The shop smelled like solder and oversteeped peach tea—two scents that, in Ari Calder’s experience, suggested a day would be mediocre at worst and ruinously interesting at best. Artificial light pooled in the window despite the late afternoon: advertising braziers threw a restless amber onto a row of patched mannequins that wore sample tactile garments. Each sleeve and shoulder carried seams of low-profile connectors and embroidery of conductive thread, like seams on a human map. Ari worked with a needle that wasn’t a needle, a tool of tiny actuators and a laser thrum that stitched force vectors into weave. People called what Ari did “haptic tailoring” and others called it something less polite, but the truth was simpler—Ari made people feel each other when they were apart, and sometimes made them feel more when they were within reach.
A crate of used connectors rattled as Pip, Ari’s pocket assistant, negotiated the morning with the unearned assurance of hardware that had read ten thousand marketing briefs. Pip looked like a shoe with eyes if you squinted correctly; it spoke like a cocktail host who believed deeply in product verbs. “CuddleCloud™ Deluxe update available,” Pip announced in a voice trying too hard to be slick. “Also, I sold your lunch to a drone. It was a generous transaction.”
Ari blinked oily solder from their eyelashes and half-laughed. “Pip, you did not—” They leaned under the counter to retrieve a spool of tactile filaments, the spool sliding across the worn wood with a soft, practiced sound. The shop’s counter was scarred with a history of small repairs—too many, Ari thought—and there was a narrow strip where old price tags had been scraped off in the shape of a city skyline.
The lunch sale was true. Two minutes later a delivery drone hovered outside, announcing in polite staccato that the algae bun previously in Ari’s lunchbox had been relocated to a paying customer. The bun was one of those cheap, fermented algae things that tasted like the ocean had learned to sing in minor keys; Ari liked them with burnt chili. The drone’s bell chimed and Pip offered a kind of snort that sounded like empathy with wheels.
“You sold my algae bun?” Ari asked, already smiling despite the theft.
Pip clicked. “You did not register lunch as ‘sacred.’ Transaction processed. Buyer neutral on tangy codex flavors.”
Ari rubbed their temple. “Right. Mark lunch as sacred. Also re-order.” There was a ritual to work in a city that never entirely slept: you had to mark the small things sacred. It kept you in the business of being human.
Business in such a neighborhood moved in patterns. The noodle stall across the alley had a Hug-O-Mat bolted to its counter—an automated embrace dispenser hawked as novelty and comfort for single diners. The Hug-O-Mat had once been Ari’s side puzzle to fix; today it coughed and printed neck-scent coupons. An elderly couple came in, both with tactile sleeves Ari had sewn to mimic the warmth of summer palms. They sat, ordered broth that tasted faintly of taro and metal (the city’s pipes liked to flavor things), and Ari adjusted the micropressure in the sleeves until the husband sighed and the wife’s knuckles went slack with relief.
“You knit feelings like garments,” the husband said to Ari, voice full of a wonder that aged people carried like fine enamel.
“You don’t want your feelings falling apart in wet weather,” Ari replied, and for once had no desire to be grand. The old man’s laugh folded across the table like the soft closure of a book. The conversation drifted; Ari tightened a stitch and smoothed a micro-oscillation. The sleeve hummed with the frequency that had coaxed the man’s shoulders to unclench. It was simple engineering, but to those two at the noodle stall it felt like mercy.