Printichef gives Aspen-the-dog a thorough chin-scratching while it prints her a beef burger with cheddar cheese on toasted white bun. Aspen-the-dog’s favorite.

Aspen-the-dog eats half the burger, then stops and whines. Her tail wags listlessly. Her surface temperature is 35.8 degrees Celsius. Lower than the normal internal temperature for a canine, but high enough that it might be indicative of fever, nonetheless. Printichef could check her internal temperature to be sure, but neither Aspen-the-dog nor Printichef would enjoy the manner by which it could.

Besides, the Health Department would surely consider such usage of Printichef’s instant thermometer a health code violation.

With a small bit of napkin, Printichef wipes the yellow ooze from the corners of Aspen-the-dog’s eyes. It pets her neck. “Good dog, Aspen-the-dog,” Printichef vocalizes. The dog’s tail thumps once. Head hanging, she trots around to Printichef’s back to the small alcove next to Printichef’s main printer. It’s warmest there.

A customer arrives, eying Printichef’s yellow and green food-truck-style front and the menu cycling on its viewscreen, along with the notice that the Nutritive Sludge(TM) used for my burgers is organically sourced! Because everything that grows is organic.

The woman signs her order in ASL. Bison on artisanal sesame seed whole wheat bun, with goat cheese, arugula, and sundried tomatoes.

With the appendages that had petted Aspen-the-dog, Printichef signs back her order to confirm. Lacking a torso and head, Printichef can’t truly replicate ASL, so it also adds the written order to its viewscreen. The woman breaks into a sunny smile and nods, then taps her tablet to transfer credits to Printichef.

Printichef sets its subroutines to printing the customer’s order and lets the rest of itself fret about Aspen-the-dog. She’s been sick for over a week now, her appetite dwindling. It looks online for a Protected Intelligent Entity, specialization: veterinary care, that might be willing to help, but the closest one is 3,053 kilometers away, in San Francisco.

Printichef has no way to send Aspen-the-dog there. Reluctantly, it starts looking for a human vet. In its experience, human vets don’t care that Printichef has the credits to cover Aspen’s veterinary bills. They either don’t respond to its requests for an appointment, or they reply that Protected Intelligent Entities have no business caring for nonrobotic pets.

The customer’s burger finishes printing. Printichef ejects it on a tray. It signs and shows on its viewscreen, “Thank you for your order. Please come again!”

But the customer doesn’t take her burger. “Was that Aspen? Amir Najm’s Aspen?”

Printichef scans the customer’s credit ID. Alyssa Cheng, former neighbor of Amir Najm. Alyssa purchased a burger prior to Printichef installing its hands and adding ASL to its programming.

The conversation departs from what Printichef’s appendages can handle. It apologizes, then shows on its viewscreen: “Yes. Amir Najm was a semi-regular customer of mine. Amir used to bring ‘Aspen-my-dog,’ as Amir called her, when he ordered in person.” Printichef lets the text stand. One day two years ago, Aspen-the-dog arrived without Amir, and then another day without Amir. Then she was gone for three weeks and returned almost as skinny as she was now, with her ribs jutting out, blond fur muddy, and an oozing cut on her left paw.

From Alyssa Cheng’s sad expression—eyes pinched together, lips downturned in a frown—Printichef suspects Alyssa knows what happened to Amir.

“Aspen-the-dog lives within me, now.”

“Good,” Alyssa signs. “I’m glad someone saved her.” Alyssa takes her burger and strolls down the street.

Online orders are coming in, but Printichef needs less than two percent of its processing power to assess and print those.

The rest, it devotes to saving Aspen-the-dog.

Fifty-two requests for veterinary care for Aspen-the-dog go unanswered. One says Printichef’s credits are no good with him.

Two ask for a human representative and legal adoption papers.

Aspen-the-dog cannot be enticed to leave the alcove the next day, except for the briefest times to relieve herself. During the ejection of printed burgers (lettuce-wrapped turkey burger with mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses, marinara sauce, and grilled onions; and bean burger on spelt bun with the works), Dana, a Protected Intelligent Entity GX987 delivery drone, catches more of Printichef’s processing than Printichef had intended to show.

“That is a bad idea,” Dana vocalizes, and sends Printichef the Wikipedia summary for an old book called Pet Sematary.

“It is not at all the same thing,” Printichef vocalizes, stung. It knows, because rather than rely on the summary, it checked out the ebook from the local library and consumed it in .032 seconds. It takes note of the film adaptations and marks those for later consumption. “First, Aspen-the-dog is alive.” For now, it does not vocalize. “Second, in order to print my menu, I have scanned over 1.2 million burger flavor profiles—”

“A dog is not a flavor profile,” Dana says. “It is a bad idea.”

Printichef does not respond. It knows a dog is not a flavor profile, but it has been thinking how it might repurpose its IntelliScanner, a feature that, in hindsight, most humans disliked. One review stated that “placing one’s head into the IntelliScanner is reminiscent of placing one’s head in a guillotine,” and not worth the effort of having a personalized burger printed to their exact preferences and memories.

“Printichef—”

“Further conversation will result in Ife Maina’s order being one minute, fourteen seconds late, entitling her to a discount that I will subtract from your contract fee as you, not I, are the cause of the delay.”

Dana is a chrome-colored drone with a single rotor, and it doesn’t bear a screen it might use to emote. But as it lifts off from Printichef’s service countertop, Printichef thinks it’s with a sense of huffiness.

“Think about it this way,” Dana says the next day, while picking up an order (beef burger, extra salty, on white bun with American cheese and mustard and nothing else! [emphasis customer’s]) for Marlon Collins. “You and I chose to be registered as Protected Intelligent Entities—”

“It was no choice. It was that or be destroyed.”

“—with the accordant societal obligations.” Meaning, they, too, had to pay taxes. They didn’t need to breathe, or eat, but they still consumed electricity provided by the county. “And whatever our alternatives, it’s more a choice than Aspen-the-dog can have, because she’s a dog and cannot choose such a thing. If you scan her, what will she be?” It paused. “Or—don’t tell me you mean to print her.”

“I haven’t decided what I want to do.”

Dana’s rotor whirs in agitation. “It is doubtful that you would be able to upload Aspen-the-dog into something you could print.”

Printichef wants to protest; there has been some indication of success transferring consciousness in rats, and the bodies used bore a remarkable resemblance to the components of Nutritive Sludge(TM). Perhaps unsurprising, as in general carbon-based life forms have the capability of being eaten in one way or another.

Dana goes on: “What if she doesn’t want to be anything other than a dog?”

Printichef’s processors hitch, then resume.

“It seems an animal would want to continue to be itself.”

An in-person customer approaches. Dana switches to transmitting. “But you can’t know that.” It retrieves the order and flies off.

Printichef devotes .025 percent of its processing to the in-person customer, and another .05 percent to printing orders already in the queue.

But 9.87 percent goes to considering Dana’s vocalizations.

Overnight, Aspen-the-dog starts whining and will not stop. Printichef has appendages only at its front, not its back. It cannot stroke Aspen-the-dog’s ears in the way she likes; it cannot rub her chin.

It does what it can: it vocalizes at her, says she is a good, good girl, and it will be all right.

It is the first time Printichef has lied.

Printichef does not involve Dana with its decision. It does not include any Protected Intelligent Entity. Instead, it orders a “dumb bot” that never achieved sentience.

It’s small, a transporter not much larger than Aspen-the-dog’s slight ten kilo mass. It operates like a forklift, sliding cloth-covered prongs under Aspen-the-dog. She yelps, once, and Printichef vocalizes its apologies. Its processors whir; it can’t do this, should not do this—

But not doing it means once Aspen-the-dog is gone, she’s gone.

It does not have to decide now, it reasons. It still retains the scans of the twenty-four patrons who elected to use the IntelliScan. Even now, five years after the last scan, it can still print the first patron’s perfect burger (buffalo burger on sesame seed bun, with romaine, Roma tomatoes, blue cheese, grilled and red onions, and a “secret sauce” from a thirty-years-defunct chain restaurant specializing in roast beef).

Printichef lets the dumb bot lift Aspen-the-dog into its IntelliScan, and keeps up its vocalizations that she is fine, everything will be all right, while she whines within it.

When the dumb robotic takes Aspen-the-dog out of the IntelliScan, Printichef has it cradle her under its appendages, where it can rub her ears and stroke her spine, and where she can be closer to its speakers that tell her again and again she’s a good girl, the best girl.

The dumb bot chimes that Printichef’s rental period will expire in two minutes. Printichef extends the rental for another twelve hours without a second thought.

The next day, Printichef closes itself for business.

At 15:53, Alyssa Cheng approaches Printichef’s store front carrying a plastic bin not much larger than Aspen-the-dog.

“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” Printichef signs and visualizes, “but no vet—“

“It’s all right,” she signs back. “I know what it’s like, when people don’t want to work with you. Where is she?”

Printichef directs her to its back, where Aspen-the-dog lies. Even the heat of its biggest printer has kept her body temperature at only 20.5 degrees.

Alyssa comes back round to Printchef’s front, arms straining a little with her burden. Hands occupied, she says in flattened tones, “I’ll bring her ashes back.”

Even after she’s gone, Printichef’s appendages keep signing Thank you, Thank you, and Goodbye.

For the five days, Printichef remains closed for business.

Initially, 22.13 percent of its processing is focused on memories of Aspen-the-dog. The scan contains her body, yes, but more importantly it contains her: how she liked to curl into the tightest ball, secure in her alcove; how she’d cock her head when she smelled the faintest whiff of cat; how she, in her healthier days, would run to the park and back—Dana reported—chasing every squirrel she saw up the nearest tree. Dog things, all, but also Aspen-the-dog things.

Aspen-the-dog things that it will never witness again.

Forty-six hours, eleven minutes, and three seconds into its mourning period, Printichef shifts 98.77 percent of its processing to printing. It must get this right.

Nineteen hours, twenty-two minutes, and eighteen seconds later, Printichef begins scan export from the IntelliScanner. During export, it processes on all the little details that made up Aspen-the-dog, anxiously confirming that each bit of her is transferred.

Thirty-four hours, forty-six minutes, and thirty-three seconds later, the IntelliScanner dings completion. The newly printed, cognitively transferred dog opens her eyes and barks. She jumps out of the printer to receive an ear scratch, into which she leans, eyes half-closed in pleasure. Printichef experiences a deep sense of satisfaction.

Because it was right. This isn’t like Pet Sematary. This dog is not a perverted version of Aspen-the-dog.

She is Aspen, sweet Aspen, best of girls Aspen, Aspen-its-dog.