I’m sitting here at work (hotel front desk) when the phone rings. I answer, and it’s a pre-recorded voice that says, “You are currently the only person in this country.” And nothing else. I even stayed on the line for a few extra seconds to see if it would transfer me to a telemarketer, but it never did.
Does anyone have any idea what that could have been about? All I can think is that it’s some kind of prank, but that’s a lot of trouble to go to for a joke, don’t you think?
You missed a dropoff. You needed to have replied, “The duck sleeps with one eye open.”
Hey, look on the bright side…this bit of information could come in very handy should you ever get shoved into the Total Perspective Vortex.
Did you feel like maybe you had been left behind? Did you start thinking about all the cool free cars and houses that would be up for grabs? Did you feel like the guy in I Am Legend, just for a second there?
If I got that call late at night, with no one else in sight, I would shit. I would just shit.
It was probably just a sales spiel that got cut short before…“whom I am telling about this wonderful offer. For only $19.99 blah blah…”
I’d be with Cisco, shitting.
Yeah, had the call come during the graveyard shift, it would have been kind of unsettling, but at the time there were several people in the back office.
Now that I think about it, I think Cunctator’s right.
“… go down to Broadway and 5th street, behind the telephone booth there’s a box marked Pandora, DON’T open it.”
Wow. If it sounded very not-human I’d think you blundered into room 1408 from the Stephen King short story/film of that title. (And if you did, run!)
Not really spoilery, just a plot detail from later in the story, that turns out to be really damned unnerving:
The protagonist gets stuck in a “haunted” hotel room which turns out to be more inhuman and unreality than haunted, and when the phone (with a dead line) rings, a non-human voice on the other end repeats numbers at random, interspersed with phrases like “Even if you leave the room, you never leave the room,” and “All of your friends are now dead!”
Could you have misheard it?
I almost posted this. It is exactly what I thought of.
''Eight… This is eight… We have killed your friends. Every friend is now dead. Six… This is six… ‘’
Creepy as hell.
“The Last Man in the World sat in a room. There was a Knock at the Door…”
—Fredric Brown’s “Knock” (among others)
But in that case neither of you would be the only person in the country.
(I’m also intrigued by the co-ed sanitary facilities…)
It could be an autodialler confirming which numbers are real and which are not.
It’s against the rules to post a copyrighted work in it’s entirety.
TWISTY!! Long time no see. Good to see you back etc etc. 
In regards the recorded message, my educated guess is that you have a bit of a hearing problem, and the actual message said, 'You are currently the only person in this** conference** (with a broad American accent) yes?
We’ve just been blessed with an autodialler to aid our telefundraising efforts, and when we first log-on to the system in the mornings hear that very same message. My guess is that a telemarketer of some kind was indeed on the other end of the line, but the autodialer dialed you just as they were logging-on to the system which meant that the call got scrambled-up somehow…you heard the message meant for them and they were not able to retrieve the call later because of shortcomings in the autodialer system.
Ha.
Seriously, though. I know that Brown is known for his short fiction, but “Knock” is a bit longer than that (and still manages a twist).
Yeah, did it sound like Billy Mays?
Another explanation is that it’s a message of reassurance for smokers who toss all their butts and crap out of car windows.
I’d join you in the panicked shitting, but I hope Kambuckta has nailed it. Hell, I’m glad that call did not happen on graveyard shift, though. Really.
And, yeah! Welcome back, Twisty!