Date Night on Union Station

by E. M. Foner

  “Why can we only play in seven games?”

  “Humans can’t compete in games that require telekinetic ability, electromagnetic spectrum sensitivity beyond visible light, or other specialized biological functions that are lacking from human genetics. But winning five out of thirty-six would be a record. No species has ever taken more than three events since the tournament play was established.”

  “Do you know if humans will be facing champions from any of the Natural League worlds in those five events?” Kelly was starting to feel pleased with herself for giving the guy a second chance and striking gold.

  “There will be strong competition from Natural League worlds in everything but Foosball. The equipment cost and gravity requirements have prevented Foosball from catching on much outside of areas with a human presence, it’s primarily a mining colony game. The main competition will be from the Hortens, of course, since they traditionally own Phalnyx and excel at gambling games.”

  “Thank you very much, Thomas. That was very useful to me.”

  “I wish there was a real band,” Thomas spoke wistfully. “I know how to dance very well.”

  “Really? It’s surprising you’re so shy in that case. My parents made us all learn how to dance when we were children and it’s really come in handy for me as a diplomat. I think I could dance to this music, even though it sounds a little alien.”

  Thomas smiled happily and held out both arms in a perfect ballroom dancing pose. “So, shall we take a turn around the room while you tell me about working as a diplomat? It sounds very interesting.”

  Kelly stepped into his arms confidently, and they set off slowly around the room, occasionally dodging other waltzing couples, as the piped-in music was composed in a triple meter. Two flower girls circled the milling adults like predatory wolves, expertly cutting out straggling couples and lightening their pockets in exchange for a sprig of violets.

  Thomas proved to be an expert dancer and a confident lead, and Kelly found herself floating along as she recounted the triumphs and disasters of her diplomatic career. She couldn’t remember anybody ever showing such an interest and asking such intelligent questions about her options and choices. Suddenly, it occurred to her that he might be a professional listener, a therapist of some sort. She was just about to ask him what he did for a living when the music stopped.

  “Alright folks, I’m afraid our time is up,” Donna’s voice came over the PA system. “Thank you for attending. We hope you had as good a time as we did, and when I say you, I’m sure you know who I’m talking about. If you haven’t signed up for our notification list, please stop and do so on your way out.”

  “Oh, can you believe how time flies?” Kelly said to Thomas, her green eyes sparkling. “How can two hours have gone by just like that? I’m afraid I’ve talked your ear off. I hope you’ll let me make it up to you sometime.”

  “It couldn’t have been two hours,” Thomas replied, interpreting her statement literally. “Let’s see. We arrived at the same time, and all of the food was gone, so we must have been late. Maybe we’ve only been here a few minutes?”

  “Such a flatterer,” Kelly said, laughing at his serious demeanor and giving him a nudge with her shoulder. “Oh, I really needed tonight, Thomas. Thank you.” She looked quickly about to make sure they had a bit of privacy, and then she crossed her fingers and tried to prompt him into action. “Is there anything you wanted to ask me?”

  “Yes, there is,” Thomas exclaimed, his face breaking into the same wide smile she’d seen just once earlier. “Did I pass?”

  “Of course you passed,” she said warmly and chucked him on the shoulder. Still, Kelly was a bit taken aback that his self-confidence could be so tenuous after the best evening of dancing she’d had in longer than she could remember. “Did you really have to ask?”

  “Of course. I can’t just declare myself to have passed the Turing/Ryskoff test. I’m hardly a disinterested judge,” he explained happily. “Now I’ll be able to present myself at the Tourney for Stryx certification, and take my place among sentient beings. Are you alright Kelly?” He grabbed Kelly’s elbows as she listed to the side on buckling knees. After a moment she took a gasping breath and regained her balance, even though all of the color had drained from her face.

  “You’re an artificial person?” she whispered.

  “Well, I prefer to be called Thomas, if you don’t mind. I am a new artificial intelligence construct, conceived as a group project of the Open University Senior Class. There wasn’t much of a budget, of course, so this body is a rental.”

  “Oh, Thomas, how could you,” Kelly implored, fighting back tears for the first time in years. “I thought you were a human. How could an artificial person be so mean?”

  “I don’t understand,” Thomas replied, his face taking on a deep look of concern that Kelly now realized was likely a preset expression from the rental company. “This is the Turing/Ryskoff open event sponsored by the remedial human program of the Open University. Didn’t you attend the judging course?”

  “No, Thomas, this is not the Turing/Ryskoff open event. This is the first social mixer sponsored by the EarthCent Embassy on Union Station!”

  “How can that be?” Thomas looked around, visibly upset. “Saturday the fourteenth at 19:00 hours in the Meteor room, Empire Center.”

  “Today is Friday the thirteenth,” Kelly hissed angrily, even as she thought, Friday the thirteenth, it figures. “How can a robot, I’m sorry, an artificial person, screw up the date?”

  “But I told you I had a problem with dating,” Thomas defended himself. “It was practically the first thing out of my mouth. I’m not very good with timing either.”

  “Problem with dating? Not good at timing? Oh God, this can’t be happening. And don’t try to squirm out of it. I know perfectly well that the Stryx broadcast a time signal so fine you can use it describe the position of a quark.”

  “That’s exactly the problem,” Thomas tried to explain. “On my early Turing/Ryskoff trial runs, I kept tripping up on accuracy. No human wants to hear the time to a trillionth of a second, so my creators suggested I simply cut back on significant digits and tell the time to the nearest minute. But in the next trial, I failed because I was blinking like a metronome. Some of the students already had job offers away from the station and they were in a hurry, so they suggested that I use a random number generator to insert a little uncertainty into my time stamping. But I’ve been having trouble with dates and times ever since. It’s very embarrassing.”

  “Thomas,” Kelly hissed and grabbed the artificial hand that felt so human she could just scream. “You don’t have to tell anybody about tonight, do you? After all, I’m not really a judge, so I can’t really pass you.”

  “But it shows how important this whole dating business is and that I’m probably not ready for the real test after all,” Thomas replied, sounding depressed. “If I don’t tell the class about it, how can they help me improve?”

  “Thomas, you’ll pass tomorrow, I guarantee it. If you give me a way to contact you, I’ll even make sure you show up on time if I have to come and escort you myself. But please, please, don’t ever tell anybody about this evening.”

  “Alright, Kelly,” Thomas answered gravely. “I had no intention to cause you any distress. You can reach me through Gryph. Just ask for ‘Trial Thomas’ and he’ll know who you mean.”

  “Thank you, Thomas. Thank you.” Kelly looked around the rapidly clearing dance floor and noted that cleaning staff from the Empire were already preparing the Meteor room for its next function. Donna and the two girls, who had long since sold all of their violets, were waiting expectantly by the door.

  “Thomas, can I ask you one more favor?” Kelly pleaded.

  “Certainly.”

  “Could you just walk out with me, so I’m not embarrassed in front of my friend and her daughters? It’s a long story, but they bought me a subscription to a dating service and, well, it’s not working out great.”r />
  “I understand,” he said kindly, and she took his proffered arm. As they walked out the entrance, Kelly blushed from embarrassment, but she gave Donna and the girls a wink. At the first turn in the corridor, when she was sure that they weren’t observed, Kelly renewed her promise to get Thomas to the trial on time the next night, and they went their separate ways.

  Back in the ballroom, as Donna waited to settle the final bill with the Empire bartender, Blythe pulled Chastity out of earshot and asked, “Should we tell Mom?”

  “Tell her what?” Chastity asked.

  “That Aunty Kelly spent the night dancing with an artificial person,” Blythe replied in exasperation.

  “Doesn’t she know that?”

  “No, the grown-ups can’t tell real people from artificials at all. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I guess.” Chastity shrugged. “We better not tell Mom though, Aunty Kelly looked pretty embarrassed. I think she wanted to prove that she could get a date without our help so she hired a boyfriend.”

  “Poor Aunty Kelly,” Blythe sighed, and the girls shook their heads sadly like old married women.

  Fifteen

  The first hour of the sit-down to determine the scheduling and rules for the gaming tournament was wasted on playing musical chairs without any music. None of the Natural League delegates were willing to sit next to representatives from the Fosterlings, the Natural’s derogatory term for the worlds aided by the Stryx. But the Drazens and the Dollnicks were engaged in a long-standing feud, the Frunge and the Hortens could barely stand to be in the same room together, and the Verlock didn’t want to sit next to anybody.

  As the top local representative of Fight On, the human gaming guild co-sponsoring the tourney, Stanley believed he had solved the seating puzzle a half-dozen times. Unfortunately, each time the delegates took their places, somebody would be left standing, due to a previously unannounced objection.

  A few years back when Stanley attended the sit-down for the big Horten tourney, he was surprised when the meeting was held in orbit around Horten Five. Each delegate was enclosed in an identical white sphere, floating randomly around a small volume of space, communicating with each other through electronic interfaces. They may as well have stayed home and done the whole thing with remote conferencing. At the time he had assumed it was related to the pathological fear of contamination that was a characteristic of the Horten relations with other worlds. Now he realized it was a no-nonsense solution to the seating problem.

  An urgent subvoced consultation with Donna, the executive brain of the family, brought the suggestion that he introduce Kelly as a living spacer between Vergallian and the Verlock. The Vergallians were generally friendly to humanity and the Verlock delegate admitted he didn’t see much difference between a chair occupied by a human and a chair that was empty. Stanley sat on the other side of the Verlock, and the meeting got underway.

  “I’m pleased to welcome you all to this planning session for the upcoming tournament sponsored by Fight On and the EarthCent consulate, I’m sorry, embassy, on Union Station. My name is Stanley Doogal, and I am the lead information trader for the Fight On gaming guild in this sector. Two seats to my left is Kelly Frank, who with the recent upgrade of our consulate to a full embassy, became acting ambassador to Union Station. She’s requested our indulgence to say a few words before we get down to the business of gaming. Ms. Frank?”

  As Kelly stood, all around the table eyelids dropped shut, earflaps drooped, and sensory protuberances wilted or retracted in anticipation of a political speech.

  “Gentlemen, and I’m told all of the gaming delegates present who manifest a gender are indeed men, a troubling incident has come to the attention of EarthCent and the Stryx management of this station. An attempt to adulterate the human food chain with an anti-competitive agent engineered by the Farling has been detected and neutralized. I want to assure each and every one of you that any attempt to interfere with these games will be viewed as an act of aggression by both ourselves and our Stryx hosts.”

  Kelly stopped and glared her way around the table, attempting to make eye contact with all the attendees who sported eyes, though the impact was minimal since most of them kept their eyes closed. “And if any of you have any questions about visiting Earth or trade agreements, I’ll be more than happy to help,” she concluded brightly.

  Kelly’s implant struggled to sort out the chorus of responses, ranging from “Whatever,” to “I’ll give you twelve to one the drug thing was the Dollnick’s play,” but she couldn’t tell who the speakers were. The run of comments turned quickly to recollections of previous diplomatic speeches at sit-downs, and the general consensus was that Kelly now held the record for the shortest lecture, probably because she was just pretending to be an ambassador. The Frunge thought there had been a shorter speech once, and before Kelly sat back down, they were already arguing over odds to bet on the proposition.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Stanley interrupted the flow. “We have a lot to get through today. I’m sure you are all aware of the unfortunate outcome of the recent Nova tournament on Felix Prime, where there was a disagreement over the allowable acceleration profiles and star buster yields in the final round. I also hear there was a fire fight in the poker room over the validity of the ‘Four Flush.’”

  The last bit brought a burst of laughter, convulsions and odd scents from the attendees, all of whom had their own way of expressing their appreciation of humor. Then the discussion shifted to the physics engine of the Nova game, and this time it was Kelly’s eyelids that began to droop. Fortunately, the chime dinged in her ear and it was Libby with the long awaited lab results from her counterfeit shopping outing.

  “I can confirm that all of the purchases you believed to be counterfeits were indeed manufactured far from Earth,” Libby spoke through her implants. “However, as none of them violate Stryx rules on toxic, explosive, radioactive, gene-altering, or other dangerous products being smuggled onto the station, it’s nothing we can involve ourselves in directly.”

  “But it’s false advertising and patent and trademark infringement!” Kelly subvoced in reply, as a mind-numbing discussion of n-space droned on around her.

  “The first is hardly a crime, or I’d have to stop advertising Eemas. The second is a civil issue which you could take up in Thark Chancery, but you won’t get the offenders to show up for the proceedings unless you hire a mercenary fleet for the process servers. Even then, simply locating the counterfeiters can be an impossible task, and there’s nothing to prevent them from moving if you do find them.”

  “So what do you suggest I do? What was the point of requesting evidence that Earth laws were being broken if you can’t enforce them?”

  “It’s a question of ‘won’t,’ not ‘can’t,’” Libby replied a bit testily. “The finding means that we won’t interfere if you choose to undertake enforcement activities on the station.”

  “What, you mean I can go confiscate the cargo of incoming ships and you’ll back me up?”

  “I mean the Earth merchants can hire enforcement personnel and we won’t interfere. We’d like to do more, but there’s a difference between helping you and taking direct action against the counterfeiters. Most, if not all of them, are operating within the laws of their own cultures, and they don’t even officially recognize Earth’s existence in any case. There’s no justification for us to value your laws above theirs.”

  “As important as trade is to Earth, I don’t want to be remembered for starting a war over nut crackers and carrot peelers,” Kelly stated firmly. “There has to be another way, just give me some time to think.”

  “Of course, and if I see an opportunity to do something else to help, I’ll let you know.”

  “If you really want to help, could you project a hologram of me and do some tricks with the room lighting so I could sneak out without anybody noticing?”

  “Kelly, these are gamers discussing the maximum theoretical efficiency of mass transfer
ence weapons within a steep gravitational gradient. If you danced naked on the table, maybe one or two of the humanoids might look your direction, but I wouldn’t bet on it. If all you want to do is leave unnoticed, just don’t hit anybody over the head with your chair after you stand up.”

  Kelly stood up self-consciously and headed for the exit. Common courtesy demanded that she excuse herself before leaving the table, but uncommon situations call for uncommon conduct. It’s funny, she thought, as the door slid closed on a heated discussion about significant decimal places. There was a pacifist movement back on Earth that wanted to ban war games lest they brainwash kids into signing on as mercenaries, but if you dumped this gaming bunch into a diplomatic crisis, they’d solve it by boring everybody to death.

  Sixteen

  Joe reverted to the silver suit for his third Eemas introduction since his dress uniform now sported a hole through the pocket to match the newly healed scar on his leg. He threaded his way through the corridors of the Little Apple on high alert for flower girls, but arrived safely at the Beer Garden in time for the date with his pocket change intact.

  The open-air café was walled off from the main corridor by chest-high partitions, and the entrance was blocked by a young woman trying to maintain her balance on improbably high heels. The girl was wearing too much makeup and not enough dress, and she was engaged in a loud argument with a Beer Garden employee who was impeccably turned out in black and white lederhosen with red suspenders.

  “First of all, I am eighteen years old, and second of all, there is no drinking age on Union Station!”

  “First of all, you look around fourteen to me,” the man said, ticking off the point on a fat finger. “Second, we do not allow corridor tramps to solicit business in our restaurant.”