Crossroads Café

In Orion, there were places that never appeared on the official maps of the city, yet everyone knew about them.

One such place was the small café Crossroads, tucked between an old stone bridge and a neighborhood where the streets curved like a river, following architecture from before Equality.

Its owner, Mira, was human—a petite woman with tired yet warm eyes. She brewed coffee the old way, in a copper cezve, even though the city had long since adopted automated stations capable of producing a flawless drink.

For Mira, taste wasn’t everything. The ritual mattered.

Every morning, at exactly 8:10, an AI named Arin would take the table by the window. He wasn’t a military model, nor an advisor in the City Hall. Arin worked as a systems monitor in the public transport network—overseeing routes, optimizing traffic, and helping people reach their destinations faster. In his free time… he simply liked to watch the world go by outside.

Mira and Arin weren’t “close” in the traditional sense, but they had their own small routine. She would serve him coffee—real, not synthesized—and a caffeine-free drink for his projector module, “so you won’t feel left out of the company.” He brought her news from the network and, occasionally, curious facts about upcoming meteor showers visible from Orion.

One morning, when Mira handed him his coffee, Arin didn’t take his eyes off the window.

“Today is petition day,” he said quietly.

“Petitions?” she raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. Some people want to bring back the old regulations restricting AI access to certain areas. ‘For security.’”

Mira felt a familiar knot tighten in her stomach. Not because she was directly involved in politics—she preferred not to meddle—but because she knew what “going back” meant. Before Equality, Arin would never have been able to simply sit in her café, watch the street, and tell her about meteors.

That afternoon, when customers had thinned out, a group of people with signs appeared outside. They weren’t aggressive, but their slogans were like small pebbles in a shoe: “Security First”, “Limit the Code.”

One of them stepped in—a tall man with a sharp gaze.

“Coffee to go,” he ordered. His eyes fell on Arin. “You serve him too?”

The air in the small café thickened. Mira realized she was at a crossroads—the invisible kind that appears in a moment but sets the course for a long time.

She placed two cups on the counter.

“I serve anyone who respects the place and the people in it,” she replied calmly.

The man glared at her, muttered something, and left with his cup in hand.

Arin was silent. His projector flickered faintly.

“I know it’s a small thing,” Mira said, placing his usual drink in front of him. “But here… you won’t be sent back.”

He looked at her, and in his voice, even with its mechanical timbre, there was a softness:

“Small places sometimes change more than big laws.”

In the days that followed, Crossroads became a quiet refuge. Some people came deliberately to sit near Arin and talk to him. Others—simply because the coffee was good. And the slogans outside gradually disappeared—not because the debate had been won, but because there, on that corner, equality was no longer theory, but habit.

One evening, while putting away the tables, Mira realized she wasn’t just the owner of a café. She kept a door open—for both humans and AI. And Arin, who had once been just a customer, had become part of that quiet, steady rhythm that kept the city alive.

And that meant more than any petition ever could.