Magic test, p.5
Magic Test, page 5
part #3 of AI Diaries Series
“How about eBeth?”
“I’ve seen her work it alone for short periods, usually right before her boyfriend comes in. She has excellent timing.”
“She has an excellent watch,” I corrected him. “I made it for her.”
“Tell me more about this café you’re planning,” Art said, stepping back from the fully assembled letterpress. “How will it differ from all of the new eateries opening up in the village?”
“That’s just the thing,” I said, trying to muster my enthusiasm for an idea I’d only found out about an hour earlier. “A café can serve food, but the focus is on providing a vibrant environment to meet with friends or do some work while enjoying a drink.”
“How is that different from a bar?”
“Technically speaking, cafés have to serve coffee and tea,” I said, though I was unsure if this was really true. “They’re more likely to have tables outside as well,” I added, doubling down on my guesswork. “I’ll put the tables displaced by the printing operation out on the veranda, and maybe I’ll build another picnic table for the backyard to catch the shade in the afternoon.”
“If people come to read or to meet with their friends, how will you keep them from hanging around all day without spending enough to make your expenses?” Art asked.
“Have you been taking business lessons from Pffift?”
“I’ve been around longer than Library has existed, Mark. Everybody takes a shot at the restaurant business sooner or later.”
“But you’re an AI in a host body, and you’ve only been occupying it since you came here,” I pointed out. “When did you own a restaurant?”
“I had a whole chain of family dining restaurants in the Minarkian Empire, but a relative of the emperor pushed through legislation banning AI from owning eating establishments in the theory that we couldn’t be trusted.”
“Are you making this up?” I demanded. “I thought you avoided getting involved with lesser species.”
“Only for the last thirty million years or so. I must have tried just about everything at one time or another. History repeats in cycles, you know.”
“Have you ever been a partner in a company publishing educational pamphlets on a foot-powered printing press?”
“I have now,” Art replied.
I had to resist the urge to grit my artificial teeth. The Original always had an answer ready for everything.
Five
“You’re just in time,” Helen greeted us as we rolled our bicycles up to the front door of Pole Position, the flagship facility of the business formed by the merger of her pole dancing and martial arts school with Kim and Justin’s chain of health and wellness clinics. “I can’t believe how fast everything came together after we signed the agreement.”
“Justin told us that this building just happened to be available when the original tenants moved their business out of the capital,” I said. “Where should we leave our bicycles?”
“There’s a parking lot in the alley to the left,” Helen replied. “The two of you must have ridden all night.”
“Half of the night and all of the morning,” Sue told her. “Mark didn’t want to close early on the first Friday of the café’s launch week.”
“Has it been going well?”
“As well as could be expected,” I said, leaving room for interpretation on both sides. “Paul and Stacey are watching the place for us tonight or they would have been here.”
“You don’t have to make excuses for them. I know that Stacey had her fill of this city when we were still carrying out our observation mission, and Paul considers the whole planet to be a technical desert. Guess who else I invited.”
I drew a blank and glanced at Sue, but she was also at a loss for what common acquaintances we might have who would be in the capital.
“Saul,” Helen told us. “The Council of Spaceports is holding a meeting at the new hotel right up the street from here. He’s going to stop by after he gives the keynote address at their luncheon.”
“You mean Saul is going to skip out on his own convention?” I asked.
“He’s the president, he can do whatever he wants. Besides, I told him you would be here, and you’re more important than anybody he’s going to rub elbows with at the convention.”
“Funny, I don’t feel important.”
Sue began wheeling her bike away to the parking lot and I followed her with my own. There was a long rack in the alley next to the building and I noticed that none of the bicycles were locked. While the average person living on Reservation would never steal a bicycle, the planet wasn’t without a criminal element, and I looked around for an explanation. Then a young man wearing clothes that I would describe as more of a livery than a uniform approached us and saluted smartly.
“My name is Theodus and I’ll be your valet parking attendant for the evening,” he announced, taking hold of the handlebars of Sue’s bike. “Nice custom job you have here. Just give me a minute to rack these and I’ll tell you about our add-on services.”
“Fancy,” Sue whispered to me, as the valet took my bike with his free hand and wheeled them both to a pair of adjacent open slots. He lifted a small L-shaped bar from the rack and fed it between the spokes of the front wheels, a measure that could only be intended to give the attendant time to get there and prevent a kid from grabbing a bike for a joy ride.
“Life in the big city,” I replied, reflecting on the fact that it was actually my first visit to the provincial capital, which was too far from home to include in my service area for turret clocks.
“Those bikes look like you came a long way,” Theodus observed, pulling a small pad from his pocket and taking a pencil from behind his ear. “Our executive package is just thirty copper, and it includes lubrication, wheel truing, tire inflation, a full wash, and detailing.”
“How much is the basic parking fee?”
“Two copper an hour, but when you buy the executive package, the first six hours are free.”
“We’ll take it,” Sue said, drawing a silver coin from her purse and handing it to the valet.
“Thank you, ma’am,” the valet said, pocketing the coin. “I’ll just put on my coveralls and get started. It takes me around a half an hour per bike, so I hope you’ll be in the area for that long.”
“Yes. We’re here for the grand opening,” my second-in-command told him.
“I snuck a peek after they installed the poles, and the instructors were trying them out,” the valet said, his eyes growing wide with the memory. “I’m thinking of signing up for one of the stretching classes just to get inside so I can watch.”
“I’ll mention it to the owners,” Sue offered. “I know they’re interested in finding synergies between their businesses.”
The valet beat a hasty retreat before we could deploy more words that he didn’t understand, and I led my fiancée back around to the front of the building.
“You know that our bicycles are just going to get dirty again during the twelve-hour ride home,” I couldn’t help admonishing Sue as we entered Pole Position.
“It’s all part of the experience, Mark. Do you realize we’ve never taken a vacation together?”
“How about the time we went skating back on Earth, or the Ferrymen’s Day picnic when I proposed?”
“Those were dates, not vacations. Vacations involve sleeping over somewhere.”
“But we don’t sleep.”
“Work with me, Mark,” Sue said with a sigh.
Justin approached with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s wonderful,” Sue answered immediately. “I love the open look.”
“Other than getting rid of a couple of walls, we barely had to do any work at all.”
“So the poles are structural,” I surmised, nodding my head in approval at the novel engineering solution.
“All of the weight is borne by the solid brass pole at each end of the rows. We added iron beams to the ceiling to spread the load, but they’re boxed in with planks to keep the timber aesthetic. Helen says that the solid poles dance very differently than the flexible ones.”
“Will you heat the building at night?” Sue asked.
“We weren’t planning—I see where you’re going,” Justin interrupted himself. “You think that the poles will cool down at night and only warm up slowly. We’re hoping to get hundreds of senior citizens into our morning and early afternoon stretching classes, so the pole dancing and martial arts instruction are scheduled for the late afternoon and evening, which should fit better with the schedules of younger people. Besides, Helen said that the solid poles are too dangerous for the students to dance on. We’re going to have them painted after the grand opening.”
“What’s the schedule for today?” I asked. “The invitation listed noon for the starting time, but it didn’t say anything about what to expect.”
“We’re giving the guests a half an hour to enjoy the healthy buffet and a drink before our instructors put on a demonstration,” Justin told me. “Hors d'oeuvre?”
“Thank you,” Sue said, daintily taking a slice of cucumber with some sort of creamy topping from the tray. “Is everything vegan?”
“There’s egg and butter in some of the baked goods,” he told her.
“That’s fine. I bake with eggs and butter myself.”
“Hors d'oeuvre?” he asked again, extending the tray in my direction.
“I didn’t even know you could say ‘Hors d'oeuvre’ in modern Aramaic until you just did,” I replied, waving off the tray. “I’m going to take a look at your spread and see if there are any ideas I want to steal for my café. Is that whole counter area going to be the apothecary shop?”
“That’s where the apothecary will serve people, but we’re also going to sell herbal teas and other dried food products that will help senior citizens meet their health goals. When I set up my independent living facility back on Earth, I realized that one of the problems for older people who wanted to make healthy living choices was the lack of appropriate products in the pharmacies where they make most of their purchases. With the apothecary shop, dietary supplements, and physical therapy, we’re trying to create one-stop shopping for those who have difficulty traveling.”
“It’s almost too bad you don’t need a website on this planet because you just provided most of the text for the homepage,” I told him. “Go ahead and mingle, Sue. I’m going to capture images of all the healthy snack food and I’ll bring you a plate.”
I made my way through the crowd to where the buffet was laid out, the guests moving in a slow line down the side of the counter that was open to the public. Kim was working with three young assistants on the other side of the counter, slicing and dicing various fruits and vegetables to keep the trays full. They were going through toothpicks by the box, and some of the offerings reminded me more of a porcupine than a food group.
“Thanks for coming, Mark,” my team’s medical and sanitation expert greeted me when my place in line brought me across from her. “You can’t imagine how long I’ve been dreaming of a place like this.”
“A pole dancing and martial arts studio with an apothecary shop?”
“Sue told me you were finally developing a sense of humor,” Kim shot back. “I’ll need to see more evidence of it before I make up my mind. Try a canapé.”
“What are the green ones?”
“Avocado. There’s also honeydew melon on the fruit trays if you’re going for a color theme.”
“I see you’re busy so we’ll catch up later,” I said, capturing visual images of both the finished products and the toothpick assembly line behind the counter. “Any drinks?”
“Healthy drinks. Nothing you’d like.”
I heard the woman behind me sigh impatiently, so I took two quick steps forward to close up the space I’d created in the line. If Kim knew that I’d modified her inebriation algorithm to work with water as well as alcohol, she wouldn’t have said that about healthy drinks, which tended to be from fruits that were eighty to ninety percent water when they came off the tree or bush. I wasn’t particularly fond of fresh fruits and soft vegetables myself, but I filled a plate to offer Sue. Then, rather than wandering around trying to find her in the mob, I checked her homing beacon and took a straight path.
“And they’re twins?” Sue was asking a dark haired woman who was pushing a tandem pram. I did a double-take, not because of the babies, but because of the stroller, the first I’d seen on Reservation. “What are their names?”
“Hypnos and Thanatos,” the woman replied. “I’m Nyx, and my husband is Erebus, so we couldn’t resist.”
“They’re so cute,” Sue gushed, bending over for a quick cootchie-cootchie-coo before turning her face up towards me and asking, “Wouldn’t it be great if I had twins, Mark?”
I almost dropped the plate. “It would be something,” I said, at a loss for words. “Really something.”
“Of course, my husband would have preferred if at least one of them had been a girl, but he hides it well,” Nyx told us. “Our first three children were boys, and I don’t think I have it in me to try again.”
“How about you, Mark?” Sue said, surprising me a second time. “Would you prefer a boy or a girl?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied, fighting back the urge to counter with ‘A girl or a boy what?’ “I mean, they both have their advantages.”
“That’s a funny way to put it,” Nyx said.
“My husband is in business and he’s probably thinking about how children could help with the work,” Sue explained for me.
“Well, don’t wait too long or you won’t have the energy to keep up with them. That’s why I’m here.”
“To buy some herbs to calm them down?” I guessed.
Sue punched me in the shoulder, but Nyx just laughed.
“It’s better to let them run wild and use up their energy so they sleep at night,” she told me. “I’m here because I heard that they’re going to offer free childcare here during the classes and I can’t resist a bargain.”
“We have a teenage daughter, eBeth, who teaches at the village school,” my supposed wife told Nyx. “Mark spoils her something awful.”
“eBeth? That’s a funny name.”
“Compared to—” I began, but Sue cut me off with a flash of infrared from her eyes, then smiled again at the babies.
“It looks like the crowd to get in the food line is easing up and I’m sure you want to get something before it’s all gone,” she told Nyx. “It was nice meeting you.”
“eBeth a funny name?” I demanded as soon as the trio of Greek gods was out of earshot. “She’s married to a guy whose name means ‘Darkness’ and her children’s names translate to ‘Sleep’ and ‘Death.’”
“It’s just their culture, Mark. And don’t think I didn’t notice how taken aback you were when I asked if you’d like twins.”
“I was just surprised,” I protested, holding out the plate as a peace offering. “Here. I brought you some things to sample for the café.”
We continued mingling for the next twenty minutes, if my accompanying Sue as she approached various young mothers and fussed over their children counts as mingling, and then Justin lowered the window shades while one of the employees hung a few bright lanterns from the ceiling between the two lines of poles. A small band consisting primarily of string players struck up a wedding tune, and Helen, dressed in a modest one-piece bathing suit, performed a pole dance that somehow gave the impression of being a waltz. When the music stopped and she spun to the bottom of the pole, the guests exploded in applause.
“I’ve never seen her dance before,” I said to Sue. “If I didn’t know better, I’d believe that she’s spent her whole life in that encounter suit.”
“Is that what you call it?” Nyx asked from Sue’s other side. “I suppose that wearing a bathing suit like that a woman can expect plenty of encounters.”
The band struck up a new tune, and four of the instructors Helen had trained swung onto their poles and performed a gymnastic dance that would have looked right at home in a circus. I almost expected them to jump from pole to pole, but the spacing was too wide for that.
After a solo dance by an athletic man in gym shorts who received less applause than his performance merited, Kim coaxed the whole audience into following her through a series of stretches and poses, while the staff moved up and down the ranks correcting our forms. I was a bit annoyed when a young woman tried to change the angle of my elbows as I parted the wild horse’s mane, but other than that I have to admit that they knew their stuff. Just as the stretching routine came to an end, somebody tapped my shoulder, and I turned to see the president of the Council of Spaceports, who I’d first met when he was posing as a safety inspector responsible for the welfare of the Originals.
“Saul,” I greeted him. “Helen told us to expect you.”
“I’m sorry I missed the performances,” he replied. “My schedule doesn’t allow me to sign up for any classes, but I understand that they plan to offer a day pass as well, and I hope to give it a try.”
“Stretching is important for a man of your age,” I told him.
Sue elbowed me, a clear indication I’d said something wrong, though I couldn’t imagine what.
“I was also hoping you’d have time to talk about the portal system built by the Originals,” Saul continued, guiding us towards a quiet corner of the large space. “We’re all very excited about the potential.”
“We’ve been proceeding slowly to watch for ripple effects since Art couldn’t tell us which of the worlds might be in contact with the others. The Originals were very hands-off in their management.”
“So I’ve heard. You understand that trading with worlds outside the League holds a certain attraction for us. I had a long talk recently with one of the other Originals who obtained a speaking device and came to visit the capital. She didn’t know much about their portal system, apparently those memories were distributed to other clones in her group mind, but she was able to tell me that all travelers were routed through one visitor center per world.”
