The Fatal Cup of Coffee

This is for the Friday Challenge known as The Second Annual Ultimate Snowdogging Competition!

I'm not quite sure when it's due. Could be 8/13/09 or 8/6/09 or maybe a year ago, but that doesn't really matter, since it's a Snowdogging competition, and all entries are expected to be late. Snowdog invented and perfected the late entry for Friday Challenges.

I'm picking a challenge from last year, before I stumbled across the Ranting Room. It's to write about your favorite or most hated appliance and what it will be like in twenty years.


The Fatal Cup of Coffee


There was no two ways about it: the coffee maker was broken, beyond any fixing. Martha had determined by careful examination, with glasses on, that it was a split piece of plastic tube that was causing the water to leak back in to the water container during the brewing process. It couldn't be taped or glued, because it was split in several places, and she couldn't get in there to apply tape or glue to every spot, even with the tiny pliers she had in the drawer. She couldn't take the tube out to fix it, because it was all one piece with the body of the coffee maker. It was hopeless.

It would only get worse as the cracks widened and multiplied. It already took five times as long as usual to get half a pot of brewed coffee, and impossible to get a whole pot. The water just kept going around and around until it boiled away.

Martha turned away from the coffee maker and as her eyes swept over the refrigerator, her shoulders slumped in complete despair. The refrigerator had been broken for over a year. The thermostat had gotten farther and farther off, until the only place she could keep milk without it going bad was in the freezer compartment, which no longer froze anything.

And the oven wouldn't heat at all, and only one burner on the top would still light. The microwave had quit working two or three years ago, but that wasn't a necessity. She still had the toaster oven, but only one of its elements heated now.

She was trapped. There was no escape. Soon her last working cooking appliances would break, and she would have to give in and buy a foodbot. I might as well just shoot myself and get it over with, she thought.

All of Martha's friends and relatives were now using foodbots. One by one, they had converted over, some eager for the easier lifestyle, some resisting as long as possible. But all of them got sick. She could see it, but they evidently could not. She kept on repairing and stealing parts from one appliance to fix another. As time went by, it became more and more impossible to get new appliances or to have the old ones fixed. There were no more parts and no more repair people. Not since the Food Processing Act in 2016.

The FDA had collapsed under its own corruption fifteen years ago, and after that, all the damaging evidence about plastic, Teflon, and aluminum cookware and food containers had come out, splashing fear into voters everywhere. Laws were passed in record time, making it a federal offense to allow food to come into contact with plastic, Teflon, or aluminum under any conditions in public places or manufacturing companies.

Martha vividly remembered the chaos of 2015. That was when she had started hoarding appliances. She had been able to get hold of several small appliances at garage sales. Since individuals were not included in the new laws, she could buy them, and their owners were eager to sell them, but that didn't last long.

More research was done that year than ever before. It took only a few weeks for new products to appear, one of which was the foodbot. It started out as a replacement for fast food restaurants, which had all closed. Then the personal foodbot appeared. All houses being sold were required to have a foodbot, thanks to the Food Processing Act.

Foodbots were made of human-friendly materials: glass, some ceramics, and specially treated iron or steel. They were like a combination of all the old appliances. You put food in, it was stored at its optimum temperature until you requested it to be prepared for eating, whereupon the foodbot would wash it, cut it, cook it, or whatever was appropriate, and then serve it up in human-friendly dishes. When you finished eating, you would put the remains into a different part of the foodbot, and it would clean the dishes and dispose of the food scraps.

Reluctantly, Martha put on her coat. She would need to go pick out her new foodbot, and on the way she would stop at MacBot for coffee. Their coffee wasn't too bad. As long as you didn't think about what might be in it.

The salesman at the foodbot showroom met her as she walked through the door, which made her nervous. She always preferred to browse by herself until she had her mind made up. But he was very nice and never made her feel captive to his persuasions.

There wasn't a lot of decision making required when buying a foodbot. Of course they tried to make it fit in with your kitchen style and color scheme, but by the time you take out the refrigerator, stove, microwave, dishwasher, and half of the cabinets, you're pretty much starting over, anyway. She picked out a cream color with Indian style trim in turquoise, pick, and orange.

“What persona would you like,” asked the salesman. “We have man, woman, boy, or girl, of course, but we also can copy your voice and personality.”

At Martha's look of surprise and interest, he continued enthusiastically. “That's brand new last month. I've installed twenty of them so far, and all twenty customers like them much better than their old ones. They say their bot understands them and knows how to fix things the way they like.”

That was too appealing to pass up, so Martha found herself answering many questions and reading some printed material out loud in a soundbooth, where her voice and personality were recorded for programming into her new bot.

After several hours, everything was set up for the installation and personal training session by her salesman, who was apparently much more than just a salesman. She only had to wait four days. She walked out, headed to TacoBot for a late lunch.

Installing a foodbot was an all-day event. First the old appliances were removed, and cabinets were rearranged or removed, then the bot was brought in and assembled. It was too big to fit through the door in one piece. The training session was last on the agenda, serving a dual purpose as a way of testing that the bot was running correctly.

Martha was amazed at the mass of details the bot had to think about. Well, if the bot thought. It was an AI computer, of course. It would track everything she put into it and let her know if something was getting close to its expiration date. It knew how much of each ingredient to use to make one serving, and it could adjust that if she said she was extra hungry or not very hungry. It would track how much and what foods she ate, and make suggestions for optimum health. It could detect spoiled food and would dispose of it. It would help her plan ahead and provide shopping lists. It would even know if it had a broken part or was not running correctly, and it would tell her.

“What's her name?” the salesman asked.

“Oh,” replied Martha. “It's Betty.” Not bottie, or batty, but close, she thought, secretly smirking while the salesman programmed in Betty's name.

“Okay, you say her name and then give her instructions. When she hears her name, she will know the instructions are for her.”

After everyone was gone, she sat at the kitchen table and gazed at Betty. She needed to try something. “Betty, make a cup of coffee, the French roast.”

Her own voice said, “The coffee will be ready in two point six minutes.”

Martha heard a grinding noise, then something that sounded for all the world like percolating. It wasn't exactly the same as her old coffee maker, which she had hidden under her bed to keep it from being confiscated by the installers. At the end of the percolating, her coffee maker always opened its lid slightly, and she had to punch it down. She saw a mental picture of herself pounding her fist on Betty and giggled.

“The coffee is ready,” said Betty, ignoring the giggle. A door opened at one end of the bot, disclosing a cream colored cup with Indian style trim in turquoise, pink, and orange.

Martha moved over to get the cup, and saw the coffee was black. “Oh. Betty, put cream in the coffee.”

This would be the acid test. The cream that Martha had transferred from the old refrigerator was raw cream, organic, unpasteurized, unhomogenized, with no contaminants of any kind. It was so thick the bot wouldn't be able to pour it. It was solid. She picked it up once a week from Tim, a dairy farmer forty miles out of town.

The door closed. There were a few faint clicks and a humming noise. Then the door opened again and Betty said, “One serving of cream is in the coffee. It was not pasteurized or homogenized. That has been corrected. The coffee is ready. All caffeine has been removed.”

Martha frowned, or rather, glared at the foodbot. “Betty, how much cream is one serving?”

“One serving of cream is one half teaspoon,” was the reply. “The cream was diluted with filtered water to the correct consistency.”

“Betty, put more cream in the coffee. I want ten servings of cream. Do not dilute it!”

“Ten servings of cream is not healthy,” Betty responded.

Martha picked up the cup of coffee and tasted it. The door closed. “This is awful!” Actually, the coffee tasted quite a bit like the MacBot coffee she had been living on for the past several days. It wasn't that bad.

“This is awful!” Martha repeated. “I want you to make another cup of coffee, and I want you to leave the caffeine in it, and I want you to leave my cream unpasteurized and unhomogenized and undiluted, and I want at least a tablespoon of it in my coffee!”

Silence.

I guess I should have named her Simon Says, thought Martha.

“Betty, make another cup of coffee with the French roast. Do not remove the caffeine. Put one tablespoon of cream in it. Do not homogenize the cream. Do not pasteurize the cream. Do not dilute the cream.”

A piece of paper slid out of a slot next to the door. Betty said, “A shopping list has been printed. You need coffee and cream. All the caffeine has been removed. All the cream has been pasteurized. All the cream has been homogenized. All the cream has been diluted with filtered water to the correct consistency.”

Martha's mouth opened. She blinked.

“Betty, I want to plan tomorrow's meals. Today I will get the things on the shopping list: coffee with caffeine in it and unpasteurized, unhomogenized, undiluted cream. Tomorrow morning I want you to make a cup of coffee. Do not remove the caffeine. Put one tablespoon of cream in it. Do not homogenize the cream. Do not pasteurize the cream. Do not dilute the cream.” Martha pounded her fist on the foodbot's top surface.

More faint clicks and humming exuded from the foodbot. After what seemed like a very long time, there was a loud clunk, and then silence.

“Betty, print the meal plan for tomorrow morning.”

“The meal planning module is not able to plan tomorrow morning's meal.”

“Betty, why can't the meal planning module plan tomorrow morning's meal?”

“The meal planning module is unable to find coffee with caffeine and cream that is not pasteurized, homogenized, and diluted. The shopping list adjusts the quantity of coffee and cream, but when the cup of coffee is made tomorrow morning, the caffeine will be removed and the cream will be pasteurized and homogenized and diluted with filtered water to the correct consistency and one half teaspoon of cream will be put in the coffee. Six servings of cream is not healthy.”

“Oh, Betty, Betty, Betty!' groaned Martha, burying her face in her hands. “Just shoot me now and get it over with!”

After several more faint clicks, another door opened in the foodbot, near the floor. A cream colored gun with Indian style trim in turquoise, pink, and orange protruded. And fired.