Thing a Week 49: Move Oolong, Nothing to Tea Here
Sabrina stepped in front of her little brother on his way to the kitchen, and looked down at Ian’s pudgy frame with her hands on her hips.
“Rinse them first!” she ordered, pointing towards the half-eaten plate and used mug in his hands. “I’m on dishes this week, remember? Do it!”
Ian sneered, peering up from roughly half of Sabrina’s pre-teenage height. Preemptively he shouted, “Mom!” and took another step towards the dirty dishes counter. Just moments before the mother lethargically called back from the other room, the bigger sibling shoved Ian again.
He dropped both the plate and mug he had been holding and the plate shattered loudly, splintering mildly. The mug spilled what little tea had been left in it, sprinkling tea leaves out onto the floor as well.
“What was that?” the mother called.
“Nothing!” both kids cheered back in unison.
“You’re in trouble now, Ian. Dad’s out of glass Stuff; Mom’s gonna be mad! Mom’s family is coming this weekend, we had just enough matching plates!”
Ian’s shoulders sank. “We could just project the design on a blank one,” Ian muttered. “Max says there’s just an interface with item tracking you download.”
Sabrina gasped. “That’s… piracy! I’m telling mom!”
She wheeled on her heels and ran out of the room, repeatedly shouting for the woman in the next room.
Ian’s smile grey only wider as he watched his sister run away. He looked disparagingly at the mess of plate on the kitchen floor and gently picked up his mug. He flicked a clinging piece of glass onto the ground and set the mug gently onto the dirty dishes counter.
As he left the room, the dishes system retrieved the mug from the counter and began a wash and reindex. At the same time, the house cleaning service was dispatched to take care of the glass mess still littering the kitchen floor. Within moments, a ladybug-looking robot scuttled across the floor, opened up a cavity between its body and shell, and began carefully sweeping each glass shard into its trash reservoir.
While the metallic ladybug worked, the lights detected that there was no more human activity in the room and softly faded to yield the room’s illumination solely to the setting sun in the west. When the bug had completed its job, it returned the shards to its home under the cupboard and laid them out once again to figure out which plate had broken.
As the Amazon Replenish scan completed and ordered an overnight replacement plate, the printer in the office running Facebook’s latest Family Newsletter app saw the event broadcast and began crunching for the best puns to put a lighthearted spin on the accident.
Excerpts from this log also appear in the following documents:
- Incident 9352 (“Broken Plate”) time-out context log 2047.
- FBI Piracy Autoflag 12953257 (“Lackey-MJMSI-21735–25304–536”)
- Amazon Replenish order #396 context
- Family Newsletter #83
- Family Newsletter #83 source material aggregate
- Sabrina Lackey character references (age 12)
- Ian Lackey character references (age 8)
- Maximillian Chandler character references (age 9)
- Maximillian Chandler v. U.S. Government, 2079 character background notes [no longer available]
- Lackey Family Kitchen Activity Log
- Kitchen DMS Activity 2915 context
- Ladybug Broombot action log
- 2047 Parental Audit — Lackey
- Electric Savings Report, Sept 2047
- Distributed Pun Cruncher 8DF2CA0 results
