Fiction
2 min
Psylicon Cafe
Tony Martello
Tony Martello
"Hello, we would like a table for two."
"Hmm, did you reserve a spot on OpenTable?
"Um, no what is that?"
"Oh, my God, where have you been? It's only
The most popular dining reservation app out there today!"
"I'm sorry. We are from out of town, can you make an exception?"
"Oh, I guess."
"Today, we are having special, tectonic pancakes with info bytes on top."
"Wow sounds dense dude...I don't know about that. Do you have any
normal pancakes with fruit and yogurt?"
"I am not sure what you mean by normal, but we also have gigabyte sandwiches, oh, and yogurt with silicon wafer chips, sprinkled with hard-drive dust. Will that do?"
"I don't know... uh, honey what would you like? Does anything look tantalizing to you?"
"Yeah, I am curious about the hash tags with eggs? What's in that?"
"There's another favorite. We scramble Bitcoin eggs with pieces of social media sausage and potato tags. I recommend this dish cuz it really satisfies your add-a-friendly cravings."
"Ok, I'll take that," Lola responds reservedly.
Guy thinks about his choice. ‘Where the hell are we, he wonders?'
"Fine, I'll take the Gigabyte sandwich."
The waiter leaves the table and Guy asks Lola,
"I enjoyed our hike this morning through the redwoods. It smells so fresh like new rain and Sequoia needles. What do you think of this place?"
Lola's eyes pinch inward. She slightly swipes her cheek. "I know, I was just picking strawberries under the redwood canopy and now I'm in techno-geek land, crazy..."
"I know," Guy reciprocates. "This whole valley used to be covered with apricot orchards. My dad told me he used to ride his bike through the orchards, chasing girls and playing baseball in the fields."
"Cool, my parents told me about the orange grottos where I am from in Goleta." My dad worked in a family run grocery store near the El Camino. He would gather up the oranges and bring them in and stock them daily."
Guy smiled. "How refreshing!"
The waiter brings the food out. Guy and Lola dive in and chow down. Halfway through their meal, Guy shares his thoughts,
"People around here seem wound-up pretty tight."
Lola nods,
"Yeah, they just want to accomplish a lot and succeed!" She shares confidently.
"I guess so, but at what cost?" Guy asks but obliges.
Lola reaffirms her point,
"There's nothing wrong with wanting more out of life."
Guy laughs,
"It's healthy to strive, but I prefer the natural way, it seems that people here are trying a little too hard..."
Lola's cheeks blush a bit and she shares,
"Well, maybe they just need to get out and take a nature hike more often like we just did."
"For sure!" Guy responds.
The waiter brings out a check-out-device for their bill with a touch screen and asks,
"Thank you for dining with us today at Psylicon Café', will you please complete a survey and pay here on our kiosk..."
Guy asks Lola,
"What do you think honey? How should we rate our brunch?"
Lola sarcastically responds,
I only ate it cuz I was so hungry from our hike."
"I know, me too." Guy agrees.
Guy fills out the survey with comments and the couple leaves the café' to continue their trip.
When the waiter comes back to the table to pick up the kiosk, the screen is frozen on the comments section and reads:
"Call tech support! Your hard drive crashed, the Bitcoin eggs got descrambled, the hash tags caught a potato virus, and there was a glitch in my Gigabyte sandwich..."
What would you like to read?
Select a story