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No soft pinks and golds in her makeup today Thick liner around her eyes and lipstick like a ripe, black cherry made her look like she was ready to ride into battle Ms Julia Anderson had come to meet him in full armor today

“Hello, Ferro, how has your day been? No steel aquatic creatures in your office I see”

“Not ”

“Right Well I’ve brought ation syste, also black, and pulled out her tablet co up a three dier, showing different angles, the di in and out depending on what she was featuring

“It will be touch screen And voice activated It will be able to look things up by landmark or by street, state, zip code, whatever It will be especially handy when you’re lost, and say, you’re on Third Street, but you need to get to the wharf So you can push a button on your steering wheel, activate voice recognition and say, ‘How far am I from the wharf?’ And it can tell you and map a route”

“Good ideas,” he said And they were Julia did have a way of thinking like the kind of person ould need to use this piece of technology

It was harder for him Maybe because he didn’t understand people especially well Not normal, functional people

They spent the next few hours altering her rendering, discussing features, s one of them found necessary and the other felt was useless

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed the conception of a product so much And it had to do with Julia With the fact that she felt so deeply about what it was they were doing It iving

By the time they were finished, there were five empty cartons on his desk that had once contained Chinese food, and they were on their fourth pot of coffee And the sun had gone down, their afternoonpast work hours

“This is it!” Julia said, standing up fron How can they not? It’s genius Beyond genius, if I say so myself I mean, really”

When it cauise her passion all the way And he was glad She tapped into a part of herself, a part of life, that was off-li near her when she was overfloith energy and exuberance was intoxicating