Katriona— Wol, Year 13,147

Katriona has to register for national health insurance, a seemingly benign chore that she’s been putting off for six months. Why? Ask her therapist.

But she’s on the mission now. She’s ready. She’s even motivated. She’s…probably unprepared, but going all the way downtown and presenting herself to the government computer is the first step…right?

It takes the companionable courage of Eleni and Bryn to actually make her hop on the magnet bus and head into down. Downtown is exactly like it always is, complete with the crowded, loud land streets and sky streets with their semi-transparent streets and expensive stores.

After the bus leaves them at the land stop, they consider taking an elevator tube up to the sky streets, but decide to walk on the ground to the government complex. It’s dirtier, but still faster.

Once in the government insurance building, Katriona finds an available machine and scans her finger.

>>Katriona Marel Ankerson. ID Number 2873-9193-4934-3835-2181<< The machine reads it out in an old-fashioned robot voice. >>Born 7/17/13121. Profession — Independent Teacher.<<

“Ugh, why doesn’t it say I’m a writer. You know I’m primarily a writer,” she complains to Eleni.

“Aren’t you just teaching these days?” Eleni asks. Katri rolls her eyes.

She navigates the government computer system until it gives her an appointment for her full body scan and sends instructions to her personal cloud. They leave as soon as they can.

Once out, the three decide to go to the museum district for a coffee. It’s the kind of thing tourists and unemployed people do in the middle of the week. The museum district reflects life a couple thousand years ago, back when the Mother AI that governed the planet was still being built.

The coffee shop is located inside a theater and is decorated with artfully preserved ceiling paintings, murals, and classic statues on pedestals.

The waiter is an old-fashioned android- the kind from back when they tried to make robots look and act like people.

“Welcome to the theater cafe. Please, let me show you to your table,” says the android waiter with a name tag that reads “Mauricio”. His movements are so perfect, they are fake. He inclines his head just the right amount, leads them to the table much too gracefully, and has a smile that was so genuine, no real human could ever pull it off. After handing them a menu, he goes to greet a tourist couple, repeating the same line over again in exactly the same tone.

It is with carefully coded pleasure that he shows them each and every cake, pie, and bread they offer in the cafe, before they settle on lemon pie, carrot cake, and cheesecake. They keep looking for glitches as Mauricio carefully sets their plates in front of them and deferentially fills their water glasses, but the android is a well-oiled machine.

Much to their disappointment, it is a different android waiter who gives them their bill after the meal. This one must be an earlier model, because he isn’t quite so charming as dear Mauricio.

“He must be back there charging,” Bryn says in explanation when they are too polite to ask the new android waiter. “You know, back when they had to charge their devices.” They laugh about how primitive their world used to be.

Then they leave the carefully curated museum district and step out onto a land street that smells like pee, where they have to keep a firm hand on their bags and wallets as they push through crowds of vendors, beggars, and shoppers.

The irony does not escape them.