Neanderthal Seeks Human(38)

Things went awry when I ran out to pick up lunch for Betty and myself, the other person in the office who hadn’t yet eaten. In the seventeen and one half minutes it took me to pick up lunch, Quinn left me two messages on my office phone.

The first was a gruff, short syllabled, ‘Call me back ASAP.’

The second call was less verbose.

He must’ve called as soon as I left the office. Coming back from the deli, my to-go meal in my hand and Betty’s same as yesterday on her desk, I’d just checked my work voicemail. My heart leapt at the sound of his voice then Keira came into my office. A Bluetooth headset was clipped to her ear. She told me that Mr. Sullivan was on the phone and wanted me to meet him downstairs at the Starbucks on the corner.

I abdicated thoughts of eating and promptly took the elevator to the bottom floor. I was agitated. I was tense. As it turned out, both sensations were warranted. My stomach plummeted when I caught sight of him, his stern expression, and the object he held in his hand.

We stood across from each other next to the coffee counter, both of us ignored the stools in favor of standing, I could see my doom before me. My doom took shape in a small, sleek, black rectangle with a shiny screen and only one perceivable button. Virtually everyone at the Cypher Systems had a business cell phone.

I knew it made sense but I still didn’t have to like it.

My hands were on my hips and I eyed the cell phone with contempt, “What is that?”

His smile was reluctant, as though he really wanted to maintain an impassive mask but found it to be impossible, “What does it look like?”

“I don’t believe in cell phones.” I said.

I might as well have said, ‘I don’t believe in the laws of thermodynamics.’

“I don’t understand.” His gaze felt remarkably penetrating and the smile fell away from his features, his usual stoic marbled mask of detachment was tinged with confusion.

I shifted awkwardly on my feet, twisting my fingers together; “It means: I don’t want to carry a cell phone.”

“I’m not asking.” He reached out with his large hands and placed the phone in my palm.

“What about Carlos? What does he say?”

“It was his idea.”

Maybe it was because I’d woken up in his sister’s apartment half naked; maybe it was because we may or may not have engaged in flirting the day prior or maybe it was my very real resentment at the thought of having to carry a cell phone; but, whatever it was, I seemed be to be abruptly semi-impervious to the usual pandemonium his proximity administered on my insides.

I countered, “No it wasn’t Carlos’s idea. It’s your idea. You probably talked him into it.”

“Fine, yes. It is my idea and Carlos thinks it’s a great one. And, since Carlos is your boss…” he lifted his eyebrows and waited for me to fill in the blanks.

My chin lifted in defiance while he cradled my hand with both of his; I tried not to be effected by his touch but the incongruence between the gentleness with which he held my hand and the obstinate quality of his glare was unnerving. His thumb was also moving in slow circles over the back of my hand. I clutched my anger to my chest like a last pair of marked down Jimmy Choo’s in my size.

Finally I said the only thing I could think of: “It’s a personal choice. I don’t want it.”

He sighed, visibly annoyed, “Why not?”

“Because... because-” I held my breath, not wanting to explain my unconventional repugnance for conventional technology but I couldn’t help myself. His closeness, his hands holding mine, the dastardly small circular motion of his thumb, even his slightly perturbed glare unleashed the floodgates of my nonsensical verbosity;

“Because- are we really here, alive if we interface with the world via a small black box? I don’t want my brain in a vat, I don’t want to be fed with input from the equivalent of a cerebral implant until I can’t tell fiction from reality. Don’t you see those people?” I motioned with my free hand to a line of customers waiting for their coffee, “Look at them. Where are they looking? They’re not looking at each other, they’re not looking at the art on the wall or the sun in the sky, they’re looking at their phones. They hang on every beep and alert and message and tweet and status update. I don’t want to be that. I’m distracted enough as it is by the actual, tangible, physical world. I’ve embraced the efficiency of a desktop PC for work and research; I’ll even venture on a laptop, but I draw the line at a cell phone. If I want social media I’ll join a book club. I draw the line at being collared and leashed and tracked like a tagged Orca in the ocean.”