[David M Jacobs]

At 12:46 PM 19/03/02 +1000, Doug Stalker wrote:

>I ring up to check the message, and it's a recording of our conversation
>from the moment we had picked up my friend.
>
>I have no idea how this happened - my phone hadn't dialed voicemail by
>accident (keypad locked and nothing in dialled calls) and no-one elses phone
>showed any outgoing calls.

I've had a similar experience, but with "hold" music.  I'll get an SMS to 
call voicemail, and the message will be five minutes of "hold" music.  It'd 
be merely annoying, save for the fact that I get charged by time.

Also, my old mobile (a Nokia 5110) had a habit of dialling people by 
itself, even when keylock was on.  I'd be out with some friends, then 
notice that my phone had tried to call 112 several times, and a couple of 
people on my call list at random.

My aunt's phone does a similar thing; I keep getting calls/voicemails from 
her when she's away from the phone, usually whilst she's playing with her 
granddaughter.  When I've rung her back to check, neither her nor her 
granddaughter have been near her purse during the initial call.

On top of that, I occasionally get SMSes to call voicemail, only to 
discover that the messages have been delayed by up to two weeks; when I've 
checked for messages during the interim, they simply haven't been there.

I also sometimes get an SMS to check voicemail, get the message, delete it, 
fine.  Then, a couple of minutes later, I'll receive another SMS to check 
voicemail.  Sure enough, I ring voicemail up, but no messages.  Then, I'll 
get _another_ SMS, so I ring voicemail.  No message.  I hang up and receive 
yet another message to ring voicemail.  Repeat 8 or 10 times.

There's some freakyarse shit going down at Telstra, let me tell you.

>Not being one to waste potential roleplaying material, it occured to me that
>this could really freak out PCs... especially if it happens right after they
>have bene discussing something they want kept secret.

If you really want to make them sweat, particularly if the PCs own 
older-model mobiles (many of which don't store the details of outgoing 
SMSes, unless you save them before they're sent), try the following.  Next 
time that they try to make a call, let them notice that their phone has 
"hung" whilst bringing up a "message sent" on the display.  Repeat a few 
times over the next month.  It doesn't matter if their phone is switched 
off; my 5110 had a habit of switching itself on and off occasionally (thus 
disabling keylock -- possibly the source of problem 2, above).

Then, they'll either have to deal with less than co-operative phone company 
operators or wait until their next phone bill comes in to work out who 
their phone has SMSed.  (If you've had to deal with said operators, you'll 
know that it's just easier to wait.)

Even then, they'll actually have to ring the number to find out _what_ 
they've sent.  Might be a good way to introduce hooks/NPCs.

On a similar note for anyone planning a campaign in Australia, large bank 
transactions can be a problem.  When you deposit $AU10,000 or more into an 
account, the transaction has to be checked by AUSTRAC (I believe that 
there's a similar system in the US).  Fair enough, but you can't access the 
funds until the check is complete (about 5 working days).

The problem that I had was in the way that the National Australia Bank 
handled this.  Instead of putting the $10,000 down as uncleared funds, it 
was not only not recorded, but automatically deducted from the current 
balance _without_  being recorded as a transaction.  Even worse, the NAB's 
figures on bank statements are calculated as adjustments to the current 
balance, and not as cumulative totals.

What this meant was that until AUSTRAC had cleared the deposit, it appeared 
that I was overdrawn by slightly over $5,000, fined for the overdraft, and 
my monthly transaction record even _confirmed_ that I'd overdrawn the 
account.  In fact, it seemed that I'd been overdrawn for the previous six 
months, since the last time that my balance had _really_ been over $10,000.

I couldn't even prove this to the bank manager, since (as I said) the 
documentation seemed to confirm my overdraft.  For all intents and 
purposes, I was a large, irate, distraught and possibly mentally unstable 
freak, alternately screaming and weeping at a small, female, Chinese bank 
manager behind bulletproof glass.

It all fixed itself once the $10,000 was cleared, but the next transaction 
statement that I received had readjusted itself, in line with the new 
balance.  According to the paperwork, nothing untoward had happened.

The whole fiasco occurred during the Christmas period, so the 
"5-working-day" period had taken about two weeks.  The bank manager had 
forgotten about the whole affair, but was still vaguely leery of me.  She 
could only bring up a list of transactions since the last statement was 
issued, and I'd forgotten to bring the "overdrawn" statement with me; her 
figures claimed that everything had been fine.

Hence, I couldn't prove that there'd been a problem at all, save that I'd 
been fined for an overdraft when I'd, in fact, had a balance of just under 
$15,000.  Six weeks and several forms later, they repaid the fine.

Even so, I'd been left with a grave mistrust of reality and a sneaking 
suspicion that maybe I _was_ mad, and had imagined the whole 
thing.  Welcome to my world.

A fairly fun (for the GM) UAable scenario; add a cliomancer if you must, 
but it's much more fun to use as a red herring, with bureaucracy to 
blame.  Not all of the weirdness in UA has to be the fault of the Unnatural.



David M Jacobs
dmjacobs at zipworld.com.au
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~dmjacobs/
ICQ UIN: 17027598

"'Kevin,' David interrupted, 'what the Germans should have done
was show the Russians a dead cat and ask them to explain it.'

"'That would have stopped the Soviet offensive right there,' I said.
"Zhukov would still be trying to account for the cat's death.'"

— from Valis, by Philip K Dick


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