The chocolate response
Once, the Green Computer Gremlins only had your number, but now they have your flavor
“No, said Sloth, “not your turn, my turn!” He turned his short green gremlin body to his friend and gestured with finality.
“But I never get good ones!” Hunger wailed, his sad face rolling from left to right and back again. The corners of his pale green mouth drooped and drooled. His eyes teared up, and Sloth stopped arguing to gawk at hm. He was a sight to see, in a brown and grey dust-coloured jumper, with a fuzzy head cover and his own hairy green arms and hands somehow blending in.
Sloth had never seen Hunger this messed up. Sure he argued, but never like this! Young adult Computer Gremlin boys were not given to revealing real emotions. Sloth wanted to believe him, but he was still suspicious.
“Are you pulling my leg?” Sloth demanded, staring at Hunger’s green face as it rolled back and forth, wailing. Hunger stopped and stared back, almost nose to nose.
“I wanna release food scents. I wanna spread them apart so cube human doesn’t notice. Bunch them up so he drools. Stop them as soon as he drools. Wait for a while until he goes back to work, then give him a steady stream of delish smells. And then send the “Cake and Pie Day” email so he bolts for the lunch room.
“Or you can send it. I don’t care. You can do that part. I just wanna do the scents.”
After this unexpectedly long and passionate speech, Hunger wiped his green-lipped mouth and chin with one hairy arm and rubbed his eyes with the other.
Sloth handed him a tissue to blow his nose. “OK. You can do the scents. You sound like you can do it better than me, anyways.” Sloth checked his dull silver wrist watch, worn over his sleek silver bodysuit, over his green body. “It’s time to start.”
“OK” said, Hunger, “But first, thank you my best and almost only friend.” He hugged his shiny buddy, who hugged him back after a slight pause. “We start first warm chocolate smell, just like plan, but less, and in small spurts, for now.”
“Yeah!” said Sloth, and they high-fived with their hairy green hands.
Meanwhile, outside the computer, Rob pounded away on an email about why it would be better to use Python than Make to create a new feature in the build system for the company’s main software product. He stopped, wiped away thoughts of chocolate bars, not much fun for him on a Keto diet anyway, then erased half of the email and explained the change in terms of using a new tool in the Jenkins build system, pipelines.
Rob’s typing slowed as he thought about chocolate mousse. He attributed that to the pun of mouse and mousse, because he didn’t notice the faint intermittent aroma of chocolate that his body was reacting to.
The scents that Hunger released were timed according to the results of months of experiments that no other Gremlin knew about. Those tests were based on further months of reading English-human writings about eating addiction and “neural reactivity to food cues”. The readings and the experiments would continue. Today was the first use of those experimental results.
Sloth did not know that he was witnessing history, he only knew that Hunger acted like he knew what he was doing, and the human was responding.
