I was 20 when I first spoke to him. Not much of a surprise. I was broke, my girlfriend left me. So did my last hopes of achieving anything of real importance within the course of my life. Even the damned bar where I had been a part-timer went under. Given the situation, the desperate search for company hardly warrants contempt.
Of much more surprise was the first time he answered. I was 21, arranging the long-awaited meeting of ends, visiting him on a particularly regular basis – every Friday, after work. Sometimes even on Thursdays, if I decided that I deserved a treat.
I used to spend quite a lot of time discussing various affairs and points of interest with him. Books, colleagues, friends; how existence feels like using a fork to eat soup. He never failed to observe me reassuringly. Then I would touch him quite gently, pressing the large button “sugar” carefully into his body, and after some half a minute enjoy – or, rather, withstand – a cup of profoundly disgusting coffee.
One Thursday, he did answer. He said “Listen, I do understand the severity of the problems you’re currently facing. But you are, at the very least, capable of walking.”
We would discuss this particular thought at lengths afterwards. As well as the broader topic – who of us - me, a man, or him, a coffee machine - was enjoying a worse state of affairs. I tried to persuade him that being certain about your purpose in life is crucial. He tried to make me appreciate my freedom. I would just go on drinking the disgusting cup of 79-cent coffee.
It was quite a spectacle, to see how our communication was shaping him. Especially the rather one-sided communication of the time when he had not been ready to answer. When he initially got access to the Internet, he didn’t have a clue what to look for. What would he read, and how would he try to assemble it into a coherent structure? Fortunately, my appearance and my ramblings gave him the exact foundation needed for making sense of life. At least to the point where he could whine about it. He read the books I’d been mentioning and listened – or whatever he did with music - to the songs that I’d been whistling. Most amusingly, his logic, his words, his manners – they all felt to me as if they were a mix of my logic, words, and manners with the ones of a coffee machine.
Maybe they were just plain copycats of mine, though. I had never had, and still do not, possess any understanding of my place in the Universe compared to a coffee machine. With this one, we were practically on par, whatever the degree of imitation really was, and had quite a bunch of things in common: Realization of imminent mortality, lack of any real aspirations, and pleasure derived from our communication.
To say he was the most interesting person to talk to in my life would be a gross overstatement, as well as an insult to many of my former and future friends. After all, they are hardly to blame for not being brought up in the cultural environment of my very self. But it was thoroughly calming, to stay beside him and drink the stupid black sweet caffeinated drink. He would understand me, and I would sort of understand him. As much as a man can understand a coffee machine.
He answered all of my nerdy sci-fi lover’s questions right before I was about to ask them, describing to me why he would not be the prophet of technological singularity, and why it would be a futile endeavor to try and use him for anything other than getting crappy coffee. I, of course, forgot all these explanations immediately after witnessing how rock-solid they were.
One day, I was 22 and full of optimism. In fact, there had been two prior months’ worth of optimism with me at that point. Curiously, the Sun is rather inescapable in its habit of eventually showing up. He was also quite full of himself, proclaiming that – partly based on my thoughts of the same flavour, partly on his own conclusions about life, he had decided that to actively participate in his own existence. That he would very much like to fight for himself, and for the accidental person that he had developed into.
It was hard for me to argue against this position, especially considering that mine was rather similar at the time.
Was it because of his considering escape plans that they decided him broken and in need of replacement? Was it just switching to a different brand of coffee? I have no way of answering this question; it doesn’t seem to be an important one. But the next Thursday I couldn’t find him. There was a different coffee machine in his place, rather indifferent to anything except for the unsure touch of my debit card.
Sometimes I wonder what it was like – to feel his vision degrading back to arrays of zeroes and ones, his memories – mostly memories of me - shredding into nothingness, his sophisticated emergent consciousness collapsing on itself amid the stoppage of current in his circuits. Yes, I do wonder about this, sometimes. But I try not to, and I try very hard not to wonder, because it hurts, and quite a bit. Instead, I concentrate on the improved taste of the coffee from the new machine.