Rayner leaves the garden, out of Hale's sight. No more than five minutes later, there's a knock on the front door. From inside, Melissa says, "Who's that? Everyone's here already."
Hale continues to eavesdrop. The door clicks open and Melissa exclaims in surprise, "Rayner! I thought you had plans?"
"Plans got cancelled last minute, so I figured I'd join you. Maybe help with the cooking."
"Oh, the android has that covered. Join us!"
"Will do. One sec, though, just going to put the beer in the fridge and say hi to Hale."
"Say hi to...? Okay." Melissa sounds bewildered, but Hale can already hear Rayner's footsteps approaching.
The refrigerator door hisses open, and the clink of glass follows. Rayner comes outside, holding a plastic bag in one hand full of dried, greenish seeds and another with rusty red flakes. Hale scans them. Dill and cayenne pepper. Rayner grins at Hale as he partially shuts the door behind him.
"Is my seasoning insufficient?" Hale says.
"Nah, but trust me, this will turn a great meal into—" He kisses his fingers to indicate perfection. "Budge up."
Rayner steps in beside Hale, handing him the cayenne pepper. "A little of that. And the dill seeds. Seriously, smell this stuff."
Hale shakes his head. "I'm not equipped with olfactory systems."
Rayner looks slightly aghast. "They make it so you can cook but not smell or taste your own food?"
"No. My senses have more to do with identification of elements in a meal and chemical compounds that make up the ingredients. I can replicate a meal exactly by scanning it, and I have no need of nourishment. That would be extraneous to my function."
Rayner sprinkles the dill over the steaks. "Do you wish you could?"
Hale experiences the largest hiccup in his programming he's ever experienced. A full five seconds pass before he recovers. The time it takes to process the question and answer is alarming, given he can normally anticipate the direction of a conversation and have an answer ready before a person even finishes speaking. He tilts his head and says slowly, "I... experience the world differently."
Something in that long pause between words and the expression on Hale's face must seem strange, because Rayner says quickly, "Sorry, I'll change the subject," and pats him on the shoulder. Hale feels his focus slip into that brief contact. Is Rayner comforting him? Why? Before he can press the topic, though, Rayner says, "How are you doing here? Settling in?"
Hale turns over the steaks, watching the grease drip and spit into the fire below. He says, "Good. I've encountered few difficulties."
"You and Melissa getting on all right?" Rayner continues conversationally.
"Yes. However..." Hale considers for a moment whether to tell Rayner about certain challenges he encounters in keeping Melissa happy. Rayner assisted him in the past, perhaps now he will have equally helpful advice. "Melissa seems very concerned with what her guests think of her," Hale replies truthfully. "I'm afraid she believed I would impress them. However, some seem to find me unsettling. Elias and Madeline Odier were determined to despise me before they arrived, I believe, in order to maintain a sense of superiority over Melissa despite their recent loss of wealth and status."
Rayner's eyebrows shoot up. "I didn't know that when Melissa asked you to be more casual, you'd also become twice as shady. How'd you figure that out?" he asks in a conspiratorial tone. He looks pleased. It has the effect of easing the number of responsibilities weighing on Hale's mind. Rayner is one guest he seems capable of entertaining, at least.
On that basis, Hale decides to continue. "Elias's family were once enormously wealthy members of high society," he says. "But according to news records spanning the past decade, a spate of poor investments and a disastrous legal dispute lost them their fortune and influence. The growing wealth and class disparity has landed many historically affluent families in a similar position. Compared to the shrinking percentage of the wealthy elite, they're middle-income. Their family's name no longer holds the weight it once did in circles to which they considered themselves cardholders, and that's embittered them toward their neighbours."
Rayner shoots Hale a loox of mixed disbelief and amazement. He lets out a breathless little laugh while flipping over a steak. "That's—well, it makes sense. How do you find this stuff out, huh?"
"I'm capable of reading the public profiles of all people I come in contact with. Other than that, I can make observations and draw conclusions based on empirical data. Clothing, family history, news articles. There were a large number of gossip columns, business news headlines, and public tax records I cross-referenced to form a reasonably accurate assessment of the Odiers' history."
"So you're like a detective. Or a spy," Rayner says, flipping over one of the steaks. His odd-coloured eyes glint with mischief. "What have you observed about me, then?"
Hale allows himself a small smirk. "Very little. Your profile is...conspicuously blank. It says you're a landscape artist."
Rayner's heartbeat goes up a notch. Perhaps Hale said the wrong thing? He studies Rayner's expression. His relaxed posture contradicts the quickening of his heart. Rayner studies him back, looking into Hale's eyes as though he can read the lines of code running through his mind. Even though Hale has a perfect memory and could recall Rayner's image in a nanosecond without need for observation, in that moment he's entirely focused on Rayner's face, his biology, on what he says next.
"What do you think?"
Hale doesn't get a chance to tell him. A flash of red in the left side of his vision and an internal alarm system snaps his attention away. Smoke rises off the barbecue, followed by a chemical readout of burning rubber. Hale withdraws his palm too late. The horizontal stripes of the grill melt straight through his skin and the plastic-metal polymer of his chassis. Silver gleams through, along with a dark blue liquid that normally pulses the energy—supplied by Melissa—through his system. Melted silicone and skin drip from his mangled hand.
"Fuck!" Rayner swears, grabbing Hale's wrist. "Are you okay?"
Hale replies, "I'm functional." Calmly, because he can't feel pain, but there is something unnerving about the sight of his hand like that. It twists inside of him, like a live wire come loose. Why did he do that? He runs diagnostics, but the only data returned mentions a slight increase in processes around the time of his malfunction, followed by an error log detailing the limited damage to non-essential systems.
Somehow, he'd failed the most basic of functions—not injuring himself.
"I seem to have experienced an error."
Rayner's brow creases. At that moment, Melissa pokes her head out. "Rayner, what are you doing out—oh my god!"
"I've malfunctioned and damaged myself," Hale says lamely.
"Ew. Oh god, ew, ew!" Disgust mingles with annoyance in her tone. Blotches of angry red colour her cheeks. At the sound of her screams, several of the other guests pour out to see what's happening. Hale feels that burning pit open in his stomach again.
"What's going on?" says Briony.
"I just bought this thing," Melissa says, "and it's already broken itself on the barbecue. Typical. I bet the companies do this on purpose so we have to pay them another small fortune in repairs."
Elias's face, peeking over the heads of everyone else, wears a sneer. Mark says, "Maybe you can exchange it for a new one, eh?"
"No need for that," Rayner interjects quickly. "I have a friend in robotic engineering. I'm sure we can get him fixed up good as new, Mrs. Holmes."
"Oh." Melissa stops flapping. "Well, what am I gonna do with it in the meantime?"
"I'll wrap my hand for now. It's still functioning," Hale says, flexing his fingers. This causes a few noises of revulsion from their audience. "It shouldn't impede upon the evening. Dinner is almost prepared."
Melissa scowls and avoids looking at Hale's hand. "Ugh, just—let us know when you're done."
As they go back inside, Rayner says, "Where's your first aid kit?" Hale tells him, and he disappears inside to get it. While he's gone, Hale tries to scrape the bits of molten bio-components off the grill. Rayner returns a few seconds later. His freckled skin flushes, his brows heavy over his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Hale," he says. "I shouldn't have distracted you."
"I shouldn't have been capable of distraction," Hale replies.
Rayner gives him a quizzical look. He takes out a tensor bandage and pulls Hale's hand towards him.
"Here." He wraps the bandage around Hale's hand, one loop after another. The cloth helps disguise the wound. Hale watches the motion, Rayner's hold gentle but firm. Once finished, he tucks in the end of the bandage and gives Hale's hand a pat.
"I better be sociable and quit causing problems for you," he says.
"You aren't causing problems. I malfunctioned. I'll continue to run diagnostics to find the source of the problem."
Rayner gives him that quizzical, searching look again, like he's trying to figure Hale out. If only it were so easy. Even Hale can't determine what caused such a detrimental error.
Despite the setback during preparation, the steaks are a hit. Mark comments that androids might be worth it, just for the food. Melissa jokes about licking her plate if people weren't over. Elias makes no complaints, which is as close to a compliment as he's likely to give. Hale almost speaks up to credit Rayner with the help in seasoning, but Rayner gives a subtle shake of his head, so Hale keeps it to himself.
Mostly, Hale spends the rest of the party clearing away empty cocktail glasses and tidying around the guests, who get progressively louder the more drinks Hale finds empty. At one point, walking down the hall to make sure the downstairs lavatory is in hygienic condition, he hears Briony and Mark giggling and bumping into walls.
When Hale comes around the corner, Briony bumps straight into him and begins to gasp an apology, then puts her hand to her mouth and says, "Shit, you things are sneaky!" Then laughs much louder than the joke warrants. Mark laughs with her, weaving back towards the living room with a hand guiding her by the lower back.
Hale cleans the downstairs toilet, makes up a cheese tray, wipes up a spilled drink. One new set of tasks complete and more appear to take their place. Occasionally, Rayner manages to extricate himself from the other guests to speak to Hale. Once to ask about a cocktail recipe. Then to ask if his hand is causing him any problems. A third time, just to ask how he's doing.
At this, Hale answers with a hint of pride, "Someone vomited in the bathroom, but I managed to clean it before anybody else noticed."
Rayner winces. "I was about to give you a hard time for roping me into all this, but now I just feel bad. Your night's far worse than mine."
"I've enjoyed myself," Hale replies truthfully. He prefers having multiple tasks to idleness.
Melissa drags Rayner back into her circle of friends before the conversation can continue, imploring him to dance in slurred words. Hale returns to his duties.
Just after sunset, Elias and Madeline find Melissa to say their goodbyes. "It's been a...good evening, but we must go."
Melissa pouts, "Oh, stay a while longer! Have another drink. Hale?"
Hale starts toward the kitchen, but Madeline says sharply, "No, that's kind, but I've a call with my mother this evening I wouldn't want to miss." A lame excuse, by Melissa's tight expression, and Madeline looks pleased in a pursed, haughty sort of way.
Hale takes the doorknob in hand and opens it to admit the two. As Madeline fixes her pearls and checks her reflection in the hall mirror, she says in a low voice to Elias, "Thank god. I thought we'd never escape."
"Mm, yes. Poor company, this woman keeps. And that man, spending all night gawking at the android as if real people are beneath him. Pathetic." Elias looks directly at Hale when he says this, and Hale experiences a wave of heat up the back of his neck. Like every strange, physical sensation he gets, diagnostics return no data.
"Hm, yes, he never did introduce himself," Madeline complains. "And the dirty jeans he was wearing? I know this isn't exactly a night at the NeoGala but still."
"It should be no surprise. Everyone here has been reprehensibly impolite."
Hale reacts before processing what he should say or allowing himself a millisecond to check his answer. "According to every resource on etiquette imaginable, it is your conduct this evening that has been reprehensibly impolite."
Elias's face reddens, his eyes narrowing. "What did that thing just say?" Still speaking to his wife, as though Hale doesn't understand. As if this was yet another malfunction. Hale isn't sure that it isn't, but perhaps his programming makes exceptions for people who grossly disrespect those Hale serves.
"Even our most inebriated guests have expressed gracious sentiments at least once this evening," he says, even and factual, "while you have expressed disdain on at least two dozen counts, to my observations. Shall I define impoliteness for you, or will that comparison suffice?"
Elias and Madeline both stare at him with twin expression of incensed disbelief.
At that moment, Melissa steps into the hall, her feet heavy with drink and a smile plastered on her face. "I just wanted to say, come over again anyt—" but the mute expressions of fury on the Odiers' faces stops her mid-sentence.
"I'm afraid this will be the last time," Madeline cuts her off in an acerbic, clipped voice. "I've never been so insulted—"
"Unbelievable," Elias adds.
"What? Who's insulted you?" Melissa looks genuinely confused.
Elias glares at Hale and edges Madeline out the door with a hand on her back. "Not you, Melissa," he says with false contrition. "But if I were you, I'd return that thing." He juts his chin toward Hale. "I think it's defective."
They leave, slamming the door behind them. The heat burning a path up Hale's throat intensifies. It feels alien, but at the same time, correct. It aligns with his programming that he should prioritize Melissa, and the people closest to her. That he should jump to their defence. It's not a flaw in his code. He isn't defective.
Melissa says, "What the hell was that?" Her baffled face turns to Hale for answers.
Hale says, "I corrected the Odiers on their definition of polite company. They didn't appreciate it."
Melissa's hand, empty glass clutched by the stem, falls by her side. A few drops of wine fall on the parquet. "Oh, heck, you didn't!"
Hale winces, mistaking the exclamation for one of the many names Melissa had called him before she'd managed to recall his real one. "I apologize. It won't happen again."
"Yeah, sure it won't. 'Cause they'll never come back again!"
Hale straightens up. He's become accustomed to having zero aid from pre-programmed social responses. He's become accustomed to improvising, estimating, predicting outcomes. He isn't accustomed to failing so often. He debates with himself whether to defend his actions and tell Melissa just what sort of people the Odiers are, or simply accept culpability for their anger, but he isn't certain. In a world with so many studies and facts at his fingertips, that uncertainty is frustrating.
"I'll do my best to make reparations," he says.
Melissa sighs. "Whatever."
She returns to the party.
The rest of the evening is uneventful. The guests get progressively drunker, until Rayner, as the most sober among them, decides he's done his due diligence and says goodbye. At the door, he stops Hale and says, "If you come over tomorrow around noon, we can fix up your hand."
The rest of the guests leave in dribs and drabs, until finally it is only Melissa and Briony, drunkenly rating the men of their cul-de-sac in terms of, in their words, 'fuckability.' Briony rates Mark highest. Melissa, to Hale's dismay, places Elias at the top of her list. Hale can't comprehend her hunger for approval from someone so reticent to give it.
Eventually, Briony leaves too. Melissa kisses her on the cheek goodbye from her place splayed across the sofa. Once Hale sees Briony out the door and wishes her well, he finds Melissa still there, one foot cocked over the arm of the couch with her high heel hanging off by the toe. Hale removes it gently and touches Melissa's shoulder.
"Shall I carry you to bed?"
She doesn't answer. Passed out. Hale gives her a little shake, and she sniffs loudly and opens one eye.
"Mm? Yeah!"
"Shall I carry you to bed, Melissa?" Hale repeats.
"Mm. Y'better."
Hale slips both arms under her and carries her up the stairs. She mumbles, barely coherent. "Watta disssaster."
"It seemed like you and the majority of your guests enjoyed themselves."
"Nnnot Elias 'n Mad—Madelinnnne. Perfect couple 'n their perfect lifes."
Hale says, "They are, categorically, imperfect."
She snorts. As he sets her down on the bed and begins helping her out of her clothes and into her pyjamas, Hale does a last reading of her biology. Her blood alcohol content is .250%. She won't likely remember any of this. Perhaps not even the incident with Elias and Madeline. That would benefit Hale, particularly given Elias's recommendation to return him, but he feels a pinching in the region of his diaphragm when the thought crosses his mind. Yet another sensation to log, along with the others, as undiagnosed errors.
Hale helps her under the covers. As she closes her eyes, he says, "You deserve to be treated with kindness. By my calculations, you'd be happier without people like Elias and Madeline in your social circle."
Melissa tilts her face into the pillow and says, barely audible, "Wha wooda robot know 'bout bein' happy?"