“We won’t be using iPhones in five years,” Solder said, wiping sweat from his brow as the backpack’s cooling fans roared to life. “The device is invisible, weightless, and currently requires a backpack-sized lithium block to function. It occasionally heats up like a toaster oven against your lumbar spine, but our marketing team is branding that as ‘immersive thermal feedback.’”

Early adopter Brenda Swype, a paralegal trying to commute home, attempted to utilize the new interface on a crowded subway platform. She stood frozen near the turnstiles, aggressively poking her left palm while shouting her two-factor authentication code into the void. Fellow commuters gave her a wide berth as the headset cable snagged on a railing, nearly toppling her backward into a pretzel stand.

At press time, the company announced a software update for “ambient computing,” which mandates that users dictate their sensitive medical history at full volume while riding the bus.

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