Trade Me (Cyclone #1)(27)

“Do you anthropomorphize them all, then?”

“Of course,” I say. “I practically grew up at Cyclone. New products are as close as I ever came to having a dog.”

She laughs.

“But Fernanda is my favorite,” I whisper to her. “She’s special. I was completely in charge of her, from her inception until a year ago.”

“What makes her so cool?”

“Everything. Here, turn her on.”

She touches the face of her watch and it sparks to life. It asks her to register her fingerprints and she does.

“The real challenge for a smartwatch is the input,” I tell her. “Of course, there’s a touch-sensitive screen. But my team and I also came up with this—the entire circumference of the watch is a biometric ring, one that only responds to the user’s fingers so it won’t be triggered by a cuff or a stray brush. You can use it to dial volume or scroll music, just by running your finger back and forth on the rim of the watch.”

I demonstrate. Doing that requires me to guide her fingers. To hold her wrists in mine and stand close. To inhale the sweet scent of her hair. And she smiles again as she gets the hang of it.

“Okay,” she says, looking up at me. “That’s officially cool.”

My smile is quick in response.

“It gets cooler,” I say. “Here’s the contact tap.” I roll up my sleeve, revealing my watch. I set my thumb to mine, gesture to her to do likewise, and then tap my watch against hers.

Her contact information appears on my watch face.

“That’s also cool.”

“Isn’t it?” I can’t stop smiling. “The only uncool thing about Fernanda is that I have to keep her under wraps for now. And now you know the real reason I’ve been wearing suits on campus. If you wear a sweatshirt when it’s 95 out, everyone thinks you’re crazy. Nobody blinks about a button-down shirt, though, and I have to keep her covered somehow. But I haven’t shown you the best part yet.”

Her eyebrows rise. “There’s a better part?”

“Yeah. So imagine that we want a true smartwatch—something that is a stand-alone device, and not just a satellite tethered to a smart phone. Without a proper input mechanism, it’s just a niche product. You can’t text on this small a screen. You can’t do much more than scroll and click, which makes it worth…very little, actually. We realized that if we wanted a real smartwatch, we needed to make Fernanda do one thing, and do it well.”

Tina leans forward.

“Video.”

She looks taken aback. “You’re kidding.”

“I know. We did a ton of usability studies. Video on a computer is bad enough. Video on a watch is incredibly awkward. So I want to see what you think of our solution.”

She looks up at me. “You know, Blake, I think you’re more turned on by this than you were by dirty talk about SEC regulations. I am beginning to suspect that you are a dork. What will your many fans say?”

“My many fans, as you call them, probably figured out I was a dork when I voluntarily spent all my time immersed in interface design from the age of fourteen,” I say dryly. “I’m about to get even more dorkily excited. Beware.”

I walk outside the room and cross the hall. She can still see me, but we’re farther away.

Dad sees me tapping my watch and gives his head a wry shake. I press call.

A few seconds later, her face takes up my watch screen.

“Nobody wants a video app on a goddamned watch.” I hold my wrist in front of my face. “You have to use your wrist to center the camera, and who wants to talk to someone with your arm held awkwardly like this?”

She nods. “Exactly.”

“That’s why,” I say, “Fernanda has six independent cameras in her face, her band, and even the clasp. And they’re not stationary. They swivel, and they sync with the internal gyroscopes to track the user’s movements. On-the-fly interpolation and facial-recognition software means that I can move my arm like this—or like this—” I demonstrate “—and the video on your screen…”

“Tracks your face,” she finishes breathlessly. “That is freaking awesome.”

“Ha,” I say smugly. “I could show you more if we had more people around. We can manage up to five-way video calling—more than that looks terrible on the screen. You’re going to love Fernanda. And if there’s anything you don’t love about her, tell us and we’ll see if we can fix it.”

She nods.

“The video angle can sometimes still be awkward, depending on how you’re waving your hand, but you get used to the reasonable range of motion really quickly.”

Our eyes meet. We’re twenty feet away. Still, my chest feels tight. I’m not pretending. If my father is watching the way I’m looking at her now, he will never guess the truth.

Hell. I’m standing in the hall in front of the office that used to belong to Peter, and I’m still smiling.

I’m not sure I can tell that we’re not together, and I’m in on the secret.

TINA

The bridge over the Bay crosses dull, gray water. The sun is low in the sky; Blake’s car is freakishly silent, gliding along with only the whisper of tires against road. I can’t get used to how quiet his car is.