Wilson came into my office carrying what appeared to be a large, flat screen TV monitor. He struggled to get in the door with it, and set it down gently on the carpet next to the chair that he sat down in across from me.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“I guess so,” I said, not wanting to hurt his feelings, or diminish his enthusiasm. “Got a deal on a TV at one of the neighborhood places?” I asked.
He looked hurt, like I had insulted him.
“No, no. It’s my new phone. It’s the X Alpha 7 model. It was just released this morning. You should have seen the lines at the store over on Fifth. I got there last night, around midnight,” he said, proudly.
“You…”
“Slept out on the sidewalk.” Wilson said.
“And this was by choice?”
“Yup, first guy in line got there two days ago. I mean, I don’t need to be first for the darn thing. It’s just a phone, but I was like twenty-sixth, I think. We were all really excited to be among the first people to get our hands on it.”
“And you definitely will need hands,” I said.
Wilson looked down at the phone like it was a living, breathing being. I half expected him to pet it, or ask it how it was doing.
“This may sound silly,” I said, “but I’m wondering how you make a call on that. I mean, there’s no way you can possibly hold it up to your ear.”
“Oh, sure I can,” he said. “They gave us a tutorial at the store. It’s really easy.”
I watched as he leaned over, and labored to pick up the phone. He swiped, and poked, and touched the screen and said, “Alfie, call home.”
He glanced at me and said, “Alfie is the Alpha digital voice assistant.”
“Of course.”
Wilson lifted the big, flat device as it rang, and put his ear against it.
“You just place your ear right here on the little outline in the center of the screen.”
A second later he was talking to his wife, checking in and discussing his big adventure of sleeping on a New York City sidewalk. He needed two hands to hold and angle the phone against the side of his head. After a few moments he said goodbye, and as he went to end the call the device slipped and dropped to the floor.
“Oh, no,” he yelled, reaching down and checking on it.
“Going to take some getting used to, huh?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s the same operating system and all, just a bigger…”
“Screen.”
“But so much easier to use than those little phones from last year,” he said. “Hey, did I mention the new table feature? Word is that Apple and Samsung are already working on something similar.”
“I’d love to see it.”
Wilson stood up, picked up his big phone and pressed a few buttons. Skinny little legs slid out from the device and suddenly the X Alpha 7 phone, was a table.
“Wow,” I said. “You can play cards on it.”
“And look,” Wilson said. “You can use this new keyboard feature that lets you play the piano on the screen.”
“Hard to think how we lived without these things all these years,” I said.
Wilson admired the X Alpha 7 for a bit, then looked back at me. “You should get one. Your little phone is kind of, well, kind of dated.”
“It’s only two years old,” I said.
“I know, but so much has changed. I mean the technology is so far advanced now.” He chuckled and pointed at my little phone on my desk. “I mean, you can’t turn that into a table.”
“I’ll give you that,” I said. “But it’s been awhile since I found myself desperately in need of a table for something.”
“Oh, you will. Once you have the table option, you can’t imagine living without it,” he said.
“I’m willing to take my chances,” I said.
Wilson had the thing resting on his lap now, and he scrolled, and swiped and poked the screen and seemed to be having a great time getting to know his new phone.
“Mind if I ask what the Alpha cost?” I asked.
“It’s the X Alpha 7, by the way. Just so you know.”
“Thanks for the clarification.”
“It was sixty-nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars,” he said, without a hint embarrassment.
I used both hands to work my jaw back into place from the sudden drop. “Six-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine dollars?”
“Yes, but they have attractive financing available,” Wilson said.
“How thoughtful.”
“It’s called a Phoneage, you know like a mortgage, except for your phone. You can even use it to cover the five-thousand dollar extended warranty. That covers everything that could possibly go wrong.”
The screen on the X Alpha 7 went dark and Wilson poked the phone a bit and looked puzzled. “Oh darn, I think the battery died.”
“But you just got it what, like three hours ago,” I said.
“Yes, but it does need frequent charging. They said that in the class they gave us,” he said.
He reached into his backpack and took out a thick, orange industrial strength electrical cord of some sort. “Get a load of this,” he said. “No more of those frail chargers like you have with your little phone.”
“No, that’s a little bigger, and thicker. You sure it’s okay to plug that into a wall socket? I mean, I don’t want to cause a power hit to the building or anything.”
“Please,” he said. “Using the wall outlet is so last year.”
He gently put the phone down on the floor, careful to rest it against the chair. He got up and looked back at me.
“Hey can you give me a hand getting my generator? It’s out in the hall. That’s another great thing about the X Alpha 7. It uses its own power supply.”