Mood ring, empathy, and brown tomatoes
Chapter 1
It is the same old dream. I am standing on this open marshland with yellow grasses as far as I can see. I see a couple of giant dark brown tomatoes the size of a two-story house spread far apart. Minutes later, I hear the chirping of sparrows and a peck on both my shoulders. Before I knew it, I flew afloat with wings on both shoulders. I keep soaring up, flying past the marshlands over a rice plantation. I’m panicking and sweating as I have no control over my wings. The size of the rice plantation keeps shrinking beneath my eyes. My thoughts blackout when my fear reaches its zenith.
‘What are you thinking so deeply about?’ asked Claire looking into Frank’s eyes.
‘Oh, umm.. nothing. Just a weird dream I had yesterday. Do you think dreams have meaning?’ Frank responded, staring at the sunset.
‘I like to think that dreams are a stream of consciousness that can shed light on some of our unexpressed desires and needs.’
*What’s with my desire for tomatoes? I hate tomatoes. Frank pondered.
‘As eloquent as it sounds, for the most part, I think most of my dreams are just bullshit. I don’t overthink my dreams,’ quipped Claire.
*Both of them chuckled. Claire pauses just as she sees a teenage couple approach them head-on. She took a quick peek into Frank’s eyes.
Tell me something, If you see me today for the first time in the park, will you ask me for a walk?
*Frank smiled, leaned in, and kissed her right chin. He closed his eyes and laid his forehead on Claire’s sweaty shoulders. He held Clarie’s hand and heard the mood rings clacking against one other. He peeked into them and quickly averted his eyes.
Mood ring. It all started ten months ago when Frank had to travel to Paris for six months. Just a week before his departure, he proposed to Claire, ‘Hey baby, what if we could express our emotions in a smart, connected way when we are far away?’
‘What do you mean by smart, connected way?’
‘Ummm… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I can’t exactly find the right words to express my feelings to you. When you are near me, you understand my silences; you make it easier for me.
What would I do six months away from you? That’s why I built these mood rings for us. It’s an electronic intelligent wearable connected to WiFi. The idea here is that we express our mood by rotating the trackball to tune the color of the LEDs to every possible hue that reflects how we feel at the moment. Ring also has a heating pad that adapts to our body temperatures. So..If you don’t feel the warmth on the ring; I might be taking a bath or sleeping. The ring has perovskite solar cells to power the battery and gets charged even in ambient room light. Charging should not be a problem. This should work well for a long time until broken.’
‘Interesting. Just another experiment of yours?’
‘Just another experiment of mine.’
Over time, both have started to understand each other’s emotions through the color of LED.
When Claire set her ring to yellow, she meant to say, ‘I feel like a genius.’, which is often!
Dark green — ‘I am having a tough day.’
Teal — ‘I am exhausted. I wish you cook for me today.’
Frank expressed his emotions as,
Red — ‘Rough day at work. I need a hug.’
Brown — ’I feel horny. I wish you are here with me.’
Grey — ‘Leave me alone. I am on Cave mode.’
White — ‘I am bored. Let’s do something together.’
Beige — ‘I feel amazing. I need a hug.’
When one of them turns the ring to a random new hue of LED, the other always calls and checks in. Sometimes Frank sets his ring to shades of orange, which Claire understood as ‘I feel fear, motivation, and focus.’ But Frank couldn’t articulate his feelings to Claire whenever he set his ring to shades of Orange. Nevertheless, Frank loved how he could express his complicated emotions in hues of light when he could not find the right words to express his feelings. The mood ring connected them in new ways when they both were away.
***
Frank married Claire because she was the first girl he met who could be his wife, best friend, paramour, partner, and salope. Claire is more than half the happiness in his life. More precisely, he likes to think that way since he read somewhere that marrying the right person is more than half the happiness in a man’s life.
Why am I madly in love with this woman? Frank used to ask himself often. That she mimics Hitler's voice with her French-tainted English accent to motivate and cheer him up. That they both could talk art all day without food? Or the mole that is asymmetrically positioned between her lower lip and chin? That the only time he feels possessiveness is when another man can make her laugh louder than his silly jokes? Or that she destroys him in Chess and makes love to him after that? Or the fact that she goes on a solo trip around the world for two weeks every year? Maybe it’s because she could involuntarily make his body shiver gently at the scent of her sweat.
He concluded that it did not matter. Maybe it’s two or three of those reasons. Which ones? He couldn’t wrap his head around that question. Maybe, it’s all of those little reasons.
‘It’s the wrong question, all wrong questions!’ He often murmurs to himself.
As with so many other questions in life, he thought we were trying to answer another wrong question.
***
‘How is she doing?’
‘Who? Preet? She’s doing good. We met at Mario’s for a drink. She hasn’t changed a bit.’
‘Isn’t that where you guys met for the first time?’
‘Oh, yes. I am surprised you still remember that trivia, baby.’
‘I remember all the stories you have told me about your exes. Haha…What is she doing that these days?’
‘She’s working as a radiologist at UPMC. She’s doing pretty well herself; she still got her wry humor.
‘Married?’
‘She’s been seeing someone, still undecided between a partner and five dogs for life. She’s adopted a new dog recently.’
‘You went to her place yesterday?’
‘Yeah, baby. It wasn’t planned. She invited me to her place as it was only a mile away. We had a few drinks at the bar and just walked to her place.’
‘Haa… I see’
*A squirrel strolls with a walnut a few feet away from where Frank and Claire are sitting. A swirl of wind gushed past them, forcing them to close their faces with one hand. The squirrel stood there, looking at the sky for a while before scurrying and climbing the nearby tree.
‘So your mood ring’s battery died last night?’
‘No, I think it was working fine last night. Why?’
‘For almost an hour, I couldn’t feel the warmth on my mood ring. I thought you removed it.’
‘Hum.. I’ll check the Peltier sensor data after reaching our room,’
‘Okay. I was just curious.’
‘Sensors could behave funky sometimes,’ quipped Frank.
*Claire did not respond. She stared at the squirrel, moving fascinatingly over the tree trunk for a moment, pausing, then switching her gaze to the sunset. Three years ago, they met at the same Schenley Park for the first time.
Breaking the awkward silence that ensembled them, Frank said, ‘I love you, Claire,’ steering his eye away from the squirrel.
‘I know,’ responded Claire, still looking straight into the sunset. Frank looked into her eyes like a guilty kid who ate his chocolate without his parent’s consent. A few minutes passed by, and Claire, with a slight smile, said, ‘Love you too, baby.’
*Frank held her hand and squeezed it gently. In the past couple of months, the mood ring allowed them to self-reflect on their emotions throughout the day and to pay attention to the feelings of one another.
‘Sometimes, I don’t want Claire to know how I feel...
Maybe the heating pad was a bad idea…
Are we both manipulating each other with this mood ring?’ he pondered. His thought drifted again to the dream last night. ‘Why tomatoes? I freakin’ hate tomatoes.’
~Rahul Sekar
P.S: The concept of a mood ring is inspired by an IoT project by Carnegie Mellon Alums Kira Mulshine and Corey Williams.
I collaborated with my CMU cohort and friend, Ussama Bin Naveed, to illustrate the product concept sketches. Ussama is Freelancing. Check out his Fiverr page.
