“McCarthy speaking,” she answered, turning away from the window so that she wouldn’t be distracted by the lump of fat eating a lump of fat on a bun.
“Doc, hey!” said a cheery male voice. “It’s Louis. Third floor? Uh, Convenience Technologies?”
He sounded like he expected her to remember him, so she uttered a brief polite laugh, as though in recognition while she searched her memory. “Ah, yes, Louis. The...birthday party. Two weeks ago. You were...working on home hubs?”
He sounded please and relieved. “That’s right! Yeah. God, it’s really nice talking to you again. How have you been?”
Oh, for god’s sake… “Busy,” she answered, smiling so hard that she was gritting her teeth in an effort to fooling her brain into thinking this was a pleasant interaction. It wasn’t really working, but at least she kept her voice under control.
Yeah, she remembered Louis. Smart. Treated her like she was smart, too, which was a pleasant change from the other men she’d met in his field. Spent the whole conversation not quite staring at her cleavage, but at least he was “not quite” staring instead of openly staring. On the whole, could have been worse. And now, he was calling her work number.
I swear to God, if he asks me for drinks…
“Still busy, in fact,” she added quickly before he could do just that. “I’m with a subject. Do you need help with something?”
“Oh, right! Uh...” Well, at least he had the good graces to sound embarrassed. “Well, our product is entering the initial testing phases, and we’re sending a few units out to some select folk for feedback. I was wondering if you wanted to try one out. Might help with being busy...” He was trying to sound tempting. Well, it did sound pretty tempting.
“I don’t know. After that fiasco with Alexa and the dollhouse? And the follow-up fiasco with the news report about it?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Louis said firmly. And quickly. He really wanted to make this sale. “Or at least, we will immediately rectify the situation if it tries. And of course, you’d be well compensated for you time. All we ask is that you let us install the device, and then talk to it like it’s a real person. Uh, a personal servant who will never complain.”
Evie sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She should say no. At the very least, she didn’t want to give Louis any ideas about further relationship potential. He clearly found her attractive (she knew that just by the tone of his voice) and might very well be using this test as an excuse to get closer to her.
On the other hand, she was curious what they’d cooked up. Rumors had been circulating about the device for some months, stuff about holographic interfaces and artificial neural mapping and real conversation potential. And while she was reasonably certain similar conversations had gone around Google and Amazon’s R&D offices, she was getting excited for it in spite of herself. Plus, compensation was always good.
“All right,” she said finally. “But I want to know what I’m getting into. Have someone meet with me tomorrow to go over the manual and design specs.”
“I can absolutely do that!” He was probably planning to do it himself. “Thanks, Doc. This really means a lot to us down here.”
“I’m sure it does.” She hung up before he could gush any further. He didn’t call back, so that must have been the end of it.
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