#Gray has Thoughts about What We Do in the Shadows (2016) tag

[whenfrasermetbeauchamp]

I heard the clicking of jet rosary beads as Mother Hildegarde straightened up, and the soft voice of one of the sisters in the doorway, summoning her to another in the day’s string of emergencies. She had almost reached the door when a thought struck her. She turned with a swish of heavy skirts, pointing at the foot of my bed with an authoritative finger.

“Bouton!” she said. “Au pied, reste!”

The dog, as unhesitating as his mistress, whirled smartly in mid-step and leaped to the foot of the bed. Once there, he took a moment to knead the bedclothes with his paws and turn three times widdershins, as though taking the curse off his resting place, before lying down at my feet, resting his nose on his paws with a deep sigh.

…

I woke, quite suddenly, to find that Bouton was gone, but I was not alone.

Raymond’s hairline was completely level, a flat line drawn across the wide brow as though with a rule. He wore his thick, graying hair swept back and hanging straight to the shoulder, so the massive forehead protruded like a block of stone, completely overshadowing the rest of his face. It hovered over me now, looking to my fevered eyes like the slab of a tombstone.

…

There was no stillness in my dreams, though, and I stumbled wearily through mazes of repeating figures, endless loopings and whorls. It was with a sense of profound relief that I saw at last the irregularities of a human face.

And an irregular face it was, to be sure, screwed up as it was in a ferocious frown, lips pursed in adjuration. It was only as I felt the pressure of the hand over my mouth that I realized I was no longer asleep.

The long, lipless mouth of the gargoyle hovered next to my ear.

“Be still, ma chère! If they find me here again, I’m done for!” The large, dark eyes darted from side to side, keeping watch for any movement of the drapes.

I nodded slowly, and he released my mouth, his fingers leaving a faint whiff of ammonium and sulfur behind. He had somewhere found—or stolen, I thought dimly—a ragged gray friar’s gown to cover the grimy velvet of his apothecary’s robe, and the depths of the hood concealed both the telltale silver hair and that monstrous forehead.

…

I watched with remote fascination as he placed his cupped hands on my breasts. They were broad and almost square, the fingers all of a length, with unusually long and supple thumbs that curved around my breasts with amazing delicacy.

…

The large thumbs were pressing gently but firmly into my flesh, and I could feel my swollen nipples rising against the hard palms, cold by comparison with my own heated skin.

“Jamie,” I said, and a shiver passed over me.

“Hush, madonna,” said Raymond. His voice was low, kind but somehow abstracted, as though he were paying no attention to me, in spite of what he was doing.

The shiver came back; it was as though the heat passed from me to him, but his hands did not warm. His fingers stayed cool, and I chilled and shook as the fever ebbed and flowed, draining from my bones.

The afternoon light was dim through the thick gauze of the drapes around my bed, and Raymond’s hands were dark on the white flesh of my breasts. The shadows between the thick, grimy fingers were not black, though. They were…blue, I thought.

I closed my eyes, looking at the particolored swirl of patterns that immediately appeared behind my lids. When I opened them again, it was as though something of the color remained behind, coating Raymond’s hands.

As the fever ebbed, leaving my mind clearer, I blinked, trying to raise my head for a better look. Raymond pressed slightly harder, urging me to lie back, and I let my head fall on the pillow, peering slantwise over my chest.

…

Always touching, never hurrying, he brought his hands back over the shallow curve of my collarbone and down the meridian of my body, splaying his palms across my ribs.

The oddest thing about all this was that I was not at all astonished. It seemed an infinitely natural thing, and my tortured body relaxed gratefully into the hard mold of his hands, melting and reforming like molded wax. Only the lines of my skeleton held firm.

An odd feeling of warmth now emanated from those broad, square, workman’s hands. They moved with painstaking slowness over my body, and I could feel the tiny deaths of the bacteria that inhabited my blood, small explosions as each scintilla of infection disappeared. I could feel each interior organ, complete and three-dimensional, and see it as well, as though it sat on a table before me. There the hollow-walled stomach, here the lobed solidness of my liver, and each convolution and twist of intestine, turned in and on and around itself, neatly packed in the shining web of its mesentery membrane. The warmth glowed and spread within each organ, illuminating it like a small sun within me, then died and moved on.

Raymond paused, hands pressed side by side on my swollen belly. I thought he frowned, but it was hard to tell. The cowled head turned, listening, but the usual noises of the hospital continued in the distance, with no warning heeltaps coming our way.

…

“Now,” he said softly. “Call him. Call the red man. Call him.”

The pressure of the fingers within and the palm without grew harder, and I pressed my legs against the the bed, fighting it. But there was no strength left in me to resist, and the inexorable pressure went on, cracking the crystal sphere, freeing the chaos within.

My mind filled with images, worse than the misery of the fever-dreams, because more real. Grief and loss and fear racked me, and the dusty scent of death and white chalk filled my nostrils. Casting about in the random patterns of my mind for help, I heard the voice still muttering, patiently but firmly, “Call him,” and I sought my anchor.

“Jamie! JAMIE!”

A bolt of heat shot through my belly, from one hand to the other, like an arrow through the center of the basin of my bones. The pressing grip relaxed, slid free, and the lightness of harmony filled me.

…

“I must go,” he said. He laid a hand upon my head. “Be well, madonna.”

Weak as I was, I rose up, grasping his arm. I slid my hand up the length of forge-tough muscle, seeking, but not finding. The smoothness of his skin was unblemished, clear to the crest of the shoulder. He stared down at me in astonishment.

“What are you doing, madonna?”

“Nothing.” I sank back, disappointed. I was too weak and too light-headed to be careful of my words.

“I wanted to see whether you had a vaccination scar.”

“Vaccination?” Skilled as I was at reading faces by now, I would have seen the slightest twitch of comprehension, no matter how swiftly it was concealed. But there was none.

“Why do you call me madonna still?” I asked. My hands rested on the slight concavity of my stomach, gently as though not to disturb the shattering emptiness. “I’ve lost my child.”

He looked mildly surprised.

“Ah. I did not call you madonna because you were with child, my lady.”

“Why, then?” I didn’t really expect him to answer, but he did. Tired and drained as we both were, it was as though we were suspended together in a place where neither time nor consequence existed; there was room for nothing but truth between us.

He sighed.

“Everyone has a color about them,” he said simply. “All around them, like a cloud. Yours is blue, madonna. Like the Virgin’s cloak. Like my own.”

The gauze curtain fluttered briefly and he was gone.

— Dragonfly In Amber

Photos: outlander-online.com, Season Two, Episode Seven, May 21, 2016

Book: Dragonfly In Amber, Diana Gabaldon, 1992

Tumblr: October 3, 2018, WhenFraserMetBeauchamp 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿❤️🇬🇧

WFMB’s Tags: #Outlander #Season Two Episode Seven #S2E7 #Faith #Dragonfly In Amber #Chapter Twenty-Five #Call him. Call the red man. Call him #I sought my anchor. Jamie! JAMIE! #Why do you call me madonna still? #Everyone has a color about them. Yours is blue, madonna #Claire Fraser #Jamie Fraser #Master Raymond #Bouton #99 #100318

#Outlander #Season Two Episode Seven #S2E7 #Faith #Dragonfly In Amber #Chapter Twenty-Five #Call him. Call the red man. Call him #I sought my anchor. Jamie! JAMIE! #Why do you call me madonna still? #Everyone has a color about them. Yours is blue madonna #Claire Fraser #Jamie Fraser #Master Raymond #Bouton #99 #100318

[waqasblog2]

Marty the grocery store robot is a glimpse into our hell-ish future

Attention shoppers: I've seen the future of grocery store technology, and let me tell you, we can do better.

I’m no Marty McFly. I simply reside in a small Connecticut town, which means that in addition to doing Extremely New England things like commuting to the city on the Metro North, bragging about beaches, and the fact that the state inspired the picturesque fictional town in Gilmore Girls, I occasionally spend some time on the weekends shopping for groceries at a local Stop & Shop.

Prior to 2019, the Stop & Shop shopping experience was similar to that offered by most any other large grocery store chain. But this year, Stop & Shop introduced giant, gray, aisle-patrolling robots at more than 200 stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.

Now, food shopping comes with unprecedented levels of anxiety and absurdity.

Sneaking a peek while Marty is safely docked.

Image: nicole gallucci / mashable

Each of the robots weighs a massive 140-pounds and costs a whopping $35,000. Oddly, all of the robots are named Marty, and atop their tall frames — which tower over my own 5 foot, 3 inch stature — rests a large pair of google eyes. You know, so as not to come off as complete faceless, emotionless, lifeless bots. If you’re confused as to what these rolling mechanical columns do, Martys also wear the following description on their bodies like a name tag:

This store is monitored by Marty for your safety. Marty is an autonomous robot that uses image capturing technology to report spills, debris, and other potential hazards to store employees to improve your shopping experience.

Essentially, once Marty identifies a hazard using its sensors, it stops in its tracks, changes its signature operating lights from blue to yellow, and repeatedly announces, "Caution, hazard detected," in English and Spanish. One of several catches to their existence, however, is that the robots don't actually clean anything.

Marty does a whole lot of nothing

Marty is advertised as an aisle-sweeping superhero, but it's simply a messenger that shouts about a problem until a more capable human comes and removes whatever the hazard may be. Upon learning this fact, some people, like myself and the woman heard in this video shared by Twitter user @jennlynnjordan, are rightfully confused.

Apparently my supermarket has just gotten a robot. Its name is Marty. It detects spills. Doesn’t clean them, just starts shouting if it sees one. pic.twitter.com/xnRuV8LBCU

— Jennifer Jordan (@jennlynnjordan) July 23, 2019

"Oh, I thought it washed the floor," the unimpressed mystery shopper can be heard saying. "Wow... I've got my husband to tell me there's a mess!” she continued, delivering a burn to both Marty and her semi-helpful hubby. As Jessica McKenzie reports for the New Food Economy , employees aren't the biggest fans of the machines either.  

“It’s really not doing much of anything besides getting in the way,” an employee told McKenzie. And in some cases, the machines even create more work.

A January press release states that the in-store robots are supposed to "enable associates to spend more time serving and interfacing with customers," but one of the robot’s major flaws that its sensors appear to treat each hazard with the same level of caution. A harmless bottle cap or errant piece of cilantro will elicit the same response as a spill of clear liquid that someone could genuinely slip and injure themselves on, which means that in certain cases an employee may have to take time that could be spent interacting with a customer to walk across the store and grab a puny little grape that escaped a bag. Seems counterproductive!

The other day, we heard the googly eyed and friendly stop& shop robot alerting (in two different languages) of a found hazard! We braved it out to find out what this hazard was: a bottle cap! #robotLifeProblems pic.twitter.com/h965nscTy7

A post shared by Robert Schaufelberger (@dekorobert) on Jul 24, 2019 at 12:50pm PDT

I've only seen Marty "go off" once in the produce section. When an employee came to the rescue she couldn't seem to find the hazard, so in attempt to quiet the robot she scanned the floor and began picking up any fragment in sight — a questionable crumb, a plastic bread tag, a shred of corn husk. To this day I have no idea what minuscule object Marty was trying to warn me about, but after causing quite the scene it eventually resumed floor duty. 

The feeling of shopping amidst a supermarket stalker

When Marty isn't getting all hot and bothered about an abandoned twist tie on the floor, you can find the robot beeping incessantly and lurking behind customers' backs.

Some shoppers — especially those with children — find the robots charming. Nancy Lesslie, who frequents a Stop & Shop in Quincy, Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe, "I talk to him [Marty] I take videos of him. I show them to my kids... he just makes me smile."

Others, however, find Marty's unfamiliar presence a bit unsettling.

Met Marty the robot in my local Stop & Shop last night. He followed me around the store. Still not sure how to feel about it. 🤔 #retail pic.twitter.com/a6C7GnNADn

@BenKissel @LPontheleft I finally met Marty today and he scared me as I turned the corner. He just roams around and makes ominous beeps constantly. Robots taking over at my local Stop and Shop in MA. pic.twitter.com/67xC3tbQYz

— Jennifer Jordan (@jennlynnjordan) July 23, 2019

Bucks County, PA on some next-level sci-fi shit pic.twitter.com/QAzdVsDZAl

— Krieger (@KriegerStyle) July 15, 2019

On one shopping trip while I was browsing a shelf filled with bags of quinoa, I realized that the possibility of Marty choosing my aisle to turn down filled me with genuine anxiety. As Marty's beeps grew louder and closer I literally held my breath and prepared to speed-walk away if necessary to avoid an encounter. After seeing Marty roll past my aisle I triumphantly thought, "That's right. Keep rolling."

Remember that one debate in October 2016 when Trump was shadowing Hillary Clinton like a magnetic ghost? That's how I feel whenever Marty is around. The googly eyes soften the machine's appearance for a few seconds, but once you break off the staring contest you're reminded that you're in the presence of a rolling piece of tech that uses laser sensing and cameras. 

Marty Mc... Why?

Ultimately, these robots feel more like a burden than a benefit. They're way too large, way too beep-y, way too pricey, and they seem to create additional tedious work for employees.

You're telling me Marty has to be this huge? We're the same humans that created the Roomba, and yeah, it sometimes runs over dog poop and makes a mess, but at least it's small and capable of cleaning. 

And is it really worth investing $35,000 in a mostly useless machine when Stop & Shop has reportedly cut back on staffing and made money problems clear to employees?

The robots did have one perk, though. They actually increased human interaction and led me to interact with employees and fellow shoppers more than usual. Nothing more unifying than a couple of humans chatting over shared robot confusion. As time passes and we further acquaint ourselves with Marty's presence, though, that conversation will die down.

Met this robot in Stop and Shop today Are the eyes to make it more relatable? Distract us from the robot takeover? Comic relief?? Ironically increased human interaction in the store because everyone is talking about it pic.twitter.com/eJ6oAWQCgK

— Alexa Sterling (@AquaticSterling) January 27, 2019

While Stop & Shop's tech innovations have made headlines recently, they aren't the only stores to test out robots. Westfield malls in California introduced Pepper, a cute 4-foot-tall humanoid robot, in 2016, and even Walmart plans to bring thousands of autonomous floor scrubbers to stores next year.

In June, Stop & Shop began bringing Marty to stores in New York, and by the end of the year, 500 of the robots will be in Stop & Shop stores and Giant food stores — another supermarket chain owned by the Netherlands-based parent company, Ahold Delhaize.

Perhaps if I wasn't so paranoid of technology and didn't live through billions of email addresses getting hacked, millions of Facebook users being impacted by security breaches, rumors that Amazon Echo devices are spying on us, and more I would be more accepting of Marty. But for now, I just want to shop for groceries in peace.

This content was originally published here.