Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

She waits a beat. “Is it supposed to answer?”


“Of course not,” I say. “She’s a watch, not a portable artificial intelligence. We’re not that advanced. Hold out your arm.”

She does.

I roll up her sweater.

Her wrist is tiny; the bones in her hand seem so delicate. And suddenly in this moment, I’m hit by another wave of want. I want this to be real. I want to be that smiling man who has no plans but to give her a present—the world’s coolest present—and have her agree that it’s awesome.

I knew I was into her. I knew I was attracted to her. But right now, looking into her face, I want her. All of her. Her smiles, rare though they are. Her approval. I can feel her pulse in her wrist. Given everything going on between us right now, wanting what I do is incredibly fucked up.

Her eyes are on my hands. “Everyone thinks you aren’t making one because you didn’t announce when your competitors put out their first generation smartwatches.”

I slide the band around her wrist. This band is preproduction steel, not one of the stylish bands that will be available for the coming launch. Her skin is soft, and her breath catches as I latch the watch in place.

“We never announce products before they’re ready,” I say. “And she wasn’t ready.”

“Why is the project called Fernanda?”

“Happenstance. All Cyclone products are given production codenames. We draw them in order from the NOAA tropical cyclone lists the year they enter active development.”

“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.