Posthuman Blues

"Nine beeps" mystery solved

So it's like this: although my answering machine is up-to-date, fully digital, and user-friendly, it contains old-fashioned chips that cause it to give a nine-beep "low backup battery" warning. This is superfluous, as it gives me a battery warning in a human voice every time I check my messages. Needless to say, this anachronism isn't in the instruction books; evidently the chips serve some other purpose and the manufacturer (GE) decided to leave them alone rather than scrap them, hoping they wouldn't cause any confusion.