He had to admit that there was some great stuff out there that was derived from real Adar technology. Forget brushing your teeth, all you had to do was pop a Nanobrush™ capsule, crunch it in your teeth and not only did your teeth turn lily-white but you didn’t have to worry about halitosis for twelve hours. Then there was the entire electronic tech revolution…

“Wait, got a call,” Sal said, holding up his hand to the back of his head. “Yeah, Joe, Sal… That’s great, man…”

Implants, though… Jeeze. Back when they were the “killer app,” Doc had thought BlackBerry was a pain in the ass. The only way you could tell the difference between a raving street-guy and a raving corporate attorney was the quality of clothing and that one had a flashing blue thing in his ear. But since implants had hit the market, people really did hear voices. Now you couldn’t tell the difference at all.

Of course, he was wearing a VeriNthal ear piece, which gave him pretty much the same look as an implant wearer. But you could at least see the damned earring.

He hit the menu again and was amazed to see an Adar exit the door to the restaurant’s kitchens, bearing a massive platter.

That was the other thing about Adar cooking. The Adar approached their two daily meals with religious reverence. The most undertrained neuter home-cook had more passion for cuisine than a cordon bleu chef. Each meal had to be both satisfying and a work of art. They were worse than the Japanese about it.

So while Bill would have been perfectly satisfied with a platter of glangi noodles, what he got instead was a half a dozen dishes. Condiments, sides, little crunchy things, none of it was particularly identifiable. He’d been to dinners at the White House that were less elaborate.

“Methmar,” Weaver said, nodding to the trans-neut waiter. The transfer-neuters were only semi-sentient and did most of the mundane tasks of the Adar. Far smaller than the males, much less the females, the trans-neut was about six feet tall with mottled brown skin and three eyes set over a wide, flat face that was mostly a mouth with wide, grinding molars.