The Gift
Several hypotheses presented themselves for consideration. Maybe Mr. Kilmer didn’t want to look like a fly-eyed alien behind the dark-tuned peeps lenses, although personal appearance didn’t seem to be high on Mr. Kilmer’s priority list. Or maybe he sympathized with the pundits, politicians and newsblink announcers who blasted the growing peeps culture as isolating and dehumanizing. “In this frightening new world, have we become more like the machines than the machines themselves?” asked one nationally famous deconstructionist preacher, who advocated technological abstinence and demanded a ban on peeps, cogware, mechs and even the servile drudge bots that performed tasks deemed too low or dirty for humans. Joe 59 didn’t like to think about what would happen if enough people adopted his views. But com pads were considered evil technology by the deconstructionists, so it seemed unlikely that Mr. Kilmer was a techno-reactionary. Was there a simpler explanation? Joe 59 decided it was in the best interest of Java Joe Corporation and Mr. Kilmer himself to proceed with a further investigation.
While the espresso machine burbled and hissed, Joe 59 directed the shop’s extensive array of biosensors to provide him with a complete biotic scan of Mr. Kilmer: brain wave patterns, cellular mitosis efficiency rates, moment-to-moment shifts in body temperature, respiratory tracking, enzyme and protein analysis, active and passive neural response testing and dozens of other scans that were normally used to determine each customer’s optimum nutritional requirements so that their orders would not only be delicious, but bursting with healthful additives and supplements.
The entire scan lasted less than five seconds. Even the active tests, such as the tempo shift in the subliminal heartbeat that was superimposed on the shop’s biosyth jazz background music was so subtle that Mr. Kilmer never showed any sign of conscious reaction to them. Processing and analyzing the data consumed another several seconds before Joe 59 had two significant results. First, he noted that every time Mr. Kilmer tapped on his com pad it seemed to elicit tiny spikes of cerebral pleasure. The dopamine levels produced by his thalamus increased with each tap. Apparently, using the cramped, inefficient pad was comforting to him! Fascinating. Joe 59 streamed his findings worldwide to all 50,000 Java Joe’s mechanical shop managers via the corporate feed so that they too could benefit from his research. Sharing insights about patrons was a proven method to increase customer satisfaction. But the second discovery Joe 59 did not share. The cellular scan returned a disturbing result; there was an 80% chance that Mr. Kilmer had a brain tumor that would kill him within the year. It was a violation of company policy to discuss matters of personal health, politics, family, sexual practices, religion, pending legal cases, financial status, criminal history, phobias, the stock market and competing coffee shop brands. Disclosing a terminal medical condition would almost certainly result in a cogware reboot and the loss of his secret gift. That was unthinkable. And with a tumor of that severity, it was very unlikely that Mr. Kilmer didn’t already know about its presence. Joe 59 decided that his best course of action was to initiate some friendly and stimulating banter to optimize Mr. Kilmer’s Java Joe experience, so he settled on a casual question concerning Mr. Kilmer’s job.
