Taking His Order

She approached his table, but he didn’t look up.

C: Hi.

B: Hi. Coffee, please.

C: Cream or sugar?

B: No. I mean, no thanks.

C: Sure thing.

Claire returned to the kitchen. it was a small room full of old steel contraptions. One of them made beverages: any beverage.

It wasn’t a touch screen, like most such devices. This was typical of THESIS creations. It had a rigid mechanical keypad with numbered buttons corresponding to the on-screen options. The keys were printed with ornate, curled numbers like an old typewriter. The options appeared on screen in plain text:

1 - water 2 - soda 3 - coffee 4 - tea

She pressed 3.

1 - black 2 - cream 3 - sugar 4 - cream sugar 5 - xcream sugar 6 - cream xsugar 7 - xcream xsugar

She pressed 1.

1 - iced 2 - cold 3 - lukewarm 4 - hot 5 - xhot 6 - boiling

she pressed 4.

She was used to all of these sequences, so that when she approached the keypad of the beverage screen, she just put a mug under it and pressed 314 without looking at the screen. When she first started working here, she found the strange plain white text on a black screen uninviting, but she soon grew accustomed to it and started to actually appreciate the simplicity.

This sort of interface, she noticed, was common throughout this section of town. Rumor was that the head of this company, THESIS, was prejudiced against graphical interfaces, and the fancier and more colorful they were, the more he hated them.

The mug filled quickly and precisely with a brown liquid that was more or less coffee.

When she emerged, his table was empty. She walked toward the table quite timidly, until she found him staring out the window in the back, almost hidden by the cafe’s odd shape. After a short hesitation, she placed his mug at his table.

He turned to face her, then sat at the table without saying anything. Something made her linger. A feeling of deja vu, or at least, recognition.

C: Do I know you?

B: No.

C: I guess you just have one of those faces.

B: I guess.

She grew more timid, as she didn’t like to force conversation with someone clearly uninterested. His tone was not cruel or harsh, however, just… tired?

B: What would you get here?

C: Everyone gets chicken and waffles. It’s like, the thing here.

B: But is that what YOU would get.

C: Me? Um, well, actually, I’m kind of a vegetarian, but I have really been craving meat lately, so… maybe.

He held the coffee to his nose, closed his eyes and inhaled.

B: Maybe.

He sipped again.

B: Yes. Yes, I’ll have chicken and waffles.

C: Okay.

She returned to the kitchen. Beside the beverage machine was another machine, much larger. It had a simple, cartoonish graphic on its metal exterior, which depicted a smiling pig with angel wings and a halo. Above it was a phrase partly scratched off with age, but still mostly readable: “Super Butcher Pro S”

It hand a similar keypad, and a similar screen.

1 - Chicken 2 - Cow 3 - Pig 4 - Catfish 5 - Soy

She pressed 1.

1 - White meat 2 - Dark meat 3 - Mixed 4 - Custom…

She pressed 3.

1 - Bake 2 - Grill marks 3 - Boil 4 - Broil 5 - Poach 6 - Blacken 7 - Fry

She pressed 7.

She then approached the breakfast mate, a bizarre contraption which still gave her the creeps, cleared her throat, and said, “Two waffles.” Though this was not particularly loud, she was self conscious of its sound in a silent, cavernous diner. If there was any illusion that anything here in the diner was made from scratch, or in any case by an actual cook, she was shattering it.

Shortly, she returned with the chicken and waffles arranged in a pleasing way on the plate (this was the only part of the meal she had any say in, and she took pride in it). She placed it in front of the man, who took a deep breath, perhaps smelling it, with his eyes closed. Then, without looking up, he spoke again.

B: Is it an ethical matter?

C: Is what?

B: You’re a vegetarian, you said.

C: (brief awkward laugh) Oh. I don’t know. It’s going to sound stupid.

He sipped his coffee and waited.

C: So I have this friend who was telling me that they still eat dogs in China. And I said that’s horrible but then I was reading this article, you know, about how pigs are just as smart as dogs. And my dog is pretty smart. I mean not compared to us, but he definitely thinks, you know? And now I can’t help but picture him whenever I see bacon and I’m like, do we just care about dogs because they’re cute?

B: And what about chickens.

C: Well… they’re pretty dumb, I guess.

B: So chicken and waffles might be okay.

She laughed.

C: Yeah, MAYBE.

The man took a large bite of chicken, eyeing her carefully. She laughed. He didn’t smile.

%% this IS a moment though. they’re becoming a little more comfortable after this little conversation thread happens.