The staff wheeled the Metatron up to the main lodge on a dolly and set it down. It emitted a warning tone, suggested that everyone stand clear, and then stood up. It moved in generally humanoid fashion. But because it was, for the time being, just running an automated program, it was infinitely patient, pausing frequently to scan its surroundings and consider its next move. The first thirty seconds of its emergence were fascinating to people who’d never seen one of these things before, but after that most people began to lose interest as it became clear that this was going to be about as interesting as, say, staring through the window of a front-loading laundry machine while it washed a load of bedsheets. Its general program was to find its way around the resort, moving slowly enough that it couldn’t possibly hurt anyone while scanning its surroundings through visible and infrared cameras. Its pace was so deliberate that people instinctively veered around it as if it were a statue. But if you sat in one place and glanced up at it occasionally while reading a book or sipping a pint, you’d see it in a different place each time you looked. In the dark it turned on running lights so people wouldn’t bang into it. Thanks to these preparations, El didn’t have to joystick the Metatron around every corner, he just had to tell it “Follow that guy” or “Stay with this group” or “Go to the conference center” and it would do so.

So neither El nor his Metatron ever heard the safety briefing, but maybe it didn’t matter since the robot could be replaced if it blundered into the water. This was only one of a family of related questions that the conference’s organizers had to ponder under the general heading of whether to count Elmo Shepherd as an attendee. The Metatron took up the same space in the hall as a human being. But it didn’t count against fire code limits. It didn’t need to eat, and it didn’t require a bed, or even a room; every evening, when the after-dinner speech concluded and most of the attendees went to bed, the Metatron turned its back on them, walked to a dark corner, found an electrical outlet on the wall, pulled an extension cord out of its belly, bent over, and plugged itself in to recharge. Then it just stood there until proceedings resumed in the morning.