Android Pastries

A Short Story

One fine Sunday in June, an online bidder of unknown origin purchased Anne’s Anne-tastic Patisserie for 4,000 KitKoins, which Anne understood to be roughly the equivalent of a boatload of cash. The Patisserie was not for sale at the time, but the buyer paid triple what it was worth, so Anne retired to the small sliver of beach still left in North Carolina, never to be seen or heard from again.

No one saw the new owners of Anne’s Anne-tastic Patisserie move in, but one day the large neon arrow that pointed down at the patisserie’s roof read Android’s Adroit Patisserie instead. While Anne’s pastries had been passable, though mostly stale, she did still have some regulars who were caught off guard by the change. Her three employees who worked in the bakery were also blindsided when they came into work one morning and found that a steel wall replaced the old wooden employee entrance door that used to jiggle open without a key.

At first, only a few of the old regulars went to Android’s Adroit Patisserie. They only went there because there were no other pastry shops nearby. The pastries were pretty good, however, and kept getting better according to reviewer feedback, so word got around. In just three months of business, the AAP, pronounced AHHHP!, had already featured in Food and Wire Magazine and on Automaton Bourdain: Without Limits.

Pretty soon, celebrities, athletes, and CEOs began frequenting the small patisserie too. The equipment inside was all automated. Not a soul worked there. There wasn’t even a counter where you could place your order. In the first week it was open, you just walked inside and spoke your order aloud from the holographic menu projected in front of your face. This made for some confusion as people assumed they needed to shout.

FOUR CINNAMON ROLLS!

CROISSANT WITH CHOCOLATE! MAKE IT TWO! AH, NO, WAIT! I WANT A SCONE!

GIVE ME COFFEE! BLACK. WITH CREAM?

FETTUCCINE ALFREDO!

The delivery method was also confusing since there was no counter. Little holes would open up in the walls and ceiling and mechanical arms would reach out to serve pastries on dishes. Sometimes, the arms had buggy coding and instead of serving pastries on plates, they pitched them at the customers’ heads. Customers were also frequently vague about their orders, leading to one instance in which a man asked for DONUTS! and the restaurant obliged by stacking 400 donuts around the man all at once in the shape of a glazed igloo.

By the second week of patisserie operations, there was no menu at all and no need to speak your order. The tiny nano-sensors in the air predicted your order with one hundred percent accuracy or your money back. And, since there was no menu, the patisserie crafted the most delectable, one-of-a-kind pastries just to your specific tastes! Instead of serving customers on plates or throwing pastries during a glitch, robotic arms, which were now soft and supple like human arms, fed each customer personally and wiped their mouths with moist towelettes afterward.

If someone unfamiliar to the AAP came in and tried to speak their order, they’d find their mouth filled with the most delicious pastry they could have ever imagined eating. And their bank account would be automatically billed.

Pretty soon, the restaurant even did away with chairs and made the interior a cul-de-sac. All you had to do to get your order was drive in the entrance, roll down your windows and say AAP! By the sixth month of business, the restaurant had become so in-demand, that the shadow owners of the property purchased the entire block surrounding the patisserie. Now, instead of driving inside a restaurant, all you had to do was drive down Android Avenue with your windows down and your mouth open. Efficient robot hands propelled by drones could serve up to four hundred cars and eight hundred customers at a time, assuming a speed equal to or less than 35 mph.

Such was the success of Android Ave, that, one-by-one, the adjacent streets were purchased for other retail endeavors, until the entire city became known as the Autopolis. One had merely to walk outside for their every whim to be fulfilled. Open your mouth when just vaguely hungry or thirsty? Need satisfied. Had your eye on that new gadget? It was in your hand before you could voice the thought.

After a year and a half of living in what people in some circles began to call “Wish City,” citizens began to notice that the ground was sinking. It turned out that the constant demand for stuff meant a constant demand for resources, including the groundwater in reservoirs underneath the city. The more that Autopolis pulled its groundwater for the manufacturing of goods, the more the city sank. And, since the Autopolis was a coastal city, this meant the city was getting closer and closer to sinking below sea level.

The city mayor called it an emergency and ordered first responders out to the levees to go wish with all their might for more sandbags to keep the sea at bay. This was the Autopolis, after all, and they could get what they needed to save their city without even snapping their fingers.

Unfortunately, first responders didn’t want sandbags. Not really. They really really wanted to want sandbags, but what they actually wanted was the newest this and the shiniest that. This culminated in almost zero progress on the levee. Some of the first responders thought about stacking their new this-es and thats to bolster the levee since they couldn’t seem to get sandbags, but always thought better of it when they read the product reviews:

5 STARS, 1-MILLION REVIEWS. A MUST-HAVE FOR ANY TOILET! or 4.9 STARS 1-BILLION REVIEWS. JJ JENKINS WOULDN’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT!

In a vain attempt at heroism, the mayor himself went out to the levee to demonstrate how it was done. But, instead of sandbags, fourteen robotic hand drones brought him a new car with a built-in theater, a fried chicken sandwich, and some anti-diarrhea medicine.

On the day the Autopolis sank, water rushing over the pitiful levee in a murky, salty torrent, every single person almost simultaneously wished for a boat to save them. Many of the people wanted boats that they couldn’t afford, so no help came at all. The others who could afford boats, however, wished for impractical, very large boats, which got stuck in between buildings or hit other boats and sank.

Would-be rescuers from outside the city attempted recovery missions, but as soon as they crossed into the Autopolis, robot arm drones swarmed them, delivering them so many material goods that their helicopter pilots could no longer see to steer, and their boats became so laden with things that they tipped with the extra weight. Eventually, the world outside the Autopolis was forced to watch as the city was claimed by the sea.

There was much debate and hoo-ha after the incident. People were afraid and rightly so. So, the brightest minds and the most powerful politicians came together for what was called the CYBORG SUMMIT. World leaders agreed that robot patisseries were henceforth banned, unless the injection of cash into the local economy was “too good to pass up.” They also said some nice words and a few thoughts and several prayers. Later that same week, an online bidder purchased Ichabod’s Icy Treats in Ipswich, Massachusetts for ten times its actual worth. No one batted an eye.

The end