Slow day - The Cafe
The Small Business Chronicles: Slow Day - The Café
Chapter One: Wrong Side of the Bed
Jack woke with a start…after the past several months, he had finally trained himself to wake mere seconds before his alarm sounded. He quickly silenced it before it’s activation, and then waited another few seconds for Gabby’s pre-programmed timer to deactivate her sleep mode…something that before seemed random.
Gabby started stirring immediately and focused her eyes on him with a smile…a smile which then turned into a concerned frown.
“Jack dear, why are you in such a bad mood?” she asked, gently caressing his face.
To an unobservant person, she would appear to have been very intuitive, but Jack knew better…she had merely used the infrared scanners in her new eyes to scan his body heat, and determined his mood that way.
Still, she was correct: he was in a bad mood, which was what caused his mind to focus so much more on Gabby’s artificiality that ever before. It had been a few weeks since he had finally opened the café, and so far, nothing had gone as planned.
For starters, the android he had ordered to tend the bar was delayed; the person he bought it off was lazy and took too long to ship it out. Because it hadn’t arrived, he had to pull Serriah away from the gift shop to cover the bar. The one thing that softened Jack’s mood was that it was finally scheduled to arrive today.
For another thing, the android he’d acquired to waitress and clean the booths and tables, had what could best be described as an attitude problem. She had a strange custom personality module that Jack had never encountered before, and it was taking him a while to modify it. In the meantime, she was giving the patrons attitude, resulting in dozens of complaints each day.
Finally, the main source of Jack’s headache…the chef. Jack thought he had gotten a great deal when he bought her…a highly customized Housewife model. She was fairly young looking for a housewife, in her late twenties, but she was already programmed with a wide array of cooking and cleaning programs. The problem…she was an illegal sleeper model. Apparently she had belonged to a wealthy person who paid someone to install illegal sleeper software in her so she’d be as real as possible.
Technically, owning such a model was illegal, and naturally, Jack had to report it to the Spaztech team. Fortunately, they allowed him to keep her so they could get some unofficial reports on a sleeper android. The problem was that he was having difficulty modifying her memories of her previous owner, which led to confusion and constant malfunctions.
All in all, the convergence of bad luck he’d had was reducing his profit margin, and he hoped that today, he could fix it once and for all. He’d even made sure he had no repair appointments today, and he was going to have Gabby help out in café with the cooking while he repaired the chef.
“Yeah,” Jack finally said, coming out of his reverie, “It’s just the bad luck we’ve had with the café these past few weeks,” he admitted.
“Well, don’t worry dear,” she smiled, leaning in and giving him a kiss, “I’m sure you and Ellie will fix things up today.”
“I hope so,” Jack smiled back, giving her another kiss.
That morning Gabby decided to delay her usual morning shower, not that she really needed a shower, but she still liked to be clean for him. Either way, she gave up her shower time so Jack could take a longer one and so that she could cook him something extra special to start off his day with.
After stuffing himself with the delicious meal Gabby had cooked, he packed up the lunch she had prepared for him and Ellie and then prepared to head down into the lab to begin his day.
“Good luck dear,” Gabby said, giving him a loving kiss.
“Thanks, I’m gonna need it,” Jack smiled, “Oh, and you can go ahead and take a shower now,” he added, “I’m gonna work on Luiza last.”
“Oh, okay,” Gabby smiled, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Jack shrugged, “Besides, if you’re going to be cooking for people, android or not, you need to be clean.”
“Of course,” Gabby nodded, “Now go get to work,” she ordered.
“Yes ma’am,” Jack mockingly saluted, heading to the elevator and scanning his palm on the security pad.