It was the kind of crap, summer day where the humidity crawls on you like slugs. A layer of pollution fog over old city cement and high rises kept it oven hot. Xuan Ji's noodle cart had three of four wheels so that it sat at an angle. The ground was covered in dry noodle oils and broken bowls of the uninitiated. The neon tubes that spelled out "Xuan Ji's" were shattered years ago. People knew to call the automaton inside Xuan Ji. It was the cast-mold of a diner server, blue striped, collared shirt, creepy white smile, and cowlick hair. Time had bleached most the color from its stripes. Its left arm was a bright red lobster claw. Nobody knew who resupplied the cart or why they never fixed the wheel. The streets adopted Xuan Ji because it made the best noodles in the city. The cart was cared for enough so the garbage collectors wouldn't drag it to the dump. After a heavy storm that caused floods in the city, Xuan Ji lost its human arm. The city revolted in the aftermath of the flood. Protestors covered government buildings in black paint and copies of their denied insurance claims. All hell broke loose when invoice statements were leaked showing the agency responsible for sewage maintenance had held "diplomatic welcome lunches" with line items that included misto quentes that cost as much as a car payment. Whoever retrofitted Xuan Ji grabbed a leg from a military tank. One of those crab walkers that got sent in to fix up the devastation and ensure the riots stayed contained. The type that could scale the sides of buildings and lob tear gas canisters into crowds. The thoughtful deviant who gave Xuan Ji the arm even updated the firmware so it could still cook. Condensation balanced on the tubes and widgets of the cart. The automaton faced away from the street, body angled down as if to hide from the sun that bleached its paint. It was in sleep mode.

Danival dragged his feet. Fists deep in his shirt pocket. In the RecursoTec locker room his readout was acting slow. It was buggy anyway. He brushed it off and added it to his mental fix-it list after the payout. He started the hike towards Xuan Ji’s noodles to replenish his brainstuff with octopus. His newscaster had once said that a cephalopod’s body was its brain. He found that having a soup after processing always helped to cure the headache. He wanted to take the bus because every muscle in his body hurt from being resuscitated so many times during the procedure. He didn’t because RecursoTec advised to move after an appointment. Almost as soon as he left the building, his readout chimed with an update. He pulled the widget, expecting the bright blue of success. It was red. Even Yelde hadn’t received a red report. The system said he had barely contributed to the processing network. He received barely zero Brazilian reals. Danival was beyond broke.

As he approached Xuan Ji’s noodle cart, one of his experts advised him to gather more data and make an informed decision before telling Xiao Lin. To lead Xiao Lin towards the conclusion that they wouldn’t have enough money would cause unneeded stress and friction. Danival felt an anxious noose tighten around his throat. It was the exact opposite advice he was given when he first asked. That time, another expert told him that the most reasonable solution was to tell Xiao Lin now. The two of them would evaluate the situation and collaborate. Danival knew Xiao Lin would jump to robbing someone and he’d have to talk him down from that.

Danival tried to understand why this was happening to him. He had never ever won a lottery, but now some glitch targeted him. He did nothing wrong.

He curled into one of the four stools attached to the cart. Xuan Ji spun to life awkwardly. Its limbs trailed. Someone had decorated Ji in an orange dragon mask for Chinese New Year. It rested angled. The light from Xuan Ji’s eye diodes cast an ominous blue glow from the mask’s maw. It was offset by the bot’s upbeat disposition.

“Danival,” Xuan Ji wouldn’t pronounce Danival’s name correctly, but it did recognize him. “Nice to see you again. Ha. Ha.” The sound didn’t come from Xuan Ji’s face, but the distorted speakers embedded in the stand itself. “What will it be? The usual? Ha. Ha.” Xuan Ji’s unnerving laugh didn’t impact Danival. His head was pounding. Every time he pressed one area of his skull or neck, the pain moved like noodles slipping off a spoon.

“Yeah, one ceph and a blue feed.” Danival knew that Xuan Ji would not actually make his “usual” if he didn’t specify the order.

Xuan Ji’s eye color changed, creating green dragon breath inside the mask. Danival didn’t flinch as a compartment sprang open. It almost swiped off his nose. You could hear liquid slap the lid. When it opened Danival peeked and saw the collection of gray octopus floating there. The lobster arm passed over the container until something inside it flashed green. The claw opened, dunked into the tank, withdrew an octopus, and smashed it into a large bucket of boiling broth.

A knob in front of Danival pulsed blue. He pinched it delicately and pulled out a long tube. It filled with blue liquid as he screwed it into a matching connector of the panel embedded in his arm.

When the meat had become tender, Xuan Ji’s claw withdrew the octopus and slapped it onto a cutting board. It opened to reveal a series of knives and tongs. This was Danival’s favorite part. The metal flashed, and all you could hear was the snip snip of perfect cuts. For a moment, his headache dissolved.

He could have sat there for the rest of the day listening. He’d usually zone out. Allow his attention to meander the not-so-crowded but always damp street of the alley. His gaze would climb the rusted and chipped apartment balconies that canopied the street. But Danival ripped himself from the meditation. “Ji, I’ve got a problem.”

“Nothing a hot bowl of noodles won’t fix. Ha. Ha.”

Danival gnawed on his chopstick in agreement. “I need to tell…” Danival caught himself before saying Xiao Lin’s name. His friend had been to the stand plenty of times. Xuan Ji knew him. Danival couldn’t give the details of the scheme. He didn’t want to implicate Xuan Ji. “I owe a friend some money. I was going to have it. The money. But something happened and I don’t have it. My friend and I are trying to start a– a business together. But now I don’t think it’ll get off the ground. He’s been working really hard on it and I don’t want to see him fail.”

The way the dragon mask rested on Xuan Ji’s head made it look like it was thinking. Its body was absolute still. Only the blades inside the claw moved, tossing discs of tentacle on perfect arcs into a bowl of noodle and vegetables.

Danival asked, “What would you do?”

“I would make noodles. Ha. Ha.”

“No, about my friend. His– Our business. What would you say to him?”

“Is this a friend you trust?” Xuan Ji’s head and torso angled down as the claw snapped shut.

“He’s my best friend.”

Xuan Ji wobbled across a series of levers and knobs in the cart. A tube jerked its way over the bowl. There was a large THUNK in the machine. A slow, aqueous brown drip became a dark tan, steaming fluid. Xuan Ji spun to face Danival. The light diodes switched from green to blue. Steam crawled along the sides of its neck, up the dragon’s cheek fins. “If your friend is truly as important as you believe, then you can trust yourself. A true friend will support you when things are tough as true love springs forth from those who can reciprocate the needs of the downtrodden.” Xuan Ji slid the bowl across the counter with its human arm. Danival caught it without spilling a drop. “Here you are, sir. Ha. Ha” the disembodied voice said. Danival tried to grasp the words. He had a sense that the slew of haiku nonsense the robot spewed had a deep meaning. The answer was in there somewhere but, it crumbled like tofu through his fists. Xuan Ji drew in the air with his claw arm the Mandarin symbol for love.

Ai. Danival remembered his sister scrawling it on the family readout scroll in retribution for being forced to learn Mandarin. She knew their parents could read, so it would be good punishment. It took weeks, but their parents relented and agreed to get a dog. Isabella An named her Ai the moment she emerged from the incubation tank. They had no idea her bones were dissolving. The puppy’s death was a shock, that after years, still made Danival’s heart feel like cement and his intestines curl–

Danival smacked himself in the face with both palms. He had never had a dog. His sister was forced to take Chinese classes, but she wrote words like “chicken,” “dinner,” and “vacation.” The small dog was so real to Danival. He remembered the individual strands of fur bouncing back to attention as his tiny hands pulled along Ai’s spine from tail to neck. He pinched the arch of his nose and threw the smell of the dog out of his mind.

His sternum was sore. He thought of telling Xiao Lin the truth that he did not have the money they needed. He would blame the glitch and cut off this anxious noose he’d tightened around his throat. Fractalling conversations played out in the string of a single noodle being slurped up. Xiao Lin’s reactions he knew them all. It made the chest pain calcify. His headache stretched down his neck and constricted his shoulders. Danival realized he let the thought of this going wrong actually made it go wrong. He tried to think of the word “manifesting” but couldn’t. That made him even more nervous.

He took in a clump of noodles as Xuan Ji did its post-cooking philosophy routine. The dragon head bounced as its body spasmed in mock gesticulation. Chinese New Year was soon, and Danival would spend it hiding. He’d cover his head in a thick hoodie and constantly be looking over his shoulder for some tattooed bodybuilder who walked too close. Would they break into his apartment at night, find him sleeping in his underwear, covered more in sweat than the thin blanket of his futon? They would gag him silently and pull him into an unmarked, manual vehicle. They’d strike him until he stopped resisting, then plug him with analysis devices. His organs, his bones, his circulation would score shockingly low. He’d make more revenue for them as a trafficked body than a collection of organ packs. His family would call after months of not hearing from him. His friends would note how he sometimes would slip away, like when he stopped going with them to the gym. Maybe he finally did move out of the city and start working on his degree again. Reluctantly, his sister would contact Xiao Lin, but he’d be imprisoned, too, in some deep blackmail. He would have a speech prepared: Danival and him had gotten in an argument. Rough. Almost bloody. That Danival had sworn him off, the city, the country. Yes, Xiao Lin would lie, drugs were involved. That would be the end of it.

His sister.

It took his dumb brain that long to consider Isabella An. She had a way for navigating unrelenting bureaucratic customer service systems. She once helped improve his credit score, but he ruined it again when he dropped out of university. She helped him modify the status from “drop out” to “paused credits.” She was great at this kind of stuff. Danival pulled up her contact but froze. He’d have to navigate carefully and not let her know he had gone back to RecursoTec. She had the skill to get this resolved and would do him the favor, but not if he had broken the boundaries of her moral playing field. She wouldn’t support a desperate situation he allowed himself to fall into when she had been a phone call away. She would certainly not help him buy drugs disguised as medical devices to sell during Chinese New Year.