“Whatever they are, they’re an expensive luxury item,” Renton says dismissively. “An economic dead end. Your problem, Tim, is that you’ve invented this thing but you have no real vision for what to do with it.”

You stand up. “I’ll get the bouillabaisse.”

The debate—which is not quite an argument, but at times so fierce it almost sounds like one—only pauses when you bring the soup to the table. You sit back and watch as they lift the first spoonful to their mouths.

Tim frowns. But it’s Renton who speaks first.

“Whoa!” he says, staring at his bowl. “What happened here?”

Mike sniffs his spoonful. “That’s rank,” he says quietly.

“What’s wrong?” you ask anxiously.

“I think some of your fish may have been off,” Jenny says nervously.

   “That’s not possible—” you begin, but then you remember. The employee who couldn’t understand why you wanted fish bones. Who only agreed to add them when he thought they were for your cat. Clearly, he’d simply tossed a bag from the trash in with the order, assuming your pet would sort out the edible ones.

Your stock—your beautiful, elaborate, saffron-infused fumet—was poisoned from the start.

“I’m so sorry—” you say helplessly.

Tim pulls out his phone. “Basilico can have pizza here in thirty minutes. That good for everyone?”

Numbly, you collect the full bowls and carry them back to the kitchen. Jenny gets up to help.

“I feel like such an idiot,” you say miserably when you’re alone.

“It isn’t your fault.”

“I’ve let Tim down. John Renton came here convinced I’m an expensive white elephant and I’ve just proved him right. Of course I can’t smell anything. I’m a robot.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily assume that’s Renton’s view,” Jenny says cautiously. “He wouldn’t be here if it was. He’s just sparring. He’s like that. All those tech guys are.”

You glance at her. “Mike’s not, though.”

“Mike’s not,” she agrees. “Or not so much. Which is why I married him.” She gives you a sideways look. “Why do you say, of course you can’t smell?”

“I can’t, can I?”

She shrugs. “The food industry already uses artificial taste buds. The deep learning for an artificial nose has existed for years.”

“So why…” You stop, thinking through the implications. “He wanted to build me as quickly as he could,” you realize. “To get me back. Even if it meant having to cut a few corners.”

“Well, I guess that’s men for you. Their priorities come first.”

“He loves me,” you say defensively. “He couldn’t wait a day longer than he absolutely had to.”

You say it, but once again you have that uneasy feeling about Tim’s love for you—that it’s as driven and uncompromising as everything else he does. There could be something claustrophobic, even frightening, about being loved so much and so inflexibly.

   “Yes,” Jenny says. “Tim turned out quite the romantic, in the end.” And again you have a sense of hidden history, of backstories and shared memories and past events that are still unknown to you.

36

   While they wait for the pizza to arrive, they finish the Bâtard-Montrachet and start on the Pernod, which is eighty-six proof. Only Alicia refuses—she’s still barely touched her wine. Jenny fills a shot glass along with the rest, but sips it slowly. The others down theirs in one, then reach for refills.

John Renton keeps coming back to the same issue.

“There are only two drivers for emerging technology.” He taps the table in time with his words. “Productivity and sex. You’ve already ruled out the first. So that just leaves sex. Everyone knows VCR beat Betamax because the porn industry adopted VCR. Snapchat beat messaging apps like Slingshot because it made sexting possible. You make your robots—how shall I put it?—fully functional, maybe you have a chance.”

“Cobots are completely sentient,” Mike says. “That implies they could withhold consent.”

“I don’t see how that would stack up, legally. Can’t rape a robot, am I right?” Renton thinks for a moment. “Slutbots. Now, there’s a product.”

   “Sexting and watching porn are private activities.” Tim speaks calmly, but you can tell how angry he’s getting. “Having a relationship with a cobot is very public, as I’ve already proved. No one’s going to pay millions of dollars for people to laugh at them.”

“Then, my friend, I don’t think you have a market,” Renton says with finality.

“You don’t get it, do you, you stupid prick,” Tim says. Renton laughs, a short happy bark, and you realize this is what he’s been working toward all along, that he’s been deliberately goading Tim into losing his temper. “This isn’t about millennial self-gratification. Look at the fucking bigger picture. Forget the robot for one second—that’s just the delivery mechanism. Abbie’s mind now exists as something purely digital. And therefore transferable. Don’t you see the potential of that?” He gestures at you. “She’s not some fucking toy. Effectively, she’s immortal.”

There’s silence. Mike looks at Elijah, as if to ask whether he’s heard any of this before. Elijah gives a slight, mystified shake of his head.

John Renton laughs again. “Immortal? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I don’t kid,” Tim says coldly. “Abbie’s mind will go on growing and learning forever. Her body—the shell—is replaceable, and therefore upgradable. Everything else can be transferred. Effectively, our bodies—our original bodies—are now just the boot program for something better. For version two point oh, if you like.”

“That’s insane,” Renton says. But he says it with delight, as if the idea is a shiny new present he’s just been handed.

“Most people think death is inevitable,” Tim goes on. “But what if that’s just a failure of our collective imagination? What if death is just another problem to be hacked? Right now it’s a massacre out there—fifty million human beings mown down every year. If that resulted from any cause other than old age, don’t you think we’d have done something about it?” He looks slowly around the table, then back at Renton. “Robots aren’t just the potential saviors of humanity. Robots are the future of humanity. And once you start to see it like that, you realize they’re way, way more important than some stupid texting app. Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison—they’re all investing billions in this area. I’m meeting Larry in a couple of days to see if he wants to come on board.”