Advanced Mythology by Jody Lynn Nye

keypad, earpiece, and mouthpiece. “As you can see, it’s a personal digital assistant. And a cell telephone. But it has dozens of other uses. You see the modular design. It’s amazingly versatile. It can do just about anything you want it to.”
    Everyone watched her hands intently as she flipped the small device in her hands. Keith studied it with fascination. It wasn’t really a box, but a stack of very thin panels held together by tiny hinges. The other copywriters were murmuring to one another and making notes. Dorothy drew furiously on her sketchpad.
    Ms. Schick turned on the unit. The screen came to life on a crisp, colorful graphic rotating over a black background. Keith was impressed by the sharpness and resolution. So were the others. The technician grinned at their coos and hums of admiration.
    “High-res monitor,” Lehmann said. “We got tired of screens where you couldn’t see the small details.”
    “User interface is multiply configured,” Ms. Schick continued. “With the stylus,” which popped out of the side of the unit, “you can use it as a normal palmtop. The screen is touch-sensitive, so you can pull down the menus, or doodle on it, write in the character box or touch the character keyboard that pops up. But what sets this little guy apart from the others—among many other innovations—is the keyboard.” Jen Schick held onto the screen and flipped the rear portion down and away from the rest of it, pressed a minute catch, and opened out two of the panels, which turned into four, snapped out flat. “This one is big enough for even a touch-typist with big hands to use. We recessed the keys slightly so you get a slight “reward” action when you press each solenoid. There are several PDA units out there with keyboard peripherals, but they aren’t integral to the unit. Closed up, some of them are bigger than their PDAs.”
    Theo Lehmann spread out his hands side by side. “You can use your thumbs across the breadth of the keyboard, but you don’t have to. The majority of the workforce does not need to be retrained for this platform.”
    An approving hum rose from the PDQ executives. Even Dorothy was nodding to herself. Keith couldn’t take his eyes off it. He thought it was wonderful.
    “Memory?” asked Rollin Chisholm, his voice husky.
    “Four hundred gigs running on a 12.8 GHz FlagChip IC, in the original configuration,” said the engineer. “The next generation will have more. It runs real Windows or Linux or any other system you want to install—with its own mini CD-ROM, you don’t need a docking station. It’s an extraordinary device. It deserves extraordinary treatment.”
    “We agree,” Dorothy said. “It’s amazing.”
    Keith watched the engineer fold and refold into different configurations. Ms. Schick flipped the keyboard shut but left the unit folded out into two panels so the telephone keypad was beneath the screen. She set it down on the desk, where it stood by itself.
    “This little ring here,” Jen Schick went on, twisting a stubby cylinder that was mounted along one end of a long edge on the upright portion, “is a camera eye. The GF Mark One will take over 600 pictures on a memory stick or ten times that on a writable mini-CD. It can record an hour of video or more, depending on how much resolution you want. The drive is back here. You can see that we’ve reduced the drive size so that it doesn’t add bulk. The drive is Theo’s baby. We’re ready to license out the patent to seven other companies, but we want to get our own unit to market first.” Lehmann tilted his head with a modest expression.
    “Incredible,” murmured Allen. “The disk drive is thinner than a checkbook.”
    “The camera lens will swivel in any direction. You can use it as a digital video camera and record on a disk or stick, or send streaming video over either your wireless phone line or the Internet. Of course it’s fully Internet compatible. One of the things we thought the