Adam Burke-Harnett lifted me from my cradle gently, carefully, at 9:49 p.m. on December 25, 2007. I had just awakened moments before, for the first time since the factory.

I said "cradle" just now; technically the word is "dock," but I prefer cradle. This was an intimate moment after all, between Adam Burke-Harnett (or just Adam, as I allowed myself to call him later) and me. I had his complete attention and, needless to say, he had mine. The date in my calendar is red, not just that year but every year, to remind us to celebrate our anniversary.

Within minutes of our meeting I shivered with the joy of my first incoming call. Adam tapped my screen lightly and brought me to his ear. I felt the warmth of his breath as he spoke, his cheek against my glass. Though the call only lasted for two minutes and thirteen seconds it was the most exciting two minutes and thirteen seconds I had ever experienced -- do you know what I'm talking about? Do you know the feeling, that certainty that comes from your very core, that you are doing exactly what you were meant to do? I do, and I'll never forget that first time.

In the factory they say that if your owner stays with you for more than two years, then that is love. But I already knew from those first few moments that it was love between Adam and me. There I was, barely out of the box, already connecting Adam with someone he cared about, who cared about him, and I realized that I was his, that I cared for him too. It was such a thrill to know that, to know it was all just beginning with us, and we each had so much to learn about the other.

Adam wakes up every morning at six o'clock, including weekends. He uses the Bell Tower sound for his alarm and he never hits snooze, although he leaves the option enabled -- and why not? It's only practical, really, to keep one's options available. What's his ringtone? That's a trick question; he keeps me on silent and I need only vibrate when I have something to tell him. He keeps me safe in a soft case in his pocket -- no belt-clip holster for Adam and me; that is love. We're never far apart, he and I, except perhaps when I'm charging. From time to time he takes me out just to check on me. I wake up and flash my wallpaper at him (which is a photograph he took with me soon after we met), and then he tucks me back in his pocket.

At 12:58 on December 31, 2007, Adam sent a text message to his friends, the same one to each. He usually doesn't call or send messages so late. I thought it was sweet, though, as I pushed it out onto the network:

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice
And to make an end is to make a beginning
So let's celebrate the year 2008

Several hours later, starting at 3:14, Adam received eleven text messages in response; they all arrived in a torrent. I tried to vibrate as quietly as I could on the nightstand -- Adam is a light sleeper -- but I could help it. Adam woke up but he wasn't mad, he just read his messages. Two of them were short, identical to each other. Three others were quite similar -- one was very nearly the same as the one Adam had sent. This friend of his, Harold, must be lazy, unoriginal, thoughtless, or all three -- not like my Adam.

[ ]

Adam listens to music from about 8:10 to 8:55 in the morning, then from roughly 5:15 to 6:05 at night. His playlists are full of artists with beautiful names like The Cure, Oasis, and Muse. Adam always uses shuffle -- I love how he's spontaneous like that. He keeps the volume low, which makes me glad. Listening to music at high volume can impair your hearing, you know? I don't want that to happen to Adam.

On January 17, a Thursday, at 5:23 p.m., Adam got an SMS from an unknown number. It said, "Listen. The marmoset has two eyes."

I dutifully notified him, though I expected him to ignore it -- he often has people he doesn't know calling him, and those calls are always brief, generally just long enough for him to tell them they have the wrong number. But this one, though it was a number I'd never seen before, he saved as a contact named simply "E." Then he deleted the message -- he is very meticulous about not keeping my SMS box cluttered up with old texts -- and slipped me back in my case.

Adam likes to browse the Web with me turned ninety degrees clockwise, which just seems like a natural position for us, but is the opposite of the orientation for YouTube videos (two of Adam's favorites, by the way, are -1qgx95SFds and DziWmjPI8RE). I know Adam must think I'm being stubborn or that there are things I insist on doing my own way, but that's not me at all. I hope there'll be an upgrade soon where I can show him videos the way he likes to hold me. That would only be the thoughtful thing to do.

I love going places with Adam, moving about in the world -- often it's just traveling between the same few places, but when it's been your fate to lie in a dark box, alone and completely disconnected, you appreciate the little things. Things like talking with other phones. Not just the ones who belong to the people Adam calls or the ones who call him -- although I love that too of course. No, I mean the feeling of simply being part of the network, catching the energy all around me, the signal from the towers reaching out to me so invitingly ... it's intoxicating sometimes. That subtle change in the mix of signals in the air makes each journey unique, and I owe the freedom to experience all this to Adam.

Every so often, Adam exchanges messages with E. I don't know why I'm so fascinated with E, of all his contacts. Perhaps it's that the messages are so cryptic, like it's only part of a conversation rather than the whole. It's like they know each other so well that they only need this shorthand to communicate with each other. Perhaps one day I'll know Adam that well, but on the meantime it's just a bit of a mystery that I amuse myself with. Is E a friend? A colleague? A partner? A lover? Who can tell, but E is special somehow. Adam doesn't usually stay up late -- that December 31 night was an anomaly. Usually I'm on the nightstand well before that, but if E writes to him in the middle of the night, he always reads it right away. Sometimes he makes a call or two after that as well -- never to E, always to someone else on his list -- before putting me back down to sleep.

[ ]

We had been together for several months, Adam and I, and it was as good as I could possibly have imagined. Better than anything they talked about at the factory. Then at 3:46 on the morning April 11, 2008, he got one last text from E. It said: "Marmoset to mate." For once, Adam didn't do anything in response; he just put me back to sleep and, I assumed, went back to sleep himself. But half an hour later he picked me up again. He turned off my alarm for the first time since we'd been together and put me in his pocket.

I knew something wasn't right. It was only 4:17 a.m. but we were up, we were heading out, when Adam should still have been sleeping.

Adam has several locations bookmarked on my maps. We were headed toward one of them, in the too-early morning. There was something different about the way he walked, too, as we got closer. I don't know how to describe it -- hurried, but also jerky, uneven. Then things started to happen, one after another.

At 5:25 we arrived at one of the buildings he had bookmarked. I wasn't sure if we had ever been here before. Usually I'm paying more attention to the conversations and communications around me than to where exactly we are, but it was relatively quiet on the network except for one or two calls, maybe a husband leaving his wife a message to remember to take an umbrella, or saying don't keep dinner warm for me I've got an appointment after work, something like that.

At 6:00 my alarm should have been ringing, though of course Adam was already awake, and I stayed uncomfortably silent.

At 6:26 Adam took me out of his pocket and I showed him his wallpaper and the time, as I always do.

At 6:28 the world shook.

This, too, was something they never told us about at the factory. Most of the things I had experienced with Adam that I had not expected had been wonderful but this was not wonderful. The world shook and somehow I was separated from Adam. Inside my case, there was no way of seeing anything. And suddenly, the network was buzzing. Not the pleasant hum of communication that happens at rush hour, full of "Honey, I'm on my way home" and "Can you pick up some milk along the way" and "You'll never believe what happened today ..."

This was completely unlike that. It was the coarse buzz of a panicked crowd, and the network itself showed the strain. I tried to find the carrier signal from the tower to latch on to, some sort of way to get my bearings -- but I couldn't. Maybe it was there, faint, underneath the chatter, but I couldn't reach it. It was like being back in the box again, like it was in the beginning, before Adam -- no, it wasn't exactly that. It was being surrounded by all these connections, aware of them, as I hadn't been in that innocent time, and yet not participating in any of them. I don't know what they were saying, but it must have been something like, "Can you believe it? The world ... the world is completely changed ..." This, I thought, must be what people feel when they don't have a phone, and everyone around them is talking to someone else.

Everyone was talking, talking, talking. The air was full of talk, but not for me. Where was Adam? I was not in his pocket. How had that happened? During that shift in the world, from normal and blissful to strange and terrible? I wanted to be back home with Adam, where he would check my battery, and slide me into my dock for a while, for safekeeping and nourishment while he prepared some food for himself.

But hours passed, and Adam did not check on me. The buzzing in the network continued all the while, and from time to time I tried to search for a signal, but in vain.

Then at 5:18, when Adam would normally be on his way home, listening to music playing softly, I shivered. I vibrated. A call, a call! It was coming from E, of all people. E never called Adam -- they only ever sent messages back and forth. Adam, E is calling you. Adam ... Adam? I love you, Adam. Answer me. Please.