Sinatra at the Sands - 2026

By George H. Rothacker

Sinatra was at his finest at the Copa Room in 1966. Can the entertainer be even better, enhanced by new technology sixty years later?

Twin brothers from Lakehurst, New Jersey, join forces to bring Frank Sinatra back to life in 2026, reprising and updating a concert series staged in Las Vegas in 1966 by the legendary entertainer.

After earning their masters degrees in computer science from Oxford University, Lorenzo and Aldo Fiore set off on different career paths only to find their way back into a collaboration that pushes technology to the edges of possibility, as they each reach their own personal objectives though the process.

Sinatra at the Sands –2026 is full of twists and turns, successes and setbacks, each shedding light on what it means to be human, as well as the limitations of our species to predict outcomes for ourselves and for future generations.

Although the novel is speculative and the climactic events perhaps not totally possible at this time, the technology within its pages exists for readers of today, provoking questions about the  limits of our science just a few short years away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781977273307

George H. Rothacker

George Rothacker grew up in Upper Darby, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, in the 1950s and ‘60s, and graduated from Upper Darby High School and then Temple Technical Institute in North Philadelphia. He has owned and operated a successful design and marketing firm since 1978, and built a parallel career as an illustrator and painter for more than 50 years. Sinatra at the Sands -2026 is his ninth book of fiction. It is based on current technology and an appreciation of the impact Frank Sinatra and his music have made worldwide over several decades and the influence Sinatra continues to have on the music industry long after his passing in 1998. George and his wife, Barbara, have four children and eight grandchildren, and live in Radnor, Delaware County.

Book preview

Foreword

Las Vegas,1966 (2026)

Sinatra tightens and adjusts his necktie while posing at the mirror above his dressing table at the Sands. It’s late January 1966, and Francis Albert Sinatra turned fifty a few weeks ago. Although fuller in the face and body than in his youth, the singer appears fit and trim in his tux. His trademark blue eyes still sparkle with the magic that in the 1940s made female fans swoon and throw themselves at him.

He slept well the previous evening and the shallow shadows beneath his eyes were erased by the skills of a pretty twenty-something cosmetologist provided for Frank by Jack Entrator, the manager of the Sands Hotel and Casino. The dressing room is filled with flowers from the management as well as from the many fans who have joined him year after year at the Sands, a venue in which he has only recently been permitted to purchase a share. Frank pulls a pair of cheater glasses from the inside pocket of his tux jacket and looks over the song sheet provided by his young arranger and conductor, Quincy Jones. It includes old chestnuts he’s recorded throughout his career: songs by the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, along with Frank’s signature song, My Kind of Town, written for him by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. He notices that Jones has added a few duets, including one with Ella Fitzgerald, who happens to be in town for the opening, and a few guest artists he’s never heard of, along with a couple of tunes he’s never previously recorded or even performed.

Frank’s confident that he can start anywhere on the song sheet and nail the performances despite his lack of familiarity with the material or the people with whom he’ll sing. Even though he was never trained to read music, he’s got a sixth sense for it and has been playing bars, clubs, radio and TV for more than 30 years. Besides that, he’s backed up by Basie on piano and the Count’s full orchestra, with arrangements created by Jones, who’s also been hired to conduct.

Though he has no recollection of rehearsing with the band or the guest stars he’ll soon meet, he has a fairly accurate idea of how each song will sound. He’s also got the patter and the jokes to soften the audience, and will use any ignorance of the songs to his advantage. If he goofs up a line, it will only improve the performance. He’ll pull out his glasses from his jacket pocket, pick up the score and complain. You shmucks! D’you expect a guy my age to read type this small? Where’s Sammy? His one eye’s better than both of mine.

This will be a crowd that loves him. Many have been following him since they were teenagers and have grown older along with him, rebelling against the unromantic squawking of hard rock, and searching for memories of lost youth in the days when Sinatra was the latest craze.

The audience may be surprised by a few songs they’ve never heard done by Sinatra, as they will by the choice of artists selected for him to engage a new generation of listeners. Some may be curious as to why they’ve been invited to spend an evening listening to a man who’s been dead for more than thirty years, inside a venue torn down in 1996.

Sinatra knows what he’s up against, but he’s survived Elvis and the Beatles and successfully collaborated with Antonio Carlos Jobim on songs that introduced the Bossa Nova beat to the U. S., so he’s prepared for the challenge.

Frank doesn’t drink or smoke before or during performances, but often sips on stage from what appears to be a glass of Jack Daniel’s with three cubes of ice and a splash of water. In reality it’s tea with lemon, and he often holds a Camel or a Chesterfield, trailing a stream of smoke between his thumb and index finger. He knows his voice is his treasure and he’s as kind to it as he can be, considering the lifetime of abuse he’s put it through.

Frank’s mellowed, but is often moody, and after the shows he drinks whiskey and martinis heavily. He’s prone to fits of anger, and has tried to commit suicide several times, once almost shooting himself while fighting with his then wife, Ava Gardner. He’s been single for more than eight years, and the new woman in his life is Mia Farrow, a teenage TV star thirty years his junior and the daughter of Tarzan’s Jane, the actress Maureen O’Sullivan. Frank needs the rush of love and the companionship of women to remain at the top of a game he feels, inside, that he’s always just about to lose.

A call comes in over the intercom from the stage manager, Ten minutes until you’re on, Mr. Sinatra.

Frank takes a sip of tea, secures his hairpiece, and poses for the mirror with a confident smile that reminds him of the charm he can successfully apply to an audience of whatever age.

He turns off the lights in the dressing room and walks down the long corridor to the stage thinking of how fortunate he is to have made it this far along without having become a failure.

The house is packed with people of all ages, income levels, education, and nationalities. He notes that except for those walking to their seats, they are wearing Apple Vision Pro glasses. Sinatra can see what the audience can not, as Basie’s orchestra starts to play several bars of Come Fly with Me.

The man known as the Sultan of Swoon, the Chairman of the Board, and Ol’ Blue Eyes walks casually onto the stage carrying the drink he brought from his dressing room. When he reaches center stage, he bows to thunderous applause and nods to Basie and Jones, who provide a long intro as he settles onto a stool. He lights a cigarette and places the Zippo lighter and the pack of Camels next to his drink on the small upright table at his right, and waits for Jones to give him his cue...

Chapter One

Meet the Fiores

The Fiore twins, Lorenzo and Aldo, began toying with video games when they got their first Wii at the age of six in 2006 and a few years later began playing Mario Kart Wii, a kart racing game when it was first released by Nintendo in 2008.

The brothers immediately got hooked on the game and eventually mastered the complete Mario series. Since the main characters were Italian, the twins’ father, Luigi, and their mother, Caterina, thought that the game was harmless and permitted the boys as much time as they wanted to compete with each other in their free time, after completing their homework and ending their day of work at Fiore’s Family Restaurant.

Their parents were second-generation Italian Americans: their father, Luigi, was born in Oceanside, New York, and their mother was raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Luigi’s father, Salvatore, worked as a pizza chef and a handyman while his wife, Lydia, raised four children, cooked, cleaned, and made repairs inside and outside their home. She also produced and sold precooked meals to families whose parents both worked at jobs and had little time for meal preparation.

Caterina’s mother, Francesca, was widowed and had three daughters. She’d settled in Cherry Hill with her husband, Carlo, who had secured a job as a porter at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia after arriving in America in 1976, and eight years later had risen to the position of general manager, a job he kept until his death from liver cancer when Caterina, the oldest child, was thirteen and her sisters were nine and ten. Francesca used money from Giorgio’s life insurance policy to train as a paralegal and soon found a job as a legal assistant with the Stein Law Firm in Moorestown. Though she had a noticeable Italian accent, she proved to be a reliable asset to Michael Stein and the other attorneys in the firm, as she was knowledgeable and intuitive when working with the firm’s clients.

While going to middle school and high school, Caterina had taken over the chores of her mother that included meal preparation, at which she excelled, experimenting with new recipes inspired by the menus taught to her by her mother and written into booklets by her grandmother.

Luigi and Caterina met at the Hanger 21 Tavern in Lakehurst in 1995. Neither could afford to attend college, but each was looking to break a cycle of low paying jobs for which they felt underpaid, undervalued and overqualified.

They both spotted ads for employment placed by the tavern in several papers including The Manchester Times, the New York Post, and the Camden Courier.

Luigi responded for the position of restaurant manager, while Caterina called during a break at her part-time job in a card shop in Camden, attracted by the ad for a head chef. Both Luigi and Caterina were quickly called in for interviews, since the previous manager had been caught stealing from the restaurant owner, Jack Domino, and the head chef, the wife of the disgraced manager, also needed to be replaced.

At first glance, neither seemed to fit the model for the jobs they acquired. Both were strangers to the area and hadn’t much experience in business, but Domino was more interested in them as young people who had ambition and who were willing to work and learn on the job. He was also impressed with their knowledge of, and appreciation and passion for, the food from the old country, and related to their accents and cultural ties. He realized that he needed to fill the positions quickly, and both were willing to work for wages less than what he would have had to pay more experienced candidates.

Late one evening after closing time, Luigi and Caterina formed a bond while discussing their past lives. They discovered that all four of their parents came from San Giovanni, Italy. When Caterina later mentioned Luigi Fiore to her mother, Francesca smiled and told her daughter that she had once dated Luigi’s father, Salvatore, and that she would like to meet the young man at some point.

Neither family had much money, but they got by on tenacity and the selflessness of family. Luigi was looking for a chance to make his fortune in the restaurant business. He had arrived for his interview wearing his Sunday suit and despite wearing white socks and pants he’d outgrown, Domino hired him for the job, and he quickly moved from his family’s overcrowded home in Brooklyn to a rooming house located not too far from the tavern.

Caterina had a harder time separating from her mother and younger sisters, who she believed needed her. But Francesca encouraged her daughter to attempt the break, and to use the cooking skills she and her mother had taught her, rather than wasting her youth working in a card shop. Your sisters are old enough to take on some of my responsibilities. It’s your turn to build your life. Use your talents and raise your own family.

Although pretty and bright, Caterina found it hard to fit into the working world. Unlike her mother, who had proved to herself and her bosses her obvious worth, Caterina was shy, and unsure of her value and her skills. Her insecurities interfered with her aspirations and although she knew she had some of what she needed to succeed, she often felt she had neither the drive or the spunk to pursue a career.

Shortly after securing the head chef job at the Hanger 21 Tavern, Caterina began to fall in love with Luigi, who was ambitious, passionate and unrelenting in his pursuit of her. He also was uncompromising in his mission to achieve a life worthy of his dreams. Although it was frustrating for them both, he was determined to put off thoughts of marriage until they had both earned enough money to open a restaurant of their own, using and expanding on the recipes created by their mothers and grandmothers in San Giovanni.

It took three years, but by hard work, a strict budget of the finances and devotion to their tasks, Luigi and Caterina saved enough to purchase a failing pizza restaurant located along the main route through Lakehurst. Luigi proved to be a tough negotiator and wore down the resolve of the older couple who owned the business, and then secured a loan from the Lakehurst Naval Federal Credit Union to purchase it. They named the business after Luigi’s family name, Fiore, which was also the name of the town where their family lived in Italy. Fiore being the Italian word for flower, Luigi designed the logo for their restaurant using a white lily. The white lily also had significance as it had become the national symbol of Italy, and is most commonly associated with the Virgin Mary and the Holy Family.

Luigi and Caterina were married in 1998 and purchased a small house within the Lakehurst borough the following year. The timing was essential since the apartment where they had lived was small, and Lorenzo and Aldo were due to be born in February 2000.

Soon after the move, Luigi’s parents and Caterina’s mother, whose other two children had found jobs in other areas, all decided to resettle in Lakehurst, after which Caterina’s two younger sisters and Luigi’s two brothers also moved into their neighborhood. Activities centered around weddings, christenings, funerals and birthdays and the holidays as celebrated at St. Mary of the Lake Church, with Luigi’s mission being to expand the business of bringing true authentic specialties from the San Giovanni region into Lakehurst.

By the time the twins turned eleven, the Fiores had become one of the the largest employers of individuals of Italian descent in central New Jersey. Their business was so successful that they soon opened satellite restaurants in Asbury Park, Collingswood and Avalon, which were all run, and primarily staffed, by uncles, aunts, cousins and inlaws of the Fiore family.

Salvatore and Lydia remembered the hard times, but the children who were born in this country had stable homes and a family that was financially secure, with assets enough for their twin grandchildren to be the first to attend a college or university. Luigi and Caterina both knew that education was essential, and they made sure that although the twin boys worked at the restaurant, they still had time to study and get the grades necessary to secure their path to successful careers.

Despite the hours Lorenzo and Aldo spent playing video games, they both excelled at their studies. And though the Fiores were conservative Catholics for whom virginity for women was expected until marriage, Luigi and Caterina often broke the rules of the Church, which included the practice of birth control. Rules were also flexible when it came to the games their children brought home, which were often violent and explicitly sexual in nature.

No one seemed to intervene in the boys’ choices of games or what they watched on the computer, and even if the parents happened to come into a room and see them on a virtual reality adventure with a porn star, they would merely apologize for interrupting and leave the room. Somehow they seemed to intuitively understand that virtual porn wouldn’t lead to conception, so they left their children to do their own thing. By the time Lorenzo and Aldo had completed their sophomore year in high school, the twins had mastered many challenging video games on the market and were experimenting with the creation of their own online game. In order for them to grow further, they realized that they needed an educational program that could expand their gaming skills as well as provide a greater understanding of artificial intelligence, conceptual animation, robotics, quantum computing and facial and voice recognition systems. The only school that offered such a program for high school students was Stanford University, which had developed the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) in 1963. Over the years Stanford had changed the name and the mission of its program to meet the challenges of new generations of children who had grown up mastering the methodologies necessary to navigate thematic approaches far beyond the scope of Pong, Asteroids and Pac Man.

The young professors at Stanford realized that by the age of 18, it was far too late for students to acquire the skills needed to keep up with the development of systems created, managed and directed by AI. As leaders in the field in the U. S., Stanford, along with MIT, Columbia, and Cornell, had developed a series of online courses designed for middle school and high school students interested in careers in new technologies, gaming, robotics and neuroscience. They would one day be instrumental in creating thinking machines that would exceed the capabilities of humans in finding solutions for the world’s larger problems, such as food and electrical distribution, healthcare, environmental issues and population control.

The brothers continued to earn money at their jobs at Fiore’s Family Restaurant in Lakehurst and were able to fund their tuition without asking for support from their parents.

Though neither Lorenzo nor Aldo had any formal training in the field of artificial intelligence, they had absorbed enough from their teachers, their game playing, podcasts, and articles in various magazines that they were comfortable with the subject and understood that game development offered the perfect practice field for finding solutions to the larger issues faced by humanity.

Role playing games such as the series Dark Souls had enabled players to learn from past mistakes, gain rewards, and avoid death while navigating hostile environments. They could efficiently use their stamina to endure an enemy attack and confuse their enemy, and assist their allies by providing clues to moves that would help save them from destruction.

Dark Souls was developed and designed by Hidetaka Miyazaki in 2011 for the company FromSoftware, where he worked as a coder. He was 29 when he began working there. Not many gaming firms would consider me for the job, he told Simon Parkin in an interview for The Guardian. I was too inexperienced in the field and too old to be hireable. Most developers in the industry, and especially in Japan, join firms shortly after graduation and stay at the same firm throughout their careers, so I was given a low level job. Little did Miyazaki know that within ten years he’d become the company’s president, or that two of his games would sell in the millions and win dozens of awards and a network of celebrity fans.

At the age of 16, the Fiore brothers applied for the SAIL summer program but were not nearly the youngest applicants. The entry age began as early as 13, with many of the prepubscent students having been involved with games such as Dark Souls from its first edition. At the time the Fiores applied, they were put on a waiting list. The singular distinction of the Fiores that set them apart from the other applicants was that they were identical twins, and SAIL had never before received applications from twin brothers who satisfied the requirements of the admissions board.

As a result, when two students who had previously been accepted were forced to drop out a month prior to the beginning of the program, the Fiores were put at the top of the list.

It was later explained to Lorenzo and Aldo that the program was, in fact, provided online, and that the commuter fees would be waved for their participation, bringing their total costs down to $3,296 per student.

To prepare for the courses, they purchased the Kindle version of Our Final Invention, written in 2013 by James Barrett, which predicted many of the fears the world would have once ChatGPT became universally available, and The Master Algorithm, by Pedro Domingos, which had the subtitle How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World.

As they began to study the science of AI, the Fiores postulated the possibility of a game being created that could never be won by humans, since it wouldn’t have been built by humans. It would use a virtual world, similar to Earth, to prove that humans were incapable of evolving quickly enough, have enough insight, or be altruistic enough to win a game that required a fierce but benevolent super intelligence that had only one objective — to save the Earth from humanity, and to save humans from themselves.

Chapter Two

Francesca

The classes the twins were enrolled in at Stanford were available to teens in their high school sophomore and junior years. Both boys were 16 and at the higher end of the age group of candidates who had applied, but as the only twins registered, they were accepted to fill the empty slots in session one, scheduled to begin on July 13.

In addition to attending the live online classes conducted by a young team of professors, students were required to participate in out-of-class group projects and reading assignments, and to attend prerecorded online lectures on a variety of related topics. A prerequisite of the program was that students have a working knowledge of the Python programming language, which fortunately the twins had learned on their own while in middle school.

The course also provided an introduction to philosophy, fundamentals of gaming, and discussions in effective altruism as it applied to the understanding of humans and their place in the world.

The course was designed to prepare students for college level instruction in 3D modeling, computer animation, and storytelling as it applied to the gaming world.

The twins had already acquired many of the skills offered by the program, but never had experience exchanging ideas and working with instructors practiced in the evolving uses of technologies. Their hope was that the program would give them a leg up on other students applying to Stanford and other highly rated colleges and universities in the coming year, as well as the possibility of scholarship money provided for outstanding performance in the programs they would choose to enter.

Except for articles and videos they had stumbled upon on the internet or in the news, they had not yet had the opportunity to explore in-depth concepts, nor had they been presented with questions such as What does it mean to think? and Are thought and intelligence separable from consciousness?, as well as Who is responsible for thinking machines if something goes wrong? and Will machines have to be seen as having rights of their own and be held responsible for mistakes they make, and not the humans who created them?

Though familiar with mobile phones, the internet, and the restaurant’s ordering system, the twins’ parents had shown little interest in the field of artificial intelligence. Their traditions, religious beliefs and ideas on moral behavior remained rooted in the past, and they had little curiosity about the future outside the limits of how it might affect their immediate lives, and those of their relatives and the employees of their restaurant.

Only Francesca, the mother of Luigi, and grandmother of the twins, had explored the wonders of technology and, thusly, had become more deeply aligned with the quests of Lorenzo and Aldo than her daughters and her inlaws.

As a result of her knowledge and receptivity to technology, Francesca, or grandmother Nona, had grown into the parental role model for the boys, who have confided in her their personal issues as teens, such as confusion about dating, bullying, religion, and how intimate they should become when beginning a relationship with a girl.

Unlike their mother, who shied away from such questions, Francesca was forthright and shared with them examples from her own young life. I was pregnant with your mother when I got married. My mother, Sophia, rushed Carlo and me to the alter before I even grew a belly. Carlo and I had dated for about a year, and he became my first and only lover until he died. I’ve made up for it since.

It wasn’t only about sex that Francesca was outspoken when questioned on issues. She held strong opinions on politics, feminism and protection of the environment, and was opposed to most of the doctrines of the Catholic Church. She believed that the cover-ups by the church of priests who preyed on young boys or girls was horrific; she approved of abortion; and she greatly enjoyed relationships with openly gay males, often turning up at pride events if she happened to be free from conflicts with work or from family and social conflicts.

Prior to her move from Cherry Hill to Lakehurst, New Jersey, Luigi and Caterina had asked if she would be interested in managing their restaurant, and it was through her guidance, as well as the nature of the food and hospitality brought to it by the Fiores, that the restaurant had become a landmark and expanded into its other locations.

As the time grew nearer to the start of their online summer camp, Lorenzo and Aldo accelerated their own education in artificial intelligence and alternate realities by experimenting with a simple gaming contest that would be challenging for them to play with each other. By rearranging simple graphics: a triangle, square, pentagon, rectangular beam and a ball, they constructed an on-screen obstacle course that had the ability to adapt to the movements of an opposing player to keep a Mario-like avatar from reaching a goal. By providing the shapes with a primitive form of a thinking mind, they soon realized that after several attempts at play they both could simply watch the game and marvel at how the field of symbols adapted to their moves with Mario, mostly preventing him from reaching his goal. When Mario received his own thinking mind, neither of the brothers had to play the game, but just watched the games unfold as the opponents got better and faster with their moves.

On a day when Francesca had a moment to herself, she observed the twins watching a game, and asked what was happening on the electronic board. Aldo explained that the avatars were making choices on how to play the game on their own after being given certain guidelines and rules that they were required to follow. Lorenzo then explained that the players could think many times faster than either of them could, and that it was the subtleties in the programming that made the difference in which player might win. He added that Mario and the group of shapes soon were making their own rules to make the game more difficult, and that he and Aldo had lost any understanding of what was happening between the players, or of any objective beyond winning the game.

The game soon becomes boring, said Lorenzo to his grandmother, since the game continues at such a speed we can’t keep up with it before it crashes the computer without showing a final score.

Francesca, who was a logical and practical thinker, posed a real-world problem to the twins and asked if they might try to provide a solution applicable to Fiore’s Family Restaurant.

Sure, Nona! Give us your problem, said Aldo, smiling and wondering what she would come up with.

"Well, boys, no matter how hard we try to improve our efficiency at the restaurant, there is food at the end of each day that needs to be discarded. We give some of it to the church’s food bank, but much of the food can’t be kept overnight. We order in bulk to get good prices, but many times we have little idea how many guests we will serve in a day, how much they will eat or what they will choose to eat.

We are not alone with this problem that every restaurant must deal with. My question to you is, ‘Can you create a program that will more precisely determine how much food and what variety of food we should order?’

That’s an easy one, responded Aldo. I believe it’s already being done by several food chains like Wendy’s and McDonald’s, The orders are taken at a kiosk and immediately compared to the number of units of food and drink stored by the restaurant. If the restaurant runs out, the ordering system will let the customer know that he or she has to make another choice, and then will add the item into its database for reorder.

No, Aldo. I get that, said Francesca. But that doesn’t help me plan my orders for the next week or the week after. It only provides an answer to how much food and drink we’ve sold.

And I suppose that may work for chains, but not for our restaurant, added Lorenzo.

Francesca continued, Is it possible to calculate each order, and over time create a profile of our customers that might align with our inventory to identify what people eat and predict how often they will come and how much they might order of each item?

That might be difficult to do, Nona! blurted out Aldo. Many of our customers are new and come for the first time, and if we have enough new customers in a week, it will alter the outcome.

How much data would you need to have the system attempt a good guess? asked Francesca.

The longer we’d have to create a test sample, the better we could calculate an estimate, said Lorenzo. But I don’t think we could ever make a fully accurate prediction.

But, added Aldo, if we had lists of both regular customers and new customers, and information on trends in food from many restaurants in the way we can in our restaurant, along with information on inflation and national eating trends, we could get closer.

Mostly all of our bills are paid by credit card, said Francesca, so we have most of that information available to us. But I also have another question. If we can determine what our customers eat, can we calculate costs by component, and separate the components out by their need for freshness, and spice and recipes required to create different menu items using similar ingredients?

Does it have to be that mechanized? asked Lorenzo.

No, but if they can more accurately price our meals to the cost of labor and our inventory, we can keep prices lower without losing money, answered Francesca. And what I’d like to do is have the system operate without the customers having any idea of the calculations made and the savings gained.

Do people complain about our prices? asked Aldo.

No. But they may in time, and as a family restaurant we need to make money for ourselves and our employees, while being conscious of the prices we charge to the families that are loyal to us, answered Francesca.

And besides, think of it as a game where everyone wins but the garbage can.

What about the people at the food drive? asked Aldo.

Most of our scraps currently go to landfills, although a good bit of our leftover cooked food goes to the church, but there is still so much more that is wasted, said Francesca. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if artificial intelligence could distribute the components to where they are needed most in the country and in the world, rather than pay farmers not to grow certain foods, or consumers to have to pay higher prices because the world has no idea how much food is wasted?

This must already be done by some agency? said Aldo.

Well, it’s not done that well at our restaurant, answered Francesca.

We start our course in two weeks, said Lorenzo. Maybe the instructors will have an idea...

Aldo had already picked up his iPhone and was typing. We don’t need to ask the question. According to the site ‘Rescuing Leftover Cuisine’, 40% of the food produced, processed and transported in the U.S. is wasted and ends up in landfills.

And you kids are creating games that no one can solve, while we have a test kitchen right here for you to practice in, said Francesca, smiling.

Do we need AI for this? asked Lorenzo.

Maybe not right this minute, answered Aldo, but it seems like it could be a really good project."

I’ll leave you to your thoughts, added Francesca.I don’t have time for games. I have a restaurant to run. And, by the way, don’t you two have deliveries to make?

Chapter Three

The Telepathic Twins

From an early age, Lorenzo and Aldo Fiore recognized the close bond they’d formed by being identical in almost every way. They took pleasure in playing with the same toys and games, selecting matching outfits rather than exploring their own singular identities, and often finishing a sentence that the other twin had begun during a conversation. They enjoyed being with each other more than playing with other children and often sequestered themselves from contact with other kids, preferring to giggle at each other’s remarks and to be comforted by each other’s presence in a room.

Before they reached the age of five it was extremely difficult for Luigi or Caterina to tell them apart, and they would often play tricks on their parents, with one pretending to be the other, especially when being reprimanded for bad behavior, which made the other twin laugh and take the blame, while the scolded twin knew, but never confessed, that he, himself,