episode_0009
by fnovelpiaThe place we arrived at was MacArthurnald.
Oh… There was a clown holding a hamburger at the door, along with the familiar yellow m on a red background drawn on the sign.
The streets here are very different from the Korea I knew, but who knows the feeling of being glad to see at least one thing I know?
As soon as I got out of the car and saw McArthurnal’s, I ran over to see if it was really the fast food franchise I knew.
that’s right!
It’s this color!
However, I saw several people who looked like customers inside, and there was something like a sharp device on their head like the biobot from earlier.
You say you’re a robot, but you eat food?
As I was watching in amazement, two pretty, well-dressed female biobots stopped eating hamburgers and looked at me, laughing and gesturing.
Is this also a reaction shown by the entered code?
Or is it the result of learning from big data or something?
“He knew where this was and was so excited?”
“Whether you know it well or not, the smell is something kids will like. There is no kid who doesn’t like fast food.”
When I went inside, the future MacArthurnal was a little different from the MacArthurnal I knew.
The pungent smell was still there, and although it seemed like an ordinary fast food restaurant, there was something subtly different about it.
At the counter, a beautiful looking bio bot smiled like a clerk and waited for me to check in.
Nothing changed except from a human to a biobot.
So what was the reason why I perceived that I had changed?
That was because of the helmet and goggles-like items behind the biobot.
There’s even an oxygen tank there…?
There was a set of oxygen tanks that contained sparkling liquids of various colors.
They were all stored in a plastic box, and other than that, the biobot was shown frying potatoes or cooking hamburgers next to it, and other than that box, it was no different from an old fast food restaurant.
What is that?
When I tilted my head, my surroundings turned black.
I felt something blocking me from behind, so I turned around and looked up to see the girl bio bots from earlier.
“Hello? Did you come to eat?”
“Yes.”
I nodded and answered.
According to Jihye’s words, it wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t reply, but it felt like a person to me, and of course, if the other person greeted me kindly, I decided to follow the example of saying hello too.
If it doesn’t matter whether I keep it or not, wouldn’t it be right to keep it?
“You are really cute. Where are your parents? Did you come alone?”
He literally approached me with a friendly look on his face as he saw something really cute.
They seemed very friendly and seemed like they wanted to help.
“No. I came with those people.”
But there was no need for that.
Because I had a guardian.
But I thought that if the city was like this, maybe even if I didn’t meet Jihye and Arin in this world, I might live in abundance, but at least I wouldn’t be hungry.
Biobot said that he always wished he had a younger sibling, but he couldn’t, so he said he was very disappointed and asked if they could take a picture together.
Anyway, there seemed to be no room for misuse of a single photo, so I accepted and we took a normal photo.
“Hey. What are you doing?”
“I want you to take a picture with me.”
“Um… I don’t mind if you want to do that.”
The women waved their hands in greeting, and this woman also waved her hands in greeting.
I felt like I couldn’t just treat the biobots as simple robots.
“Derry Burger Set. Change cola to milkshake. Golden Mozzarella Long Long Stick”
The clerk smiled and asked a question.
“Are you going to make the patty with cultured meat? Or is it natural meat?”
“Natural education.”
Cultured meat?
This place was very different from the Korea I knew.
It looks like adaptation will be difficult for the time being.
“Aren’t you really sick of that?”
Arin was disgusted just by hearing it, and Jihye accepted it as if she didn’t understand.
“What can I say, this is a menu that has been maintained for over 50 years.”
“You must be the person who eats that expensive natural meat the most in Korea.”
“How many people in this country are worried about money right now? At best, they are people who are gradually converting worthless won into dollars in order to immigrate.”
Arin’s menu was a deluxe American cheese burger set.
Now it was my turn, but I couldn’t easily decide on the menu.
Almost all of the menus were new to me, and other than one or two menu items that I had knowledge of, there was almost nothing left.
At least it was the bulgogi burger that Jihye ordered earlier, but I didn’t really want to order it.
People are waiting… I felt a compulsion to do it quickly.
“If you’re worried, think slowly. Anyway, you don’t know anything about the menu here.”
I responded right away to Jihye, who said it was no big deal.
“People are waiting.”
Jihye laughed when she heard that and stroked my head.
“There is no one but us. So, take it slow.”
I looked back at those words.
There was really no one.
Why did I think someone was waiting?
When I looked at the clerk, I saw that he too was waiting casually, with blonde hair that had grown down to his shoulders, as if nothing had happened.
In my memories, Korea was a country where people moved quickly and quickly, but somehow the atmosphere here was very different.
“If it’s okay, may I recommend it? There is a double cheese crispy burger that many children order.”
“Are there any kids who visited here?”
When Ji-hye asked the question in surprise, the clerk corrected her with a slightly embarrassed smile.
“To be exact, it’s a different store. A total of 13,000 children visited all stores across the country this month. Most of the customers are from Seoul.”
“Oh, I’m surprised. Anyway, would you like to try this double cheese crispy burger? There is a picture here.”
The picture of the hamburger that looked like this was definitely appetizing.
However, the price written next to it is 7,000 won, which seems to be the price of a single item, so the 8,900 won next to it must be the price of the set, right?
So what is the identity of the third price?
It was an ambiguous price at 8,000 won.
I pointed at that part with my finger and asked a question.
“What is this?”
“Ah, this is a menu for people who have difficulty smelling or tasting. Even if my baby eats food, if he doesn’t know what it tastes like, he can order this.”
Even after listening to Arin’s explanation, I couldn’t understand it, and I didn’t like it even more because she treated me like a baby.
There was no benefit to me from the time I spent listening, and in fact, it was a loss because it made me feel bad.
“I’m not a baby.”
It was so bumpy that everyone around me laughed and said it was cute.
I couldn’t be convincing in this body, so there was no chance for me to win…
When I expressed with my whole body that I did not understand, a more detailed explanation was provided.
“See those strange machines over there?”
In the direction Jihye was pointing, there were objects that I had been seriously thinking about earlier as to what they were, and I nodded, shaking my head in anticipation of finally being able to find out their identity.
“First, wear those goggles.”
I shook my head.
Basically, you have to listen carefully when someone teaches you.
There are not many people in the world who will kindly make up for your shortcomings.
When someone kindly fills you in, you need to listen seriously.
“Wear a second helmet.”
Boom boom
“Third, put on the oxygen mask-like device attached to the helmet and insert the container containing the glowing liquid into the helmet.”
The clerk said it was for demonstration purposes to show to first-time customers, and gave a demonstration using items he had rummaged around in and pulled out from somewhere.
It looked like an oxygen respirator worn by patients, and the liquid inside the container connected to the helmet began to boil and smoke entered the mouth.
“Then even people who cannot taste taste will be able to taste it.”
Eh?
“What is the principle?”
“You’re fooling your brain. Actually, the goggles and helmet are virtual reality… Ah, this is difficult to explain. It’s a story the child can’t understand.”
It took some time for him to spin me around and explain it to me as if I were a child, but anyway, the goggles and helmet themselves are said to be a virtual reality connector and a machine that uses brain waves.
It is said that virtual reality is not yet at the level of implementing complex things such as games or movies, and when connected, it is only a matter of sitting at an empty table and chair and having the food you entered prepared.
However, because it tricks the brain and affects the senses, when the user picks up a virtual hamburger, a meal’s worth of stored drug is released little by little into the mouth.
Then, the user visually thinks he or she is eating a hamburger, and the drug containing nutrients actually provides nutrients and a feeling of fullness to the body.
It is said that VR technology tricks the brain into thinking it has a sense of taste.
This means that the brain thinks of the taste of a hamburger before losing its sense of taste and mistakenly thinks it is tasting it.
Of course, people who complain of taste problems have different causes, so there are still people who cannot solve the problem with this alone. In the case of people who have completely lost their sense of taste or cases where this alone does not solve the problem, a very specialized and expensive machine must be used, not a simple machine like this. However, most people can taste the taste with just this much.
“I guess you understand… If you find it so interesting, would you like to try this?”
“No, I just want to eat a hamburger.”
Still, wouldn’t it be better to eat a real hamburger?
My memory of hamburgers remained in my mind as a bit bitey and that it was delicious to eat once in a while, but the moment I took a bite, I felt a whole new world pop into my head, and it became difficult to trust my memories anymore.
In fact, most of my memories were similar to this one, but in the end, I felt that there was a big difference in the details, and it has reached a point where I can no longer trust those memories.
I’ll just use it as a reference and now I’ll just have to trust what I’ve experienced.
Chop chop chop
“I’ve never met a kid who doesn’t like hamburgers. Hey, I’ll pretend. You should drink cola too.”
Now that I think about it, I feel like my chest is a little tight.
In times like these, Jihye was a wise person worthy of her name.
As I put my mouth to the straw and took a sip, I realized that even though it had only been a day since I started my life here, I had been living my life really wrong.
A life without cola is… not a life…
Hamburgers… are divine…
This is the path of gastronomy…
My dream might be to be a gourmet…
I heard that being a gourmet is a job that involves traveling around the world, eating delicious food and evaluating it, and it couldn’t be anything other than a really lovely job.
At the moment when I was eating a delicious hamburger, suppressing the desire to explode if I found a restaurant that was not delicious, I heard an interesting conversation.
“Have you applied to be your little brother yet?”
“So… I think it would take too much time to make a younger sibling due to the backlog of applicants right now. I wish it was as cute as before.”
“But you’ve worked hard so far, so everything will work out. What did you write as the reason?”
“It was reported that having a younger sibling can give humans warm feelings.”
“Get someone who is good at writing and try writing it. You can’t write that short.”
Oh?
For a robot, doesn’t the conversation sound like a real person?
If he was truly an emotionless robot, he wouldn’t have talked about wanting to have a younger sibling or anything like that.
If it were a normal person, it wouldn’t have been able to hear those whispers, but this body had an exceptionally good sense of hearing.
I listened closely and overheard the conversation of the people who had taken pictures with me earlier.
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