four days in Manhattan/ draft 1

four days in Manhattan

fiction
edward w Pritchard

After boot camp and before my training in North Carolina through some small miracle the Navy gave me and three of my fellow enlisted men four days of leave. Maybe it was because as radio men we were headed to the War in Lebanon after our training. Having no girl friend at the time and no one at home I decided to fly to New York, Manhattan, the second largest City in the world at the time of this story, 2022.

I did a lot of drinking, strip clubs and gambling like any navy man would and by the second night of my leave I was ready for a quiet evening. I went to the new chain restaurant Durbin's Amish Foods for a seven o'clock dinner alone.

That evening was the most shocking of my life. My waitress was one of the GHE artificial intelligence series four synthetic serving models. A robot of sorts with all the artificial intelligence prerequisite skills for serving work in a restaurant. Wearing a cream colored  Amish style bonnet and the appropriate persona of a shy nervous Amish teenager my waitress brought me drinks, served me bread and sprinkled imported cheese and olive oil on my Caesar salad. All the while the serving unit spoke to me diffidently in a soft sweet voice with lowered "eyes" and a tilted "head".

The rub here? My sergeant in basic training the last twelve weeks at the Marine camp where I trained was also a series four synthetic serving model robot. Believe me my Sergeant's voice was anything but sweet, he wasn't shy and Sarge never cut up my food for me. Looking at the waitress in Manhattan I become unable to look in the eyes; and not just because she was six feet seven inches tall.  It made for a very uncomfortable meal. Both my Sergeant at basic and the waitress in Manhattan were of the exact same type personality and demeanor but were presenting a different persona appropriate to the situation that they were in.

I had heard that these synthetic artificial intelligence units were capable of a wide range of behaviors but it wasn't until I encountered one there in New York that I realized that they could be more than human at times.
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