Date Night on Union Station (10 page)

Fourteen

The mixer was held in the Meteor room, one of the smaller ballrooms of the Empire convention center, which was popular with interstellar trade shows and academic conferences. Donna had logged just over a hundred preregistrations at two creds a head, which covered the room rental for two hours and included one free drink. Walk-ins were welcome for a 50-centee premium, and hopefully there would be enough to pay back the embassy’s petty cash fund for the finger food provided by Empire catering.

It was really a Beta affair, and if it worked out, Donna planned to add a band at the next event, maybe open it to couples as well. The “classical” tracks pumped in softly over the room’s sound system were only marginally better than the unidentifiable music that played in the tube capsules.

Kelly arrived late, found out that she had forgotten to preregister, and paid the premium for her nametag. Donna looked her up and down, obviously unimpressed that she had come straight from work without going home to change, but Kelly just mumbled “Long story,” and entered the ballroom.

Once inside, she headed hopefully for the folding tables with the white tablecloths, but the party platters looked like they had been attacked by a flock of ravenous birds. There were still plenty of crackers, but nothing remained of the dip, and the only slices of cheese left behind bore the telltale marks of having been sampled and rejected.

Then she spotted a discarded napkin formed like a crumpled canopy over the corner of a silver platter. With a sense of heightened anticipation, she grasped the peak between her thumb and forefinger and raised it slowly, while turning her head sideways to see what would be revealed. At the moment of truth, the torso of a blue-jacketed figure loomed into her vision.

“Hello. I’m Thomas. I arrived just after you.”

“Hi Thomas, I’m Kelly.” She straightened up, embarrassed, but unable to keep her eyes from straying back to the napkin and what it potentially concealed.

“I’m sorry, I think I interrupted you,” Thomas apologized with an exaggerated look of concern. He appeared to be a few years younger than Kelly, with medium length brown hair and no outstanding features that spoke for or against his looks. “Please continue what you were doing.”

Kelly hesitated for a moment because the whole thing was so silly, getting caught hunting for a bit of finger food under a discarded napkin and then turning away from a conversation to do so a second time. But she decided to take him at his word.

“Thanks, I’ll just take a quick peek,” she replied, and whipped off the napkin without any further ado. It revealed two slices of a spiraled bread roll that included some kind of white filling flecked with green olive. Synthesized tuna salad? Synthesized chicken salad? Her mouth began to water.

“Please, you have them both,” Thomas encouraged her. “I don’t need to eat things like that.”

“Well, if you insist,” Kelly agreed quickly, moving both rollups to a small plastic plate, then taking a nibble of the first.

“They say the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach,” Thomas ventured with a smile. His whole face rearranged itself around the upturned corners of his mouth and his strong, even teeth. Kelly immediately felt guilty.

“I think they usually say it about a man’s heart and stomach,” she admitted, and held out the plate. “It’s very good. One is all I really wanted.”

“A man’s heart and stomach,” Thomas repeated. “I believe you’re right, but truly, I can’t eat a bite.”

“If you’re sure?” Kelly smiled in relief, and made quick work of finishing the first rollup. Thomas stood quietly, observing, so she swallowed quickly and asked, “Have you been on Union Station long?”

To her surprise, Thomas suddenly appeared to be acutely embarrassed. She looked at him curiously as he shuffled his feet and looked around self-consciously, before he finally came out with, “Actually, I’m not very good at dating.”

An uncomfortable silence followed as Kelly chewed the second rollup and tried to come up with a polite way to lose the poor guy and try again before the evening was shot. But then she spotted Donna looking skeptically in her direction, and she had the sudden urge to prove she could manage a date on her own. What could it hurt to give the shy guy another chance?

“So, do you happen to know anything about the Union Station gaming tourney?” Kelly asked. She hoped to give the guy an easy conversational entrée while picking up some background information to help with the Blanker conspiracy that had just landed in her lap. “I’m supposed to attend the planning session as a diplomat, but I really know very little about it.”

“I know a lot about the Union Station gaming tourney,” Thomas responded with a burst of enthusiasm and renewed confidence. “Do you want to know about the history of the games, the events this cycle, the contestants, the prizes? I may be entered in one of the peripheral events myself if I qualify.”

“Tell me about the contestants, Thomas. I’m especially interested in knowing about the competition in any games where humans will be competing for the championship.”

“There are thirty-six events in the tourney, and humans can compete in seven of those. Of the seven, humans have a chance of winning five. The Drazen will win at Three Square until the rules are changed, because the endgame is a perfect match for their tentacle, and either the Frunge or Dollnicks will win at Trikado, because they can turn off their pain receptors and regenerate limbs later. But humans have a good chance at Phalnyx, Backgammon, Terror Drive, Foosball and Nova.”

“Why can we only play in seven games?”

“Humans can’t compete in games that require telekinetic ability, electromagnetic spectrum sensitivity beyond visible light, or other specialized biological functions that are lacking from human genetics. But winning five out of thirty-six would be a record. No species has ever taken more than three events since the tournament play was established.”

“Do you know if humans will be facing champions from any of the Natural League worlds in those five events?” Kelly was starting to feel pleased with herself for giving the guy a second chance and striking gold.

“There will be strong competition from Natural League worlds in everything but Foosball. The equipment cost and gravity requirements have prevented Foosball from catching on much outside of areas with a human presence, it’s primarily a mining colony game. The main competition will be from the Hortens, of course, since they traditionally own Phalnyx and excel at gambling games.”

“Thank you very much, Thomas. That was very useful to me.”

“I wish there was a real band,” Thomas spoke wistfully. “I know how to dance very well.”

“Really? It’s surprising you’re so shy in that case. My parents made us all learn how to dance when we were children and it’s really come in handy for me as a diplomat. I think I could dance to this music, even though it sounds a little alien.”

Thomas smiled happily and held out both arms in a perfect ballroom dancing pose. “So, shall we take a turn around the room while you tell me about working as a diplomat? It sounds very interesting.”

Kelly stepped into his arms confidently, and they set off slowly around the room, occasionally dodging other waltzing couples, as the piped-in music was composed in a triple meter. Two flower girls circled the milling adults like predatory wolves, expertly cutting out straggling couples and lightening their pockets in exchange for a sprig of violets.

Thomas proved to be an expert dancer and a confident lead, and Kelly found herself floating along as she recounted the triumphs and disasters of her diplomatic career. She couldn’t remember anybody ever showing such an interest and asking such intelligent questions about her options and choices. Suddenly, it occurred to her that he might be a professional listener, a therapist of some sort. She was just about to ask him what he did for a living when the music stopped.

“Alright folks, I’m afraid our time is up,” Donna’s voice came over the PA system. “Thank you for attending. We hope you had as good a time as we did, and when I say you, I’m sure you know who I’m talking about. If you haven’t signed up for our notification list, please stop and do so on your way out.”

“Oh, can you believe how time flies?” Kelly said to Thomas, her green eyes sparkling. “How can two hours have gone by just like that? I’m afraid I’ve talked your ear off. I hope you’ll let me make it up to you sometime.”

“It couldn’t have been two hours,” Thomas replied, interpreting her statement literally. “Let’s see. We arrived at the same time, and all of the food was gone, so we must have been late. Maybe we’ve only been here a few minutes?”

“Such a flatterer,” Kelly said, laughing at his serious demeanor and giving him a nudge with her shoulder. “Oh, I really needed tonight, Thomas. Thank you.” She looked quickly about to make sure they had a bit of privacy, and then she crossed her fingers and tried to prompt him into action. “Is there anything you wanted to ask me?”

“Yes, there is,” Thomas exclaimed, his face breaking into the same wide smile she’d seen just once earlier. “Did I pass?”

“Of course you passed,” she said warmly and chucked him on the shoulder. Still, Kelly was a bit taken aback that his self-confidence could be so tenuous after the best evening of dancing she’d had in longer than she could remember. “Did you really have to ask?”

“Of course. I can’t just declare myself to have passed the Turing/Ryskoff test. I’m hardly a disinterested judge,” he explained happily. “Now I’ll be able to present myself at the Tourney for Stryx certification, and take my place among sentient beings. Are you alright Kelly?” He grabbed Kelly’s elbows as she listed to the side on buckling knees. After a moment she took a gasping breath and regained her balance, even though all of the color had drained from her face.

“You’re an artificial person?” she whispered.

“Well, I prefer to be called Thomas, if you don’t mind. I am a new artificial intelligence construct, conceived as a group project of the Open University Senior Class. There wasn’t much of a budget, of course, so this body is a rental.”

“Oh, Thomas, how could you,” Kelly implored, fighting back tears for the first time in years. “I thought you were a human. How could an artificial person be so mean?”

“I don’t understand,” Thomas replied, his face taking on a deep look of concern that Kelly now realized was likely a preset expression from the rental company. “This is the Turing/Ryskoff open event sponsored by the remedial human program of the Open University. Didn’t you attend the judging course?”

“No, Thomas, this is not the Turing/Ryskoff open event. This is the first social mixer sponsored by the EarthCent Embassy on Union Station!”

“How can that be?” Thomas looked around, visibly upset. “Saturday the fourteenth at 19:00 hours in the Meteor room, Empire Center.”

“Today is Friday the thirteenth,” Kelly hissed angrily, even as she thought, Friday the thirteenth, it figures. “How can a robot, I’m sorry, an artificial person, screw up the date?”

“But I told you I had a problem with dating,” Thomas defended himself. “It was practically the first thing out of my mouth. I’m not very good with timing either.”

“Problem with dating? Not good at timing? Oh God, this can’t be happening. And don’t try to squirm out of it. I know perfectly well that the Stryx broadcast a time signal so fine you can use it describe the position of a quark.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Thomas tried to explain. “On my early Turing/Ryskoff trial runs, I kept tripping up on accuracy. No human wants to hear the time to a trillionth of a second, so my creators suggested I simply cut back on significant digits and tell the time to the nearest minute. But in the next trial, I failed because I was blinking like a metronome. Some of the students already had job offers away from the station and they were in a hurry, so they suggested that I use a random number generator to insert a little uncertainty into my time stamping. But I’ve been having trouble with dates and times ever since. It’s very embarrassing.”

“Thomas,” Kelly hissed and grabbed the artificial hand that felt so human she could just scream. “You don’t have to tell anybody about tonight, do you? After all, I’m not really a judge, so I can’t really pass you.”

“But it shows how important this whole dating business is and that I’m probably not ready for the real test after all,” Thomas replied, sounding depressed. “If I don’t tell the class about it, how can they help me improve?”

“Thomas, you’ll pass tomorrow, I guarantee it. If you give me a way to contact you, I’ll even make sure you show up on time if I have to come and escort you myself. But please, please, don’t ever tell anybody about this evening.”

“Alright, Kelly,” Thomas answered gravely. “I had no intention to cause you any distress. You can reach me through Gryph. Just ask for ‘Trial Thomas’ and he’ll know who you mean.”

“Thank you, Thomas. Thank you.” Kelly looked around the rapidly clearing dance floor and noted that cleaning staff from the Empire were already preparing the Meteor room for its next function. Donna and the two girls, who had long since sold all of their violets, were waiting expectantly by the door.

“Thomas, can I ask you one more favor?” Kelly pleaded.

“Certainly.”

“Could you just walk out with me, so I’m not embarrassed in front of my friend and her daughters? It’s a long story, but they bought me a subscription to a dating service and, well, it’s not working out great.”