Chapter 1 - Background/introduction

Sup, the names Ethan, the date is June 10th, 2068. I’m about to tell you a story about me and my close friend, Carol. Now, Carol and I have known each other since the 3rd grade. When we were 12, we promised each other that would stick together throughout the rest of our lives. Our parents thought this was cute and that we were just kids being kids, but we were serious. Our friends were always telling us that we would separate, but it never really happened. Now, I know it’s a cliché, but we went to the same schools, even the same college. When we graduated from High School, we decided to share an apartment since we were going to the same college, it made sense. At first, our parents weren’t on board with the idea, the reason behind their caution was the same as all parents. They didn’t want us to, you know, do the DEVILS TANGO. This was understandable, but we persuaded them with the fact that I am gay, and Carol was taken. Listening to this, our parents finally allowed us to move into an apartment together. Furthermore, we bought a house together after graduating from college with our masters in the respective fields. Carol graduated with a masters in programming and game design. I graduated with a masters in engineering and architecture. We were roommates for 8 years before buying a house 5 years ago.


“Nonononono! Fuck!” followed by a slam on, what sounded like her desk, was what I heard come from Carol’s room one afternoon. You’re probably wondering what is going on, that there’s probably some extra context that you need. You see, Carol and I had been working on a coding project for a solid 1 ½ years. What was this project? Well, we had been hired to create a program that would be applied to the very first food replicator that eventually found itself inside a fancy restaurant down the street named Bakers Eatery. Yes, by replicator, I do mean something similar to what seen in the vintage movie series Star Trek. Everything went right… for the most part. The first problem was the sheer size of the project, the second issue that we, mostly Carol, faced was finding the right taste for each and every piece of food produced by the replicator. Now you’re probably wondering “How does one make food from code? Shouldn’t there be some machine that produces the food?” Well, yes there does in fact have to be a machine. That’s where I came in. Carol was the programmer/coder, and I was the engineer/architect of the actual machine. This meant that Carol was in charge of telling the replicator what to do, and I was in charge of creating the replicator and making sure it was compatible with Carols strings of code.

When we were first put on this job, the owners of Bakers Eatery led with the amount they were willing to pay for this replicator. After introducing themselves as Alexis and Connor Baker, they explained that they would pay us 1.5 million credits IF we could manage to actually create the replicator. Obviously, we accepted this, thinking it would be too hard… boy were we wrong. First of all, I thought that all I had to do was create a simple station with a shape and structure similar to that of an old arcade game, like the ones from 80 years ago, with mechanics similar to an MDR (Mechanical Dismantling Reconsense). The size and shape of the replicator worked fine with our plans, the problem was we had to create a whole new FPR (Food Production Reconsense). For those who don’t know, a Reconsense is essentially the core of any production/dismantling machine that generates the ingredients/materials needed for producing or dismantling the designated item using methods that are quite unethical but legal. There are too many types of Reconsense’s to count. The reason why this was an issue is that the materials and parts I required for an FPR were outlawed in our city 5 years ago. Making a long story short, I somehow managed to create a new FPR out of our coffee machine using its LDR (Liquids Distributing Reconsense). Carol was very annoyed at this but composed herself, knowing that it was the only way. Anyway, my part was done for the time being. It was time for Carol to start on her coding, where she would input recipes for EVERYTHING known to all being on Earth. I mean, I did help with some of it, but Carol argued that the coding and inputs were her job. She also made the mistake of rejecting taste testers that would have been sent by the Bakers for assistance.

As it may have been guessed, the thing that Carol started with was inputting the recipes for the replicator. This took about a month because, even though she just copied and pasted the recipes from a worldwide cooking site that she uses on the nights when she cooks, there was still a shitload of input to add. During said process, Carol was constantly ordering herself take out for every meal of the day and skipped going to the gym everyday like before the project. Now, you may or may not be asking yourself “Would Carol get fat from all the takeout and laziness?” Well, the short answer is yes, and it happened how some might think. You see, she was able to restrain herself from ordering junk food for the first week. However, for the rest of the recipe inputting month, she ordered the exact opposite. She usually got any fast food, heavily sauced Italian, and really anything salty. It was what she felt was the tastiest. By the end of the first month, she looked 25 pounds heavier.