The Ambush

The restaurant is a chaotically organized orchestra of background noise, but between these two, the institutional merriment of the Tex-Mex chain is silenced. They sit across from another, the center piece flare dulling in the tension between them, the hands of one resting on the table and the other with arms crossed.

“Why would a guy from LA come to a place like this? There’s no way that anything here is even remotely authentic.”

“You tracked me here to lecture me?”

“No…I’m just saying…”

“Look, I’m meeting someone here. She likes this place and she’ll be here…”

“No she won’t.”

“What’s this about?”

The waiter approaches and with a raised hand and a shake of the head he is sent away. The conversation pauses as the waiter refills drinks at nearby tables, negotiating around chairs and loose limbs. These two adjust their seating, one sitting up straighter and the other scooting in closer to the table.

“You had to choose a waiter section. I bet that’s her thing too, huh?”

“She likes the feeling of talking to someone. You know, I am still planning on eating.”

“C’mon, really? This place offers French fries as a side…”

“Again, what’s this about?”

“Your violation.”

“My violation?”

“Did you not read your contract? Or did you just not believe your sponsors would be serious about every detail?”

A chime rings at the table next to theirs and a display begins to play a series of advertisements related to the car they drove, the clothes they wore and the devices in their pockets. The waiter disengages from the service station and clears their table of dishes, placing them a retractable bin that opens from his torso.

“Look at that…How can anyone like a restaurant that interrupts your meal with pop up ads?”

“You get a ten percent discount if you accept ads with your meal. A lot of restaurants do it.”

“And that’s supposed to make it better? Portioning out your meal with commercial breaks. It’s stupid.”

“I don’t understand why you tracked me down over a violation. I gave them back their money and their information.”

“That’s not how these guys operate. They don’t use banks and lawyers to get back what’s theirs.”

“Like I said, I gave it all back.”

“No you didn’t…”

A birthday celebration erupts from the other side of the restaurant as a drone delivers a complimentary slice of cake playing a mariachi rendition of ‘happy birthday’ and their waitress discharges streamers. The restaurant applauds and returns to its earlier din.  A message appears on the display at the table of the two, ‘Your waiter has been inactive for 5 minutes. He will be returning to take your order.’

“See, if you’d been at the interface section we could have just tapped the ‘deciding’ tab on the table screen and be set until we pressed the ‘decided’ tab. Now we got to watch this guy make his way back over here and…perfect, it looks like he’s got queso smeared on one of his sensors and he can’t decide whether to go left or right around that table.”

“You can check my accounts and search my apartment. There’s nothing there.”

“You’re not hearing me. The money is not the issue. They expected you to keep the money. What they want back is you.”

“But they know I won’t run. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t. It’s too late. What good am I to them now?”

“You are their experiment, don’t you understand? You volunteered. You signed yourself, literally, over to them. They own you. And more importantly they own what’s inside of you.”

By this time the hostess, having been alerted of the confused waiter, has cleared the queso and reset the waiter’s objective log and he sets back toward their table. The waiter takes the order, displays the confirmation on his chest and walks away.

“French fries? You ordered French fries with your tacos? You really are a completely different human being…”

“I just did it to spite you.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you have absolutely no memory, emotional or sensory, of the authentic Mexican food that you would have been surround by in LA. Do you even remember growing up in LA?”

“No.”

“Right. And that, amigo, is the problem. You are proprietary technology. Developed and engineered for a specific task.”

“If you are talking about the brain enhancement, I’ve already had that removed and sent back to them.”

“Wow, you are on a roll. First you give up all the money that was legally still yours, then you remove a device that was open source, not patented, and would have given you a huge mental advantage over almost anyone else.”

“But that’s all they did to me.”

“Wrong again…”