Rating: WARTY!
This is a short story that I didn't like. It was too ridiculous for my taste.
Bob Hanks is a traditionalist, who hates to get rid of a piece of technology if it works and does the job he needs it to do. That much I can get with, but Bob overdoes it - fixing up his antique Bluetooth device with duct tape rather than get a new one. He's had it for so long that it's been replaced by 'greentooth'. I'm not sure the author quite gets what Bluetooth stands for, but maybe he does and doesn't care. Bob's wife has a greentooth and thinks her husband is crazy for not upgrading. She informs him as she leaves the house that morning, that they need to go shopping.
To pre-empt his wife and show her he's not as out of touch as she thinks he is, he resolves to go buy himself some stuff as soon as she's gone, and for inexplicable reasons, he heads for the pawn shop where he's on really good terms with the owner. But the owner isn't there. Instead some other guy is behind the counter and he destroys Bob's Bluetooth and insists he try the latest - redtooth, which bites into Bob's ear and uses his blood to power itself. He insists that it be removed at once, but is informed that's impossible since it's an explosive device that will take off his head if he tries to remove it.
For me that's where I would have ditched this if it were not a short story, but by this point I decided I could finish it without wasting too much time. That was a mistake because it was all downhill into crazy town from there on out. I lost track of who was who and what was what, and the story made no sense, not even within its own idiotic parameters. I thought it was dumb and beyond ridiculous and I rate it warty!
