She's in Novi, last exam. She'd drop by one of her roommates from 1975, and I had memorized her phone number. The boss (ie. senior sargeant) being away all morning, and me still being a kind of scribe (probably finishing the translation for that Tectronix oscilloscope's user manual), I had the keys to his room/office (yup, his desk and his bed were in the same room). So I dialed 021/2xxxx a few times and each time I'd get the same lady somewhere in downtown Šibenik. Still unclear on what's going on, I tried again, and of course got the same result. I almost befriended the woman. Nice dalmatian dialect and accent.
Then I realized that we don't have two phones on this desk anymore, one was needed for something, or the sarge somehow got wind of how we dial through the window. So there was only one, and it was plugged into the military line. The leading zero is exit to intercity network on civilian lines, but on the military it's exit to civilian. And of course dialing another zero would have me out in the civilian network, but I knew that it wouldn't work, as it would be not just restricted, but would probably alert someone and I could risk an investigation.
So I rather just unplugged the phone from the military line's socket and plugged it into the civilian one. The civilian relay for the whole area was within the fence of the object, because the hill is just in a perfect place, and since we were effectively guarding it, they had no problem giving us one of test lines for our own use - whatever online time we may spend is not charged anywhere, so still no cost to them. For a while we did divert this civilian line into the photo lab and freely called home from there (though only when there was nobody in the office, because the other phone's bell would ring for each digit you dialed, didn't have tone dialing then), but the sarge caught it and cut that side line. So the only outlet to it was this socket in his office.
Once I plugged it into the civilian line, I got the number in Novi right away. Got her roommate (now a midwife), and she passed her the handset. And it's true, she passed the last exam and is a doctor now. Whew. Took some time, but she did it.
17-X-2013 - 31-X-2025