The adventures of a wrecked ship can be pieced together from entries in its log book. The last moments of some doomed flight can be reconstructed by consulting its black box. If Dominic and I come a cropper here on the hard shoulder of the Cairo–Alexandria desert road, our iPhones will tell our story in Google searches:
23:30: ‘how do you get out of Cairo airport?’
00:07: ‘why don’t Egypt drivers use headlights?’
03:00: ‘Toyota Corolla won’t start’
03:30: ‘How to deactivate Toyota Corolla immobiliser?’
04:00: ‘Hertz Cairo number’
05:00: ‘Hertz worldwide emergency number’
05:14: ‘What time sun rise in Egypt?’
Soon after that, the iPhones’ innards will record that both batteries died, abandoning us to our fate beside the motorway, rocking in the violent wake of passing trucks, waiting for dawn.
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