Dr. Caldwell took a sip of tea and then poured another cup from a blue-and-white ceramic teapot. He pressed a red circular button on the tabletop and a slot opened before him. A vertical panel rose up out of the table and displayed an illuminated menu. “Ah, but take a look at your menu. Tell me what waitress could memorize all these choices? Along with nutrition information? Go on. Press that red button in front of you.”
Francis reached over and pressed the button. Another vertical panel rose up out of the table and lit up with dozens of pictures of food. In all his years of dining out, he had never seen so many options. Although this restaurant billed itself as serving Asian fusion cuisine, it was clear this place brought it to another level. The choices for fusion were overwhelming as one could mix Asian, Mexican, German, Thai, Italian, and American foods in one order.
He sorted through the suggested entrees but then found a customization button. He started with teriyaki chicken, fried rice, and mixed vegetables. As the minutes wore on, he swapped out ingredient after ingredient and in the end came up with a teriyaki enchilada topped with sauerkraut, pine nuts, and marinara sauce. He wondered if, besides nutrition information, the menu screen offered a set of ethnicity percentage statistics for his creation. He hit the expanded display button. Above the screen a holographic presentation of his dish floated in mid-air and rotated.
“What is that?” Dr. Caldwell said with ridicule in his voice.
“I have no idea. My doctor did say I should eat more fruit. Maybe I should change my order.”
“And pine nuts? You should try the walnuts here. Freshly cracked from the shell.”
Francis changed his order back to just teriyaki chicken, fried rice, and vegetables. He noted a banner scrolling across the top of the screen that read, “Twelve million combinations in all!” This was not fusion, he thought, it was a culinary civil war that would explode into indigestion.
“But I suppose we should get down to business,” Dr. Caldwell said as his menu screen retreated into the table. “I brought you here today to showcase what our restaurant has done so far. But we’ve reached a plateau in the market and I want to take all this to the next level.” His words were measured and drawn out as if he spoke to a little child. “With your industrial and interior design background in restaurants I thought you could maybe spot something we missed.”
“It is a little slow for a Thursday night,” Francis conceded. “You’re definitely on the cutting edge of technology, though.” He loosened his tie with his fingers. His dark wool suit made him uncomfortable because it was not his normal attire. Something else felt wrong about this place and it bugged him on an emotional and creative level.
“What do you think of the art on the walls? With you being a design major.”
Francis scanned the walls around their table. When he first walked in, he swore there were multiple Japanese paintings from the lobby to the table. At first, the painting adjacent to their table consisted of koi swimming in a pond but now it morphed into a foggy depiction of the Great Wall of China. “Are these paintings electronic? They keep changing.”
Dr. Caldwell let out a sigh. “I picked those up overseas. Programmable canvases from Denmark. The paintings change every five minutes. I couldn’t decide it I wanted a customer to feel like they were in Japan or Cuba. Morocco comes up a lot. I like Morocco.”
“I guess I’m more of a natural materials kind of guy,” Francis said as he took another sip of cardboard-flavored tea. “I like things to be more wild or handcrafted. But you probably already saw that from my portfolio. I can work with tech though.”
“Handcrafted? That sounds expensive. Or should I say expendable? Inefficient?”
Francis drew back. “What I meant to say was I prefer wood, rock, water, plants…” His voice trailed off. “Of course none of it matters if you have no customers. No customers, no cash flow.”
Dr. Caldwell eyed Francis suspiciously. “Do you think the traffic flow inside the restaurant is misguided?”
“No, I think that’s good. I can’t put my finger on it. I know. Maybe you should knock out a wall.”
“Good heavens. What on earth for?”
“We’re here on the coast. There’s a great view of the ocean on the other side of this mall. You should take advantage of that. Haystack Rock is just up the shore.”
Dr. Caldwell acted like he considered the thought. “No. I like being able to control the experience. What do you think of the tabletops around the grill? It’s imported Italian marble.” He tapped the marble as if he was a salesman patting the hood on a lemon of a car. He then reached into his suit and withdrew a bag full of pills. The pills were all different shapes, sizes, and colors. He began to pop them into his mouth a few at a time and washed them down with his tea.
“How many pills do you have there? Fifty? One hundred?” Francis said.
“Twenty-three. Each one serves a particular function. The blue pill here with the number twenty on it helps my metabolism. It's my goal to live as long as I can or least until we perfect immortality.”
Francis shifted in his seat. “How long do you want to survive? To see the day when everything gets automated?”
“Maybe. Then we can all focus on higher level things.”
“I think you expect too much out of all your machines. How do we get our food here anyway? When does the chef arrive?”
Dr. Caldwell pointed toward the kitchen. “Here’s our chef now.”
The chef appeared human from the torso up, but down below it was all wheels. It wore a pressed white shirt and a dopey white chef hat. The face was plastic but human-like and its eyes proved to be cameras. Francis was sure it was outfitted with the latest in fine motor controls, artificial intelligence, and lifelike facial expressions. He knew that much about the current state of robotics.
Behind it rolled another robot shaped like a washing machine on wheels. The top of the machine was covered in square metal pans full of ingredients for their order along with several spatulas, a grill scraper, and two salad bowls. As the chef rolled into place the cart followed in lockstep as if to keep the ingredients within easy reaching distance.
The chef grasped the two salad bowls with its rubber-coated fingertips and deposited them in front of Francis and Dr. Caldwell. Two bundles of silverware wrapped in burgundy-colored napkins were deposited next before the chef turned on the ventilation system just above the flat grill.
Francis leaned over from his seat and examined the chef’s cart from top to bottom. It did not have any visible sensors on it and it had several drawers on the side that faced their table. “How does this cart know where to go?”
“It follows the lead of the chef. It does possess an exquisite path-finding algorithm of its own, however,” Dr. Caldwell said as he unfolded his napkin, draped it across his lap, and dined on his salad.
“But what if it’s crowded? How does it know not to run into people?”
“It has a fantastic collision avoidance system. If needed it will speak to you.”
Francis considered putting his foot out in front of the cart to truly test its capabilities but thought better of it. He unrolled his silverware and dove into his salad. His salad was too perfect. Each strand of shredded iceberg lettuce was cut to same annoying length. The cherry tomatoes were quartered without a flaw and the soy-ginger dressing was mounded as if it came out of an automated dispenser. He stirred the salad with his fork to introduce some chaos.
“Something wrong?” Dr. Caldwell said dryly.
“This salad. It’s too…”
“Perfect? Perfect portions reduce food costs significantly.”
“But look at these croutons. They’re all cubic. There’s no character to any of this. Your salad is the exact same as mine.”
“And how is this a negative? Are you saying you want inconsistency?”
Francis was at a loss for words. “I’m just saying maybe you should fuzz your algorithms up a bit. Insert some random noise.”
“That�
��s curious,” Dr. Caldwell said as he finished up the last of his pills in between salad bites and sips of tea. He wiped his mouth and set down his fork. “Ever cut into a bad tomato, Mr. Beam?”
“Sure. Every now and then.”
“And what does it cost you?”
“A few cents.”
“No. It’s more than that. It costs you time and stress. Time because you have to find another tomato and stress because you wonder if the other tomatoes in the package are bad. Stress because you have to wash off the paring knife. Stress because you wonder if it would have just been easier to have picked up a salad to go.”
“It’s just a tomato.”
“No, it’s an enterprise. Have you ever visited a vegetable farm, Mr. Beam?”
“My mom used to grow vegetables in her garden. Or doesn’t that count?”
“Okay, fine. Then you are familiar with the problems of soil moisture, insects, crop diseases, climate change, and keeping the weeds out. We own most of the food chain for these restaurants, Mr. Beam. We have robot harvesters picking the lettuce for your salad. Machines that uproot the carrots. And can you tell the difference?”
“Not really. Other than…”
Dr. Caldwell put up a hand. “Our fields are worked by robots and watched over by towers that constantly feed data into a central computer. If the plants are short our water machines roll out to water them. If a plant is too stressed or underperforms it is cut down by a laser, its roots extracted, and it is replaced immediately by another seedling. It’s quite a system.”
“But what defines an underachieving plant? What if you cut down a plant in its prime that might have been on the verge of producing?”
“You’re missing the point, Mr. Beam. This isn’t about potential. It’s about percentage.”
“So you’ve taken out any human workers.”
“And brought uniformity and consistency to the system. And predictability. Really, Mr. Beam, you should read up more on the subject. The returns are astounding.”
The robotic chef whirred around the food cart and set two octagonal ceramic dishes in front of Francis. The index finger of the chef’s right hand opened up and shot the first dish full of brown soy-ginger sauce and filled the second dish with a pale yellow sauce.
“Is that enough yup-yup sauce? Or can I offer you more?” The chef said in deep male voice with mechanical overtones.
For a moment, Francis thought the chef sounded like a robotic Barry White. After examining the sauce, he replied, “Nope, nope. This is plenty.” The command drew a smile from Dr. Caldwell and it was the first hint of emotion Francis saw on the man’s face.
After filling Dr. Caldwell’s dishes with the same sauces, the chef delivered two steaming bowls of onion soup. Next, it opened up its right index finger again and squirted oil onto the grill. It then withdrew a bowl of white onions and a rounded bowl of white rice from the top shelf of the cart and dumped both onto the grill. From there, it picked up a metal pan full of sliced zucchini, carrots, and red peppers and slid them onto the sizzling grill.
“What's your name, auto?” Francis said as he finished his salad.
“Octal,” the chef said in a warm voice.
“Octal? Why not something like Octavio? I think I'm going to call you Octavio tonight.”
“My name is Octal,” the chef said, but this time with a hint of a mechanical growl. The onions crackled in the oil and the rice began to steam after a few seconds. Octal then reached over to the cart and withdrew two raw eggs. In less than a second, it cracked the eggs on the grill and swept the broken shells down into a square hole in the corner.
“So, Octavio, how long have you been here?” Francis said.
“My name is Octal. I've been here six months.”
“Six months? Why, you’re pretty new then.” Dr. Caldwell leaned over and lowered his voice. “That's perfect. That means his AI hasn't been hardened yet.”
Octal continued to work on the grill with a metal spatula. It scrambled the eggs at a frenzied speed that no human could possibly duplicate. It then shifted the rice around until all the grains were pushed into the shape of a heart. “My heart is to serve man,” it said in a devoted voice.
“Octavio, that's lame. I've seen that a hundred times. Whip up something more interesting,” Francis said.
“How about a train?” Dr. Caldwell said.
“Okay. Make a train,” Francis said.
Octal whirred away and in five seconds reshaped the heart into a steam locomotive. Octal the pushed the pile of rice around the grill like a train. “Choo choo,” it said in a deadpan voice.
Francis put his elbows on the tabletop and propped his hands under his chin. He feigned amazement. “How about a train wreck? Can you make it into a train wreck?”
“Why would you ask it to do such a thing?” Dr. Caldwell said.
“Oh come on. I'm just having a little fun.”
Dr. Caldwell raised an eyebrow.
Octal replied, “I cannot make a train wreck. I do not understand the request.”
“Sure you can. Just slam your spatula into the train. Make the rice fly everywhere.”
Octal paused for a few seconds as if its circuits went into overload. “No, I cannot do that. That would violate my core principles.”
Francis smiled and nodded at Dr. Caldwell. “See, now we're getting somewhere.” He looked Octal in the camera eyes. “Aren't you going to do the volcano trick? Let's see the volcano trick.”
Dr. Caldwell nearly choked on a spoonful of onion soup. “Is that necessary? You're not going to suggest an explosion are you?”
“No, no. Wait. Octavio, make a mountain range. Better yet, make a bunch of volcanoes.” Francis made gestures with his hands as if ash spewed up out of his salad bowl. He then made explosion sounds to get his idea across.
Octal flipped and stirred the rice locomotive instead. It then folded the scrambled eggs into the rice and squirted what seemed like a gallon of soy sauce out of one of its metallic fingertips. “I cannot make more than one volcano. I was only assigned one onion.”
“Well, then make a big one. Lots of fire,” Francis said. He gestured with his hands.
Octal picked up the onion and separated it into rings. It stacked the rings to form a cone on the grill. Next, it fired a burst of sake through one of its metallic fingertips and lit it afire with the other fingertip. The entire time it did not set down its spatula.
Unimpressed, Francis looked to the side. “C'mon. Make a spectacle of yourself.”
“Did you drink a bottle of sake before coming here tonight?” Dr. Caldwell said.
Octal divided up the vegetables in less than a second and scooped up a perfect portion to each of them. While it was doing this the other arm reached back over to the cart and withdrew a small metal pan with raw shrimp in it.
“Aren't its multitasking abilities wonderful?” Dr. Caldwell said like a proud father. “Its facial recognition software is second to none.”
In frustration Francis contorted his face into several painful poses. Octal mimicked each look with unnerving accuracy.
“Stop that, please,” Dr. Caldwell said.
Gray shrimp hit the grill with a sizzle. Octal reached into a sheath at its side with one arm and withdrew a razor-sharp knife. It then proceeded to slash off the tails of the shrimp with one quick algorithmic stroke and swept the debris into the square hole in the grill with the other arm.
“Does this thing ever drop anything? Hey Octavio, drop your spatula,” Francis said.
“Sir, I cannot do that,” Octal replied.
“What can you do?”
“Do you mind?” Dr. Caldwell broke in. “I'd rather you not agitate the cook. Who knows how sensitive its empathy circuits are.”
“Are you saying it isn't dialed in for sarcasm?”
“I have yet to see it successfully implemented.”
Francis downed a forkful of vegetables which were remarkably delicious, perfectly cooked to a crisp-tender, and
had just the right amount of coloring on them from the grill. The seasoning was fantastic. “Octavio, light yourself on fire.”
At that, Octal stopped flipping the now orange-pink shrimp on the grill. It reached back into the metal cart, but seemed like it got its arm stuck.
“Now look what you've done,” Dr. Caldwell whined. “Do you do this to all of your clients?”
“Oh come on. It's not like the machine feels anything.” Francis eyed Dr. Caldwell from the side. He checked Dr. Caldwell’s neckline for signs of seams. He wondered if the man was even human at all. The man’s irritation and pill-popping did offer hope that there really was a person inside that body. “Is that what it's all about for you?” He felt his cheeks become flush with anger. “You see a flaw in a person and you want to eradicate it. If you find too many flaws, you'd rather eliminate the person than waste the time trying to fix things.”
Octal began moving again and withdrew a pan of New York strip steak and a chicken breast. It dropped them onto the grill. Both cuts of meat sizzled and steam rose up from the surface of the grill. Octal sliced the steak into sixteen perfect strips and did the same with the chicken.
“I think you’re confusing efficiency with sentimentality,” Dr. Caldwell said. “Old traditions can be replaced with new ones quite readily. It’s impossible to stop progress in this area. The growth of automation is exponential not linear. This is simply a numbers game, Mr. Beam. Stop looking at it like it’s a zero sum game.”
“So we’re all numbers now. Great. And you wonder why you can’t fill the place up at a busy mall in the suburbs.”
“Like I said earlier, it’s a matter of patterns upon patterns. Once you discover those patterns, the rest falls into place.”
After Octal finished cooking the strip steak it deposited it onto Dr. Caldwell’s plate in a perfect fan shape. It then laid out the teriyaki chicken strips in a seashell shape on Francis’ plate.
“But there’s no heart in any of this. Everything’s perfect. Too perfect. It’s mechanical. It’s cold. It feels…processed,” Francis said.
“Processed? Processed? Curious choice of words,” Dr. Caldwell said.
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