Making Real Memories

The Blue Eel restaurant’s majestic view of Ceres station's gently rotating wheel-like megastructures and, beyond them, the stars, had nothing on Sophie’s eyes, glowing warmly as she listened to him recount his memory.

"Where I come from, we lived in a quaint old house from the 1800s, down by a lake in Maine," Emmet said.

"Tell me again how dinnertime went," Sophie asked keenly, ignoring the increasingly urgent calls for her from further back in the kitchen area.

"Dinnertime was a special time for us. Sometimes, my aunt Maggie would come by to help cook. Then the whole family would eat by the warmth of the fireplace. And my dad would tell us crazy stories well into the evening. The man never ran out of stories. Then the grownups would play cards together while we kids pretended to sleep.”

"There he goes again," Matteo said, sighing as he passed by with a precariously balanced serving tray overflowing with dirty dishes and used napkins.

"Don't say that!" Sophie said, her deeply freckled nose wrinkling as she looked crossly at Matteo, who just shrugged his shoulders as he left.

"Why do the others keep saying things like that?" Emmet asked.

"Don't mind them, Emmet. They just think they're being funny," Sophie said.

Then they heard their supervisor Raylah’s strident voice from behind them. “Wake up, guys!”

Raylah’s impeccably manicured hands were pushing a big old rolling tray full of steaming hot clean dishes, vomited straight from the intestines of the giant dishwashing machines deeper in the kitchen, complete with a pungent smell of lemon that dissipated slowly like a chemical burn.

“Make sure you don’t break any again,” Raylah said, looking at Emmet suspiciously. “After that, you’re back on front-of-house duty, and you too, Sophie.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Emmet said, and Sophie nodded. Then Raylah left in a swoosh of platinum blonde hair.

"Sophie, you know I'm not making it up. That’s my real childhood," Emmet said as he grabbed a big handful of silverware.

"I believe you, Emmet," Sophie said, smiling warmly at him as she put a tall stack of white plates in their places.

Then it was time for them to work front-of-house again at the self-styled most romantic restaurant on the Ceres asteroid station. Emmet’s first customers of his shift had arrived in the softly lit night-blue lobby. They were mesmerized, as customers often were, by the giant curved aquarium where exotic fish frolicked in captivity. The woman was wearing a tight white dress that reached halfway to her knees and was smiling politely at Emmet as he approached them. The man, who seemed at least ten years older than she was, ignored him. As Emmet seated them, the man kept insisting to his date that he was wearing a genuine Rolex watch from Earth.

As Emmet returned with their drinks, a customer at another table intercepted him and asked him to describe dishes and modify his order even as he was carrying the drink tray. He spent a few minutes talking to the other customer. All the while, Rolex guy was giving him the evil eye.

"Why don't you fetch me an actual cold one instead of a warm one, skin job?" came the man's sneering voice as Emmet was leaving after dropping off their drinks.

"You know it’s terrible to call them that," the woman said in a hushed voice.

“I'm sorry, babe, I apologize. I just feel I pay enough for decent service,” he said.

“I'm so sorry, sir. I’ll bring another one right out,” Emmet turned around and said, embarrassed.

Something about the man, with his receding hairline, deep-set eyes, and nervous hands, almost reminded Emmet of a memory he’d rather not remember. Walking toward the kitchen area, he felt his balance start to fail him as he carried a large tray of dirty dishes. He had to rest for a moment while Raylah's long-lashed eyes looked at him disapprovingly.

"I’m so sorry, Raylah. I’ll get right back on it," he said, wiping sweat off his brow.

"It'll be alright, Emmet. Matteo told me he has a surprise for you later tonight. See, maybe he’s nice after all," Sophie told him encouragingly as she passed by.

Emmet managed to drop off the dirty dishes in the kitchen and return with a new drink for Rolex guy. Then, as he walked toward them, he caught a part of their conversation.

“…I’ll take you on a cruise to Ganymede with me. There’s going to be asteroid surfing. You haven’t lived until you’ve stared death in the face in one of those tiny pods! What… not sure if you want to try it? Well, you’ll come around to it, babe. There will be famous bands on board too, and I know one of the singers personally…”

“Sophie, I think I know that man,” Emmet said as he saw her in the kitchen area afterward.

“I think I know him too,” Sophie said darkly, and then she left to take another order.

Later as he was bringing the couple their appetizers, Emmet slowed down his steps and listened intently to their conversation.

“Yeah, I have connections because I work for Tyriel Corporation. Can you believe I even spoke to the Old Man once?”

“What did you say to him?” she asked, enthralled.

“Not much, but he thanked me for my service and said I'm a big part of the company’s success. I’m a part of why actual humans don't have to die out there mining asteroids and maintaining broken construction robots out in space. They're the ones who do that for us now,” he said, looking in Emmet's general direction.

All at once, Emmet saw a part of his childhood dinnertime memory that he had never wanted to see. At the start of the memory, there was a cruel prologue that his creators had mercifully erased, but only imperfectly. Now it was geyser water surging to the surface and scalding his system. In this part of the memory, there was a green screen, and this very same Rolex guy he saw at the table was dressing up as his dad and trading jokes with the recording studio staff.

Emmet collapsed to the ground in a crash of breaking dishes and clattering silverware, his body shuddering violently.

Raylah rushed to his side, but her concerned eyes were only for the shocked customers. “I apologize! This one's having a malfunction. We might have to retire him.”

“No!” Sophie said, rushing to Emmet's side as well. “He’s just been a bit tired, but he’s going to be alright. You know this can sometimes happen when newbies are getting adjusted to how things are,” she insisted to Raylah.

“Fine then, you take care of him, but don't make your tables wait!” Raylah said before attending to Emmet's customers herself.

Sophie helped him to his feet and put his arm over her shoulders, helping support his weight. Then she carefully guided him back to a chair in the kitchen area. Once he was seated, she proceeded to wipe the mess off him. He caught sight of her caring smile as she wiped his face, and his shaking subsided.

“It's alright, Emmet. All of us on the wait staff are just like you. We all have fake memories that haunt us, and we're all from nowhere. But we can make real memories together,” Sophie said, looking at him encouragingly.

“Thanks so much, Sophie. But you had better get back to work, or Raylah will get mad at you too,” Emmet said.

“I will, but I just want to make sure you’re okay,” Sophie said.

“I’ll be alright. You can go. I’ll take a quick break and then continue my shift,” Emmet said, his hands still trembling as he gripped the arms of his chair.

That night at eleven o’clock standard Ceres time, all six of the wait staff gathered around a too-small table in the kitchen area. They were exhausted from their long workday and bantering as they dined on leftover food from the kitchen.

“Hey Emmet, here’s the surprise Sophie told you about. Because you told us that story so many times, I saved up some money to get a deck of cards. They said it's from Earth,” Matteo said, triumphantly holding up a small box of cards.

“I don't think anyone here knows how to play cards, though,” Erica said.

“Ah, but see, there's a game description on the back. It's a game called Hearts,” Matteo said.

"Yeah! Let's play," Sophie said.