The stage of the Nirvana Ecstasy bar had been cleared of live humans again for another ancient musical holo-projection, and I automatically turned my attention away from the woman in the door to the ancient video the instant I heard the noise. I saw a a 2D-video of an unshaven long-haired man in weird clothes, holding some kind of guitar while frantically screaming instead of singing. The rest of the people on stage made more noise on their instruments as accompaniment than I could have imagined music to be, even though they were just with three or four. I never had encountered anything like this before.
“Leste has been restoring and converting old videos and projections, and now we are showing them regularly. It gave us a new audience even. This one is a favourite of the people here, because it’s made by people who had the same name as our bar, Nirvana. Twentieth century stuff, and a bit too loud for my taste, but it's easy to get used to.”
She must have noticed that something in me froze up when she spoke that name, because she became a bit apologetic.
“Both were named long before any temple of Acosmia or Amaya was built in The City. It seems to have had a positive meaning, or something like that.”
She was yelling that last bit, because the singer had started screaming his chorus again.
I said nothing for a while while the song played on, and neither did she. Yelling at someone I'd just met was not my idea of an ideal conversation. The song ended with a lot of noise, and another dance act came on that was more suited for the light district than for a museum, with both the man and one of the women I had already seen before. I turned my head away from the stage, towards the woman in front of me. Without even touching me she made me follow her to the last table, and I seated myself on the plastic chair again, while she did the same in front of me. I was strangely aware of all my surroundings. I hadn’t been close to any specimen of my own species in ages, so it still felt rather uneasy.
She had long dark hair, and a tanned skin colour resembling light caramel, but her eyes were very light, almost golden in this light. I was still staring at her, not knowing what on Earth to say, not because of her being beautiful -although she undoubtedly was- or even because of her being a woman and me a man, but just because of her being a human being.
Being so close to a human being that had their full attention fixed on me was a weird sensation.
She noticed that I was unable to start the conversation again so she did it herself. “So what’s your name. I’m Evelith Anathemina.”
“A… Adamam, Adaman Yimmand.”
I said it hesitatingly, and it was surprisingly strange to hear me speak my own name again, in my own trembling voice, after all those years.
“And what brings you here, Adaman? We usually only have the same old customers here, and that group is getting smaller and smaller.” She pointed at the group of less than ten people that was looking at the show, and I noted that at least two of them weren’t humans but an older type of humanoid robot, and some kind of levitating semi-transparant hologram. “As you can see, they’re nostalgics, even the non-humans.” Most AI’s did upgrade their chassis regularly, so they probably was a very interesting story behind those very antique ones here. But that was a question for later.
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“I just needed a drink. The repairbots were still fixing the drink-o-matic when I left work, so I took the bar most likely to actually sell drinks here in this district.” She smiled and looked me straight in my eyes. My levels of unease rose again, but I was unable to turn away, petrified like an animal in the headlight of a vehicle in older eras when there still were animals. But she wasn't hostile, nor did she really try to seduce me.
“Anyone can see you’re not a customer for the Light District from a standard mile distance. But hey, neither am I. I only live and work here for the cheap apartment. This ancient building holds the only place I could rent.” I took my eyes away from hers when she blinked.
“So, your work is really to give drinks to customers? Like a machine does?”
“Yup, an actual barmaid as in the old stories. Nothing more than that. Don’t get any stupid ideas. This place used to be mainly a striptease bar indeed, but over the years it firstly became a place for nostalgia. Most of the others around us have closed over time. And they hired me here just for being human when they transitioned to the new shows. There are others here to keep the Light District factor up though…” She waved at the stage with a gesture of her hand.
“But anyway, it seems to work, people even give me generous tips just for being an actual human being that serves them, and not a robot like everywhere else. I have to serve drinks and remove empty glasses and wash them, and talk to people a bit. But I must admit that the crowd is still thinning every year, even here. In a while nothing will be left here, even in this place.”
“Can’t you apply for another job?” She looked me up and down and let her eyes rest on the logo of the robofactory on my chest.
“Me, working with robots all day like you do? That’d suck the life outta me. Sorry, I’ll have to if my life depends on it, but I’m not looking forward to it.”
“So your job pays enough for the rent now?”
“Yup, I live upstairs in this building. Small studio apartment, ancient building. We even have a human janitor and there’s no fundlocks on the doors anyway.”
“I had assumed that all doors had received fundlocks ages ago, didn’t Prez Emon himself do a campaign for ‘a fundlock on every door, for greater freedom for every woman and man?’ Years and years ago when we were kids?” she nodded.
“He did, but it was impossible to install them here, incompatible with an older system built centuries ago. And they gave up. The light district wasn’t their priority.”
My head seemed to be exploding from all the new stuff, or was it just from finally being out of my daily trance state after all these years of being lived by my job without any humans around me at all?