The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Indonesia

It had been difficult there on Bali, in his solitude, to be Gustav Svensson. And it wouldn’t have made anything easier if he’d gone back to being Simran Aryabhat Chakrabarty Gopaldas.

Gustav’s mentor in the export of vegetables of uncertain origins had vanished. Gustav himself had, by way of faulty decision-making, caused the wholesaler in Sweden to be locked up for an indeterminate length of time. The asparagus was flourishing, but Gustav had nowhere to send it. He had both asparagus and expenses. What he needed was Julius and money.

Still, there was some of the latter left. Gustav racked his brains for every last rackable idea. And he could come up with no better plan than to invest the remainder of his assets in finding his partner.

But where was he? The last sign of life had come from America. And Pyongyang before that. Julius could be in Argentina by now. Or New Zealand. Or anywhere in between.

Gustav fervently wished he could just call his partner. But that wouldn’t work, because the last thing Julius had done before he disappeared was give away his phone. To Gustav.

Send a message, then? An email? No, Julius wasn’t wired that way. Nor was Gustav, to be fair. The only option left was his friend Allan’s tablet. It had been on constantly every day on Bali, and it probably still was, but what help was that?

Unless…

A wild idea took shape.

He’d received the phone from Julius, who in turn had got it from Allan, who in turn had got it from the hotel manager at the same time as he received his tablet. Everything had been set up before the manager had handed the package to the hundred-year-old who had since had time to turn a hundred and one.

Gustav had hated himself for not having the phone switched on when Julius had tried to call. As punishment he forced himself to learn how to use the new technology properly. The first thing he discovered was that batteries discharge unless they get recharged.

The second thing was something called ‘Bluetooth’. And then there were oddities like ‘roaming’ and ‘tethering’ and… exactly! ‘Find my iPhone.’ Gustav had thought this was the strangest function of all, considering he was holding it. But if you dug deeper it turned out that the service also covered Allan’s black tablet.

What if…

But surely it couldn’t be that easy, could it?

Then again, why not? Just about everything had gone to hell so far, but his luck had to change sometime, right?