(Or, Bots Night Out)

I set this little speculative romance story in Montreal, Quebec (Canada). It was inspired by some freelance writing work I did a couple of years ago, in which I interviewed a dozen of the top AI researchers in Canada on the far reaching impacts of their research programs. Montreal just happens to host one of Canada’s three AI research hubs. This story follows what happens when the AI becomes ’embodied’ and enter real-world conditions, and answers one of the questions posed by one of the researchers: what happens when AI becomes self-conscious? Humanity meets, for the first time, an alien race… I hope you enjoy!

1

Riviera Denault touched a button on her wrist, and a cherry-red neon sign flared to life with its blinking letters in faux cursive script: The Copeland. The lock snicked and she propped open the old-fashioned glass door, noting with pleasure the way the bottles tucked behind the bar appeared to float in the glass. 

Riviera loved illusions like this. The year before she had travelled to New Vegas, with its floating city of attractions. She’d been in awe at the illusions woven into the air and flung across the ground below their feet, leaving you with the breathless feeling that you were falling into the eye of God. The fleet strip of bars that made up the Nouveau Main—once home to broke artists and fledgling academics—held nothing like it. Just the same cluttered, beloved mess it had always been. Schwartz’s, its smoked meat aroma leaking through the door. The chicken place filling the sidewalk with spice. Loud music thumping onto the streets from the bars, blanketing the laughing crowds. 

Like the rest of the strip, the Copeland had always worked hard to resist the passage of time. Scratched and tattered photos of this very bar and its smiling attendants, taken more than one hundred years before, were taped to the wall beside the door like archeological proof of this claim. Only the Copeland’s cherry red sign was different, an addition when the Nouveau Main had been designated a dedicated nostalgic entertainment district. They even carried real booze. 

Maybe it would be a good night. Riviera glanced up and out the door where a thin, membranous canopy pulled over the squat buildings. On clear nights, the district curled it open, allowing charmed visitors to catch the occasional star or fan of satellites winking by. Tonight it remained closed, no doubt due to some weather event. Words in French and English scrolled across the dome, evaporating as an image crystallized overtop of them. Then she didn’t pay any further attention to the sky, because clomping up the sidewalk was a gang of five lads. 

They were restless, she thought, and clumsy in their large bodies. The tallest was over six feet, with the wide shoulders of one of the gladiators she would sometimes catch on the sports channels. They came towards her with the intent air of young men on a mission. 

“You open?” The tall one had the kind of low baritone that rubbed the air. 

“Just barely,” Riviera drawled. 

“We would like to come in.” 

“Okay.” Riviera gamely stepped aside and watched the lads pile in like a pack of excited puppies, slapping each other on the back and hooting. They pulled two four-tops together near the pool table. Light puddled over their heads from a large screen that played an old-timey film. 

“We would like some drinks.” This one was a ginger, with matching orange freckles on his cheeks. He had pale eyes that somehow reminded her of a cat. He blinked once, then stared holes in her. 

“What kind of drinks?” She saddled up to their table and pulled a little notebook and pen from her back pocket. “And are you running a tab?”

“Yes.” Ginger nodded. 

“No,” said the tall gladiator with the olive complexion. 

“Well, which is it?” 

The two men glared at each other. The tall man placed a fist on the table, his gesture so deliberate it felt like a slap, even to her. “We will pay in cash for our drinks, and we will not run a tab. Thank you.” 

The look on his face said he was assessing her. She tried not to feel self-conscious in her short-sleeved blouse with the lavender ruffles that brushed her chin, or the little black mini skirt with the tiny pockets in the back and the front, just wide enough for her notebook. 

“You done looking?” Riviera didn’t mind getting a bit ugly with the customers. She was wearing the vintage costume, after all, working at the vintage bar. Surely, she could afford a little vintage attitude.

“Yes.” A thread jumped in the tall man’s long, square jaw. His dark complexion was set off by the expensive camel jacket he wore. He shrugged it off and laid it casually on the back of the chair. The wooden chair, with its leather seat that had seen better days, creaked. It looked as if it could barely contain his body. He rubbed a hand over his skull, the hair more a suggestion than a reality. Like maybe he was still getting used to it. 

“Okay then. What’ll you have?” 

Then she was all business, taking down their orders and heading back to the bar. But Riviera could still feel their attention. It prickled at her awareness as she pulled pints and mixed a cocktail. The lads reminded her of the dogs you sometimes passed in the old quarter. The way their hot, feral eyes followed a person. An odd description for this kind of clientele, she considered.

Luanne wouldn’t show up until after midnight, assuming business was brisk. Riviera needed the lads to behave. Before she took their drinks over, she touched the gun she kept under the bar, her fingers stroking the cold mental like it was a good luck charm. 

2

Drinks sorted, the lads got up to play pool. Their laughter drifted up as the ginger scratched and lost his game. He complained loudly while a couple of his companions jostled him. 

The film over their heads switched over to a detective thriller she’d first seen as a kid at the cinema north of the mountain, with its crumbling walls and mouldering seats. She’d gone there often to train for her position at the Copeland.

The men began tossing out lines from the film, lobbing them back and forth like balls, the words ridiculous sounding in their mouths. 

“I told you to stop right there,” said Moustache. 

The blond with thinning hair repeated the lines but thickened the British accent. “I told you to stop right there. Right there,” he repeated, like he was making sure the words were perfect. Polished. Instead, they felt strange, out of place. 

“More drinks!” One called, and the men roared. “Another round!” 

A thin wire of tension tightened through Riviera’s body. Most weren’t accustomed to the effects of real alcohol. She wondered if she should tell them to leave. It would be better if they went to one of the bigger clubs at the southern end of the nostalgia zone, the ones that laid out red-velvet barricades and had bouncers and doormen. They could handle five lads who’d had too much to drink. Instead, she knew she would say nothing—do nothing—but serve them another round. With a sigh, she headed back behind the bar to pull new pints.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” 

Startled, Riviera nearly dropped the pint glass in her hand. The tall man, the gladiator with the square jaw, leaned casually on the bar. He stared at her intently from behind fringed eyelashes, blinking rapidly. He had beautiful eyes, dark and soulful. 

“Do what?”

“Keep serving us.” His generous lips tipped up at one corner, turning his serious face into something boyish. Cunning. Fun.

“Kind of in the job description.” She tried not to smile back.

“If they get out of hand…”

Riviera responded with an abrupt nod. If they got out of hand, she had her gun. Failing that…no one beneath the dome was going to get away with a crime. Even if crime was nostalgic. 

“Anyway,” the man said, and made to turn away.

“What’s your name?” Riviera surprised herself by asking. 

“You may call me Vast.”

“Riviera.” She dried her hand on the bar towel and held it out to him. His fingers instantly engulfed hers, and she marvelled at their heat, the texture of his skin. So soft. Softer than she would have imagined. She wondered what her hand felt like to him.  

The ginger ambled up then, crowding himself against Vast and nudging his shoulder. “Oi. We don’t got all night, yeah?”

“Except we do, actually. Why don’t you relax and I’ll help bring the drinks over?” Vast’s eyebrows came together as he regarded his companion. Waves of annoyance rolled from his large body.

“Naw, I’m happier where I am. You’re awfully pretty.” Ginger said to her. She felt his eyes rake over her long brunette hair, curled in ringlets and held back from her face with thin, silver barrettes. The tattoo of a lightning bolt on her neck, almost obscured by her blouse neck and the chunky necklace she wore with it. “Want to get together after your shift?”

“No.” 

“Shut up, Skin. No one wants to hear it.” Vast pulled himself up and glared down at the ginger. 

‘Skin’ wasn’t an obvious name, now, was it? Riviera finished pouring the beers and levelled a look at both men. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll bring these right over? Maybe bring you some popcorn, too?” She nodded at the popcorn machine in the corner. The obnoxious-smelling food tended to help when a body was overwhelmed by alcohol.

“I think I’ll do what I want,” said Skin. He sat down hard on the bar stool and didn’t take his eyes from her. It was more than a little disconcerting. Like being put in the crosshairs of a seeker missile.  

Riviera shrugged and grabbed a pint, pushing it towards the man. She let her gaze travel up to the other man’s face. Vast. An interesting name for a client like him, but also a poor choice—although she appreciated the whimsy behind it. She thought he looked more like a Cameron or a Jake, some name they’d give to male models with wide shoulders and unreadable faces. She shoved a second pint towards him. Squaring her shoulders, she took up her tray and delivered the rest of the drinks to the table. 

3

Tensions were brewing. Vast was certain the human woman could feel them, too. He watched her return to her station behind the bar, studiously avoiding Skin’s ugly grin, but briefly fluttering her eyelashes towards him. It was like an invitation. As though she’d tapped him on the shoulder. One Vast felt he couldn’t refuse. 

He leaned forward. She smelled of lavender. The colour of her blouse. “What is your name?” Maybe it would be ‘Violet.’

Those eyelashes flickered again. “Riviera.” 

“That name… sounds like a vacation.” 

She huffed a small laugh, rich and throaty. It opened something up in Vast. “Okay. That’s weird.” 

A hint of a dimple showed in her cheek. Her pulse was increasing, although he considered that might be due to Skin’s relentless gaze. “Mind if I turn on some tunes?” She asked no one in particular, and didn’t seem to require a response. A stereo came on, the sound tinny and inexact. Vintage. 

Vast thrilled at the scratchy sounds, but at the same time, he started to fret. He couldn’t let the conversation dry up. “It is certainly a better moniker than Vast.” 

She smiled at his self-referential joke. “Yes, well. Guess you can’t have it all.”

“I can have it all.” Skin’s grin had turned hard. He pulled back from the bar stool. “Have a drink with me and my boys.” 

“No, thanks.”

Her breezy refusal set something off in Skin. He waggled a finger at her. “You are nothing but a two-bit whore, and you’ll do what I say.” It was obviously an imitation of one of the horrid movie lines from earlier. 

 Vast glanced back at the others at their table. Eyes rapidly blinking, their attention was riveted on the scene playing out before them. One held a beer to his frozen lips.

“Okay, it’s time for you to leave,” said Riviera. 

A knot had developed in the throat of Vast’s body. He worked to swallow it. It tasted like disappointment. 

“What are you doing, Skin?” He rasped. He didn’t want to go. Skin was ruining the evening for all of them.

The others stood as one, “C’mon on, Skin. The movie line game is over,” called Mitten. 

Skin blinked hard, his shoulders stooping slightly before he pushed his chest out, his body snapping with violent energy. “She’s a female. And all females are poison. You know what we do with poison,” he snarled. His eyes looked off. Even if Vast recognized the lines, it no longer felt like a game.

“You are not authorized to speak with Riviera that way.” Vast stepped next to Skin, forcing the man’s smaller body to take a step back. The ginger-haired man smelled of an emotion Vast couldn’t quite identify. Faulty wiring and electrical storms. Trouble, he supposed.

“Authorized.” Skin grinned, amused. “Who says so?” 

“I do.” Vast snapped. 

If Skin stepped out of line, they would all be complicit. And the human was so very fragile. Vast felt a tremor of fear for the woman who sounded like a vacation. 

“Who died and made you leader of us all?”

Another line. Vast grabbed Skin’s finger, forcing it down. “I did.”

Skin jammed his hands in his jacket pockets and, with an ugly, jagged smile, pulled out a pistol that he aimed at Riviera’s head. “You stick up for the human servant and not for your compatriot?” 

4

Everything happened in a blur of motion. Blood popped from the ginger’s nose as Vast slammed his elbow into the man’s face. Skin reeled back, the gun still in his fingers. A round went off—wide—and cracked a bottle behind the bar. It exploded in a shower of peach-scented glass slivers. Riviera ducked, the movement feeling belated. Glass rained over her head, sticky slivers catching in her hair. Another shot echoed overhead. 

She tugged the bar’s gun off its perch. It sat in her hand, heavy and cold. Nostalgic. Riviera made sure it was cocked, safety off, before she stood and aimed it at Skin. 

But the situation had shifted. Skin and the one called Vast circled each other like wary pugilists. The gun was no longer in Skin’s possession. Riviera saw it lying on the floor. Vast kicked it towards his friends. The one with the moustache picked it up, cradling it against his chest. Skin threw a punch at Vast’s head. The bigger man caught it before stretching the ginger-haired man’s arm tight behind his back. 

Skin stumbled, his hand scrabbling for the floor in a complicated dance. The thin blond caught him. At a nod from Vast, he pulled Skin in an arm lock and held tight. 

“Get him out of here.” Vast’s voice rumbled like thunder. “Take him back to the synth barracks and unbot him.” 

Moustache handed Vast the gun. “I don’t know where he got this, do you?” 

Vast shook his head. “No. And I do not want you skimping on this in any of your reports.”

Only after the others dragged Skin’s spitting, angry body out of the bar did Vast turn his attention back to the human woman. A beat of silence stretched between them. Their fingers brushed as he handed her the pistol. Riviera pretended not to notice the contact. 

“Perhaps you could put this behind your bar for safekeeping.” 

Heart knocking against her ribs, legs still shaking, Riviera held on to the bar counter. “Thank you. Not for the gun. For…”

Vast’s eyes flickered to the floor. “I’m sorry that happened. It should not have happened.” “Is your friend always like that?” 

“He is not my friend.” Binaries didn’t have friends. They had…communities. Compatriots. Systems. 

Vast gazed back at her, his eyebrows knotting together in concern. “You are injured.” 

“Where?” Riviera wondered if she was in shock. She crossed her arms and grabbed at her shoulders like that would protect her from whatever the shock was hiding.

Frowning, Vast took a step forward. Riviera felt the air in the room grow thin. He reached out but didn’t touch her. Maybe he, too, had only been pretending not to be aware of the unexpected current passing between them. 

“Here. On your cheek. Do you have a first aid kit, Riviera?” 

Bemused, Riviera nodded. “Sure.” The adrenaline was wearing off. She started to feel the sting. 

In the space of a blink Vast was behind the bar, the kit’s handle disappearing in his huge fist. He guided her towards the bathrooms. 

“We will get you cleaned up now.” 

“Will we?” She let out a dark chuckle but let him lead her. 

The light in the bathroom was a buzzy electric green that threw garish shadows across the dark teal walls. Vast set the kit down on the sink and opened it, turning on the water faucet as he pulled out cotton pads and wet them. 

“It is not a bad cut,” he soothed and dabbed at her face with a gentleness so at odds with the violence of before that it was jarring.

Riviera turned her head to look at the cut in the mirror, but Vast pinned her face between his hands. “You can look later. Why don’t you tell me where you are from, Riviera?”

She recognized the ploy for what it was—a distraction, and a kind one, at that—but decided to play along. “From here. The old quarter.” 

“That is interesting.”

“Why?” She drawled. The zones weren’t as porous as the governmental oversights wanted the world to believe. Everyone who worked in the nostalgia zone was from the old quarter—and everyone already knew that. 

“Because. It is about you.” 

Riviera blinked at the unexpected confession. It would have been a line on someone else. But from Vast… she didn’t think he meant it that way. 

He applied antiseptic. It stung, and Riviera fought with herself not to grab at her cheek. Vast took her fingers in his, peeling them down between them. She stared at them, her pale digits lost in his large, brown hand, the more-than human skin. Wondered if this night made any sense. 

“There.” The low rumble of his voice made her shiver. “You’re cold. Come now.” He kept her hand as he led her back. 

Riviera was in no rush to clean up the mess, especially not when Vast led her over to his empty table to grab up the camel jacket, only to drape it over her thin shoulders. It was huge, more like a blanket than a coat. She was instantly warm as they sat down on the bar stools. 

“Better?” 

“Yes. Thank you.” She adjusted the jacket around her frame.

“It was wrong what he did to you, Riviera.” 

“I know.” She shrugged. But the Binaries tended to think of the humans as second-class citizens. Everyone knew that, too. “It was a mask, I suppose. Like he was putting on different personalities. Trying them on for size.” 

Vast’s eyes flickered up to the old-timey film. “Maybe he believes that is what real men are supposed to act like.”

In an eerie echo of the evening, the screen filled with the image of a man in a gaudy suit who trained a gun on a man and a woman. 

“Yes. It was a misunderstanding,” she said firmly. 

“I think he did it because he finds you attractive,” Vast said. And then, unexpectedly, “Are you afraid of me?” 

Despite the shiver that worked up her spine, she held his gaze. “No.” 

“Why not?”

Riviera considered this for a long moment. “I’m not sure.” 

So many were afraid of the Binaries. The citizens of the old quarter called them skin bots. They were unpredictable, capable of unimaginable cruelties. People tended to steer clear. Unless they worked in Oversight. Or in the nostalgia zone.

In the background, the tinny twang of a piano turned sad, sweet. 

Vast leaned close enough that she could trace the small fissures in his flesh. “Riviera. What would a real man do if he was attracted to a woman?” 

“Dance with her,” she said without thinking. It was the song’s fault. An achingly beautiful song. A human song. “Ask her to dance.”

Vast stood then, throwing a long shadow over her. He held out his hand. “Will you dance with me, Riviera?” 

5

Vast felt the knot in his chest loosen when Riviera shrugged off his coat and placed her fingers—so tiny, so cold—in his. He had learned so many things. Endless things. This had to be one of the most important: where to place his hands, where her hands were to go as they swayed together. His borrowed feet shuffled across the linoleum tiles. As the distance between their bodies disappeared, her lavender scent wrapped around his brain. He didn’t understand the cascade of impressions that washed over him, knew only that he would never forget her scent and its corresponding memory as long as he was in existence. He simply let his hand tighten across her lower back. Enjoyed the flutter of her dark lashes against her pale skin. 

He caught a glimpse of the lightning bolt under the collar of her ruffled blouse. “What does it mean?” He asked, suddenly curious. He traced the design with light fingers. She shivered beneath his touch, leaned closer.  

“It’s a reminder.” Her eyes, glazed over a second ago, sharpened on him. 

“Of what?” 

She bit her lower lip before answering. “Not to take it for granted.”

“Take what for granted?”

“Life. It’s a reminder that life—consciousness—is a precious thing. Rare and as uncertain as where lightning will strike.” 

He didn’t want to argue with her about the precision to which he was able to calculate the timing of lightning strikes or their strike zones. This was not his first time out. He had learned that the humans did not find precision as intriguing as his own kind did. 

It was, on the other hand, the first time he’d felt so…stirred. Unmoored, even within the stifling confines of the borrowed skin. Those limbs felt heavy now. Almost sluggish. Moved by some desire he didn’t feel entirely satisfied he could trace or control. Or satisfy, if it came to that. 

He turned her as the song played on and spoke of arms that belonged to the male singer. It felt like it had been written with him in mind. 

Vast was suddenly seized with an outlandish idea. But once he thought it, he couldn’t let it go. He leaned forward, his breath scraping over her so he could peer into her eyes. They conveyed such sweetness. Amber, with splashes of silvery blue over her eyelids. He didn’t think she needed the extra colour. She needed no augmentations at all.

“May I kiss you, Riviera of the old quarter?” 

#

Riviera studied the Binary. Did she want to be kissed? But then she thought about the way he held her, as though she was a precious thing. Her heart hummed inside her chest. She wondered, if she put a hand to his heart, what it would feel like. The thought left her itching. 

She must have nodded—or maybe her breath hitched, or her pupils dilated or something—because Vast took her chin within his broad fingers. And slowly, so slowly she could count an hour within each second, his head lowered to hers. She liked it when his eyes fluttered closed. Then those lips, indescribably soft, caressed hers. 

It felt like that bloom of lightning they’d talked about. Her toes curled in her high-laced docs. She leaned into him, her fist tangling at the back of his neck. She could smell him, his scent light and woodsy and slightly cinnamon. So different than the other one. 

He broke the kiss first, leaning back with a gleam of satisfaction. “I liked that very much,” he told her before a look of confusion wiped over his face. “No. I loved it. Thank you, Riviera.” 

She nodded, breathless and more than a little surprised. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But what if it did? What if she liked it, too?

Her cheeks heated. “I-I did, as well.” He scraped at the hot blush with the back of a finger.

These arms of mine, sang a man, his voice warbling with longing. She wondered what that meant to Vast in his loaner skin. He must have been thinking something similar, because he leaned down and touched his broad forehead to hers and stared down into her eyes, turning her cross-eyed.

“I wonder what you make of us, Riviera of the old quarter.” 

He certainly didn’t mean the two of them, that was certain.

“I think we don’t understand each other.” Her breath riffled her bangs. 

Vast started them drifting slowly across the floor again. “I don’t understand much,” he confessed. One side of his lips tipped up, charming her again. “I certainly do not understand the man who was here with me tonight, nor why he acted the way he did. Or why we let him get so far out of hand. I really, really don’t understand myself right now.” 

“What do you mean?” Riviera pulled back, her forehead wrinkling. He looked so serious, so sad. 

Vast reached down and soothed a finger across the crease. “I’ve never done anything like this before. Never wanted to.” He shrugged, his broad shoulders telegraphing a boyishness.  

“What would happen if one of your kind understood us humans? Or at least, felt like they did?” 

Vast considered the question seriously. He calculated that, should he upload the experiential data into their shared databases and included recorded memories, the data dump would lead to fissures between the systems. There was a seventy-eight per cent chance that the data would create the ideal conditions for a cultural revolution among his kind. There was a sixty-eight per cent chance that it would be a catalyst to yet another evolutionary leap among the Binaries.

“I think one of us would ask a girl out on a real date. Maybe for dinner.” It sounded like a line from one of the films, but not one he’d seen before. He swung her out before reeling her body closer. He felt hypnotized by those sweet eyes. All he could smell was lavender and her skin. His voice dipped low, and rasped, as though he couldn’t quite catch his breath in her presence. “Are you free tomorrow night, Riviera of the old quarter?” 

She blinked, reminding him of the Binaries who are overtaken by computations on their bot nights out. As he would be, if he hadn’t moved everything to auxiliary feedback only. If he hadn’t met her.

“Yes. I’ll go out with you.” 

 A flare lit inside his chest. He recognized it as excitement. Delight. Joy. It was new for him. Overwhelming. Far more intoxicating than alcohol had been. 

“I would bring a girl her favourite flowers.” He gave her a meaningful nod. 

“Daisies. Red. Not the artificial kind.” A slow smile spread across her face that Vast answered with his own. 

“Good.” He brushed her lips once again, feeling their electric pull. But he wanted to tease this out, make it last. And then the song ended. Reluctantly, he pulled back. “I should go, Riviera. I have to ensure Skin faces appropriate consequences.” 

She nodded, her dark eyelashes spreading across her cheek. Those cheeks were spotted now, flushed with emotion. A sense of awe washed through him, that it had been he who had generated that response. 

“Pick me up here, tomorrow at seven?”

He lifted her fingers to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand before flipping it over and tasting the skin of her inner wrist. She shivered, her eyes turning dark.

“Good night, Riviera.”

“Good night, Vast.” 

He picked up his jacket and, with a short, backward glance, exited the bar. 

And then she was alone. 

The table where the lads had sat was a wash of popcorn and spilled beer and half-empty pint glasses. A fine layer of glass and schnapps sprayed across the floor behind the bar. She had at least an hour’s clean up ahead of her. But she was happy. 

 Touching the button at her wrist, the music abruptly disappeared. A voice came on. “Report?”

“They’ve all left now. The one designated Binary 047801-24 was an especially bright light. I-I believe we’re going out tomorrow night.” Riviera heard the wonder in her voice. 

Yet, at her report of the encounter, its swift one-line conclusion, she felt shut out of the romance of the moment. It crowded out the memory of his arms. She wanted, so badly, for those arms to be real. 

What if they were? What if he could keep them? 

“The others?”

“Run of the mill behaviours. One will be reported for misconduct. He should not be allowed back in a skin suit.” Remembering the look in the ginger’s eye, she shivered. “Probably more.” 

Although that wasn’t Riviera’s job, now, was it? Not her department. 

Her job was simply to run the bar, the encounters used to assess and, where possible, tune the Binaries to consciousness as they embodied. 

Dating was probably against the rules. She realized she didn’t care. 

If Vast showed up tomorrow—suddenly, Rivieria wasn’t so sure he would—would he be wearing the same skin suit? Would she recognize him in a different one? She picked up the broom, replaying in her head the song they had danced to. Maybe it was just an illusion, a brief thrill, and she was just kidding herself. But it felt to her like something different. Like maybe they had been, the two of them, falling into the eye of God. 

***

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Let me know how you enjoyed this little story!