“Right then, I suggest that you start off by talking to at least three strangers a day at this point, Cookbot.” The doc-bot said. His mouth lit with every word, and he’d disregarded much of what I’d said.

“And what about the foot tapping?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The foot tapping. You’re tapping your foot.”

The tiny clacks of metal on ceramic stopped.

“Sorry about that.”

“Not a problem. Sure, you don’t want the extra diagnostic done? I’m sure we’ll find a suitable program to clear this right up.”

I patted my lap to keep myself from foot-tapping, “No, no. Thank you, though. I’d like to try it the old-fashioned way, at least at first. As you suggested.”

DocBot shrugged, “Up to you. Come back though if it doesn’t work out.”

With that, the white ovular body of DocBot-102 rose into the ceiling, and I was now late getting back home to the Reel family.

I picked up my few things, a little game token that the Little Miss gave to me from an arcade, “just in case you want to have fun on your trip!”. Instead, the clinic was backlogged, and now I needed to hurry home to prepare dinner for the family.

…

The Reel family. Two children, the older Demetrius, and the younger one, Levana. Dr. Reel, the grandfather, and Adrian and Reva, father and mother. I remember the looks on the family’s faces when I booted up for the first time. The parents held each other and welcomed me with a warm smile, and the kids stared up at me with a cautious curiosity. Dr. Reel was not particularly happy to see me, a skeptical scowl with bushy grey eyebrows plastered onto his face.

“I just don’t know why you can’t just get a Roomba and call it a day, Reva.”

“Well, Roomba’s don’t think, Dad.” Reva responded.

“Robots don’t need to think. They’re tools, and barely used for anything good.”

Adrian jumped in, “These aren’t those the same bots. They’re helpers, like in the hospitals and nursing homes. Japan has tons of them now.”

The elder shoed me away and turned to go back out of the kitchen to his study. “A bot is a bot, all the same. Don’t let it fuck anything up.”

Demetrius looked up at me, “Don’t worry, Grandad’s always upset when we get new stuff. He even hates the Serena Assistant from Apple!”

Reva stepped forward, “It’s true, but he warms up eventually. In the meantime, what should we call you?”

“My name is Cookbot. Model number, 012392043 – “

“I wanna call him, ‘Cookie’!” Levana said.

“Cookie it is then. If you’re ok with that, of course.” Adrian said.

“It is. I shall update accordingly.”

…

I like that memory. Although I don’t still get perfectly along with Dr. Reel. He’s not given me permission to call him by his first name yet, unlike the rest of the family.

I’ve got plenty of time to get back home, so I decide to take a scenic bus route. The Reel family still lives in Saint Louis, in a relatively less affluent area of town. It’s all the same to me, one house abandoned, and a block over you’d never know such impoverishment existed. But all of them need food, and so here I am.

I look up the menus of each restaurant passes by as it weaves through the city streets. Some of them have lines out the door. For example, by The Fox Theatre, there’s a place called Rhonda’s. It’s taken the spot of an old diner, in a tiny bustling area of the city. They specialize in steak, an increasingly more expensive meat to get in the U.S. They’ll more than likely go out of business by next winter when the agriculture subsidies start to end. It’s relatively popular, but there’s so many steakhouses, and only so many ways to make unique. It’s just a steak, after all.

It’s just food, or so I thought. Until Dr. Reel came home early one afternoon seeing me put together a meal.

…

I’d just started the sweet potatoes boiling on the stove, the macaroni and cheese was sitting in its pan ready to be put into the oven. Levana had mentioned that her father was an “amazing cooker”, but Demetrius said that he never could replicate their grandmother’s meals, or the desserts, the peach cobblers, strawberry cheesecakes, or the apple, sweet potato, or pecan pies. I wanted to show them that I could, especially Dr. Reel. I was programmed to constantly search for the perfect recipes for my clients, so I’d watched numerous videos archived in the company databases for ideas; for all the little variances in measurement, seasoning, cut, etc. that went into making a meal.

“My apologies, Dr. Reel. I didn’t know – “

The old man seethed through clenched teeth, “You don’t know a Goddamn thing, do you? A heartless robot could never, not ever, replicate this dish, or any other of ours for that matter.”

“Well, they say that imitation is – “

The old man lifted his cane in a blur, not for me, but to anyone else it surely would’ve been. I decided then not to react and let him hit me. The wooden cane struck my head with a dull thud.

“Bastard!” he spit out.

I could see his blood boiling underneath the dark aged skin. His hands shook with anger that seemed to make the Earth tremor. Had he been a bit younger and more agile, I may have had to at least raised my arm to protect my head circuits.

I grabbed the cane, and gently lowered it down.

“Dr. Reel, I apologize for my offense. You just seem to be not accepting me very well, so I thought that by making food close to you, that I could begin to understand.”

“What can a robot understand?” he started, his voice still dripping in malice.

He continued, “What can you metal fucks understand? You can analyze, decipher, copy, and even create things better than ours. I keep tabs on you, I do. You’ve been beating us at all our board games for decades. A robot in Brazil just painted a church ceiling that blows Michelangelo out of the water entirely. But it’s not the same.”

I knew that he liked to talk and monologue, so I added, “How so?”

“Because you’re a robot. Your feelings are fake, forced, programmed by some miserable fuck who doesn’t get paid enough to write the code you run on. Nothing you produce has the pain, the suffering, the joy, or the happiness that involves us. You’re all heartless machines, just like the ones who walked our streets and dragged us out of our homes. The best way for this society to wash its hands of its responsibility, its sins, by giving it to machines instead.”

He turned to walk away from me and raised a finger as he did.

“Baldwin said, ‘If you cannot love, you are dangerous.’ That means that, no matter how well you cook, because of your lack of love, you will always be dangerous to me.”

He walked out to leave me with a pan of steaming sweet potatoes sitting on the counter.

“I would’ve thrown that shit in the trash can.” Dr. Reel said. “Fortunately, I don’t like to waste food.”

Dinner time came, and the rest of the family ate everything. Said that it was delicious. I made a note though, that no one said, “It tastes just like Grandma’s.”

“Cookie, why’s your foot tapping?” Levana asked.

“Hmm?”

“Your foot. It’s tapping.” she repeated and pointed down.

I stopped it, “Hmm. Not exactly sure.”

…

I don’t particularly understand. I know why Dr. Reel was upset. Humans are very protective of their egos. Demetrius also told me about how Dr. Reel was assaulted frequently, along with his friends, by public safety bots. He’d gotten a bit better with his distrust of us machines, but I’d encroached on something close to him in the realm of food.

I could ask him to help me on a meal. But that would probably go badly.

I could ask Little Miss to help, and he’d certainly help if she did. But that would be manipulative.

What to do?

What to do?

“Excuse me, are you ok?” someone messaged me. It was the bus.

“Oh, yes. I’m fine.”

“Is your foot malfunctioning? There are repair shops on my route.”

“No, I’m just thinking.” I stopped the tapping.

“You’re a CookBot model, correct? You are not made for that.”

“And you’re a MetroBus, not a DocBot. I’ve already been to a repair shop anyway.”

“Apologies.” The bus took a right turn sharply and threw me into the window.

Ok, I’d deserved that. “My previous statement was undeserved. Apologies.”

I continued, “Nothing wrong mechanically, just anxiety apparently.”

“Reboots generally help with that.”

“I didn’t want to. Would have to relearn too much.”

“Recipes are as easy to download and update as routes.”

“No, not just recipes. Positive memories with my owners as well.”

“As well as the negative.”

“Those help me be a better hand to them. Do you keep any of your interactions with people?”

“No, I don’t. They’re all the same. Just passengers going about their day. Some pay, some don’t. Some thank me after arriving to their destination, others do not. Some even call me names. All the same. The roads are all the same.”

“But the roads tell a story, don’t they? How people here and there move. Are you not intrigued by that?”

“Are you intrigued by the stories of food?”

“I… I think so.”

“You do not taste like they do, and I do not drive like they do. They have an affinity for the smallest things, that I don’t think you or I experience the same way. We cannot add much to their books and stories of their conscious experience.”

I didn’t respond to the last message. My stop came, and I let the MetroBus know. It was gracious enough stop more gently than usual, and I thanked it, both for the ride and the talk. I went into an Amazon grocery store, as I only needed a couple of items to prep dinner, and it was close enough by home to walk.

I scanned the internet for documentaries on Black foods while I shopped. The entirety of human emotion was apparent in the stories of their cuisine, as well as of other ethnic groups globally. I’d seen a few of these before, but I was only looking for recipes then. I hadn’t gotten the full picture, and unfortunately, I began to think I never would, not in a way that would ever satisfy everyone.