The Gadget

The following story is one I wrote as an exercise in my writers group. The task was to describe a gadget, in detail, that you were holding in your hand 30 years in the future. When I came to write the story I had misplaced my computer glasses and had been searching for them for days. I kept thinking that if it was my phone, which I misplace regularly, then I could just ring the phone and it would be easy to locate, but glasses don’t have a ring tone.  Thus was born the gadget story. The final version presented below has been redrafted and rewritten using the helpful editing tips from the members of my group.  Hope you enjoy it.

The Gadget

Last week I misplaced my mother’s engagement ring. I wasted an hour frantically looking for it before I found it.  However the panic filled experience threw me back 30 years to another time when I had misplaced my computer glasses.  Back then, in 2012, when a computer screen sat on the desk in front of me, I needed the computer glasses to be able to sit comfortably back in the chair and read the screen, while I typed on the keyboard.  Unlike today where we have voice operated computers and the work is projected onto the wall so we can see clearly. 

While the computer glasses stayed elusively out of sight, for four days I had to lean in close to the computer, reading glasses perched on my nose, peering at the screen, while hot sharp lances of pain built up and played viciously across my shoulders, every now and then side tracking and burning down my back.  In desperation I would once again go on the fruitless search, but to no avail. Finally on the morning of the fifth day I found the glasses on the vanity in the bathroom lurking behind the makeup jars, and yes, when I wasn’t looking for them.

Reliving that memory I thought “That’s it!  This is the third time in as many weeks I have misplaced something and wasted time searching for it”.  It was time to bite the bullet and pay the seemingly exorbitant amount of money for the gadget that 30 years ago I fantasized about being invented, every time I found myself searching for frustrating hours for some lost item.

So today here I am unwrapping the FINDER.  I have been tracking the ever new and inventive upgrades of this gadget for
the last couple of years, thinking I should wait until they had finally perfected it and in the hope that it would eventually be cheaper than the cost of small second hand car. The prototype was about the size of mobile phones back in 2012.  Newer versions came out, each one smaller than the last. In addition I was concerned about the possibility that while it would be helpful to have the Finder to locate lost things, what if the thing I lost was the Finder?   But I get ahead of myself here.

What is a Finder?  It is a gadget into which you program the details of individual items, of which you don’t want to lose track. Such things as sunglasses, phones, keepsakes, electronic keys, jewellery, even articles of shoes and clothes, as well as tools of various kinds, and larger items like cars, for when you forget where in the multistorey parking station you have left it. In short all the things that you are in the habit of misplacing. On request from you, the Finder then directs you to the item’s location. It is a time saving and stress relieving gadget that I have wanted for years.

Now technology has come a long way in 30 years since my computer glasses incident in 2012.  I unwrap the box and take out a teardrop shaped crystal pendant on a long silver chain. The newest Finders come in a variety of shapes and styles to suit the individual.  I have chosen one I can wear as jewellery or hidden under my clothes so I won’t misplace it.  However there is a small one inch square box that can be stuck on the wall in the house that is called the Finder’s Finder.  So if I do misplace the Finder I can easily access it again by asking the Finder’s Finder. 

The Finder pendant is hinged on one side and as  I touch the release it springs open revealing a small almost invisible microphone and a tiny light which when I lift it to my eye, reads my retina imprint and programs itself to me specifically. The computer chip is voice operated and has a tiny sensor pad which when passed over the object I want it to record, reads, and then locks into its memory, sensory recognition information of that object, including the voice label I give it.  These days of course cars have a personal ID signal that can easily be picked up by the finder.

So .. let’s try it.  First up my mother’s engagement ring.  I run the sensor light over the ring and record “my mother’s engagement ring”.  The device answers “Mother’s engagement ring recognized and recorded”.  I close the device. Now let’s test it out.  I place the ring on the floor under the window in the front bedroom.  I walk downstairs and out onto the deck.   I hold the closed device up to my face and say “Find my mother’s engagement ring.”  The pleasant female voice of the tiny computer says clearly “Mother’s engagement ring is on the floor under the window in the front bedroom of the house”.   When I am two feet from the window the Finder emits a happy little chirping sound that increases in volume the closer I get to the ring.  As I pick up the ring the device says smugly “you have found your mother’s engagement ring.”

Now I’m not really sure how this technology works but I believe it’s developed from the original GPS signal technology back in the early part of the century. By 2012 newer technology had just emerged where using an app on an I-phone someone could locate exactly where you were down to a specific room in a house, if you too had an I-phone at the time. However it works I love my Finder.  No more wasted time looking for lost items.  Why did I wait so long to buy it?

Well I have list of things to program into the Finder and I’m sure I will need to update that list from time to time. So I’ll go and do that now and I’ll talk to you later.


Postscript

A week ago I went looking for my very expensive recording device that I needed for my day job. This looks a little like a small phone. I estimate I spend altogether about 6 hours over a period of four days searching for it.  I found all the attachments but no recorder. I searched every cupboard, under desks, behind furniture – often using a torch to look into inaccessible nooks and crannies.  You know how when you search so long for something how it tends to leave the house turned upside down and how this adds to the frustration?  Well I haven’t found the thing.  My friend says it’s up in Nannies room behind the wallpaper. – Those bloody borrowers. All the while the Finder Gadget was running through my head. Oh how I wished I had one.

While I have set the gadget 30 years in the future, I believe that with the way technology is expanding almost at the speed of light, it will probably only be a few years when some clever techo will come up with it as an app on the phone. Bring it on guys.