"Nothing for now," he said. "You know, every time I come, I'm surprised to see this place still operating. Any more trouble?"
'Trouble' referred to the occasional incidents, she supposed. Protesters and violence—many people viewed robots as a potential threat, a conceptual terror to avoid entirely. Those protesters strove to destroy them, to destroy her and any other surviving robots like her. The current legal view was that with no new true AIs allowed to be created, eventually the oldest of them would run down and society would be entirely human again. She and those like her were a problem that would solve itself, but to a lot of people, that was just too slow. Technically, she was offered protection—although not human under the law and thus lacking many legal rights, it was still illegal to destroy robots, given that they were sapient, had emotional existence. But it wasn't a situation the police would normally get involved with, at least not until after the fact.
When she had first met Hyeon, it was because protesters had bombed her shop. It was, likely, the incident which had saved her from their further attempts on her life afterward and given her relative peace for these seventeen years. The destruction was dangerous to the stores around hers, to the persons on the street, and so the police were called by passersby. Hyeon had been the detective on the case and had taken a personal interest in it. She had repaired herself and her store and continued as she always had, though police kept watch some time after, thanks to Hyeon's influence.
"No," she said, her tone light. "Nothing like before, Detective. Eggs and feces at the worst." It wasn't entirely honest. People kicked in her window sometimes, and there was always the graffiti. But it wasn't anything like before, regardless. Sometimes she wondered when that next escalation would be, now that there wasn't a watch kept on her, now that the incident of seventeen years ago was distant memory to most. There was no way to anticipate it. But people would do something again—she'd seen similar incidents in the news off and on. It would be her turn again eventually.
"Ah," the detective said with a resigned understanding. He slurped his soup. "Delicious as always, Sal. I don't know how you do it. You can't taste food yourself, right?" It was a subject change, but a genuine one, as was his curiosity.
"I was taught by someone with excellent taste," she said. She kept smiling as that old ache, already sensitive, was stirred up inside her again. "As long as I remember how she did it, the soup will hopefully remain delicious. I imagine people will tell me if it does not."
Of course, there was the possibility her memory would deteriorate that much. She had written it down in her log, just in case, written all the recipes down, but she wondered if they would taste the same over the mere application of ingredients in the correct amounts, without the memory of Karinne explaining how to do it. The way Karinne's hair would fall over her shoulder as she bent over sheets of baking, the way she looked with flour up her arms. The sharp rap of her knife as she chopped vegetables. The calming rise and fall of her voice—the tone, not simply the details of the recipe, drove her forward to this day. She would cook and remember that sing-song way Karinne would read things out.
Logically, she knew it should taste the same regardless. Food was a matter of practical application. But to those who ate, it was full of memories, the significance of 'delicious as always.' It seemed impossible that it could taste the same if it was not made with equally tactile memories going into the cooking.
Musing over his spoon, expression lost in thought and memory, Detective Hyeon asked, "How many years has it been now? That you've been open, I mean."
"Two hundred and seventy-eight," she said. Repeating it again so soon felt strange, like she'd lost time somehow. She really needed to get her battery replaced, she reminded herself.
"Nearly three hundred," Hyeon said, in a tone that resembled pride as much as amazement. "I remember, you said before, that's your goal."
"Yes," she said, quiet.
Hyeon rubbed his spoon against the side of his bowl to keep a drop from dribbling over the edge, the sound of metal on ceramic a loud discordant scrape to her ears. "Why three hundred, anyway? All numbers are as significant as any other to you, aren't they? You don't have the whole... human tendency to think in round numbers and treat 'em as more meaningful than the others. It's all arbitrary, right?"
She watched the drop roll down the side despite Hyeon's attempts at intervention, leaving a grainy trail behind until it hit the table and spread around the bowl's base, slow and thin. "She suggested it once," she said. "Arbitrarily. She had said she hoped with my help it would last forever. I had told her that it was impossible for anything to last forever. I had been a little less developed at the time. So, she named that number arbitrarily; 'if not forever, then let's say three hundred years.'"
"The original owner?" Hyeon asked.
"Yes," she said. "The original owner."
He waited to see if she'd say more, then shrugged, stirring his spoon in the soup. "Well, good luck with it. Only twenty-two more years left to go. If I'm still around then, I'll come by on the anniversary and check out your specials."
Hyeon made a little more small talk, and then, his food and drink done, he put his dry coat on and headed out into the rain again with a friendly farewell that she answered in kind. As the door jingled shut, she let out a breath she had been holding entirely unnecessarily. She found herself staring out after him, delayed, not knowing what to do with herself. Pushing through it, she cleaned up his bowl and teacup, wiped away the curl of soup under where the bowl had sat, mopped where his coat had dripped water, and went again into the back to recharge.
The bell did not ring again that day, and half an hour after the normal closing time—she stayed open out of a strange impulsive desire to see if anyone came at the last minute—she closed. She turned over the teacups on the tables, put away the clean dishes in the back, sent out the remaining food to be donated, and turned off the lights. Slowly, she sat down in the kitchen. To save her remaining battery life, it was best to turn off entirely, and schedule her automatic re-activation for two hours before work the next day, when she would begin baking.
She ordered a new battery to be delivered, and shut down for the night.
*~*~*
"You're sure it's this way?" Clara asked, as Joanie hmm'd and flitted left and right, peering at the narrow roads.
"I'm saying I've checked the maps, but these little roads are a bit weird, that's all!" Joanie let out an audible huff. She settled on Clara's shoulder finally, obviously disgruntled.
The tea shop had come highly recommended from Amber, Clara's new boss. When she'd seen the tea collection starting to accumulate on Clara's desk, Amber's eyes had lit up with some kind of glee.
"So, have you heard of the Cybernetic Tea Shop?"
"With that kind of name, you've caught my interest," Clara had replied, leaning back in her chair to grin up at the taller woman. "Is it some kind of netcafe?"
"You'll see," Amber had said, tapping her nose. "You won't believe what you see there, though."
Regardless of Clara's wheedling attempts to coax it out of her, Amber wouldn't say any more than that, just laughed and reiterated that she needed to go and see. Clara had no objection. It wasn't like she knew anyone else here, and she'd wanted to go around exploring the city regardless—this just gave her more reason to do so. Even if she and Joanie did get lost in the network of weird side-alleys leading down to Pike Place, she'd have a good time.
"There! Found it, right over there!"
The front of the shop was unremarkable enough. It had large glass windows showing a rather archaic interior for a tea house, with old-fashioned decorations and lace all over the place. The name of the shop was written in a small peeling design on the front door, and she had to wonder what exactly was cybernetic about this. The shop itself was clearly not terribly up-to-date and didn't have any of the usual hallmarks of a netcafe. A glance at the brightness of Joanie's feathers confirmed no additional servers besides the usual network ei
ther.
She shrugged to herself and went in. Worst case scenario, food and drink; best case, Amber's implications actually meant something.
The bell rang, signaling her entrance, but there didn't seem to be anyone in the front. She drew breath in case she'd need to call out, but the server, summoned by the sound, emerged from the back. Clara let her breath out in a startled rush instead.
It—she—was a robot. A real one, Clara was fairly sure—although she was largely human-seeming, the illusion wasn't anywhere near complete. Her neck was too thin and even, her arms too regular and lacking the bulge of muscle, and her smooth synthetic skin showed the lines of paneling under it. Her hair was a pale artificial white, cut short and falling in loose pointed wisps to her cheekbones, curling at the base of her head in front of that slender neck. As Clara's eyes met the robot's unlidded ones, the multiple concentric circles of lenses contracted, the robot looking her over in return.
"Welcome," the robot said, thin lips curling up in a smile. "Please, sit wherever you like. What can I get for you today?"
For a moment, Clara couldn't bring herself to move. She could hardly bring herself to breathe. She'd studied the proper robots, of course, the remains of them and cases involving them, but she hadn't actually met one still active.
"Clara," Joanie hissed. "You're being rude."
Clara blinked rapidly, snapping herself out of it, and felt her cheeks heat. She blessed, briefly, her darker complexion and how it helped disguise that kind of flush. "Sorry," she said to the server. "I didn't mean to stare."
"It's fine. I'm aware that I'm a novelty," the robot said, sounding a little embarrassed herself.
Hearing it said so bluntly made Clara's insides clench. She shook her head, rubbing her neck under her braid as she picked a seat near the window and sat. "That's not—I mean, I guess that is it. Sorry. Uh, I'm Clara Gutierrez," she said. "And this is Joanie."
Joanie fluttered from her shoulder to the table and hopped around to face the robot. "Pleased," Joanie chirped. "It's my first time meeting an older sister!"
"Oh!" The robot seemed to relax; her body position barely changed, but her shoulders shifted slightly. "You brought a Raise in. It's nice to meet you Clara, Joanie. My name is Sal."
"Short for Sally?" Clara asked.
"Ah..." Sal hesitated, apparently a little uncomfortable. "Technically, yes. Those from my line were all called 'Sarah' in development, but my original owner shortened it to Sally, and then to Sal. I haven't had any other name for hundreds of years. It doesn't feel short for anything."
"Hundreds of years?!" Joanie said, tone shifting from alarm to a horrified sympathy almost immediately. "Then you've outlived your owner? That's shitty."
Sal's shoulders jerked upward a little, a subtle change in angle, the lenses in her eyes shifting as she glanced away from them both. "Yes. Now, would you like to see a menu?"
Clara flicked Joanie with a fingertip, a silent admonition for the obvious discomfort she'd made Sal feel. And Joanie had chided her for being rude. "Sorry about that. She's a baby, as these things go. She's got sympathy, but subtlety about it is still hard for her."
"You gonna tweak that?" Joanie asked, curious.
"I might later." Clara redirected her attention back to Sal. "Can I see your tea list? I'm a big tea fan, and my boss recommended this place highly."
"Certainly." Sal inclined her head, hair drifting with an unnatural weightlessness to her cheeks and back again as she lifted her head. She put down the tea menu, a food menu underneath it. "I'll rejoin you shortly."
"Sorry, but... if you're not busy, mind if I ask you about some of these?" She put a fingertip on the tea menu.
Sal paused in the act of straightening, then relaxed again to lean over the table. "Of course, Clara. What do you have questions about?"
Clara glanced down at the menu, then back up at Sal. "This Dorian Gray. That's an Earl Grey variant, right? It mentions caramel, but is there anything else in it?"
"As well as the caramel, it has an addition of apple and lavender. As I understand it, it has a smokier taste than the usual Earl Grey, with a hint of sweetness behind that." Sal touched one smooth fingertip to another menu item. "If you like Earl Greys, you might also like the Monochrome. It is an Earl Grey variant mixed with a Lapsang Souchong and some honey. I have heard it has a very smoky flavor."
"Well, I'm intrigued," Clara said, looking at Sal's unblinking eyes, watching how they focused on her own fingertip. "I'll go with that recommendation, then."
"The Monochrome?"
"Yeah. Uh, this says you have a pear-flavored scone, right? I'll have one of those, and a cup of the tomato bisque."
Sal straightened and gave her another thin-lipped smile as she took the menus again. "Of course. I'll return with it presently."
As she turned and left through the kitchen doors, Clara watched her back thoughtfully. It was hard to read Sal's expressions, and she had to guess at Sal's reactions through her emotive voice. Her face, though nearly-human, had enough uncanny features to make it impossible to base any understanding off expression alone. Her lips weren't full enough to tell if they were tense or loose, her eyes didn't need to narrow or widen with her emotions, and her eyebrows didn't lift or lower while she was talking. But even so, Clara was sure that the emotions in her voice were real. A robot of her type, with a true AI that included behavioral learning, and given how long she'd been active... she would almost certainly have a range of emotion similar to humans. It was expression that was lacking at most.
That all considered, she didn't think she'd offended Sal, though it was hard to pin down why she had that impression. It was something about the way Sal had leaned over her to touch the menu, something about how open her body language had been. Still, Clara thought, she'd made a fool of herself, stammering, asking personal questions. She hated to think she'd given Sal a bad impression.
There was an obvious way to address that, at least.
Sal came back carrying a silver tray with practiced ease. Clara leaned back in her chair, watching as Sal started to put things down. "Hey," Clara began, soft and a bit apologetic, "can I ask you something?"
Sal picked up the small teapot on her tray and put it beside Clara's food, then turned over the teacup on the table so it was facing upright. "Of course."
"Did I, or we, upset you? I imagine you're often treated as a bit of an oddity, huh."
"I am a bit of an oddity," Sal said. Her face was turned away from Clara, making it even harder to read her.
"Nobody told me in advance, so I was a bit surprised to see you," Clara said. Then, a bit more quietly, she repeated, "And did we upset you?"
Sal made a noise in her throat, an uncomfortable wordless verbalization. "Only at first," she said. "I gathered from your words to your Joanie that you are some sort of robotic technician?"
"Yeah. I mostly work on Raises."
"Then it's only natural that you'd be curious about me," Sal said.
That was a 'yes,' then—if only at first, as she'd said. But Clara suspected that it wasn't that she'd reassured Sal at all—she'd done nothing to make up for it but ask about tea. Rather, Sal was probably accustomed to personal questions out of nowhere. She bit her lower lip, considering Sal. "Mm. Thing is, as an AI specialist, I know what degree of a sense of self you have. I mean—I know that you're not a 'novelty'. You're a person. So... sorry about that."
Sal's face jerked toward her, a startled, sudden movement, and all the lenses in her eyes seemed to contract at once. "I'm not."
"Huh?"
"A person. I'm not."
Clara let out a huff of air. "You're not human, but I'd think—"
"Under law—"
"Law though," she said, with an audible eye roll. "I just mean... I won't push it, but I wanted to say sorry. Seeing you got me excited. It's my first time interacting with an actual robot rather than a Raise. But it's no excuse. I was rude."
"Oh," Sal said. She straightened, fidgeted with her
tray, holding it to her chest. "It's all right."
"Also, I really like tea, and I both live and work in the area. So I'd like to come back, but I won't if I bothered you...?" She turned the statement into a question, lilting up at the end, in the hopes it would get her an answer.
"No, please," Sal said. "You'd be welcome." Her thin lips curled in a smile again, and she added, "If you like the tea, anyway."
Clara did, in fact, like both the tea and the food, and by the time she had paid up her bill, she was already planning on coming back. Though, if she were honest with herself, it was more the company than the food alone.
Part of it was, she had to admit, how unusual Sal was. Given her specialty, a robot like Sal was a creation she had a constant background interest in. She'd read probably hundreds of articles, studied so much code, came up against all kinds of historical cases, but never met one. She knew she had been rude, and felt a bit guilty for that, but she could still step back and see where her desire to get to know Sal better came from.
But at the same time, as she had said to Sal, knowing more than the average person also made her more aware of the things Sal might face. Knowing how genuine even a limited AI's emotions could be made her realize that Sal must, at this point, be used to constantly being treated as a thing. Clara was sure it went even deeper than that. Sal was made hundreds of years earlier. That alone would be alienating. The world around her was constantly changing, the social landscape along with it. People would come and go—even if losing others was part of living, Sal would lose everyone, sooner or later. Even the laws which determined her own legal standing had changed back and forth over time. And throughout it all, she'd be considered an aberration, a belonging, an oddity.
The Cybernetic Tea Shop Page 3