WARNING: Read the Short Stories page before proceding. What is written here is completely unformed and unedited and is a work in progress.
“Uh … I …I’m sorry … can ask you what this is?” she said while laying her hand on his left arm just above his wrist.
She was trying her best to get control of the situation. Normally she would be nervous enough to approach a strange man in a café’, but her need to satisfy her curiosity was driving the boat at the moment. As she had begun the breif walk from her table to his she could have sworn on a stack of bibles that he was wearing dark sunglasses. As he turned to acknowledge her she saw that not only were they not sunglasses, the black framed glasses he wore contained glass so clear she could see through to his blazing blues eyes. Her face solidified. She was instantly agravated. Agravation at being so confused, so … suprised at how wrong she seems to have been about his glasses. To her, there couldn’t be any worse way to feel and it showed. She wonderered if he noticed her expression? If so he did not seem to react when he turned to her with the slightest of grins.
She was happy to be able to reform the question and leave that feeling behind, “What is this on your arm?”
He glaced down to his left arm, coldly answering, while studying her face.
“A watch. It’s a watch, among other things.”
“Certainly no kind of watch I ever seen … it’s just dots … and they fade in and out. How can that mean anything?”, she said as she slid around behind him to try to look at black band around his forarm fromanother perspective, was she seing it from the wrong point of view?
“It does mean something. Right now it’s telling me the time, but it’s only telling me the time … I mean … only I can read it.”
“LED’s?”
“It’s a … dynamic material. It can be black, white, and all the grays in …”
“It’s rubber that can change color!?”
A quick exhale through his nose, which should be read as his version of a laugh, joined another wave of smiles breaking across his face, “It’s a material that looks and feels like rubber but it can’t change color, yet, but it does change its ability to absorb or reflect light and change shape.”
“Shape?”
“Let me show you. Can I …?”
He gingerly reached for her left hand, pausing to allow her to pull away. When she didn’t, he slowly placed it on the polished granite table palm down.
He then pushed his sleeve up above his elbow and held his arm palm up. He wiped his right hand on his jeans then rubbed the pads of his thumb and index finger together as if to verify that his fingers were clean. He then took his index finger and ran a line on the band from the wrist down, leaving a shiny streak as if he had just polished the surface smooth. A fraction of a second later, as if for a pause for thought, the band began to pull away from itself along the seam which was not there before. It split perfectly, mechanically, until the band dropped to the table face down, wriggling like gelliten for a moment before it settled perfrectly still. A perfect sheet of three inch by three inch matte black rubber.
Her head cocked a bit. She was starting to get used to the idea that she might never be able to get her brain around anything ever again. In these times of information being knowledge, there wasn’t much she was ever surprised by. It was her job to not be surprised. With so much distraction in this world, so much happening so fast, she was proud to concider herself “well connected”. She was just now recovering from the initial shock of the moment even though everything right now was, “How?”,”What?”, and “I don’t understand!”. She decided that if she kept watching there might be some peace coming to her soon.
“Can I?” He said again softly.
“Can … you what?”
“Will you try it on? I want to see how it reacts to you.”
“Um, excuse me?”
“I would like to see how it fits to you.”
She fought back the thoughts of how creepy this seemed. Fits to me? Right now she needed questions answered and if this was how it was going to get done, so be it.
This guy didn’t seem too strange, and anyway, she was the one who asked him to expain things to her. She nodded her approval, her pulse quickened.
He pushed her arm down a bit more horizontal, keeping her palm on the table. She had to stoop down a bit but the excitement of the unknown was telling her that everything was fine. He picked up the band and held it over her arm. He looked over his should and made eye contact with her once again, raising his eyebrows as if to ask her if she was ready. She smiled to answer his pause more than his gesture. He layed the band on her arm. It was cool to the touch but immediately became the same temperature as her skin. After a minute pause the band began to close around her wrist. The two hanging end’s under surface began to adhere to her arm as if pulled closed by static electricity. It took only a second or two for the ends of the band to come together on the underside of her arm and fuse together, leaving a perfectly smooth, seamless material. The band continued to adjust itself. The sensation was strange but not bothersom. It seemed to be slowly crawling down her arm toward her wristbone until it just covered the node on the outside of her wrist, where it stopped moving and felt like … nothing. She was staring at it trying to keep her planted hand as still as possible. Her arm was feeling the air movement in the room when she would expect the material prevent her arm from breathing. It was light. You could call it virtually weightless. The only thing that seemed different about it then when he was wearing it was it looked thicker and there were no dots.
“Go ahead, move your hand around,” He said while rotating his right hand in circles.”It likes … I mean, the material responds to movement. Some of the energy it requires is generated by motion.”
She slowly lifted her hand off the table and began to move and flex her hand. Again, it was the oddest feeling of nothing. No resistance at all. She had her palm facing up and noticed that the material formed perfectly to her arm. So perfectly that despite the thickness of the band the small undulations of her wrist tendons were comunicated through it. She flipped her hand over to realize that the dots were back. She watched them dance and change rythmicly, once a second. It still did not mean a thing to her but it sure was hypnotic. The circles of white didn’t just turn on and off, they faded in and out, but quickly. It was pleasant to watch.
“And this says the time?” she said almost laughing her words.
“It’s a type of code. A computer language that I have been developing for a long time now. It’s a bit of an inside joke. I guess it’s only funny to me.” He said reaching over and grasping her raised arm around the covered wrist. “Set … standard time… enter!”
The display faded away and was replaced by large block numbers showing standard time ticking away.
…2:37 03 pm
…2:37 04 pm
“I’ll pay you a thousand dollars for you to tell me how you are doing all these things.”
“That knowledge would cost you billions.”
“If I had it right now, I would give it.”
“Even if you had it I wouldn’t take it. This is my little slice of the world. The one thing that is mine. I think I am going to keep it.” He said pointing with the tip of his nose toward the watch.
“I suppose that means you want it back?”
His pause didn’t mean “yes” but she took it as such. She bent down and placed the watch face down on the cool surface of the table. My god, she thought, I can feel the table. She mimiced his action of wiping her hand clean and drew the same line with the same results. It was still stunning to her. He set his forarm right down where hers used to be and without picking the watch up it replaced itself on his arm.
“I guess I am never going to understand what I am seeing here am I?”
“What do you need to know?”
“Everything…”
“How about enough?
“Sold.”
He gestured with his hand for her to sit down. She raised a finger in the air to put him on pause while she went to her table to collect her things. She came back and sat down, settling into her chair. She slid down into a comfortable slouch and crossed her arms.
“Alright, lets hear it.” She said without any playfulness in her voice.
