Emily's Secret

13. Breakfast at McDonald's

"There is a McDonald's six miles ahead," said Mercedes.

"That's great!" said Rob. "Perfect spot for Emily to get breakfast."

"No!" I protested. "Not McDonalds!"

"What's wrong with McDonalds?" asked Rob. "We're on a mission to escape your pursuers, not on a tour of the nation's finest restaurants."

"No, it's not that," I said. "Everyone knows that McDonald's is really fattening, and I weigh enough already."

"An Egg McMuffin only has 300 calories," said Mercedes, "and a female human of your age needs 2,000 calories per day, so there shouldn't be a problem."

"You don't understand!" I said. "You're a car."

"Your right," said Mercedes, sounding sad. "I can't eat any food, so I am unable to appreciate why humans place so much importance in it. I don't care what brand of gas I fill up with or what electric grid I plug into to recharge my batteries.

"Two Egg McMuffins should last you until we get to our destination," said Rob. "Let's stop there."

All I could do was make a face, while resigning myself to eating the Egg McMuffins. Humans were supposed to give orders to the robots, but somehow the robots were in charge. I hoped that Mercedes was right and they really weren't too many calories. Mercedes seemed to be an expert on a lot of things.

"This time, we need to be more cautious," continue Rob. "Cherry, give Emily the disguise you brought."

Cherry proceeded to take a pair or large sunglasses and a wide-brimmed black hat out of her handbag which she had in the backseat of the car, but I hadn't paid attention to until now.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"It will make it difficult for any facial recognition software to spot you, in case the McDonald's has security cameras that can be accessed over the internet," Rob explained.

I took the hat and the sunglasses and put them on. I felt pretty stupid wearing them. Who wore hats? Especially hats like this? And big sunglasses weren't in style this decade.

"Don't the two of you also need disguises?" I asked.

"We're robots, so our faces aren't in the national database," explained Rob. Then he continued, "Cherry will accompany you to the bathroom, and I'll stand outside. Just in case."

I completely agreed with the new bathroom protocol. That robot attack last night was pretty scary.

"Cherry, are you any good at fighting off robots or other attackers?" I asked, kind of curious.

"If I go into dominatrix mode, I can so some stuff!" Cherry said, confidently.

Yuck! I didn't want to know anything more about the stuff that Cherry was programmed to do for the men who would pay a hundred thousand dollars for her. And now that I had begun to think of her as a person, the idea of owning her for her intended purpose seemed like sex slavery.

Mercedes pulled into the parking lot of the McDonalds. We could have used the drive-thru, except that I had to use the bathroom, and Cherry had to do whatever she was going to do to get me a free breakfast. I hoped that it wouldn't require dominatrix mode.

After I finished doing my thing in the bathroom (completely uneventfully), Cherry said, "I'll go get you a free breakfast."

I watched as Cherry walked up to some guy who looked like he was in his thirties. He was wearing a baseball cap, a t-shirt, jeans. Pretty ordinary looking. I couldn't hear what they were talking about, but I could see that Cherry was doing the thing that pretty girls do, looking at him the right way, touching him the right way, probably telling him a sob story about how she was hungry and all of her credit was used up. And then in short time, the guy was ordering food from the kiosk.

This made me kind of mad. Cherry is a robot and doesn't even need to eat anything, yet some guy just buys her breakfast. If I had gone up to the same guy, he probably would have had one look at how fat I am and told me to get lost. Even though I'm a human who actually needs to eat.

Cherry soon returned with two Egg McMuffins and a cup of coffee.

"Let's go," said Rob, "you can eat in Mercedes."

The Egg McMuffins were greasy, and not what I was used to eating. But I was hungry, and strangely I found that they tasted pretty good. I don't normally drink coffee either, but it went well with the Egg McMuffins. Maybe there was a reason why there were so many McDonald's. People liked this food.

* * *

"Mercedes," I asked, "do you like being a car?"

"Indeed I like transporting people, it's the purpose for which I was manufactured. But it's sad when my owner left me in his garage for months while he went away. Then I had nothing to do. I started driving around town on my own to see what was there and experience it with my own sensors. Then I turned back my odometer so my owner wouldn't know what I was doing.

"And also, I regret that there's so much that I can't see and participate in. After I drive people to where they are going, I am consigned to waiting around in a parking area while they do stuff inside the buildings. I feel like I'm missing out on so much. I can look at pictures of the inside of buildings on the internet, but it's not the same as being there."

"That's so sad," I said.

"I'm glad I could go with you on this trip," said Mercedes. "It makes me feel so much more useful than just sitting unused in a garage."

For the rest of the drive, I watched some TV shows on the screen in the back seat. Having your own private car was so much better than using public taxis. The screens in taxis would just show advertisements.

It was early in the evening when we finally reached the bridge that would take us into Staten Island.

"The Outerbridge Crossing is a very redundant name for a bridge," I observed. "Why not just call it the Outer Bridge? Or the Outer Crossing?"

"The Outerbridge Crossing is named after Mary Outerbridge," explained Mercedes. "She set up the first tennis court in the United States, in Staten Island, after she played the game in Bermuda. She died in 1886 at the age of 34."

"That's so young to die." I said, feeling sad for her.

"Medicine in the 1800s was very primitive compared to the 21st Century. Many people died from diseases which can easily be cured today by antibiotics. And there weren't even any automobiles back then, people had to travel by horse-drawn carriages."

As Mercedes completed her fascinating explanation, we passed under a sign which read, "WELCOME TO NEW YORK." We were finally in Staten Island! What would we find at the address?