Chapter Text
Secret Lore of the Cyber Life
December 10th, 2037
Part 1 of a multi-part series, by Vivienne King.
~~~~~
I find myself on the outskirts of Detroit, in one of Elijah Kamski's private residences.
"Well," he smiles at me with what seems to me like curious satisfaction. "It took you long enough to try asking."
~~~~~
Six days ago, my boss gave me a rather strongly worded suggestion. Something along the lines of "Dammit, Vivienne, you have paid leave days. You're supposed to use them." You see, I keep forgetting they exist, and they've been building up. A bit like the dead leaves piling up outside my office window.
So, suddenly I found myself with a lot of free time and nothing to do with it. But just about anyone who works at CyberLife has heard of Tʜᴇ Cᴏғғᴇᴇ Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ. Yes, that's how you say it.
I started to wonder about it. About what made it so special and yet so normal, all at the same time. What made it one of those many odd things that constitute daily life in America's biggest tech company.
Now, I am usually a systems engineer, not an investigative journalist, but three days into my self-imposed exile from the office, I ran out of things to distract me from the curiosity burning in the back of my mind. So I did the American thing.
I went on a road trip.
It's about six hours on the interstate from my usual haunt - the Milwaukee plant, on the other side of Lake Michigan - to the CyberLife Tower in the middle of Detroit.
I could have taken the train. I could have taken a plane. I had the frequent flyer miles for it. One would have been easier. One would have been faster. But it wouldn't have been the same. This was an adventure.
It took me a lot more than six hours.
(Don't tell anyone, but I blew a tire somewhere east of Chicago and went off the road into a wheat field.)
I do manage to get to the Tower eventually - eventually being around midday the day after, having made far too many phone calls and resolved to just fly next time - swipe into the staff entrance, and start chatting up folks on break.
Some of them are bit bemused that my idea of a vacation from working for CyberLife is visiting another CyberLife workplace, but they cheerfully pack me up to Level 13 with a tour guide.
There, four days into my 'adventure', I see Tʜᴇ Cᴏғғᴇᴇ Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ for the first time.
It lives in a small two by three foot patch of office breakroom space, nestled between a supply closet and a wastebin. It looks like a mainframe from the eighties. I hear it beep boop from around the corner, and I walk in to the sight of two engineers leaning over a binder and arguing over whether the beeping means "out of creamer" or "the idiot from marketing put in coffee pods again".
It may be legendary, but it is still a coffee machine.
~~~~~
It is the creamer - Laura speaks beep boop better than Jake does, apparently - and the supply closet is out of creamer and several other things put down on sticky notes. So when the two of them go on an fetch quest to the local Walmart, I take the opportunity to tag along and ask questions.
The legend, like CyberLife itself, starts with the company's founder. "Kamski used Tʜᴇ Cᴏғғᴇᴇ Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ all the way up 'till he left," Laura cheerfully tells me as we work through the office's shopping list. "It's probably as old as he is. You remember, all the way back when CyberLife was still a small tech startup a stone's away from UMich?"
I do in fact remember, one of the things I'd learned before I started working for them.
"Well, apparently, Tʜᴇ Cᴏғғᴇᴇ Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ - the machine and the myth both, mind you - was around even back then." Laura stops the cart and takes a deep breath. "I heard it from Annie in Marketing, who heard it from Veronica in Legal, who heard it from somebody or other, who heard it from her old boss who apparently was all buddy-buddy with the big K all the way back then."
"So, you know," she deadpans, "it must be absolutely true."
But as I discover later, it is in fact true; it has a long history going all the way back to the summer of '19, to a small Ann Arbor warehouse that once housed CyberLife in its startup days.
~~~~~
That probably explains why the classic Kamski Special is an iced coffee. Light and refreshing are not words I would usually associate with coffee, but it definitely applies to the chilled brew I'm sipping in a cafe opposite the Walmart, our haul in the back of the company van. Even the hot version that CyberLife engineer Jake Wang prefers is pretty refreshing.
"We call it a Hot Kamski around here," Jake says over his chai latte - because for all its amazing abilities, Tʜᴇ Cᴏғғᴇᴇ Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ refuses to make any drink that doesn't contain coffee - "or a Flaming Hot Kamski if you want spices and Bailey's in it as well."
It's not hard for me to put two and two together and get jalapeño.
"People put hot pepper into coffee?" I ask, bewildered.
"Well, yeah." He shrugs. "Some people like the kick."
~~~~~
The Kamski Special has found its way outside of CyberLife Tower, too; recently it's started appearing in bars and cafes around Detroit. But Jake reckons that nobody has got it quite right just yet.
"It's not the way it tastes," he explains to me as we restock the machine and its attendant supply closet. "It's what it does for you. The imitations usually drop in a cocktail of off-the-shelf stimulants and nootropics as well, but none of them can get the mix right."
"I can't get it right myself," he admits ruefully as he picks up his paper cup, personalised with elegant pink flowers tracing their way around his fingers and a small list of active ingredients on the back that he points out to me. "Every cup has a different mix, and somehow it always comes out just about right for what I'm doing at the time."
I observe that he didn't actually order anything from it for his cup to appear in one of Tʜᴇ Cᴏғғᴇᴇ Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ's many small alcoves, and he grins at me in reply. "I'm a regular, you're not. Go on, try ordering something."
I stare at what could probably pass for the lovechild of an old IBM mainframe and an espresso machine, and I feel a little silly when I open my mouth and ask for "One Kamski Special, please," but Tʜᴇ Cᴏғғᴇᴇ Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ gives me a reassuring boop and starts whirring away.
A minute later, one of the alcoves opens with a ding to reveal a paper cup with a lid and a super-thick straw stuck through the top of it. Don't get me wrong, I love super-thick straws, but I definitely didn't order one. I stare between it and Jake's normal-sized straw. I'm pretty sure he's laughing at me inside.
It does taste about the same as the one from the cafe, though, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi that takes me far too long to place. I sip away at it and chat, but by the time I realise it's empty, he's nowhere in sight - and I'm halfway through the absolute mess of a binder that passes for its manual.
Well played, Jake.
~~~~~
Article continued in Part 2.
Vivienne King is a systems engineer moonlighting as a tech journalist. She enjoys cosplay and heavy metal, neither of which actually require her to take time off work.