“Uhh yeah, I’ll have the… coffee please.”
“How would you like your coffee, sir?”
“Umm, I’ll just have it uh, plain… Thank you.”
I felt the next three people in line cringing, and honestly I couldn’t blame them. I was taking a girl out on a date to get coffee, and I didn’t even like coffee. I cleared my throat and turned to Emily. I considered several ways to begin small talk but instead I just stood there like an idiot for a few seconds. I was about to ask how she was doing before the cashier cut me off with her miserable voice.

“That will be $6.34 sir.”
I paid for our coffee and we found a nice high table to sit at by the window. I glanced down at my seat and noticed a few bread crumbs on it. Normally I would have brushed them off casually and sat down, but today I had a date. I weighed my options, and decided it was too soon to do anything that might jeopardize this date. My jeans could handle a few crumbs anyway. I took a seat and watched her sip her coffee in silence before deciding it was worth opening my mouth.

“So,” I said, elongating the vowel for a tad too long, “How are you?”
“I’m doing pretty well actually. Thanks for taking me out here. I like this place a lot,” she said, glancing around at the shop’s simple design. I always thought this place was absolutely dreadful, but at least I did one thing right.

“Of course. I love this place. I come here for coffee all the time,” I replied, digging myself deeper into this hole.
“Wow,” she said, with a soft giggle, “I can’t believe I’ve never seen you here before.” Luckily before I could respond, she continued, “Hey look I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to use the bathroom. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She smiled at me before heading towards the bathroom. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. This whole dating thing was hard work already. I got up and threw out my coffee, and glanced down at my phone. A notification marked the home page, along with an abstract, vaguely dog-shaped icon, over a blue background.

“Max’s activity is higher than usual! Tap here to see what he’s thinking.”

I opened the BarkMeter app out of habit and read through his last few thoughts.

“Hi!” “Hi!” “Hi friend!” “Hi!” “What’s this?” “Where is Stephen?”

I smirked at the thought of my dog missing me. It’s crazy, I thought, how quickly technology develops. Just a couple years ago we never could have imagined being able to read our pets’ thoughts like this. And now that we’ve found out their thought patterns mostly revolve around saying hi to everyone and everything, we mostly just ignore what our pets are thinking.

I was glancing through some of Max’s more coherent thoughts about fire hydrants and squirrels when Emily came back. The rest of the date went surprisingly well and I left the not-so-bad-anymore coffee place with a big grin on my face.

As I headed out to my car, my phone vibrated violently, startling me out of my daydream. I could never quite figure out how to make that thing buzz at a consistent intensity; no matter what it would sometimes go completely unfelt, usually only for important things, and sometimes it would feel like an earthquake. I shook my head amused and retrieved my phone from my front pocket. I was again notified of Max’s increased activity. Opening his thoughts only returned a bunch of jumbled characters. Whether it was a bug in the system or Max was just that excited, I put it out of my mind and resumed my skippy walk straight into my car. I fumbled for the keys while making sure nobody saw me bump into my bright red SUV.

When I got home, Max greeted me with about a thousand licks as usual, and I scratched him behind his ears the way he loved it.

“Hi Stephen! Hi! I love you Stephen!” read BarkMeter when I opened my phone. I smiled again and read over my dog’s profile.

Max

Breed: Corgi

Age: 3 years

Gender: Male

Height: 10.5 inches

Favorite phrase: Hi!

Out of all my friends’ dogs, not a single one had a favorite phrase other than “Hi!” It was cute. I continued reading over the familiar words.

Nature: Relaxed

Favorite food: BarkMix™

Max never had BarkMix, but BarkMeter always liked to promote its own brand. I couldn’t blame them, though, since they offered their software for free.

Average activity: Medium-high

Today: Extremely high

Average distance walked: 8 miles

Today: 17 miles

Average time outside: 3 hours

Today: 8 hours

That’s strange, I thought, he must have found a way to sneak outside. Ignoring the rest of the stats, I went over to the recorded video page, but the only thing that was there was a few minutes of him playing with my pillow. It’s amazing how often the video recorder fails to record anything, I thought, given that it can literally read my dog’s thoughts. Either way, I’ll need to wash my pillow and figure out how he got out.

I wasted the rest of the day watching tv and playing games, determined not to do anything of value. I ordered a pizza, knowing that my fridge was full, and that I would have to eat the whole thing. By the time I was ready to sleep, my alarm clock read 12:38 AM. I yawned, stepping towards my bed, but something caught me off guard. It took me a moment to realize there was sand all over the floor. I briefly wondered how it got there before forgetting about it, deciding I would clean it up in the morning. I fell asleep with my arms around Max’s soft belly.

I woke up at my usual time, leaving enough time to get ready and make it to work with about thirty seconds to spare, while conveniently forgetting about the sandy mess on the floor. I offered my coworker Sean a cheerful smile, to which he responded by turning his back to me as usual. When I stepped into my office I opened up a spreadsheet from four months ago on my computer and fetched my phone from my pocket, trying to remember the last time I did anything at my job. Two notifications marked my homepage.

A BarkMeter notification read “Max is feeling lonely. Tap here to send him a voice message!” I ignored it and eagerly opened the text message from Emily.

“Hey, I had a really good time with you today. I hope we can meet up again sometime soon. – Sent 1:10 AM”

I was startled by the response, but I couldn’t hold back the smile that was quickly spreading across my face. I began my reply.

“I’m really glad you had a good time, I did too. I was thinking we coul-”

My boss stepped in and I quickly threw my phone on the ground and tried to look busy.

“Good to see you on time as usual Stephen.”

“Good morning, how are you?”
“I’m well, thank you. What are you working on today?”

“W-Well,” I cleared my throat, “I’m working on aggregating data from our website usage. General information like the average age of our users or-”

“That’s good to hear. Keep me updated.”
He left as suddenly as he showed up, and I took a deep breath. Luckily he didn’t notice the “Last edited: 4 months ago” message at the top or that the document was still in view-only mode. I picked up my phone and finished my message to Emily, suggesting we go out to dinner on Wednesday night.

BarkMeter reminded me of Max’s loneliness again, and I figured I might as well respond.

“Hey bud! I’m at work right now, so I’m sorry I can’t spend time with you, but I promise I’ll take you for a walk when I get home.”

I watched his perspective as the message played twice. He darted out from under my bed and licked the speaker a few times, panting excitedly. That’s strange, I remembered, I didn’t see him before I left for work today. He must have been sleeping under my bed.

Max used to hate being under my bed. He saw a spider under there once when he was a couple months old, and he refused to go back there since. I had no problem with it, but I was glad he was warming up to the place. Maybe adding in a small blanket helped.

The memory was interrupted by a reply from Emily.

“That sounds great! I’ll see you then. And I can’t wait to meet Max. 🙂 – Sent 10:22 AM”

I really liked her. She was really sweet and funny, and she liked dogs. I was glad I had an excuse to have her over. Max would like her a lot.

The rest of my day passed quickly, and I was still excited about my date with Emily. When I got home, I couldn’t hold back my excitement, and I laughed while shouting for Max. But my happiness quickly turned to concern when he did not come running to me. I called out a few more times.

“Max! Max? Max, where are you? This isn’t funny Max! Come out, we’re gonna go for a walk!”

Nothing. I looked all around my house for him, even under my bed, but I didn’t see him anywhere. I ran outside and checked my yard, but he didn’t show up there either. I sprinted around the block and still found no trace of him. I continued shouting his name, panicked, until one of my neighbors came outside.

“Is everything alright?” said the old man. I always liked Mr. Lee.

“I can’t find Max. I don’t know where he went. I’ve been looking everywhere for him. Have you seen him?” I answered, my voice shaking.

“No I haven’t,” he said with a frown, “You should file a police report. Don’t worry. He’ll show up eventually.” Mr. Lee offered a kind smile, which calmed me somewhat.

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that. Thank you.”

I filed the missing dog report and drove around for another hour, before coming home exhausted.

“Oh Max, where could you be?” I sighed, collapsing onto the couch. As I nodded off with the tv on, I swore I felt something lick my face. Too tired to open my eyes, I fell asleep smiling.