Al's Wait & Eat
Al's is a curious establishment. His target customer base is Transferred Consciousnesses like Wave Convoy, and other Infomorphs with a highly developed awareness of human senses. While he does have a normal eat-in seating area (why turn away business?) what inspired him to open his diner was the accidental creation of his Culinary Scanner: a device that takes whatever foodstuff is put into it and creates a holoprogram that mimics it perfectly, down to its relationship with time and environment. This program can be paused (it always arrives fresh and hot, and leftovers keep forever) and adjusted to match the customer's temporal awareness, but it refuses to run from the same point in time more than once.
As befits his position as leader of his local Slow Food Convivium (read: Chapter), Al refuses to sell the same meal twice or make a stockpile of holo-dishes: every meal is made to order and near as possible from scratch. This means that service is always excruciatingly slow from an Infomorph's perspective, but also that the food is always fresh, delicious, and subtly different from the last time you had it.
Staff Quirks:
Dedicated Roleplayer: The only people to see Al in person on a regular basis are the other members of his Convivium. He otherwise lives in Cyberspace where his avatar is a One Binome. He spends so little time interacting with people offline that rumour has it he's an Infomorph himself. He isn't, but he's so thoroughly wired that a biomod will probably Transfer him into a Binome chassis.
Dumb Waiter: Al is the only intelligent member of the staff: all other staff (which look like One and Zero Binomes) are cleverly designed and highly complex, but have a rigid if-then-else decision tree. If business is slow and one of his regulars comes in, then Al might seize control of a waiter-bot to take care of them "personally".
Al's is a curious establishment. His target customer base is Transferred Consciousnesses like Wave Convoy, and other Infomorphs with a highly developed awareness of human senses. While he does have a normal eat-in seating area (why turn away business?) what inspired him to open his diner was the accidental creation of his Culinary Scanner: a device that takes whatever foodstuff is put into it and creates a holoprogram that mimics it perfectly, down to its relationship with time and environment. This program can be paused (it always arrives fresh and hot, and leftovers keep forever) and adjusted to match the customer's temporal awareness, but it refuses to run from the same point in time more than once.
As befits his position as leader of his local Slow Food Convivium (read: Chapter), Al refuses to sell the same meal twice or make a stockpile of holo-dishes: every meal is made to order and near as possible from scratch. This means that service is always excruciatingly slow from an Infomorph's perspective, but also that the food is always fresh, delicious, and subtly different from the last time you had it.
Staff Quirks:
Dedicated Roleplayer: The only people to see Al in person on a regular basis are the other members of his Convivium. He otherwise lives in Cyberspace where his avatar is a One Binome. He spends so little time interacting with people offline that rumour has it he's an Infomorph himself. He isn't, but he's so thoroughly wired that a biomod will probably Transfer him into a Binome chassis.
Dumb Waiter: Al is the only intelligent member of the staff: all other staff (which look like One and Zero Binomes) are cleverly designed and highly complex, but have a rigid if-then-else decision tree. If business is slow and one of his regulars comes in, then Al might seize control of a waiter-bot to take care of them "personally".
We've HAD them in Fenspace already, even if it's a throwaway ref in the Gazetteer's "Places to Eat" section.