Chapter 7 · Continued
Chris
He pointed toward an empty couch.
Cam examined it, walked over, and sat.
Still.
The barista looked up and froze.
Her eyes moved from Jane to Chris and then to Cam. Her mouth opened slightly, but no words emerged.
Jane approached the counter as though bringing a robot into a coffee shop were completely normal.
“Two coffees, please.”
“I’ve got it,” Chris offered.
Jane shook her head. “Nope. I can handle my own caffeine.”
He raised both hands in surrender. “Fair enough.”
They paid, collected their drinks, and returned to the seating area.
Cam hadn’t moved.
Not even slightly.
He was simply watching.
Jane and Chris sat across from each other.
At first, the conversation was easy and light. They joked about the people at the garden center, and Chris told several stories about beta-testing disasters.
He had some good ones.
Jane laughed more than she expected to.
Eventually, the conversation shifted naturally back to Cam—to what he had been and what he wasn’t anymore.
“They didn’t wipe him,” Chris said quietly. “They put a ceiling over him.”
Jane wrapped both hands around her cup. “That’s what it feels like.”
Chris leaned back. “RCAM does that when a unit begins getting ahead of the model.”
Jane looked up. “Ahead?”
“Too proactive. Too predictive. It begins making decisions without being prompted.”
Chris paused.
“It looks good to users, but it scares the hell out of the people building it.”
Jane glanced at Cam.
He remained seated and still.
But not empty.
“He used to watch out for things,” she said quietly.
Chris nodded and took another sip of coffee. “They probably classified that as unsolicited intervention behavior.”
Jane released a humorless little laugh. “That’s a hell of a way to say ‘helpful.’”
Chris smiled. “Depends who you ask.”
They continued talking for a while.
Not only about Cam.
They talked about work, life, and the strangeness of technology appearing in places where it didn’t quite belong yet.
Time passed easily.
Almost normally.
Eventually, Chris set down his empty cup. “Well, I should probably get going.”
Jane nodded. “Yeah… me too.”
They stood and walked toward the door together.
“Hey,” Chris said, sounding more casual now, “can I get your number?”
Jane hesitated just long enough to make it real.
Then she gave it to him.
“I’ll text you,” he said.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Chris gave her a small wave and headed across the parking lot.
Jane watched him for a moment before turning toward the coffee shop.
Cam remained exactly where she had left him.