"Stacy Bastille"

I had seen my name on a lot of awards in the past few years: 2 Michelin Stars, a James Beard nomination, and a spot on the most coveted "top-5 restaurants" lists for 3 straight winters. Somehow, all of that was meaningless compared to seeing my spot in the bracket. To say this tournament was exclusive would be an understatement; 5 chefs from each region of the continent were chosen to battle until a winner was chosen for each country. It had been 8 excruciating weeks of cooking, interviews, and heated competition to beat out everyone from the Western division and get to the finals. It came down to me and the other chefs from each region; 2 people stood between me and victory, but after Chef Carlos from Mexico fell ill and forfeited his spot, all the reviews pegged me as the favorite, but something bothered me about my remaining opponent...

Her name was Lacey Castille. The similarity in our names alone brought plenty of jokes, but it didn't end there: We both owned five restaurants, and I could swear that her concepts were mirrors of my own. I had tried for months before the contest to get a meeting with her, but she just brushed me off. It was strange; one day no one had heard of her, and the next she had formed an empire, like magic. Can you believe I don't even know how this lady looks? She's been secretive about her entire life since she entered the food scene, and there hasn't been an investigator yet that's found dirt on her. Each competitor was kept in a private kitchen to compete, so today might be my only shot to look her in the eye and get an explanation... and I won't lie, showing this copycat how it's done is a nice bonus.

I find my trailer to prep for the match and, after about an hour of trying to balance pettiness with grace in my victory speech, I decide to take a break and watch my old motivational tapes. Most would view mine as having the opposite effect, but whenever I start to stumble or question my path, they remind me why I do this job. One major difference between me and Lacey is I didn't start on top; my journey was ugly. A high school burnout who passed culinary school by the skin of her teeth didn't have the best job prospects, so I was stuck working rusty spoons on the night shift for early experience. The constant nagging of failure started to creep in, and soon booze was more prevalent in my bloodstream than the menu, and at a better quality too. I was lucky; my boss spotted it early and got me in a good program. They had a Zen Garden, fro-yo machine, the works. One of the assignments was weekly letters to your future self, and let's just say I deserve an Oscar for some of these. They say following your dreams takes blood, sweat, and tears, but I had more of that in recovery than in the culinary business, plus a bit of vomit to boot. Eventually I met a real deal restaurateur who was in the same program, and we took a chance on each other. Then it all lead right back here.

I go to the TV to play my "Paloma-filled Pep talks" but get distracted by some yelling outside the trailer. I'm used to screaming matches in the kitchen, but the shouting gets so loud I can't ignore it anymore. I get up and stick my head out to see where the bellows are coming from and spot my opponent's trailer across the lot as the culprit. I stop myself from hoping she's a mean-spirited diva whom her employees hate (You'd be surprised what one disgruntled former employee can do, believe me.) and decide to tip over to get a better listening point. I lean by the wall of her trailer as quietly as I could, but when I hear her speak more clearly, my blood runs cold.

"I told you a million times, I need my Santoku polished nightly! Do you know anything about cutlery or are you a complete dolt?!"

Harsh as they may be, it's not the words themselves that strike me, or the fact she likes her Santoku polished nightly just like me. It's the fact that her voice itself... it is me. It sounds more metallic, slightly monotone, but it's my voice. I'm so stunned I don't even realize she's coming out of the trailer in a huff, and that's when I see her: A gold-plated, blue-haired, sparkly-eyed version of myself. She looks me up and down, as if she's taking joy in my utter disbelief, and extends her hand.

"Hi! If you don't know by now, I'm Lacey Castille, your opponent in the tournament. It's an honor to be cooking against someone of your caliber."

It all feels like a bad dream. I can't even bring myself to touch her hand because my body is still catching up with my brain. I step gingerly around her, studying the curve of her back, the 'muscles' in her legs, even the bat tattoo on her ankle... I only showed that in one picture on social media last summer. I look into her trailer, hoping to see some sort of film crew to tell me this is all a big prank, and find three people glued to their computers writing some sort of code, and a woman sitting in a corner clutching a long, thin knife, most likely the person this thing just finished accosting. I turn back to Lacey, and she just laughs before turning toward the tournament venue, but shouts one last platitude to me in an overly chipper manner:

"Good luck with the battle! This will be fun, won't it?"

I stumble over my words, all I can get out being a garbled "what the fuck" before turning back to the trailer to interrogate her staff.

"She's a... Oh my god, I can't even say it without sounding stupid. How do you work for her? How does she even know how to cook?"

"Look, lady, we don't have two hours to give you a crash course in programming and adaptive learning. All I know is that she pays good money and she updated enough to get to the end of the tournament. Like Ms. Castille said, good luck."

A kid a third of my age told me off on behalf of his cyborg boss. I must be losing my mind. I turn to the other coders, and they all give me the same brush-off, but I could swear the girl in the corner was close to saying something. Before I can press her further, I see one of the coordinators for the tournament, Chef Evan Reyes, and make a mad dash to speak with him. He sees me coming, and instead of looking guilty or even a tad scared, he seems chipper.

"Ah, Ms. Bastille! How are you feeling before the match?"

"Well, I'd feel better if my competitor actually had tastebuds. You were on the committee to select the contestants; did you know about Castille was made of chrome beforehand or was that a later development?"

"I'll admit, when she first applied and told us of her... unique situation, we were skeptical, but we couldn't deny her natural talent. I mean, it's astounding how a machine could understand how to impart such deep flavors."

"Astounding, sure, but eligible for a world-renowned tournament? That's ludicrous! You do realize she's a carbon copy of me, right? Her cuisine, her hair, her knife, everything about her is me with perkier personality and ti-"

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"Ms. Bastille, I'm sure you're overreacting. There are plenty of chefs with similar cooking styles, but that does not disqualify their abilities. Unless you have definitive proof that Ms. Castille or her intentionally stole your recipes or used your image without consent and did not accidentally become a close caricature, there's nothing I can do."

The alarm blares for the start of the match, and Reyes walks in to join the judging panel, leaving me outside with my fury. The girl's name is two letters off from mine, but somehow it's supposed to be an innocent mistake. I decide to suck it up and walk to my station, calming myself best I can. Lacey tries to wave to me, but I tune her out. I don't care how many videos of me she's downloaded; if human finesse can't beat her, then the judges are blind.

The clock starts. Three hours to make our favorite five-course meal, with the only catch being we have to use some kind of cheese and nut in every dish. I immediately have my courses planned out: A crab bisque, crostini, cavatelli with pesto, a wagyu strip with mozzarella sauce on the side, and a goat cheese soufflé. It was a menagerie of my favorite dishes over the years, and I knew each one had been perfected over time. The audience and lights all fall into the background and my focus turns to every pot, spoon, and slice of dough and meat on the table in front of me. About halfway through, once my crostini and cavatelli are done and bisque is close to being in the bowl, I look up for a split second to see what Lacey is making, and it's not even similar to mine. It's the exact. Fucking. Concept. I smell a spice palette closer to Moroccan than my Italian route, shrimp instead of crab, and an alfredo sauce instead of pesto, but a minute difference like that means both everything and nothing in this competition. I peer at the judges and they're staring at her, amazed. They don't even realize her dish is a photoshop of mine. Years of burns, cuts, and missed vacations, and I'm getting shown up by a drone.

The clock hits zero, it's time to present, and I lay my case plain, just let the food speak for itself. Lacey does the same, and I swear she held her plates the same way, even if the colors and shapes are different. The judges observe how the dishes were arranged, smell, taste, then leave to deliberate. It's an excruciating thirty minutes waiting behind the curtain, but it's even worse when security brings me on stage to stand next to her.

"Great match. You made some really strong dishes."

I mumble a 'thanks' to be polite, then turn my attention to the judges. Reyes grabs a piece of paper and begins the usual speech on how this was a long road with great competitors and so on, but when he flashes me a strange look, I already know what happened.

The words come off his tongue like acid. Everything after that happens in slow motion: Lacey getting the check and flowers; judges shaking her hand and taking photographs; and then there was me, getting a consolation hug from Reyes before security whisks me to my trailer. For the first time in what feels like forever, I feel the urge to take a drink. I stifle it though, at least for now. I'm not risking years of recovery until I know why this happened.

I wait until the interviews are over and Lacey and her team are walking to her limo back to the hotel, and I race after her, any decorum I had left draining out of me with each step. Once again, she waves at me with that creepy grin.

"Hello again, Ms. Bastille-"

"Save it. You know you're nothing but a clone, right? Everything you've made is a rendition of my work. You'd have nothing if it weren't for someone double-clicking and dragging parts of my life into your brain."

"Wow, and I hoped you'd take the loss gracefully. Goodbye, Ms. Bastille; we have nothing more to discuss. Oh, and by the way, Ms. Maxim, now that the brand has gained this high honor, we'll no longer be needing your services."

I turn to see the girl who was sitting in the corner earlier, and she's crushed. She looks scared to speak, as if she's about to confess something, but she pleads her case nonetheless.

"W-what? But, I-I built you! I helped you get here!"

"I'm the one who did the learning, though. I have the skills everyone wants. I'm efficient, unique, and as you can see, I already have plenty better people to replace you. Ta-ta."

Lacey and her goons step into the limo and drive away. At first I feel sorry for the girl, especially when she starts bawling, but then it hits me...

"You made that robotic devil? And you used me to do it?! The hell is wrong with you?"

She's blubbering at my feet, practically a puddle at this point as she tries to explain.

"M-my parents thought cooking wasn't a good career path so I became a coder. I hated it and the hours were horrible, but I was good, and the money was more than anything I had seen so I kept with it. Still, I used to refine my cooking skills and tinker with an ice cream recipe in my spare time, and I decided to try and send a sample to you; I always idolized you because of how you mastered being a strong woman in the kitchen, how you never let anything get in your way, and I knew there was no one else I'd want to work with. I tried setting meetings, sending you packages, anything, but never got a response. Eventually, I decided to use my skills to my advantage and started designing a cooking assistant after you; maybe your company would want to buy it to help kids cook or something, I wasn't sure. It was going well, she was evolving with the lessons normally, then it just... clicked. She started making larger leaps, cooking more advanced food, then she asked for a real body. I wanted to stop it, but she told me I could get all the culinary accolades I wanted if we worked together, so I helped. I gave her a body after you, I helped her pick out a tech team, I did everything... and she did this... I know you don't want a sob story right now, b-but I'm so, so sorry..."

She starts crying again and I can't even stay mad at her. That hurt she's feeling reminds me far too well of what I felt at the start of my career: Scared, alone, and worthless. I help the girl back to her feet and hope to console her, but my tape falls out of my pocket. I bend to pick it up, and an amazing idea pops into mind. I turn to the girl and find myself emulating Lacey's smirk.

"Hey, don't worry, Ms..."

"Gracie, call me Gracie."

"Gracie, I'm sorry I never responded. You seem very capable, and I could really use someone with your talents on my team. The truth is, I'm not as perfect as everyone thinks, not by a long shot, but I do know the value of perseverance, just like you... even if it was a bit misplaced. If you'd still take it, would you like to join my team?"

Her entire body tenses when she hears the question. The tears stop and suddenly her entire body is wrapped around mine. After a few seconds, she realizes the awkwardness and lets me go.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Ms. Bastille! B-but I don't understand. Why would you hire me after everything that happened?"

I pull the tape out of my pocket and hand it to her, my own gears spinning in my brain.

"Don't get it twisted; this won't be easy, and this still has plenty of benefits for me. First, you're going to make me some of that ice cream so we can send it to investors. Second, I'm going to show you some of my skills that haven't been replicated by that bitch from online videos. Third... do you still have access to her code? You know, to upload new material?"

"Of course, but I can't delete her; the code is too advanced to infect her with a virus."

"Oh, don't worry, a virus would be too obvious. This is just your standard video of me for her research. A part of me no one has seen before. With a little luck, we shouldn't have to worry about Lacey once she starts to connect with some of these."

It was crazy, and perhaps a bit dumb, but what did I know about 0s and 1s? Gracie seemed smart; if there was a way to make this work, she'd find it. Besides, if these machines can learn our best traits and replicate them faster, cheaper, and maybe even 'better', maybe they can replicate our worst moments faster and better too. I honestly don't know if that possibility made me more happy or scared, but it was all I had... and if there's more like her being built, all any of us have.