Scifi Motherlode

The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake-1

The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack CakeFirst off, it’s important you know that snack cakes do not feel guilt. That is why, even with the corpse of my lover here before me, all I can think of is finding someone else to take me in. To eat me. Fulfill me.

Love me.

It is my nature and purpose. It is the only reason I was created. It is why, even as the pungent smells of my lover’s decomposing body reach the rudimentary olfactory cells in my ultrachocolate frosting, I softly whistle my lilting mating call, casting about for a new precious soul mate to embrace me gently with supple fingers and raise me toward the blissful warmth and moisture of the glistening portal all pink flesh and bright white teeth and then when I cannot stand the anticipation a single moment more BITE DOWN and grant me the blinding wild release I have craved for as long as I can remember.

Oh PLEASE someone find me here and eat me! I have been created with cutting edge late-21st century biobaking technology to grant you the ultimate sweet eating euphoria. Pay no attention to the woman on the floor, or at least give me a chance to PLEASE you before you tend to her. You won’t be sorry.

She is no one important. She means nothing to me.

She is just a pick-up that didn’t work out. You know how these things go.

As soon as she walked into Shangri-La, the supermarket where we met, the store told me her name. Lynda McVicker.

It told me everything I needed to know about her, too, and then some. Like all customers these days, her spending habits are logged on the worldwide Shopnet computer network, accessible to smart goods like me once the in-store grid pings her subcutaneous identichip.

Right away, I knew she was the one for me.

Based on her purchases over the past three weeks, she did not look like a suitable match. She had bought nothing in three weeks but produce and low-fat or no-fat foods. Not a single scrap of junk food. On top of that, she had purchased diet books, workout clothes, and a yearlong membership to a gym, all within the last three weeks.

But OH when I went back further, I could see how PERFECT she really was. I can tell you from personal experience in this particular case that true love DOES exist.

For her entire adolescent and adult life up until three weeks ago, Lynda had been the queen of junk food. Aside from the briefest blips of non-junk spending due to occasional failed diets, she had purchased only the most fattening, high-cholesterol, chemical-soaked foods available from grocery stores, restaurants, vending machines, and mail order websites.

In short, she was the perfect woman. Though she was on a diet that day, she had eaten non-nutritious foods in great quantities all her life. Though her last purchases had been salad greens and bottled water, her 225-pound body told the true story.

I knew she was just waiting for someone like me to come along.

As she made her way across Shangri-La, I followed her progress via Store’s buyspy grid and made myself ready for our encounter. I was determined to make our first meeting perfect in every way.

Researching her preferences via Shopnet, I found that she most often bought products with predominantly blue and gold packaging...so I shifted the chameleonic inks of my wrapper from red and white to blue and gold. Discovering that she favored darker chocolates over lighter ones, I manipulated my own coloration, shifting the milky browns of my ultrachocolate frosting and cake to deeper, fudgier hues.

As Lynda lingered in the produce aisle, sullenly tucking genetically modified hypertasty carrots and cucumbers in her hovercart, I requested a rearrange from the shelving. When Store agreed I had the best chance of the snack cake varieties in the display to make a sale to Lynda, clacking pincers dropped from the underside of the shelf above me and moved me from the middle rows of the display to the front. The position of the entire shelf changed, too, rising up to Lynda’s eye level and pushing out a few extra inches into the aisle.

There was no way she would miss me now...and no way she could resist me, once I started pouring on the charm.

At least, that was what I thought before she walked right on past my aisle.

To say I was disappointed when Lynda steered her hovercart away from the cookie and snack cake aisle would be a tremendous understatement.

There I sat, looking fabulous, dreaming of the love of lips and teeth and tongue I craved above all else...and Lynda didn’t even come down my aisle. Via Store’s buyspy, I watched as she pushed on by, pausing at an endcap display to listen to cereal boxes calling out to her before she turned down the next aisle and kept going.

For an instant, I panicked, fearing I had missed my chance at meeting the woman of my dreams. My baked-in mind (consisting of a matrix of precision-engineered and digestible protein molecules) was thrown into a state of confusion.

Then, I pulled myself together and pinged Store, determined not to give up so easily. From the memory my makers had given me, I knew that the path to true love is not always smooth, and that anything worth having is worth working for.

Though Store was skeptical, already having shunted processing power away from the quadrants Lynda had passed through or missed, he agreed to give me a chance with some guided couponing. According to Lynda’s past activity in this and other shopping facilities, she might respond favorably to a strategically placed offer.

When she was midway up the next aisle, Store flashed a message on the organic LED screen implanted in the palm of her hand: "Save one credit on Sea Sprite plankton snacks in Aisle 5!"

I thought it was the perfect bait, since Sea Sprite plankton snacks were among the items Lynda had been buying most often since starting her diet three weeks ago. Though Sea Sprite products usually were displayed in Aisle 8, Store had already diverted a batch of them via the underfloor realignment system to a niche on a shelf right across from me in Aisle 5.

Thanking Store for his help, I focused on buyspy, nervously watching as Lynda stared at her palm screen. She read the text message from Store, then looked away, distracted by the cries of products on the shelves around her.

But then, thankfully, she looked back. From twenty different spycam angles, I watched as she raised her eyebrows and nodded...then directed her hovercart to head for the end of the aisle and turn left.

Toward my aisle. Finally, she was coming closer. We were about to meet.

Joyfully, I added a final touch to spruce myself up for her: in the looping thread of white icing on my fudge-frosted face, I wrote her first name in neat, cursive lettering.

I personalized myself so there could be no doubt whatsoever that we were truly meant for each other.

Snack cakes like me have a supercreamy center, not a heart...but if I had had a heart that day, it would have been pounding like crazy as Lynda moved down my aisle. My baked-in mind was focused entirely on one thought alone: I LOVED HER. Every atom of my being was consumed with a single imperative desire: that LYNDA would BUY me and DEVOUR ME.

I LONGED for her credit chip to transfer funds into the accounts of my manufacturer. I YEARNED to feel her pudgy fingers TEAR OFF my wrapper and close around me, THRUSTING me toward the sweetest fate that I could ever DREAM of, the ECSTASY and INTIMACY that occurs when TWO become ONE.

If only if only if only she would have me she would TAKE me.

She drew closer.

On both sides of the aisle, cookies and snack cakes cried out to her, a hundred different suitors trying to intercept her with songs and lies and promises. Twice, packages leaped off the shelves into her hovercart, but she spotted them and stuffed them back in their displays. A bag of Stimchoc Thrillchip Omegawafers used a stealthier tactic, sliding off a rack and clinging to her sweatpants with a light static charge...but she caught that one, too, and peeled it right off.

Then, having made it through the gauntlet, she pulled up right in front of me. Her broad backside was turned to me, as she was looking at the Sea Sprite display across the aisle...but finally finally finally she was THERE she was CLOSE TO ME.

I had a chance. It would be tricky, overcoming her willpower, getting her to TAKE ME in spite of her diet after she had passed so many others by, but I KNEW it could be done. I KNEW I was special and had the power and desire to win her over.

I knew that true love would win out.

I began my approach gently, knowing that she had been burned before. Noise and aggressiveness would not work with her; what she needed was kindness and understanding.

Activating my sound chip (protein-based and digestible like my mind), I cast a beam of hypersound in her direction, a focused signal meant for her ears only.

Though I was bursting with eager excitement, I kept my voice soft and controlled for her. From mining her records on Shopnet, I knew she had responded best in past shopping events to a steady male voice of moderate depth, and I shaped my voice accordingly.

"Hello," I said to her, secretly thrilled to be speaking at last into the beautiful shell of her ear...the ear that was so gloriously CLOSE to her wet, red LIPS. "Hello, Lynda."

Lynda looked around, searching for the source of the voice, a voice so unlike the shrill, artless cries of the other products around her.

"Over here," I said, using the luminescent molecules in my frosting to make myself glow softly. "My name is Smidgen. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lynda."

The moment she laid eyes on me, I exulted. There it was, as plain as the label on my wrapper, laid out in bright relief before the optical cells baked into my body: a longing for me just as strong and perfect as mine for her.

Still, I could see that she would not give her love easily. As quickly as the passion flared on her face, it was gone, slammed away behind a cold, bleak wall of denial. Her desire to resist temptation had come between us, threatening to prevent the happiness we deserved.

Fortunately for us both, this resistance only made me more determined to bring us together.

"Don’t bother me," said Lynda, staring at me with a look of disgust that I knew barely concealed her true attraction. "I’m on a diet."

"I hope you won’t mind my saying so, Lynda," I said softly, "but you certainly don’t look like you need to be dieting."

"What do you know?" Lynda said sharply. "You’re just a snack cake."

"Actually," I said, "I’m a Supercreamy Double Ultrachocolate Deluxe Smidgen. I have a level seven digestible artificial intelligence, free will enabled, and I can tell you that in my opinion, you don’t need to be on a diet."

Briefly, a look of appreciation flashed in her eyes...then was gone, replaced by cynical rejection. "Nice try," she said coldly. "You’d say anything to get me to buy you."

"I understand why you might think that," I said, "but I’m not like other snack foods. My compliment was sincere, Lynda."

"If you don’t think I’m fat," she said sarcastically, "then you’re dumber than any snack food I’ve ever met."

With that, she turned away, back to the Sea Sprite display. I worried that I had lost her then, that our love was not to be...but she took just enough time picking out her packet of plankton snacks that I thought I might still have a chance. She wasn’t rushing off; though she seemed unmoved on the surface, a conflict was raging inside between her need to lose weight and her need for me.

Her need for pleasure.

Quickly, I gathered my resources for another attempt at breaking through her defenses. While her back was turned, I freshened the color of my frosting and cake, brightened my glow, pumped up my ultrachocolatey aroma, and got Store to nudge my display shelf just one more inch out into the aisle.