A mysterious hooded man hands you a digital watch. The numbers that appear on the watch seem to change at random.
The guy’s hoodie was surprisingly deep. I don’t mean it was intellectually complex or whatever, it just... hid his face really well. It cast shadows in all the right places to make him seem sinister and mysterious. It obscured his features.
When I was a kid, and I got a hoodie for the first time, I imagined the hood covering my face and casting deep shadows like that, like I was a character in a comic book or the grim reaper or something; but really, a hoodie’s hood normally just covers your head, maybe keeps out a little rain, keeps in some body heat.
So the guy caught my attention for the perfection of his hoodie.
He jostled me on the bus and I turned to look at him, which is how I noticed the hoodie; in fact, I was so busy marveling at the hood’s beauty and amazingness that I almost missed the guy himself. He looked surprised to see me.
That is, his body language... he leaned away from me, the posture crying out “You?!? Here?!?” as eloquently as if he’d yelled it.
I don’t know if I knew the guy, actually, because he was wearing that perfect hood; nothing about the way he moved or whatever called anyone in particular to mind. I was still thinking about the hoodie, anyhow.
It was dark grey, and it looked soft and warm; it was one of the ones that didn’t have a zip in the front, so it had the huge kangaroo pocket in front. It didn’t have any branding anywhere on it, which made me want it much more, but also made it difficult to figure out where I might get one of my own.
I opened my mouth to ask the guy about his hoodie, or at least say something like, “Hey man, that’s great hoodie,” when he seemed to get over his surprise and leaned suddenly toward me, grabbed my hand, and shoved something into it.
“Here,” he said, and then turned and darted...
Nowhere, really, because the bus was in motion. He just managed to turn away from me and take a couple of steps toward the back door, effectively ending our interaction.
“Hey,” I said, looking down at my hand. He’d shoved a watch into my hand; it looked vaguely expensive, and it was heavy. It was... I guess the most unique thing about it was that it was a heavy, expensive looking digital watch; it had the sense of a wristwatch that would be worn as an art piece, a bit of cool and a bit of conspicuous consumption, but those are usually analog.
I was assuming it had been stolen, and the dude was getting rid of it. I had just about framed a story in my mind where he’d stolen it from someone who looked vaguely like me, and seeing me thought that I’d recognized him and he was trying to settle up or something by returning the watch.
He was still only a few feet away, separated from me only by his turned back and the delicate, soap-bubble thin and delicate social privacy field that surrounds all passengers on public transport. I reached through the bubble and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” I said again, “What the hell?”
He turned back toward me suddenly, and I jerked my hand back; I’ve played enough fantasy-themed video games to have an instinctual expectation that when a guy in a deep, feature-obscuring hood spins to face you in that specific way, looking sort of at-bay with his back against the back-door stairwell, crouched just so, that he’s likely to start flinging fireballs or something in your direction. I flinched.
“You’ll figure it out,” he said. He didn’t have a low, growly, Batman voice, as I was sort of expecting; but he did manage to convey... portent.
The bus stopped, the back door didn’t open. “Back door!” yelled the guy in the hood, in his portentous voice. The back door hissed open; the guy looked back at me, his face still hidden in the shadows, his posture framed in the bus doors for a second; I thought he was going to have something more to say, but then he was gone.
He fell. It looked to me like he tripped over his own shoelaces, getting down off the back of the bus. He was picking himself up off the sidewalk, dusting himself off, as the doors closed and the bus pulled away.
The watch didn’t seem to be showing anything like an actual time; there were five numbers, with no colon, and they flickered when they changed, which they did constantly.
I don’t wear a watch; like everybody else under the age of a bazillion, I use my phone as a timepiece. I strapped the thing to my wrist; it had a black leather band with a buckle. Whoever was the habitual wearer of the watch had smaller wrists than me, I could see from the stretching of one of the holes.
That was it, really; that’s where I got the watch. It measures IQ, or some analogue thereof; it seems to be better at predicting raw problem-solving potential than actual IQ numbers. When you wear it on your left wrist, there’s a tiny dot on the side of the watch that faces away from you when you’re looking at the face; point that dot at someone, and it measures their intelligence.
It took me a long time to figure that out, actually; I was sitting across the table from one of the technical founders of the company I work for, and the watch was displaying a higher number than I’d ever seen before, and I developed a hypothesis; testing seems to have borne it out.
It’s good for interviewing people, and it’s given me a pretty good sense for how to modulate my expectations, but other than that...
I have no idea why that guy in the hood thought I should have it, or what his deal was; I’ve never seen him again.
And that hoodie doesn’t seem to be for sale anywhere; I’ve never managed to find one quite like it. Irritating, to see something perfect and then have it be gone again.
The guy’s hoodie was surprisingly deep. I don’t mean it was intellectually complex or whatever, it just... hid his face really well. It cast shadows in all the right places to make him seem sinister and mysterious. It obscured his features.
When I was a kid, and I got a hoodie for the first time, I imagined the hood covering my face and casting deep shadows like that, like I was a character in a comic book or the grim reaper or something; but really, a hoodie’s hood normally just covers your head, maybe keeps out a little rain, keeps in some body heat.
So the guy caught my attention for the perfection of his hoodie.
He jostled me on the bus and I turned to look at him, which is how I noticed the hoodie; in fact, I was so busy marveling at the hood’s beauty and amazingness that I almost missed the guy himself. He looked surprised to see me.
That is, his body language... he leaned away from me, the posture crying out “You?!? Here?!?” as eloquently as if he’d yelled it.
I don’t know if I knew the guy, actually, because he was wearing that perfect hood; nothing about the way he moved or whatever called anyone in particular to mind. I was still thinking about the hoodie, anyhow.
It was dark grey, and it looked soft and warm; it was one of the ones that didn’t have a zip in the front, so it had the huge kangaroo pocket in front. It didn’t have any branding anywhere on it, which made me want it much more, but also made it difficult to figure out where I might get one of my own.
I opened my mouth to ask the guy about his hoodie, or at least say something like, “Hey man, that’s great hoodie,” when he seemed to get over his surprise and leaned suddenly toward me, grabbed my hand, and shoved something into it.
“Here,” he said, and then turned and darted...
Nowhere, really, because the bus was in motion. He just managed to turn away from me and take a couple of steps toward the back door, effectively ending our interaction.
“Hey,” I said, looking down at my hand. He’d shoved a watch into my hand; it looked vaguely expensive, and it was heavy. It was... I guess the most unique thing about it was that it was a heavy, expensive looking digital watch; it had the sense of a wristwatch that would be worn as an art piece, a bit of cool and a bit of conspicuous consumption, but those are usually analog.
I was assuming it had been stolen, and the dude was getting rid of it. I had just about framed a story in my mind where he’d stolen it from someone who looked vaguely like me, and seeing me thought that I’d recognized him and he was trying to settle up or something by returning the watch.
He was still only a few feet away, separated from me only by his turned back and the delicate, soap-bubble thin and delicate social privacy field that surrounds all passengers on public transport. I reached through the bubble and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” I said again, “What the hell?”
He turned back toward me suddenly, and I jerked my hand back; I’ve played enough fantasy-themed video games to have an instinctual expectation that when a guy in a deep, feature-obscuring hood spins to face you in that specific way, looking sort of at-bay with his back against the back-door stairwell, crouched just so, that he’s likely to start flinging fireballs or something in your direction. I flinched.
“You’ll figure it out,” he said. He didn’t have a low, growly, Batman voice, as I was sort of expecting; but he did manage to convey... portent.
The bus stopped, the back door didn’t open. “Back door!” yelled the guy in the hood, in his portentous voice. The back door hissed open; the guy looked back at me, his face still hidden in the shadows, his posture framed in the bus doors for a second; I thought he was going to have something more to say, but then he was gone.
He fell. It looked to me like he tripped over his own shoelaces, getting down off the back of the bus. He was picking himself up off the sidewalk, dusting himself off, as the doors closed and the bus pulled away.
The watch didn’t seem to be showing anything like an actual time; there were five numbers, with no colon, and they flickered when they changed, which they did constantly.
I don’t wear a watch; like everybody else under the age of a bazillion, I use my phone as a timepiece. I strapped the thing to my wrist; it had a black leather band with a buckle. Whoever was the habitual wearer of the watch had smaller wrists than me, I could see from the stretching of one of the holes.
That was it, really; that’s where I got the watch. It measures IQ, or some analogue thereof; it seems to be better at predicting raw problem-solving potential than actual IQ numbers. When you wear it on your left wrist, there’s a tiny dot on the side of the watch that faces away from you when you’re looking at the face; point that dot at someone, and it measures their intelligence.
It took me a long time to figure that out, actually; I was sitting across the table from one of the technical founders of the company I work for, and the watch was displaying a higher number than I’d ever seen before, and I developed a hypothesis; testing seems to have borne it out.
It’s good for interviewing people, and it’s given me a pretty good sense for how to modulate my expectations, but other than that...
I have no idea why that guy in the hood thought I should have it, or what his deal was; I’ve never seen him again.
And that hoodie doesn’t seem to be for sale anywhere; I’ve never managed to find one quite like it. Irritating, to see something perfect and then have it be gone again.
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