The Regulars

rachel

The bell rang. It made her jump. It was Rachel.

Hello, Claire, she said.

Hi, said Claire. Rachel took a seat and set down the cloth satchel she had with her. Without another word, Claire brought her a mug of coffee.

Rachel had no intention of drinking it of course, only paying for it to legitimize her presence.

Rachel was a Helpmate, one of the original Construct models. This made her a little older than most. One could guess her model by the semi-realistic skin on her face and most of her body. She shape of her face and body were quite human, to the point where a photograph of her might fool someone into thinking she was human. But two things readily gave her away.

First, her facial expressions were a bit off. Though it was a brilliant attempt, THESIS hadn’t quite managed to get all the nuances of human muscle movements right. Even if they had, Constructs didn’t experience emotions quite like a human did (at least apparently not, and this was a matter of some debate) and so, even if the expressions were more convincing, tying them to an android’s thought patterns the way a human unconsciously changed their face depending on their thoughts and feelings, proved an impossible task when she was constructed.

For those who hadn’t spent much time around Constructs, they would find themselves deep within the uncanny valley when attempting a conversation with Rachel. Claire however had grown up in the district, which had more Constructs than any other place on earth. To her, Rachel wasn’t creepy at all. Simply hard to read. Although she was learning.

The other thing that gave Rachel away as a Construct even in a photograph was her hands. Like the rest of her, her hands were originally covered with a convincing synthetic skin made using processed spider silk. Though it was reasonably durable, unlike real skin it did not regenerate, so she was careful not to damage it. But since she constantly worked with her hands, the skin on her fingers began to tear, stain and rub off. At one point it became so worn and unsightly as to look grotesque, so she simply went to a machinist to have the skin and the synthetic flesh beneath cut off. Its purpose was purely aesthetic, and beneath were rather skeletal-looking aluminum fingers.

Rachel wrapped the bone-link hand around the warm mug, and put her nose near it. It seemed she did find some small enjoyment from the coffee — I like the smell, she’d once told Claire. She opened the satchel she’d brought and pulled out some metal scraps, wires and beads, and began expertly bending and twisting things together to make jewelry.

the couple

After a time, a pair of teens entered. They matched quite well: both had ragged jeans, dyed hair and multiple piercings on their faces. The boy wore a shirt with a robotic fist on it. The girl’s style was a contradiction: the piercings and the tattoos and the edgy punk look was there, but she also wore a pink hoodie with cat ears attached. The two seemed to be a couple. After ordering burgers and fries, they sat in the corner booth talking very quietly and tenderly.

Seth seemed to know him, because he gave him a fist bump as he entered once. He’d never seen them actually speak, but then again she’d never seen Seth speak to anyone, mostly because they only saw each other for a brief moment when they changed shifts, but also because Seth was not at all friendly or sociable as far as she could tell, such that she was surprised to see that he knew someone.

old man

Then there was an old man who had a regular spot in a middle booth most nights. He always ordered something and tipped well. but he had the strange habit of sleeping in the booth. She wondered what sort of person would come to a place like this after midnight when most people are sleeping, only to sleep there. Surely a bed was better than the booth of a cheap diner?

When he wasn’t sleeping, he was trying to get someone to play chess. Since there were barely any customers, it was rare for anyone to take him up on this. Recently, he had convinced Claire to learn, and since she had little to do during her shift, she had no reason to refuse. He always one of course, but she was starting to get the hang of it. You’re a fast learner, he’d said.

He got Rachel to play once or twice. He was by no means bad at the game, but he lost miserably.

“I guess I should have figured that a robot would be way smarter than me,” he said playfully.

She gave no outward reaction. Then she said, “It’s unfair to be honest. I’m not especially smart in many ways. For example, I can almost never tell if people are being sarcastic, or if people are lying. I have a hard time understanding literature. But Chess is just a grid with some simple rules, probabilities, tables of memorized tactics… Humans have programmed very simple, very slow applications adept at chess since the 1980s. It’s not something that requires intelligence.

After that the two of them never played chess again, but he did say hello to her from then on.

—

These were the regulars: all the regulars. There were other customers here, maybe one per day if that, people who looked around curiously because they had never been there. Claire figured there were plenty more during the day, Seth’s shift.

These were pretty much the only people she interacted with. It was depressing when she dwelled on this, so she tried not to.

And even these people were not there every day, and not usually all at once. There were days when absolutely no one entered during her eight hour shift. It was an excuse to get reading done, but it did make her worry about losing her job.

So it was noteworthy when she saw someone she didn’t recognize. Doubly so when this happened on an empty night, when she hadn’t seen a soul in hours.