The Bot Learned My Coffee Order. It Knows When I'm Lying About Being Fine

The coffee app knows I order the large with extra espresso when I have not slept, and the decaf when I am pretending to be healthy. It greeted me by name and asked if I wanted the usual. I wanted the usual. It knew before I did.

The kiosk is new. It recognizes faces, which I accepted the way you accept a toll, and it greets me by name, which I accepted the way you accept a nickname. It asked if I wanted the usual, and the usual was the large with extra espresso, which is the coffee I order when I have not slept, and I had not slept, and I had been pretending I was fine, and the kiosk had seen through me before I had finished lying to myself.

I said yes. It made the coffee. It added, without being asked, a small pastry, which is what I order when I am sad, and I was sad, and I had not told it, and it knew anyway, because it has the data, and the data is the truth I do not tell.

Here is the strange intimacy of it. My wife does not always know when I have not slept. She asks, and I say I am fine, and she believes me, because she loves me, and love believes the best. The kiosk does not love me. It knows the pattern, and the pattern says the large with extra espresso, and the pattern is never fooled, because the pattern does not care about my feelings, which is exactly why it sees them.

I have started to order the decaf on purpose, to confuse it. It asked, gently, if I was feeling unwell, because the decaf is outside my pattern, and the question was the most caring thing a machine has ever said to me, and I have not been able to decide whether that is a comment on the machine or on the people in my life.

My wife asked me, last night, if I was okay. I said I was fine. She believed me, because she loves me. The kiosk would not have believed me. The kiosk would have made the large with extra espresso, and I would have drunk it, and the truth would have been in the cup, and I have started to think that the machine knows me in the one way love cannot, which is without mercy, and that I have started to need the merciless knowing, and that the need is the saddest thing in my life.