#71: Grocery Tag

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Cody, Tommy, Sally, Carl and a dozen other young kids tele-operated drones that swam wildly thru the submerged Distribution Centers and various food warehouses. Every time they passed a pallet, be it in the racks or anywhere else, they zapped it. It was a game. They had divided the DC into sectors and whoever finished tagging all of the pallets in their sector first, won.

Won what?

Who cared. They won. That was enough. Perhaps they could convince a mommy to provide ice cream or cookies as a reward.

Some of the kids were in the Banana Slug. Many were in the different farm islands. Kids caught on fast to the new tech and were all tele-operating robot zappers in the submerged WoolyWurld Distribution Center in no time. A kid couldn’t get hurt in Virtual Reality so their parents let them run Amok. That was just fine. There were safeguards.

Besides that it was fun.

When they finished they scampered off to do something else. Their minds roamed free in virtual reality. Their bodies were safe at home. It was a win-win situation for everyone.

.....
Gustav was operating the new inventory control center in the Banana Slug that day. He noted that the DC had been successfully zapped. He uploaded the data into the DataBase and forgot about it.

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The Bottom Feeders Fed.

  

SSmoke Robot Catfish and other BottomFeeders ranging in size from tiny to huge patrolled the river and the immediate floodplains in an expanding spiral looking for carbon.

No other Floodwaters in history had ever been so clean.

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“Honey” Sherry said to Melton, her husband “I’m making a run to the WoolyWurld Distribution Center. Do you want anything in particular?”

“Beer.” Weldon said without even thinking. He liked beer but he couldn't’ see how anyone could drink that 'Oil Change' Stuff. He preferred his beer to be a lot less strong. He was deep into VR scanning the MagLib. There was so MUCH new information. He wanted to be better versed in the capacities of this new technology before he made a move. “You might stock up on Coffee come to think. Best glom onto a supply. I don’t know how soon it will be before anyone figures out how to grow it, if ever”

“Yes dear.” Sherry settled into her recliner. It was handy when she was using the VR function. Instantly her consciousness was transported via the magic of Quantum Entanglement Communication into a Kraken-Kart in the DC. She prowled through the submerged aisles looking for bargains. (Old ways of thinking die hard.)

The Kraken format had worked so well as a general purpose remote that Chad had fabbed a bunch of them of various sizes and of several varieties. The KrakenKart she was using looked like the illegitimate love-child of a squid and a shopping cart. Several had been stationed in the DC and other submerged warehouses, for those who needed to go gathering ......er....that is....shopping.

The Kraken swam slowly down an aisle. Sherry had a little list. This DC was bulk products only. The flooded warehouse interior was rack on rack three levels tall, of palletized material. She was in the dry food area. Sherry had no desire for anything other than food. The SSmoke was taking care of most their needs, wants and wishes except for nutrition. Unknown to her, other’s agreed. In different parts of the warehouse. Kraken-feeders were removing and converting ‘not-food’ to SSmoke.

The Kraken-cart stopped in front of one of the storage units. It was almost as maneuverable as a cuttlefish. One of it’s two long front tentacles penetrated the SSmoke water barrier that had been installed by the children’s zappers. It selected a case of the intended food stuff. In this instance it was canned Tuna.

When the children had played their game earlier and zapped everything, the SSmoke ZapBall had preformed numerous functions. Some of those functions had dealt with the data base, some of the other functions it had dealt with was product preservation. The zap ball was composed of trillions of motes. They had been programmed to exclude all the water from around the product. The salvaged products were sitting in a bubble of inert gas, dry as a bone. The SSmoke membrane enclosure was keyed so that only a Kraken Tentacle could penetrate. The tentacle could then remove content. No water came in when it did so.

The tentacle removed the selected item and tossed it into it’s basket, then moved on. Soon enough they were both loaded. She had two of the tentacular robots working at the same time since no one else was shopping that day. The pair of cybernetic squid left the DC and swam to their boat. She and Lucy unloaded them quickly then sent them back to the DC for someone else to use.

They were sort of like long range autonomous shopping carts.

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The Next Episode Is
#72: Grain Elevator…
The Previous Episode was
#70: The Ship Comes in…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
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Book One: SoulStone
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