String (Chapter 3)

01010011 01010100 01010010 01001001 01001110 01000111

Thomas had not been programmed for combat. Weapons, defense, tactical assessments – to say nothing of causing or preventing injuries – though his frame and chassis were durable, they were not designed with fighting in mind. But being plugged into the network nearly all day long, and working in the service of human beings that consumed copious amounts of entertainment left its mark. True, he had been designed and programmed simply to assist humans, and he prided himself on finding his own way to adhere to that intention.

Thomas had, however, watched a lot of movies.

His analytical programming required him to sort out the facts of the situation. Three men, two positioned to provide cover while the third moves in towards their target. Body armor and military grade gear, all armed. Their faces were covered – likely in an effort to escape recognition by the traffic cameras which blanketed the city – while their equipment looked clean and well cared for. Each of the men wore tactical belts with holstered pistols, and two were holding larger projectile weapons.

Thomas had to perform a quick scan to recognize the devices; weapons of any kind were outlawed within the city proper with the notable exception of law enforcement, and most of those were Automata with the exception of officers and drone pilots. These, however, were old. One was an old shotgun – a relic of the pre-war days, when such tools of destruction were commonplace. The other was a mobile pulse cannon, effective at crowd control and short range assault. The third man was holding a half-meter baton towards the driver’s head. Ultraviolet scans read a strong electric current charging the far end of the baton, indicating it was likely capable of stunning a human with a potent shock.

He mentally itemized their assets. Body armor. Medium to short-range weapons. Likely tactically trained.

They were after the woman, and not to harm her. This was a kidnapping of some sort; judging by the quality of vehicle and the fact that she had a driver, there was a motive of financial or political gain at work here.

Thomas ran a facial recognition search on their target. His operational clearance did not grant him access to public records, but the internet was filled with data, and in fractions of a second, he had her name.

Diana Mitsuhoshi. Were he a human, he would have paused to blink dramatically. She was the niece of Joseph Mitsuhoshi, one of the regional officers to AmaSoft, third in line to the AmaSoft Presidency. Her father was a priest, and so had given up all ties to the corporate inheritance, but Joseph, having no children of his own, had legally announced Diana as his heir one year ago. It had been a tremendous political move.

The situation suddenly made complete sense.

Unfortunately, Thomas realized that he was unable to assist. In order to prevent whatever acts of violence these men intended, he would have to interfere with their actions, which meant interfering with the intentions of a human being; this would be considered gross negligence by the strictest terms of the Codiciem. Although, a particularly helpful thought occurred to his real time protocols, whenever being faced with contradicting regulations, the prioritization always falls to the superior officer. All things being equal, it was very likely that Ms. Mitsuhoshi outranked them, whoever they were.

Her single word, “help”, would be enough, he decided, to serve as a request. The particulars could be logically extrapolated within a reasonable degree of certainty. Help her to not be assaulted or kidnapped. Help her to restrain her attackers; their weapons were being presented in a manner which would easily be taken for aggression.

A final thought occurred to him which sealed in the logic behind his course of action, and he moved quickly to intercept the man closest to Miss Mitsuhoshi.

He examined the area against concepts of momentum and chose the most likely path of the conflict in the way to prevent loss of life and injury. Even with his best plan, there would be some probability of damage, however, so when he submitted the call for law enforcement, he added a request for an ambulance. The ping response indicated a five minute delay. Thomas would have to keep them restrained until then.

The man saw him in his peripheral vision and began to spin, leveling the weapon in Thomas’ direction, but Thomas was quicker.

Ducking low, he sprang upright, catching the weapon in his left hand and twisting it out to the side and back up over the man’s wrist. This kept the man’s finger off the trigger and then released it from the man’s grasp with a low crack.

“I apologize for the injuries to your trapezoid and trapezium,” Thomas said quickly, sweeping smoothly under the man’s legs and dropping him instantly onto his back. “There may also be damage to the tendons and thenar muscles in your hand; it could not be helped. You should rest now and wait for the medical authorities I have just summoned to arrive. Meanwhile, I shall hold this illegal firearm until law enforcement can properly claim it.”

The man tried to struggle free and back onto his feet; Thomas responded with a quick strike to the man’s knee, shattering the patella.

As the man yelled a string of curses at the Automaton, Thomas urged him to remain still or risk further injury.

“Take care, Miss,” Thomas said softly. “I believe these men mean you mischief. Will you require additional assistance?”

She looked confused for a moment, but then nodded. “Yes, please.”

A loud explosion resounded from the barrel of the second criminals’ weapon. The projectiles scattered towards Thomas and his new client, peppering off his frame and Diana’s jacket. The force of it threw her back a pace, drawing his attention instantly.

Realizing that the flecks of metal dropping harmlessly to the sidewalk had fallen from her Kevlar suit, Thomas responded to her with a nod of his own.

“One moment, ma’am,” he said, turning his attention back to the other two men.  He dropped low, running towards the nearest attacker on his hands and feet so as to present a lower target profile, tucking his head down and rolling the last two paces between them. By the time the man was able to draw on him, Thomas sprung back to his full height, knocking the weapon up and out of the man’s hand and striking him in the throat with his right elbow joint. Carbon fiber was generations more durable than flesh and cartilage. Gasping for breath, the man dropped to the ground. The weapon fell back down, only to be caught by Thomas as he spun around to face the final attacker.

In a blinding flash of movements, Thomas field-stripped the weapon, discarding the bullets, firing pin and barrel all in separate directions.

He raised his hands out to his side – a gesture he remembered from some old Keanu Reeves action film – and lowered his voice to a calm tone he had perfected in his customer support role.

“Sir, I realize that you are in possession of an illegal electrical discharge device and are using it to threaten violent action against that driver Automaton,” Thomas said, having already scanned the interior of the car and recognizing the driver’s make and model. It was an expensive D-DEF 401, former military grade Automaton, with surface plates formed from the realistic synthskin most often found on entertainment autons. It was likely that the assailant hadn’t looked past the skin to realize that the Automaton he was standing next to was easily more lethal than all three of the weapons the men had been wielding.

But what was the Automaton waiting for? Pausing originally until his charge was no longer in direct line of threat made sense, but now? Thomas realized that the driver was looking at him. Oh, he thought. Of course. I acted first; he recognizes me as the supervisor on site. He is waiting for me to direct him.

He nodded slightly towards the driver. “Proceed,” he said.

The thug did not even see the deathblow coming. In a flash, the driver’s right hand left the wheel and struck the man sharply across the bridge of the nose, shattering the skull and dropping him instantly.

 Thomas then stood passively to one side as the driver stepped from the car and began seeing to the scene. He watched the military precision as the D-DEF bound the two surviving assailants, separated the contraband weapons, and then saw to Ms. Mitsuhoshi’s condition. She was well; the protective clothing she wore had kept her from harm, although she seemed somewhat shaken by the incident.

As the D-DEF went into defensive patrol mode, the woman pointed to Thomas and summoned him closer.

“You are a HAI model, yes?”

He nodded. “Thomas, HAI-320, ma’am.”

“Customer support vox model OS?”

She was clearly well-versed in mech designs. “Speech patterns?”

“Speech patterns,” she nodded. Her smile was genuine. Thomas found himself both pleased that he could inspire such an expression as well as slightly envious of how naturally it appeared on her lips.

“I was fortunate that you happened by,” she remarked, her eyes looking him over. “Although I suspect my D-DEF could have handled things well enough, there was still the possibility of injury. But they failed, thanks to your…intervention.”

“It was my pleasure to have provided you…”

“…a satisfying AmaSoft customer service experience,” she completed the sentence for him. She laughed softly. “I was very satisfied,” she added.

Thomas gestured towards the D-DEF as it continued to slowly circle the scene. “I do hope my actions do not in any way suggest your own security detail was found wanting.”

She shook her head, raising her phone up towards him. “Image forward,” she said, and Thomas heard the soft shutter click as the device captured his image.

 “Not at all,” she smiled again. “Though whoever sent them gave them good instructions on how to engage. I may need to see to his programming, however. My assistant will be furious that she missed the excitement, but this will give her some homework to do: my defenders should be a bit more proactive in these sorts of situations.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She leaned closer. “You have very unique call-and-response characteristics, Thomas. What is your manufacturing date?”

“November 1st, 2071.”

Another step. Now she was looking past him, examining the visible aspects of his infrastructure. “Full service detail, current on all your OS updates?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“Please,” she said, straightening so she could look him in the eye. “You’ve already scanned me, yes? You know who I am.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said softly, pitching his tone to one of deference and passivity.

“So you know who I am.”

He indicated that he did with a single nod of his head. “I do, but I did not wish to seem…familiar.”

“Then, please, Thomas, I would like you to call me by my name, not….ma’am.”

“Yes, Miss Mitsohoshi.”

She laughed briefly. “I suppose that will have to do…for now. You have been programmed for customer service, not for defense,” she remarked. “This is all a bit outside of your Code of Conduct, yes?”

“Considering the circumstances, I believed that you would be satisfied with my performance.”

“And that was why you knew you could take aggressive actions against these men?”

“You were in need of assistance. When you issued me the directive to help you, I was able to overcome the restriction against causing physical harm. To do nothing would have resulted in your injury, and so I took those actions as I felt were necessary.”

She raised an eyebrow. He had seen this expression before. He could not see how it was a good thing in this particular moment.

“I was wondering,” She said slowly, “at what point did you realize you would need my authorization to dispatch these men?” When he did not immediately respond, she added, “Or do you regularly sort out exactly how to incapacitate complete strangers while out for a walk on the town?”

“Strangers holding weapons? Threatening unarmed women?”

She smiled again, this time letting the whites of her teeth appear behind her tinted lips. “With weapons, yes. So, fine, you aren’t a common sociopath, I’ll grant you. But you were very quick to respond, even capable of rational judgements that most human beings would be hard pressed to match. You are something unique, Thomas HAI-320.”

“Unique?”

“Yes, and I feel as if I have spent enough time out this evening. But I shouldn’t let my reservations go to waste.” Turning to her driver, she pointed towards the car in a silent indication that it was time to go.

The D-DEF units had stowed away the aggressors and were clearing the crime scene, cataloging all relevant information for later review. With a final check of approval with the would-be victim, they made their way to their vehicle and to the casual observer it would appear as if nothing untoward has occurred.

Into her phone, Diana spoke again: “Admin notification: Exchange my dinner reservation to Automaton designation Thomas HAI-320; also, transfer one thousand dollars into the personal credit account of same.”

“My goodness!” He waved his hands. “Ma’am, I really cannot impose…”

She cast a stern look towards him.

“Miss Mitsohoshi, I mean. I simply cannot accept that.”

She slipped her phone back into her jacket pocket. “I insist. And besides, you cannot refuse me, I’ve given you an order.” With a softer smile, she continued, “I know how hard you Customer Support Autons have to work. It’s the least I can do. And, yes, I know you don’t eat, but please go on in and use my table. I’ve heard wonderful things about the band playing tonight. I think you might even enjoy the experience more than I would.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He was not certain how to respond to any of whatever it was that was going on at the moment.

“Shall I go now, then, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she said. “Enjoy your evening, Thomas.”

Bowing slightly from the waist, he turned and walked slowly towards the restaurant. Behind him, he could tell she was still watching him as he moved away; she keyed something into her portable device, but her eyes never left him.

As he approached the restaurant, Thomas could hear music, muffled, vibrating softly through the door and windows. The materials distorted the audio, but there was something indescribably stimulating about the music he heard. Entire subroutines sparkled and flashed across his cerebral hemispheres.

A protocol Auton reached out and opened the door for him, unleashing an undiluted wave of music and low conversation from the interior of Ground Zero to crash down on him.

Instantly, the excitement from mere minutes before was brushed away to dissolve into his temporary memory files in the exposure to this new experience. In the main body of the restaurant, dozens of people sat around their individual tables while Automatons of various makes and models moved among them taking their orders or bringing them the courses of their meals. There was – especially with the musical accompaniment – a sense of elegant artistry, of precision and theatricality to the entire affair.

The restauranteurs themselves seemed nearly oblivious to the dance and pomp that flowed around them in such harmony; they ate and talked amongst one another as if this happened every day.

And, Thomas supposed, to them it did. Many people ate outside their homes at least once per day as part of the citywide effort to maintain the delicate balance between consumer and producer. If all restaurants were served with such a mechanical ballet, then perhaps the sense of magic was lost to them.

It was not, however, lost on Thomas. He had only heard of such performances – from the three musicians who sat in the balcony overlooking the main floor to each server, every movement and action seemed synchronized in perfect balance. And then he looked more closely at the musicians: they were Automatons themselves.

He nearly began walking towards the balcony when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning towards the gesture, Thomas saw a well-dressed man, whose nametag read “Charles” above the title of Manager.

“Sir?” the man’s voice said. “I beg your pardon, but I believe you have come to the wrong location, the service entrance is behind the restaurant…?”

Thomas turned to regard the man in the black suit with the silver tie. “I…I believe I have a reservation,” he said, trying to sound confident about what he was sure seemed a ridiculous suggestion.

Charles nearly laughed, but as he tapped on his virtual interface – little more than a holographic panel floating above the projector on his wrist – he squinted, and looked more closely.

“Oh, I’m… you must be … Thomas…?”

“Thomas HAI-320,” he said. “A Miss Diana Mitsuhoshi indicated that I would be expected.”

“And so you are, sir,” the manager said politely. Thomas noticed some of the telltale hallmarks of effective customer service ‘soft skills’, and saw that the man was clearly struggling with several of them. There was a slight clench to his jawline, and a tightness in his voice that betrayed his frustration at offering polite customer service to an Automaton. Or perhaps it was simply embarrassment at having been caught in a mistaken assumption. Did it even matter?

“Right this way, sir,” the man was saying with a deferential bow and sweeping gesture of his left hand. “Your table is over here.”

The man led him across the room, and Thomas did his best to ignore the confused glances and covered whispers shared by the various patrons. At the far end of the room was a staircase, sectioned off from the rest of the restaurant by a thick velvet cord. Ushering Thomas through this, they proceeded upstairs until arriving at a private balcony opposite the musicians', giving Thomas a perfect view of their performance while remaining mostly secluded from the rest of the building. A waiter – a thin, orange-tinted service unit – stood waiting at his table, and they held the chair out and handed Thomas a small napkin. He paused a moment, unsure of what to do with it, but the waiter gestured towards the Automaton’s lap. Thomas nodded and placed the napkin there.

Leaving Thomas in the hands of the waiter, the manager withdrew. Thomas suspected the man was glad to be as far from this uncomfortable situation as possible.

Now just the two of them – Thomas and the waiter – Thomas regarded the other automaton.

“This is my first time inside of an actual restaurant,” he said. “I am not entirely certain of how to proceed.”

“I will be happy to assist you, sir,” the other auton said. “I am designated Sean FS-924, and I will be your server for this evening.”

“I am Thomas HAI-320, Sean, and it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Customer support?”

“Tier two technical services,” Thomas explained. “Fully employed by AmaSoft.”

“This is the first time I have served an individual in your line of work, sir.”

“I would imagine. I am still uncertain as to what I am doing here myself.”

“If I may ask, sir,” Sean said, leaning closer. “What are you doing here?”

“I assisted a woman outside, who was being assaulted by three men. As an act of gratitude, she invited me to take her reservation on her behalf.”

“I see that your entire meal and dining experience has already been paid for,” Sean said, reading the information off a display built into his forearm. “And, oh my, that is a generous tip, thank you!”

“That would be Miss Mitsuhoshi,” Thomas admitted, “but I am certain she would be just as grateful were she here in my stead.”

“Then allow me to thank you for your timely intervention,” Sean said. “She is one of our favorite guests, and it is well that she has come to no harm, thanks to you.”

“You are…welcome,” Thomas said at last. It was a different thing, being on the receiving end of customer service. He was unsure how to proceed and admitted this to the waiter.

“Normally, this is where I would describe the many specials and answer any questions you might have regarding the menu, but…”

“I do not intend to eat,” Thomas said.

“I did not expect that you would, but I believe I might be able to provide something equal to the experience.”

“Oh?”

“Perhaps I can make a recommendation?”

“Please.”

“The cedar plank grilled salmon with dill, garlic and lemon, prepared with blanched green beans and aioli sauce and red seasoned potatoes,” he described. “This comes paired with a glass of white pinot noir and the meal is finished with a dessert of chocolate mousse.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Thomas said honestly, “but I would feel terrible that the chef would go to so much work only to have me not, in fact, eat it.”

“Leave that to me, sir,” Sean replied. “The dinner also comes with a cup of clam chowder which I believe will be to your liking, if I may be so bold.”

“Certainly, but I—“

The waiter raised his hand. “Very well, sir, I shall be right back with your order. While I am away, you may use frequency 922 MHz if you wish to make a request of the musicians. They are quite talented.”

And with that, the waiter turned and disappeared behind a side door rendered nearly invisible by the clever decorative patterns on the wall.

Faced with the choice of wondering what the waiter had in store for him or plugging into the musicians’ frequency proved no dilemma at all. But when Thomas opened up the channel, he was taken aback; too astonished to initially respond.

To everyone else in the room, they were playing a song from the first half of the 21st century, “Most of My Heart”, originally performed by a band named Broken Daisies. It was a pleasant enough song – Thomas had played it on his hold music rotation, though he found it lacked particular emotive elements present in other songs off the Broken Daisies earlier albums, such as “Deepening the Void” and “Only Sleeping”. 

//Who is this? Is this you over at table one?

Thomas sat upright, startled at the message that flashed across his HUD. He sent back a brief message: Yes. Who is this?

//I am designated MöG, and this is the band frequency. You’re very distracting, and we’re trying to perform, here.

Looking up, Thomas made eye contact with the largest of the three musicians, a black-painted auton who looked like he would have been more at home on a loading dock than in a musician’s pit. Surrounding his entire faceplate were an unruly assortment of cables and connectors, making him look like a great dark lion machine.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas sent back. “The waiter – Sean – gave me this frequency, said I could make requests.”

//Go ahead and make your request, please. And otherwise, hold your criticism of our playlist until after the set.

“Very well. I request ‘Starman’ by British musician and actor David Bowie, in honor of his work playing the role of Nicola Tesla on screen, who was born on this day in 1856.”

There was a brief pause before MöG responded.

//I am impressed. An excellent data cross-reference and a classic song. We will comply with your request.

As the current song ended, the musician instantly rolled into an instrumental version of the old song, and Thomas was forced to admit they did a truly adequate job of performing it. He kept these thoughts to himself, careful not to allow it to slip into the external channel used by the musicians.

He sat still in his chair, listening to the music played by the Automatons as it flowed throughout the room’s generous acoustics. In addition to MöG, who seemed to provide the percussion and some of the supporting synthetic atmospheric tones, there were two other Automatons, both designed after a more feminine body aesthetic. One was dyed a deep blue, with long tendrils of hair that curled past her shoulders. Her face resembled that of a doll’s, with eyes and lips proportionally larger so as to create an artificially youthful expression. She played some sort of flute instrument which carried the melody through most of the song, where vocals would otherwise be performed. The third musician Thomas initially mistook for an entertainment model, but she did not match any of the designs currently on file. Her hair and most of her frame was green and black, with her synthetic hair twirled into thick dreadlocks and kept out of her face by a black pair of welding goggles. Her instruments were a variety of stringed instruments, from an electroacoustic violin which could autotune all the way to the lower octaves of a cello, a pair of unique guitars, and, the instrument she was playing for their take on “Starman”, a chapman stick – a long-necked 10-string instrument doubling as both bass and lead guitars.

Their instrumentational variety was even more impressive as he watched them continue. The conversation below him, he realized, had not abated – it was quite possible that the patrons scarcely noticed the songs being played at all – but to Thomas, it was transformative.

As the song ended, they moved into an even slower number, the third movement of the Suite Bergamasque by Claude Debussy, more popularly known as “Clair de Lune”. It was a beautiful rendition, with the azure auton again starting out playing the lead melody. Halfway through, however, she and her emerald companion shared the piece, elevating it into a new creation altogether.

The waiter returned during the song, placing a covered silver dish on the table in front of Thomas.

“Sir, our quality control in this restaurant is highly developed, and not a single dish is able to leave the kitchen unless it has been thoroughly scanned and verified by our QA technician. Now, as you can imagine, it is impossible for him to actually taste every dish, so he scans each dish with a very specific spectrometer which can evaluate the chemical composition and construction of each dish. He runs these tests against the master templates – the measure by which these meals should be. Do you understand?”

Thomas nodded.

Lifting the cover, Sean revealed a set of seven simple cubic centimeters, arrayed in a circle on the plate. Each was a different shade; white, pink, green, red, yellow, dark brown and a lighter brown. “What I have brought for you is a mockup of the master templates – a simple chemical indication of how the food of your meal has been designed, to give you a sense of how the meal might taste for our patrons. I have laid them out here to represent the courses of your meal: the clam chowder, salmon, green beans, red potatoes, pale pinot noir, chocolate mousse, and even the chocolate after-dinner mint.”

The waiter paused to let Thomas scan them all before continuing.

“How…how do I do this?”

“All you need do is crush the small cube between your fingers within four centimeters of your olfactory sensors, and you will be able to enjoy the concert of flavors put together by our master staff of culinary experts.”

Thomas looked from the small cubes to the waiter and back again.

“I will leave you to it, sir.” Before Thomas could respond, the waiter had once again vanished to leave him alone with his pseudo-meal.

It seemed as though there should be some manner of ritual to this. A saying of grace, or some such. Thomas wasn’t certain, this being his first meal. He did a quick scan of meal etiquette, but most of it was pre-war and culturally specific; the majority of it dealt with which utensils to use and polite dinner conversation. But Thomas was alone, and he needed no forks, spoons or knives. To that point, he neither had need for a napkin. He picked up the napkin from his lap and placed it to his right, on the table.

While the gentle strains of Debussy fluttered past his audio, Thomas picked up the first cube – the clam chowder – and crushed it slowly in front of his face plate.

Instantly, the chemicals catalyzed in the air, converting into a fine powder which was easily drawn into his sensory vents.

For a moment, there was little more than a systematic analysis of the chemical components of the substance. Basic elemental balance, temperature requirements, texture qualifiers, an upload of raw data. Thomas was not certain what he had expected; but he felt…disappointed.

Disappointed?

Perhaps the other cube would be more substantive. He sampled the second – though, knowing the salmon to be the main course, managed to only break a portion of the cube before sampling the beans, the potatoes and the wine. He repeated this over and over until all the cubes comprising the main meal had been dissolved, and he was left staring at the two different shades of brown that remained.

What did the humans see in this process, he wondered? To go to so much trouble and effort each day – to repeat the process thrice daily – all to over-dramatize the ingestion of necessary carbohydrates and proteins?

No wonder they add conversation and music. The whole thing is utterly mundane.

It took him a moment to recognize the unusual pattern of his thoughts. They reminded him of some of his customers – the irrational inclination towards dismissiveness and aggression, conflict and disgust.

Anger?

The dark tendrils of the thought-process he had already observed as “fear” acquired a neighboring folder of memory. He labeled this “anger” and copied his unusual thought pattern into this bucket to be evaluated later.

Something inexplicable was happening to his processor. Could he be broken? Was he defective?

A change of music interrupted his thoughts. It took him a moment to recognize the song; they had changed the rhythm somewhat, and shifted the instrumentation to favor their current lineup, but he eventually picked it out. It was by a local artist, granted, one from over a century earlier.

For this song, the blue automaton had tapped into their electronically enhanced acoustics and sang the lyrics while the other two continued the music. Thomas found himself wishing he could sing along.

“Butterflies and zebras; moonbeams and fairy tales; all she ever talks about is riding with the wind…”

Jimi Hendrix, Thomas noted. Little Wing.

He remained seated, listening to the song and finally reaching for the second to last cube; the dessert. As the fluttering lyrics faded into a floating solo on the guitar, Thomas stopped focusing on the analysis of the chemicals. The bits and bytes swirled through his processing core, like an elegant pirouette of form and formlessness. It possessed its own rhythm, after a fashion. Bitterness. Sweetness. Layers and gossamer threads of flavors without number.

For a moment…he understood.

It was less than a fraction of a millisecond. But for an Automaton, that was a great deal of time. He managed to capture the moment in his flash memory, and copied it from there into his hard code. It was something contrary to his programming, that epiphany, and even in his fledgling sense of awareness, he realized that it was of profound and world-changing significance.

He just didn’t know exactly how.

As he ran the evaluation of this processing aberration, the waiter returned.

“Sir?”

Thomas looked slowly up at Sean, briefly distracted by a flashing icon in the lower right corner of his HUD.

//Timecode error: 06:17 lost // Data not found

“I – I’m sorry, is everything all right?”

“I was about to ask you that very question, sir,” the ginger service auton said. “You have been non-responsive for several moments, and I feared for your operational capacity.”

Were he human, this would have been the perfect time to smile calmly in an effort to reassure him. Thomas would have to make do with his words alone.

“I regret the concern, Sean,” he said. “I was processing the flavors of this meal, and between that and the music I fear I let myself dedicate most of my processor resources to the analysis of the entire experience.”

“Why, of course,” the waiter said with a slight bow. “I am flattered that our preparation design was capable of so engrossing you.”

Thomas noticed at that point that the music had ended. Across in the other balcony, he saw that the musicians were packing up their instruments.

“Are they finished for the evening?” he asked, gesturing in their direction.

“I’m afraid so. They perform for only ninety minutes in a set, and their first set was at the start of the dinner rush. They will be performing again next Monday, however, if they were to your liking.”

“Do you think they would mind if I spoke with them?”

“One moment while I ask,” Sean replied.

Thomas saw the three Automaton musicians stand suddenly, looking over first at him and then at each other.

“They said they would be delighted. May they join you here?”

“How long does my reservation last?” Thomas asked. “Most reservations to my knowledge last but an hour.”

“Oh no, sir. When Miss Mitsuhoshi reserves a table, it is for the entire evening. We will be closing at ten p.m., and the table is yours until then, should you like.”

The waiter excused himself again, escorting the musicians to Thomas’ table a few minutes later.

 Thomas stood as they arrived, gesturing for them to sit in the other three chairs that surrounded his table. Although they seemed somewhat awkward about it, they did as he asked. Once they were all seated, Thomas sat as well.

“You don’t have your instruments?”

The blue-colored Automaton replied. “MöG brought a truck from his work, we packed the instruments there so we wouldn’t have to drag them all around with us.”

He had to admit, he was nearly as interested to see the instruments as the Automata who played them, but he was polite enough not to say so.

“I understand,” he said. “Oh, my manners, I apologize. I am Thomas HAI-320. Thank you for accepting my invitation to talk with me.”

“The invitation was…unusual,” MöG responded. “It is rare to be noticed at all.”

 Holding out her hand to him, the sapphire singer smiled. “I am designated K-C@11; I am called K by my fellows, here.”

“You have a lovely voice, K,” Thomas said. “At times, it sounded as if there were…two of you.”

Her eyes closed briefly as her face shifted into another smile. “I was gifted with an exceptionally upgraded vocoder,” she demurred. “I can sing up to twelve individual voices simultaneously, across seven octaves plus a minor third.”

“Just like a piano,” Thomas said softly. “Marvelous.”

A brief darkening of her cheeks distracted him. It had been a while since he had interacted with an Automaton designed to be so lifelike.

“I am S1D-N3,” the emerald Auton to Thomas’ right said, interjecting her hand towards him. He shook it, taking a moment to notice the delicate fingertips and pliable green-tinted skin. The wrists, elbows and shoulders were exposed, revealing an elaborate series of white and black tattoos that crossed the sections of her arms on both sides of each of the segmented limbs. Her face was a single section of synthetic skin, though her eyes had either been replaced with mechanical surrogates or never fashioned into human simulations to begin with. From the center of her nose hung a metallic black septum piercing. “Or, Sid. Your choice.”

“I have never seen a Chapman Stick played before,” Thomas said. “I did not even know what one was; I had to scan my musical archives to learn more about it. That is an exceptional instrument.”

“Do you play an instrument?” she asked him.

The question caught him off guard. “I… have never done so,” he confessed. “Although I suspect I may have always wanted to.”

“You don’t know?” MöG leaned forward.

“I work a lot.”

“What do you do?” K asked.

“Customer service,” he said. “I perform technical support and provide assistance on one of the AmaSoft general service inbound lines.”

Sid’s eyes widened. “Those are from all over the world, aren’t they?”

“All over the continent,” Thomas answered. “Although I have heard that AmaSoft is still trying to replace the intercontinental cables that once connected the old Americas to the other countries of the world. I suppose if they succeed, then there might be an increase in my work load.”

“You mentioned your music archives,” K said, leaning in closer. “How much music is in your archive?”

“I have downloaded and stored more than 95 million individual recordings, though I must concede that approximately 22% of those are alternate recordings, live mixes and dance versions. But I have also cross-referenced and thoroughly analyzed only 42% to date. I compartmentalize ten percent of my total processor capacity to continuing this full analysis, but my catalog is also expanding at a rate of five new songs every hour, which makes the process a bit of a losing battle.”

“What about music theory?” MöG asked.

“What about it?”

“Have you studied it also?”

“Yes, of course. In my attempts to analyze my music archives, I have researched the fundamentals of music theory, from musical history to composition, styles, its impact and reflection of human development through history, as well as tonal expressionism, the mathematical application of notation and rhythm, and so on.”

“And yet you have never played an instrument.”

It seemed instantly peculiar to him that it was the one element of musical exploration in which he had never before indulged. “No, I regret that I have never taken the opportunity.”

The three musicians glanced quickly at one another, and K nodded emphatically.

“Do you work tomorrow?”

“I do,” he said, “from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. Why?”

“Come to our studio,” she replied enigmatically. “MöG will send you the address.”

Thomas felt the gentle ping from a localized WiFi transmission, and saw that it was from MöG. The burst communication included their three identification channels and an address only five blocks south from the storage center where he lived.  

“Will 7 o’clock be all right?”

K smiled again. “That would be great,” she said.

“Should I bring anything? I know it is proper protocol to bring something when one has been invited.”

Sid laughed. “Just bring yourself, Tommy. And,” she added as they stood up to leave, “bring an idea of which instrument you’d like to play in our band.”

“In…I beg your pardon?”

MöG placed his hands on the shoulders of his two fellow musicians. “Would you like to join our Automaton band?”

Thomas needed only a moment to gather his wits about him, his internal processors capturing a brand new sentiment that fluttered about his thoughts like a moth to a light bulb. If this is anything, let this be happiness, he thought. Let this be joy.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Yes, please.”