“Honey, what should we print for dinner?”
Snapper opened the cupboard and perused the options while waiting for a reply. A row of jars filled with muted colored powders and pellets lined the shelves. He picked up a jar containing a moss colored, chalky substance simply labeled “greens“.
Snapper’s brain hurt from analyzing emoji all day. Last week Mayor Peebles had been charged with having sexual relations with several of the young summer interns. Snapper had the unenviable task of sifting through thousands of text messages, emails, and social media conversations between the Mayor and his support staff. He felt a small surge of pride thinking about how clever he felt after discovering the hidden meaning in messages containing a panda head, a rainbow, and an eggplant. Totally scandalous!
Having graduated with a psychology degree, Snapper never imagined that he would make money as an interpretive emoji specialist. While getting his degree he had nearly failed a course in Verbal Communication Skills. Only in the last two weeks of the term had he finally learned to ask his questions out loud. Normally he submitted his questions electronically during lecture where they appeared on the class feed projected near the professor.
Analyzing emoji was perfect for Snapper, as that had been his primary mode of communication for over two decades. Real words were reserved for school work, or maybe if something extreme happened. Otherwise Snapper felt emoji was sufficient to express what he was experiencing 90% of the time.
Printed and spoken words just got in the way, as far as Snapper was concerned, especially when he had to use punctuation. Even now, he was still waiting for a reply. He should’ve just sent a message to his partner lounging in the next room.
His forearm started to tingle. He looked at the emoji projected onto his SmartScreen:
Snapper selected an array of jars: solids, chix, greens, podado, and fats. He carefully poured solids into three of the printer’s chambers before topping each one off with the appropriate powder. He set the chix chamber to MEAT TEXTURE and the shape to DRUMSTICK. The weary face emoji could only mean one thing, a bad day at the office. The kind of problem a supplemental fat infusion could solve. He added two handfuls of fats pellets into the auxiliary compartment.
He pressed start and poured himself a cocktail while dinner printed.
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