“Tate,” I hissed. I closed my hand over his to stop the drumming. “People are staring. What’s wrong with you?”
“Maybe overstimulated. Intimidated. Inundated.” His gaze flitted from one of my eyes to the other, as if he were seeing two of me. He whispered to us, “Would you ever sex with me, Dakarai?”
“Enough!” I crushed his hand flat against the table to get his attention. “If some algorithm is doing this, cancel it.” My first reaction was not so much embarrassment as panic. “You hear? Sober up!” I thought I might somehow have broken Jin’s prototype. Would he lose his job because I’d caused this public display?
“Reset, yes?” Tate subsided back on his chair. “Good idea.”
I studied him, worried he might keel over or explode or something. His face—my face!—was a blank page. Then the lights over our table changed, spreading a buttery glow across the table. Kylie was headed in our direction, followed by a server wheeling a warming cart. But then the maître d’ swooped over from reception to intercept them. When he issued a heated, but hushed command, the servers and our next course were sent back to the kitchen. Then he approached our table and, without speaking, placed a folded note in front of me.
I opened it. Your companion is a sexbot. It would be best if you left.
Tate read the note. The maître d’ loomed over us, boiling like a pressure cooker.
“We should go,” Tate said.
Now that I realized that this debacle wasn’t so much my failing as Tate’s, or at least that of his programmers, I felt sorry for him. He’d made a spectacle of himself, but seemed recovered. We could pretend nothing had happened. Salvage the evening and enjoy the rest of our meal. “I beg your pardon,” I said to the maître d’, “but have we violated some kind of policy?”
His face twisted as if he’d just broken a tooth.
“I mean, does Sofia discriminate against artificial people?”
“Artificial people?” He almost choked on the word. “Real people, sir, real patrons have made complaints.”
I waved their prejudices away, surprised at how calm I was. “Because there were no complaints the last time he ate here.” Although the maître d’ was blocking my view, I guessed that everybody in the restaurant was watching. I was causing a scene! Shame on me, but I was enjoying it.
“Dakarai.” Tate clutched my arm. “I think we should . . .”
I shook him off. “Unfair is what it is.” I didn’t need some playbot to be the responsible party. “Are you really prepared to throw us out, sir?”
“It’s fine, really.” Tate stood. “We haven’t even ordered yet.” When the maître d’’s eyes cut to him in gratitude, I grinned at the reversal. Now Tate was this jerk’s solution and I was his problem.
“What’s happening here?” The maître d’ gave way to a skinny black woman with a close crop of curly gray hair. She was wearing a double-breasted chef’s jacket, jeans, and running shoes. My hero, Sofia Vasquez.
“Mr. Delany entered your establishment under false pretenses, chef.” His face was pale as his lab coat.
“I made no pretense whatsoever,” I announced to the room.
Sofia whispered into the ear of her employee, who whispered a long reply back.
“No, Bevaun.” She cut him off and then shooed him away. “Mr. Delany,” she said, “I understand your companion was here last month. With my friend Aeri Dashima? But I had no idea he was a playbot.” She offered her hand to Tate. “What model are you, sir?”
He said, “Partner Tate, Chef Sofia.” They shook.
“He’s a prototype,” I said. “Not yet in production.”
“My compliments,” she said. “I had a Motorman myself back in the day, but poor Partner Liam could barely find his way out of the bedroom, much less go out to dinner. Please sit. If I may I’d like to join you for a moment and apologize.” Sofia must have passed some imperceptible order because Kylie was already bringing her a chair.
“Mr. Delany.” She fixed her gaze on me as she sat, “As in the Fork and Siphon forum? You’re the Delany who keeps saying such interesting things about us?”
“Call me Dakarai,” I squeaked. “Dak.” Why was I out of breath? “You’ve visited my forum?”
“Skimmed, but not a supporter. Yet. Do I remember something about dusting kalamata olive powder on ice cream? Been doing that with mascarpone gelato for years now. Gives a wider mouth feel. But I’m afraid my restaurants don’t leave me much time for recipe trolling. Or dating.” Then she chuckled. “Which was why I kept running through playbots.” She reached a decision. “Look, you two, I have no objection if you want to stay for dinner, and since I own this place, my opinion is the only one that counts. But stress affects digestion, and I can’t imagine the last little while has been very pleasant. The mood is off, no?”
“It was until now,” said Tate.
Sofia smirked. “I see the Motorman patter has improved.” She brushed fingers along the tablecloth toward Tate. “Mr. Tate, I believe I’d like to get to know you better, or perhaps one of your siblings. And Dak, what if I stop by your place next week? Perhaps a rain check dinner might provide the proper convivial mind-set? We could talk chemistry; I’ve been experimenting with a new growth of mallard liver. Adding domestic goose to the pâté culture gives it a creamy finish.”
“I-I wouldn’t want to impose.” I glanced around the room. “I mean, people come here hoping to see you.”
“I’m a cook.” She rose. “Not an attraction. If a rescheduling appeals, ask Bevaun to set it up on your way out.” She patted my shoulder. “Or else, enjoy the rest of your dinner. Afraid I have some ruffled feathers to smooth.”
I was weightless with excitement as the elevator dropped to the first floor. Sofia Vasquez in eight days! Photos for my forum! Videos! And I’d have to cook something, too; I couldn’t let her bring the entire dinner. But what to serve a master chef? I’d wanted to try grilled limes wrapped in shrimp paper with some of the heirloom tomato dust I’d been saving. Would a golden dragon mist be too forward? Maybe splurge on a pork-marbled turkey culture for the entrée? I hardly noticed when the doors opened, I was too busy reviewing my greatest hits. A dessert, definitely a dessert. When the doors started to shudder close, Tate held them. “This is us.” he said. “Where to?”
I didn’t care. “Home?” This was already one of the best nights of my life. As far as I was concerned, we could be done and I could start planning for her visit.
“So soon?” He was horrified. “But we haven’t eaten.” He followed me through the door. “And you said things were going so very well.”
“No, that’s what you said. Right before you had a meltdown in the most famous restaurant in town.” I paused near the street. “What was that all about anyway?”
“Sorry, yes, that was bad. I need to find a way to make up for it.”
“Not on my account, you don’t.”
“On my account, Dakarai.” His eyes were pleading. “Don’t let this evening become a disaster. I still have plenty of time.”
I wondered what the consequences might be for Tate. Reprogramming? Memory editing? What would it feel like to have someone messing around in my head? I realized then that I cared about him. He was playful and honest and smart. I liked his flirting style and the way he said my name. He made me feel noticed. This was crazy! I’d known him how long? A couple of hours? But somehow, I’d stopped thinking of him as a playbot. A made thing.
What had he said when he was high? That he wasn’t even conscious? No I, here. But he had me fooled.
“Dinner then,” I said. “Where?”
A cab pulled up to the curb. Its right headlight winked in greeting. “Delany?” the drivebot said, drawling like a clarinet. “Joyful party of two?”
“I called from the restaurant,” Tate said to me, then waved to the bot. “That’s us.”
Its front grille crinkled into a broad smile, revealing the fins of its faux radiator “Hop in, friends.” The passenger door po
pped open.
I shot Tate a questioning glance.
“It’s a surprise.” He nudged the small of my back, propelling me forward. “Trust me.”
Twenty minutes up the interstate, the cab swooped to an exit. I hadn’t a clue where Tate was taking me, but the GPS screen was in the final minutes of the countdown to whatever was at Thirty-Four Larson Street. How could it be 8:42 p.m. already? My head had been so filled with recipes that I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. But before we stopped, I had a question that needed answering in the privacy of the cab.
“Why did you ask if I wanted to have sex with you?”
“Damn.” He winced. “Would you consider forgetting I said that?”
“Not likely.”
“It’s embarrassing.” He sighed. “But okay. Sex.” He sounded weary. “Well, it’s where we playbots come from. Our origin story. And it’s always there for us, for you. All that flirting isn’t just for show.” He gave me a smoky side-glance. “We‘re designed to make it easy for the primaries to close the deal. Whatever he wants, whenever.”
“Or she.” This wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. “You caught Sofia’s eye.”
“No, not really.” He made a dismissive gesture. “But that was sweet of her, don’t you think? Putting us at ease.”
“You don’t think she was serious?”
His laugh was hollow. “And you’re human. Just shows that Turing got his test backward.”
He saw that I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Alan Turing?” he said. “The famous Turing test?”
“Nope,” I said. “Nothing.”
“You know, for someone who’s engaged to Motorman’s rising star, you don’t know much about robots.”
“That’s okay. Jin can’t tell a garlic press from a Jaccard.”
He chuckled. “Turing wondered if AIs could think. He proposed that if you interviewed an AI whose identity was hidden, and you couldn’t tell that you were talking to a construct, then that construct must be thinking. Whatever thinking means.”
“I know you’re a bot, Tate.”
The cab rolled to a stop in front of a two-story white bowling pin tilted at a crazy angle. “Thirty-Four Larson Street,” the drivebot announced. A walkway led through the pin to a sprawl of neon and glass. A digital screen on the building’s façade scrolled Welcome to Split City, Modern and Traditional Entertainments, Home of the Fire Dog.
“A bowling alley?” I said.
“I’ve heard the food is fun,” he said. “And we could roll a few frames afterward.”
“I don’t know how to bowl.”
“Maybe you should learn. Jin bowls, you know.”
I opened my door but didn’t get out. “Not anymore, not since . . .” Then it came to me. Yes, Jin had bowled a lot back in the day. He’d been good, although not as good as his mother, who’d won all kinds of championships. And where had they spent all that time?
“Split City,” I said. “Is this where Hani bowls? Jin’s mom?”
“Yes.” He was already waiting by the curb. “You think it’s her league night? You could introduce me?”
“Did Jin tell you to come here?”
“No,” said Tate. “He didn’t. As far as he’s concerned, we’re still tucking into turkey-beef-reindeer cutlets at Stage Left.” He waved me out of the cab. “Come on, Dakarai, she’s probably not here. But this is part of who he is. You should see it for yourself. It’ll be interesting.”
I had my doubts, but we were here, so why not?
Whereas the ambiance of Stage Left had been tranquil and understated, Spin City throttled the senses. We passed thirty lanes to our right before we could escape the clatter of pins that gave way to the chittering enticements of unoccupied game booths, the pounding of dance pads, and the periodic whoosh of a pair of skychutes that towered at the far end of the enormous hall. The air was heavy with the aroma of popcorn and onions and beer and cherry fizz and fry oil. Inaudible announcements muddied the latest hammerbop hits. It was too loud, too bright, too big, and maybe too alive for my tastes, but when Tate found us a table behind a sound shield, I sat.
“This is great.” He rubbed hands together gleefully. “We should rent bowling shoes.”
“We should order.” I twisted the menu screen my way. “Or I should.”
He craned his neck, scanning bowlers in the lanes near the skychutes. “Is she here?”
“I didn’t see her. But I had met her just once, and that was in a cab. I don’t think Jin gets along with her.”
Split City was doing a brisk business. The league crowd wearing team shirts skewed older, but I saw families with kids, a scatter of teenagers, a clump of bubbly twentysomething reenactors pretending to be their great grandparents. I ordered a skinnyburger, a basket of fried tofu, a three-berry Coke, and a firedog, just because. I thought I could foist the thing on Tate if it tasted as vile as it sounded.
“What were you saying before?” I asked.
He cupped a hand to his ear. “Before?”
I leaned in. “Something about Sofia not being serious? Because of a test I got backward.”
“Right. So Turing said humans would be able to tell if an AI was faking it. But AI Tate here could tell that Sofia was just trying to clear us out of her restaurant with as little fuss as possible. She’s not about to buy one of me.”
“Or come to my place for dinner?”
“No, I bet that’ll happen. But just once. But she’s not going to be your new best friend, Dakarai. Or your mentor.”
“And you know this how?”
“Because intelligence isn’t the only thing that counts. See, you and I were contestants in a kind of Turing test back there. The goal was to figure out what Sofia was thinking. I had an advantage because not only can I emulate human thought, but I can also sense heartbeat, skin temperature, eye tracking, voice stress, even some microgestures. Part of the playbot package. How we get you into bed.”
“That again.” I felt a burn in my cheeks.
“There’s more on offer than hot sex, of course.” He laughed. “But boys will be boys.”
“So it’s hot sex now?”
“Well . . .” He looked demure, or tried to. “The thermostat is adjustable.”
I couldn’t help it. In the moment I imagined him with clothes off, propped up against the headboard of our bed. Watching me get undressed. Waiting. Me, waiting for me.
Was I aroused? I was. Was I that twisted? Maybe.
Did he know?
The food arrived. The skinnyburger was dry and the fried tofu was soggy, but the firedog was a pleasant surprise. It tasted like plant-based meat, although it had a nice umami finish and the proper balance in texture between stickiness and crumble. They must have been quoting Italian sausage because I got the fennel and garlic, but the heat was more at the piripiri level than cayenne—enough to make my lips tingle. But it was the cacao nibs that really raised the stakes; you don’t expect a bitter chocolate crunch in a hot dog. All in all, however, while not dinner at Stage Left, it was definitely fun.
As I was finishing, Tate wriggled out of his blazer. “What do you say we knock some pins down?”
As we approached the lane we’d been assigned, our photos popped up on the score table. I put on a tired pair of rented bowling shoes: red faux leather with a broad white stripe. I wasn’t keen to stick my feet into something that smelled like a bleach spill in a pine forest, but Tate was already picking through the ball rack.
I pulled a purple ball with orange lightning bolts off the rack and almost dropped it on my ugly shoes. “Yikes, it’s like picking up a cinder block.” My arm hung straight down. “I’m supposed to throw this thing how?”
After some coaching from Tate, I opted for a four-step approach. My first couple of balls veered directly into the gutter, but I clipped a corner pin on my fourth try. Tate kept saying things like Let the ball fall into your swing and That foot should slide on the release. He wrapped this advice in laug
hter, and I might have taken offense if he hadn’t been so pleased by my attempts. His good humor was infectious and since he was only marginally better than I was, the futility of our efforts edged toward comedy. Or maybe it was another kiss from the golden dragon that improved my mood. Soon I was knocking a few pins down almost every time it was my turn. In the sixth frame, I held the ball too long at the release and it soared almost a meter in the air before crashing onto the lane with a crack like a gunshot.
I spun away from the still careening ball, giggling and embarrassed. As I scurried toward the scoring table, I saw Tate point, his face alight with joy. I turned just as my ball clipped just past the head pin, scattering the rest.
“Strike,” cried Tate. “Well played, my friend!”
We were muddling through the third and last game of our set when I spotted Jin’s mom leaving the bathroom. She was wearing a lipstick red team shirt. Across its back a golden bowling ball raced toward a lineup of letters shaped like pins: G-U-T-T-E-R-G-O-I-L.
I nudged Tate as he returned to the scoring table. “There.”
Hani Palmer was only a meter and a half tall, but the oversized shirt made her seem even tinier. Her face was downy from stemcare treatments and she’d tucked her gray hair into a jaunty cap that sported the golden ball logo. She was wearing capri pants that showed maybe thirty centimeters of scrawny brown ankle below which her bowling shoes sparkled.
“Can we?” said Tate.
“Hani.” I waved. “Mrs. Palmer!”
We abandoned our last game to meet the Gutter Goils. The league had just finished and they’d captured a table. Bibbles Polito and Millie Mills were passing a mask back and forth that was hooked up to a steaming decanter of Lowblow. Rosa Flores, who everyone called Flower, was drinking something pink out of a wine glass the size of a trophy.
“This is Jin’s friend, Dak,” Hani said to the group. “And this, Dak’s date”—she put an arm around him—“Tate. He just told me one crazy secret.” She plopped into her place in front of a flattened Coke bulb. “The secret is about him. Everyone guess what it is, one guess. Any figure it out and the next round is on me.” She waved at us to sit. “Make room, ladies, come, come. Mills, push over.”
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