“Just ask for the thing that you want,” Xander said.
“Let’s keep it simple,” the doctor muttered. “Er, aspirin…?”
“Specify quantity and dosage,” a soft voice said, emerging from the machine, making the doctor rear back in startled shock. But then he peered at the opening a little more closely, took off his spectacles to rub at his eyes, and appeared to make an effort to gather his thoughts.
“Er, twenty pills. Make it low dosage to begin with. Baby aspirin — 81 milligram.”
The opening opaqued, cleared, revealed a small plastic tube with twenty white pills in it. The doctor reached in and took it, turning it over in his hand.
“Well?” Dave said.
“Well, I guess,” the doctor said, sounding unconvinced. “I mean, I suppose they look like aspirin. If I opened this up I have no doubt they’d smell like aspirin.. But would they actually have the effect that I would expect…?”
“If it quacks like an aspirin,” Xander said, sounding just a touch exasperated with a mundane’s unwillingness to accept the science fiction miracles which he, the aficionado, was perfectly happy to take for granted. He thrust out his tea. “Here, taste this, and tell me if you think it fails the taste test for Earl Gray.”
Dave mechanically accepted the cup.
“The pills will function according to specifications,” Boss said. “The replicators have been programmed with the parameters and the context of your culture’s needs and desires. It knows how to provide that which is required of it.”
“Wait, replicators?” Dave said. “How many of these are there? Where are they?”
“At present only this one is operational,” Boss said. “But we can activate as many as necessary, in whatever location is required.”
Andie Mae and Dave had the same thought at the same instant, and caught one another’s eye in instant consternation.
“And it can provide anything that is required?”
“Anything,” Boss said.
“I, uh, no, just… no,” Andie Mae said. “They are wonderful — I might even go so far to say that under the circumstances they may be essential — but we can’t have a free for all. If anyone could walk up to one of these and ask for anything we’d have a bunch of people getting vast quantities of… inappropriate… things… and then things would go really kablooey.”
“I suggest one, maybe two, in the kitchens,” Dave said firmly, “with access keyed to kitchen staff — is that possible?” Boss inclined his head in what might have been agreement and Dave continued, “Those could simply be used to provide for whatever people who sat down in the restaurant ordered off the menu — just like a real kitchen. Maybe one on the Asylum Floor run by the good doctor here, but again — perhaps in the privacy of a room that can be locked away from general traffic, and with limited access only.”
“And one in the Green Room,” Xander said obstinately. He wasn’t going to get cheated out of this experience just because nobody else could be trusted with it.
“And in the bars?” Luke said with a hopeful smile. “That thing provides booze, too?”
“It can probably be non — intoxicating synthahol, too, if you specify that,” Xander said, baring his own teeth in a positively gleeful grin.
“Er, thanks, no, if I go into the bar I’ll want the real damn thing, thank you,” Dave muttered. “But the bars aren’t likely to be a problem, really — and if necessary whoever is in charge can come down and get a bottle of whatever they need from ours. What about this particular one? Can you… relocate it? Or disconnect it? It’s too easily accessible here.”
“Er, hey, guys,” said a new voice.
They turned around and saw one of the gamers, a boy in his late teens, strings of lanky hair falling about his shoulders. He had just emerged from the gamers’ ballroom, clutching a cell phone and looking confused, his eyes wide and apparently finding it a little difficult to focus on the real world.
“Can we help you?” Dave said.
The boy peered at the ribbons decorating Dave’s badge. “You’re ConCom? Great. Look, a bunch of us in there missed lunch…”
“It’s morning,” Dr Cohen said, frowning. “Lunch isn’t even — ”
Xander elbowed him surreptitiously and shook his head when the doctor turned in response. Don’t even try. He has no idea what time it is.
“Whatever,” the gamer said, after a short hesitation that appeared to take in the doctor’s objection and then dismiss it as being of no relevance or importance at all. “We wanted to get in some pizza, but none of us can get a signal for some reason. Can we get a pizza delivered?”
“We don’t…” Luke began, but Xander stepped forward, still grinning.
“Sure,” he said. “What would you like?”
“Oh, I dunno. Doesn’t really matter. As long as it has pepperoni on it, I guess.”
“I’ll deal with it,” Xander said brightly. “What’s your name?”
“Uh, Eddie,” said the gamer. “Uh, thanks. I’d better get back now.”
“Sure. It’ll be there in a jiffy.”
The gamer retreated, and Dave rounded on Xander. “What are you playing at?”
Xander gestured at the replicator. “Pizza delivery portal,” he said. “Right here. What better way to test it?”
“They’re hardly a representative test taste sample,” Dave grumbled.
But Xander had already turned back to the replicator.
“One pizza, large, pepperoni,” he said. “Lots of pepperoni.”
He was rewarded by the appearance of a hot, steaming pizza piled with so much pepperoni that it was practically impossible to see the crust.
“Now I am hungry,” Xander said, staring at the pizza. “That actually… looks really good. And smells even better.”
“And what are you going to do,” Dave said sarcastically, “pick it up with your own two fair hands and take it in there for them?”
“What was that?”
“Takeaway pizza usually comes in a box,” Dr. Cohen said helpfully, if a little faintly. He was still clutching his tube of aspirin but all this was rapidly overloading his circuits, and he wasn’t quite sure what the game was any more only that he knew absolutely none of the rules.
“You have a point,” Xander said. “Anyone have a pen? A piece of paper?”
The airline captain, who still hadn’t said a word, produced a pen from out of his shirt pocket and handed it over without breaking his silence, only one raised eyebrow betraying any reaction. Xander took it and then, ripping a flyer off a nearby wall, turned it over and sketched something on the back of it.
“If I specify something exactly but can’t draw it,” Xander said, scribbling furiously and flinging the question at Boss without turning to look at him, “will that contraption follow through?”
“You mean can it read your mind?” Dave said acerbically.
“With context,” Boss said, “it should be able to do what you ask. There may be a need for fine tuning.”
“Fine. Well, if I ask it for a pizza take — out box, it will know what that means, I hope. But take — out places need a logo, and come on, I can’t resist this. You know Munch’s Scream? Well, how about we substitute a Little Green Man Alien for the central figure, and here’s the design — ”
He turned his sketch to show the others, and Andie Mae actually giggled. He had drawn a classic alien face, complete with the big black bug eyes, caught in the moment of a scream. Above it, in curlicued letters, he had written UFO PIZZA — and below, in roughly sketched capital letters, the slogan THE TASTE IS OUT OF THIS WORLD.