The Stopped Clock: The Lady or the Tiger?
Nov. 12th, 2011 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolI freely admit that there are days when I need a drink. I suppose this is indicative of a problem with alcohol. I take some comfort in knowing that those days are rare, so I am at the very least a high-functional drunk.
So on a Sunday when I absolutely could not start the lawn mower, mere hours after my water heater mysteriously stopped working, and I felt the need to drink beer in the company of friends, or at least other sympathetic high-functional drunks, I didn't resist. I hopped in the car and drove over to _The_Stopped_Clock_, my favorite bar. It's a quirky little place that serves as a haven for any number of strange characters, most of whom happen to be time travelers.
_The_Stopped_Clock_ is strange in that it's not always in its usual location. There have been plenty of times when I have driven by and looked for that familiar burnt-out neon sign, the 'O's shaped like clock faces, and I can't find it. I look between the hardware store and the warehouse for its nondescript screen front door but it's simply not there. Interestingly, it's always there when I want a drink, something that Edgar has never been able to adequately explain to me.
Edgar is _The_Stopped_Clock_'s omnipresent bartender. He never seems to get a day off and nobody ever works his shifts. When I ask him about his hours, Edgar frowns and points to the sign over the bar that reads 'HOUR' IS A FOUR LETTER WORD. Units of time are verboten in _The_Stopped_Clock_, one of the few rules that is strictly enforced. For the most part, in that curious bar, anything else goes.
Edgar nodded as I pushed open the door and began pulling me a beer off the tap. A bunch of regulars were there – no surprise, not even on a Sunday afternoon; I could swear some people live in the place. Retro Retro's eyes lit up as I approached his table.
"Andy!" he exclaimed happily. "You're just in time!"
"Oh, no," I said. "Not another bowling competition?"
"No, no, no," said the scruffy veteran time traveler hastily. "Nothing like that. We're having a party, and we need to pick up the cake. Tell me," said Retro Retro, gripping my upper arm firmly and steering me away from the table, "tell me: as a native of this time period, are you in possession of an apparatus known colloquially as a 'car'?"
"Uh, yeah," I said, looking thirstily at my beer. "Why?"
"Because the bakery is a good mile away, that's why," said Retro Retro. He turned to Bobby Saturday and Sir Attaccus at the table. "We'll be right back, boys; pray don't drink everything."
"But my beer's right over there," I said plaintively.
"Take it with you!" Retro Retro suggested.
"I can't bring a beer with me while I'm driving," I said disgustedly. "I'll be arrested."
"I can help you with that," said Retro Retro, commandeering my beer and downing half of it in one gulp. "Come on, Andy; let's hit the road."
"No," I said obstinately. "We'll go later." I sat down at the bar and signaled Edgar for another beer. Retro Retro plopped down on the stool next to mine.
"What's the matter?" asked Retro Retro. He was wearing some kind of futuristic teeshirt that could flash different images and text according to what time period you were in. The image generator was working and was showing a picture of a Pac-Man; whatever composed the text was on the fritz, and it merely read [IRONIC REFERENCE UNAVAILABLE].
"I'm just having a lousy day," I said, taking a good pull off my mug. "You know, feeling kind of overwhelmed. There's just a lot going on right now."
"Ah, I see," said Retro Retro sagely. "You're feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day."
Edgar cleared his throat discreetly. He pointed to the sign above the bar that said THAT THING YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT? YEAH, THAT THING? SHUT UP ABOUT THAT. "Sorry," mumbled Retro Retro.
"No, you're totally right," I said. "I just feel totally overcommitted all the time. It's like there's not enough of me to go around and cover all the bases. Every moment there's some place I have to be and something I really should be doing. Shoot, even now when I'm trying to kick back, you want me to run errands."
"BITCH BITCH BITCH," said Retro Retro unsympathetically, downing the beer he pinched from me. "Listen, kid; why do you think people get into time travel in the first place? To not be bound by the constraints of time, that's why! Look at me." Retro Retro stood up. I looked at him.
"What do you see?" asked Retro Retro. "Be honest."
"A scruffy, sloppy, time-traveling mooch," I said.
"Dial back on the honesty," Retro Retro suggested.
"Okay," I said. "I dunno, a guy who's getting older?"
"Yeah, okay, sure," said Retro Retro. "How old you think I am?"
"I dunno," I said, giving Edgar the side-eye. If I named a number of years, I might get cut off. But it was hard to tell. Retro Retro was kind of grey and grizzled, but he wasn't too wrinkled over. "How old are you?"
"I have no idea!" said Retro Retro happily. "Isn't that great? To have absolutely no idea how long you've been alive? As a time traveler, it's no longer relevant. I can do whatever I want without being constrained by mortality." He sat back down and got Edgar to pull him another beer.
"Huh," I said. "You know, actually, that's something I've been meaning to ask you about." I swiveled about on my stool. "You talk pretty big about all the stuff you've done all throughout history."
"Why, thank you!" said Retro Retro.
"But if even a quarter of it is true, you've lived way too long for a normal human being. I mean, you've talked about ruling the Canadian Empire through two nuclear wars…"
"It would have been three, except diplomacy came through at the last minute," Retro Retro inserted.
"And then you claim to have slept with every female member of the British royal family ever, which must have taken a lot of time…"
"You know it did, baby!" roared Retro Retro, raising his hand so I could high-five him. I refused.
"Even with zipping around from time period to time period, there's no way you could do all the things you've said you've done in a single lifetime," I said. "All time travel can do is change the starting and ending points of segments of time; the total amount of time that elapses in your life has to remain static. Right?"
"Oh, Andy," sighed Retro Retro. "I forget that you're kind of a newbie at this. You're still thinking about life as a timeline, with a starting point and an ending point, like a piece of string. You think that time travelers can loop that piece of string around, cut it up, move it around, but at the end it's all the same length. Is that what you're saying?"
"Well, yeah," I said doubtfully. Wasn't that it?
"Well, that's true for other people," said Retro Retro. "But we're not other people, Andy! We're time travelers, you and I! We don't play by the usual rules. Andy, let's talk about choice."
"Oh, man, no, please, no," I begged. If I had a nickel for every time Retro Retro or somebody else spouted drunken philosophy at me at _The_Stopped_Clock, I'd have a dollar and ninety-five cents. That's not a lot of money, but it's a whole bunch of bullshit philosophy.
"Shut up!" said Retro Retro. "I'm serious about this! Now listen up, junior!" He punched me in the shoulder, and I shut up.
"Okay, supposing you've got a choice," said Retro Retro. "Supposing you have to pick: the lady, or the tiger? Which one do you choose?"
"Well, classically, I don't get that choice at all," I argue. "The beautiful princess I love points to a door, and I have to decide if she's trying to get me to marry some lady instead of her, or get eaten by the tiger."
"Really?" Retro Retro sounds crestfallen. "I always thought they were both good options. Sounds like that's a crappy game no matter how it goes. Well, okay, let's say you have to choose between beer, or whiskey. Edgar, pour him one of each, will you? Which one do you pick?"
Edgar put the glasses in front of me. "Today, I guess I'd pick the beer," I said.
"Good," said Retro Retro, taking the whiskey and downing it. "But now, supposing I said you didn't have to choose between them. What if you could select both options?"
"Looks like you've taken care of that, haven't you?" I asked drily.
"No, I haven't," said Retro Retro. "I can have the whiskey AND the beer." He picked up the beer and downed that as well. "I can do it even if the two options are mutually exclusive. Suppose I have to choose between drinking a beer, and not drinking a beer?"
"Edgar, let's make this one purely theoretical," I said. Edgar shrugged and backed away from the taps.
"As a time traveler, I can have it both ways," said Retro Retro. "It's just a matter of splitting and recombining timestreams. Oldest trick in the book. At the point of decision, I spawn off two possibilities. In one, I drink a beer. In the other, I drink no beer. As long as I split them and recombine them in the right way, I can come out at the end having had both experiences. This is what time travelers do."
"I see," I said. "So you're saying you slept with a bunch of royal chicks by spliltting up timestreams and nailing them in parallel, is that it?"
"Yeah!" agreed Retro Retro. "Well, that, plus a bunch of threesomes."
I thought about that. "So right now," I said, "you could simultaneously be here, stealing my drinks, and somewhere else, stealing somebody else's drinks."
"Of course not," said Retro Retro. "That's not me, in that other timestream, stealing somebody else's drinks. I'm just here, with you, stealing your drinks. Because I care."
"Gee, thanks," I said.
"But later on when we recombine the timestreams," continued Retro Retro, "then all those pasts merge into a single waveform. Then both drink-stealings are in my past. Both were real and true. But they're not both me until the future."
"My head is starting to hurt," I said. "Let's go get your cake before I get too drunk to drive."
"You're never too drunk to drive," Retro Retro objected. "You might become too drunk to drive WELL."
I paid Edgar, and Retro Retro and I headed for the front door. "Just a minute," said the veteran time traveler. He closed his eyes for a minute, concentrated, and then smiled at me. "After you," he said.
We stepped out onto the sidewalk and I led Retro Retro to my Prius. He was very amused by the idea of a seatbelt, and he spent most of the ride poking around through my ashtray and glovebox and cupholders. He directed me to a Randall's, and we went to the bakery department. They had a large chocolate sheet cake. On it were the words HA HA TIME-ASSAYER-3400, YOU CAN'T DIGEST THIS.
"What the hell kind of party is this?" I asked.
"A cruel party," Retro Retro admitted.
The bakery closed up the cake in a flat white box and taped it up. Retro Retro made a big show of going through his pockets and coming up with gold doubloons, a packet of industrial diamonds and a folded-over piece of paper that Retro Retro swore was Julius Caesar's suicide note, but nothing that approximated local currency. I sighed and put the cake on my credit card.
I drove Retro Retro back to _The_Stopped_Clock_. On the way, Retro Retro peeled up the tape holding the cake box closed.
"See, Andy, choice is a wonderful thing," said Retro Retro. "When you have options, you have the freedom to go whichever way you want. When you're a time traveler, if you don't like how things go, you can just not recombine that fork in the road into your existence. That's the power of manipulating time. Wow, that cake looks delicious, doesn't it?" I glanced down at it.
"Actually, it looks like it would make me sick," I said, thinking of chocolate cake mingling with beer in my stomach.
"Hey, that's cool," said Retro Retro. "More for me." With the cake box open on his lap, he plunged both hands into the cake. He picked up two ragged nasty handfuls and mashed them into his mouth. "Mmmm," said Retro Retro, chewing on an oversize mouthful of cake. Brown frosting covered his hands and facial hair.
"Wow. Just wow," I said, shaking my head. "Seriously, Retro Retro, that's nasty."
"I'm sorry," said Retro Retro, once his mouth had largely cleared, "did you just say 'tasty'? 'cause you should have." He mashed his entire face down into the box. Disgusting smacking noises emerged.
"Let's just try to keep it off the upholstery," I said faintly.
I parked in front of _The_Stopped_Clock_. Retro Retro quickly swallowed whatever was in his mouth, closed up the box, and brushed crumbs off his teeshirt as we headed for the door. Retro Retro frowned.
"You know, we probably should have picked up plates and forks," he mused.
"Nah," I said. Retro Retro smiled, relieved.
"Yeah, you're right!" he said. "Let's have us a PAR-tay!"
We pushed through the door, and Retro Retro plopped the cake down on the table.
"Oh, DO be careful with that," chided Sir Attaccus, brushing off the box. "I want everything to be simply perfect for TIME-ASSAYER-3400's You're-Still-A-Robot party."
"Did you get plates?" asked Bobby Saturday.
"Andy forgot them," said Retro Retro. Bobby Saturday frowned at me, and I frowned at Retro Retro. Retro Retro just shrugged as Sir Attaccus opened the box. His face clouded over.
"Oh, NO," he said, glaring accusingly at Retro Retro. "Not AGAIN."
"What? what's the matter?" asked Retro Retro.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" demanded Sir Attaccus. "We do not use apostrophes on cakes! You CANNOT digest this! Oh, why do I leave these matters to sloppy amateurs?"
I peeked into the box. The cake was intact, as perfect as it had been back at the bakery. I turned on Retro Retro.
"You had your cake," I accused, "and ate it too."
"Time travel," Retro Retro reminded me, blowing imaginary smoke off his finger-pistols.
"There's chocolate all around your mouth," I told him. Retro Retro immediately bent over to wipe off his lips on his malfunctioning teeshirt.
TIME-ASSAYER-3400 came through the door. Everybody in the bar stood up and cheered. The automaton paused in the entryway, taking this in. The display on his chest lit up.
I….AM….STILL….A….ROBOT, it said. Can a robot's text be melancholy?
"Twice a day!" yelled Retro Retro.
"TWICE A DAY!" echoed the crowd.
So on a Sunday when I absolutely could not start the lawn mower, mere hours after my water heater mysteriously stopped working, and I felt the need to drink beer in the company of friends, or at least other sympathetic high-functional drunks, I didn't resist. I hopped in the car and drove over to _The_Stopped_Clock_, my favorite bar. It's a quirky little place that serves as a haven for any number of strange characters, most of whom happen to be time travelers.
_The_Stopped_Clock_ is strange in that it's not always in its usual location. There have been plenty of times when I have driven by and looked for that familiar burnt-out neon sign, the 'O's shaped like clock faces, and I can't find it. I look between the hardware store and the warehouse for its nondescript screen front door but it's simply not there. Interestingly, it's always there when I want a drink, something that Edgar has never been able to adequately explain to me.
Edgar is _The_Stopped_Clock_'s omnipresent bartender. He never seems to get a day off and nobody ever works his shifts. When I ask him about his hours, Edgar frowns and points to the sign over the bar that reads 'HOUR' IS A FOUR LETTER WORD. Units of time are verboten in _The_Stopped_Clock_, one of the few rules that is strictly enforced. For the most part, in that curious bar, anything else goes.
Edgar nodded as I pushed open the door and began pulling me a beer off the tap. A bunch of regulars were there – no surprise, not even on a Sunday afternoon; I could swear some people live in the place. Retro Retro's eyes lit up as I approached his table.
"Andy!" he exclaimed happily. "You're just in time!"
"Oh, no," I said. "Not another bowling competition?"
"No, no, no," said the scruffy veteran time traveler hastily. "Nothing like that. We're having a party, and we need to pick up the cake. Tell me," said Retro Retro, gripping my upper arm firmly and steering me away from the table, "tell me: as a native of this time period, are you in possession of an apparatus known colloquially as a 'car'?"
"Uh, yeah," I said, looking thirstily at my beer. "Why?"
"Because the bakery is a good mile away, that's why," said Retro Retro. He turned to Bobby Saturday and Sir Attaccus at the table. "We'll be right back, boys; pray don't drink everything."
"But my beer's right over there," I said plaintively.
"Take it with you!" Retro Retro suggested.
"I can't bring a beer with me while I'm driving," I said disgustedly. "I'll be arrested."
"I can help you with that," said Retro Retro, commandeering my beer and downing half of it in one gulp. "Come on, Andy; let's hit the road."
"No," I said obstinately. "We'll go later." I sat down at the bar and signaled Edgar for another beer. Retro Retro plopped down on the stool next to mine.
"What's the matter?" asked Retro Retro. He was wearing some kind of futuristic teeshirt that could flash different images and text according to what time period you were in. The image generator was working and was showing a picture of a Pac-Man; whatever composed the text was on the fritz, and it merely read [IRONIC REFERENCE UNAVAILABLE].
"I'm just having a lousy day," I said, taking a good pull off my mug. "You know, feeling kind of overwhelmed. There's just a lot going on right now."
"Ah, I see," said Retro Retro sagely. "You're feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day."
Edgar cleared his throat discreetly. He pointed to the sign above the bar that said THAT THING YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT? YEAH, THAT THING? SHUT UP ABOUT THAT. "Sorry," mumbled Retro Retro.
"No, you're totally right," I said. "I just feel totally overcommitted all the time. It's like there's not enough of me to go around and cover all the bases. Every moment there's some place I have to be and something I really should be doing. Shoot, even now when I'm trying to kick back, you want me to run errands."
"BITCH BITCH BITCH," said Retro Retro unsympathetically, downing the beer he pinched from me. "Listen, kid; why do you think people get into time travel in the first place? To not be bound by the constraints of time, that's why! Look at me." Retro Retro stood up. I looked at him.
"What do you see?" asked Retro Retro. "Be honest."
"A scruffy, sloppy, time-traveling mooch," I said.
"Dial back on the honesty," Retro Retro suggested.
"Okay," I said. "I dunno, a guy who's getting older?"
"Yeah, okay, sure," said Retro Retro. "How old you think I am?"
"I dunno," I said, giving Edgar the side-eye. If I named a number of years, I might get cut off. But it was hard to tell. Retro Retro was kind of grey and grizzled, but he wasn't too wrinkled over. "How old are you?"
"I have no idea!" said Retro Retro happily. "Isn't that great? To have absolutely no idea how long you've been alive? As a time traveler, it's no longer relevant. I can do whatever I want without being constrained by mortality." He sat back down and got Edgar to pull him another beer.
"Huh," I said. "You know, actually, that's something I've been meaning to ask you about." I swiveled about on my stool. "You talk pretty big about all the stuff you've done all throughout history."
"Why, thank you!" said Retro Retro.
"But if even a quarter of it is true, you've lived way too long for a normal human being. I mean, you've talked about ruling the Canadian Empire through two nuclear wars…"
"It would have been three, except diplomacy came through at the last minute," Retro Retro inserted.
"And then you claim to have slept with every female member of the British royal family ever, which must have taken a lot of time…"
"You know it did, baby!" roared Retro Retro, raising his hand so I could high-five him. I refused.
"Even with zipping around from time period to time period, there's no way you could do all the things you've said you've done in a single lifetime," I said. "All time travel can do is change the starting and ending points of segments of time; the total amount of time that elapses in your life has to remain static. Right?"
"Oh, Andy," sighed Retro Retro. "I forget that you're kind of a newbie at this. You're still thinking about life as a timeline, with a starting point and an ending point, like a piece of string. You think that time travelers can loop that piece of string around, cut it up, move it around, but at the end it's all the same length. Is that what you're saying?"
"Well, yeah," I said doubtfully. Wasn't that it?
"Well, that's true for other people," said Retro Retro. "But we're not other people, Andy! We're time travelers, you and I! We don't play by the usual rules. Andy, let's talk about choice."
"Oh, man, no, please, no," I begged. If I had a nickel for every time Retro Retro or somebody else spouted drunken philosophy at me at _The_Stopped_Clock, I'd have a dollar and ninety-five cents. That's not a lot of money, but it's a whole bunch of bullshit philosophy.
"Shut up!" said Retro Retro. "I'm serious about this! Now listen up, junior!" He punched me in the shoulder, and I shut up.
"Okay, supposing you've got a choice," said Retro Retro. "Supposing you have to pick: the lady, or the tiger? Which one do you choose?"
"Well, classically, I don't get that choice at all," I argue. "The beautiful princess I love points to a door, and I have to decide if she's trying to get me to marry some lady instead of her, or get eaten by the tiger."
"Really?" Retro Retro sounds crestfallen. "I always thought they were both good options. Sounds like that's a crappy game no matter how it goes. Well, okay, let's say you have to choose between beer, or whiskey. Edgar, pour him one of each, will you? Which one do you pick?"
Edgar put the glasses in front of me. "Today, I guess I'd pick the beer," I said.
"Good," said Retro Retro, taking the whiskey and downing it. "But now, supposing I said you didn't have to choose between them. What if you could select both options?"
"Looks like you've taken care of that, haven't you?" I asked drily.
"No, I haven't," said Retro Retro. "I can have the whiskey AND the beer." He picked up the beer and downed that as well. "I can do it even if the two options are mutually exclusive. Suppose I have to choose between drinking a beer, and not drinking a beer?"
"Edgar, let's make this one purely theoretical," I said. Edgar shrugged and backed away from the taps.
"As a time traveler, I can have it both ways," said Retro Retro. "It's just a matter of splitting and recombining timestreams. Oldest trick in the book. At the point of decision, I spawn off two possibilities. In one, I drink a beer. In the other, I drink no beer. As long as I split them and recombine them in the right way, I can come out at the end having had both experiences. This is what time travelers do."
"I see," I said. "So you're saying you slept with a bunch of royal chicks by spliltting up timestreams and nailing them in parallel, is that it?"
"Yeah!" agreed Retro Retro. "Well, that, plus a bunch of threesomes."
I thought about that. "So right now," I said, "you could simultaneously be here, stealing my drinks, and somewhere else, stealing somebody else's drinks."
"Of course not," said Retro Retro. "That's not me, in that other timestream, stealing somebody else's drinks. I'm just here, with you, stealing your drinks. Because I care."
"Gee, thanks," I said.
"But later on when we recombine the timestreams," continued Retro Retro, "then all those pasts merge into a single waveform. Then both drink-stealings are in my past. Both were real and true. But they're not both me until the future."
"My head is starting to hurt," I said. "Let's go get your cake before I get too drunk to drive."
"You're never too drunk to drive," Retro Retro objected. "You might become too drunk to drive WELL."
I paid Edgar, and Retro Retro and I headed for the front door. "Just a minute," said the veteran time traveler. He closed his eyes for a minute, concentrated, and then smiled at me. "After you," he said.
We stepped out onto the sidewalk and I led Retro Retro to my Prius. He was very amused by the idea of a seatbelt, and he spent most of the ride poking around through my ashtray and glovebox and cupholders. He directed me to a Randall's, and we went to the bakery department. They had a large chocolate sheet cake. On it were the words HA HA TIME-ASSAYER-3400, YOU CAN'T DIGEST THIS.
"What the hell kind of party is this?" I asked.
"A cruel party," Retro Retro admitted.
The bakery closed up the cake in a flat white box and taped it up. Retro Retro made a big show of going through his pockets and coming up with gold doubloons, a packet of industrial diamonds and a folded-over piece of paper that Retro Retro swore was Julius Caesar's suicide note, but nothing that approximated local currency. I sighed and put the cake on my credit card.
I drove Retro Retro back to _The_Stopped_Clock_. On the way, Retro Retro peeled up the tape holding the cake box closed.
"See, Andy, choice is a wonderful thing," said Retro Retro. "When you have options, you have the freedom to go whichever way you want. When you're a time traveler, if you don't like how things go, you can just not recombine that fork in the road into your existence. That's the power of manipulating time. Wow, that cake looks delicious, doesn't it?" I glanced down at it.
"Actually, it looks like it would make me sick," I said, thinking of chocolate cake mingling with beer in my stomach.
"Hey, that's cool," said Retro Retro. "More for me." With the cake box open on his lap, he plunged both hands into the cake. He picked up two ragged nasty handfuls and mashed them into his mouth. "Mmmm," said Retro Retro, chewing on an oversize mouthful of cake. Brown frosting covered his hands and facial hair.
"Wow. Just wow," I said, shaking my head. "Seriously, Retro Retro, that's nasty."
"I'm sorry," said Retro Retro, once his mouth had largely cleared, "did you just say 'tasty'? 'cause you should have." He mashed his entire face down into the box. Disgusting smacking noises emerged.
"Let's just try to keep it off the upholstery," I said faintly.
I parked in front of _The_Stopped_Clock_. Retro Retro quickly swallowed whatever was in his mouth, closed up the box, and brushed crumbs off his teeshirt as we headed for the door. Retro Retro frowned.
"You know, we probably should have picked up plates and forks," he mused.
"Nah," I said. Retro Retro smiled, relieved.
"Yeah, you're right!" he said. "Let's have us a PAR-tay!"
We pushed through the door, and Retro Retro plopped the cake down on the table.
"Oh, DO be careful with that," chided Sir Attaccus, brushing off the box. "I want everything to be simply perfect for TIME-ASSAYER-3400's You're-Still-A-Robot party."
"Did you get plates?" asked Bobby Saturday.
"Andy forgot them," said Retro Retro. Bobby Saturday frowned at me, and I frowned at Retro Retro. Retro Retro just shrugged as Sir Attaccus opened the box. His face clouded over.
"Oh, NO," he said, glaring accusingly at Retro Retro. "Not AGAIN."
"What? what's the matter?" asked Retro Retro.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" demanded Sir Attaccus. "We do not use apostrophes on cakes! You CANNOT digest this! Oh, why do I leave these matters to sloppy amateurs?"
I peeked into the box. The cake was intact, as perfect as it had been back at the bakery. I turned on Retro Retro.
"You had your cake," I accused, "and ate it too."
"Time travel," Retro Retro reminded me, blowing imaginary smoke off his finger-pistols.
"There's chocolate all around your mouth," I told him. Retro Retro immediately bent over to wipe off his lips on his malfunctioning teeshirt.
TIME-ASSAYER-3400 came through the door. Everybody in the bar stood up and cheered. The automaton paused in the entryway, taking this in. The display on his chest lit up.
I….AM….STILL….A….ROBOT, it said. Can a robot's text be melancholy?
"Twice a day!" yelled Retro Retro.
"TWICE A DAY!" echoed the crowd.
