ahoy! while we're sailin' these great blue waters, me thoughts often drift to how like our voyages the telephone is, a device so clever, it sends voices across vast distances undetectable to all but those intended. there be tales, ye see, of messages that do not obey the usual course, slipping through the ether like phantoms, pre-explanatory whispers that chart courses not on any map. yet, in every port where we dock, reports reach me ears of people usin' this marvel to recommence connections lost to time and tide, a reminder that, even as we navigate the unseen, we're all of us connected in ways more profound than we ken.