Chapter 222 Melancholy
Mai Mai is a vending machine, or rather, from the looks of it, it looks like a vending machine.
In fact, Mai Mai is not a vending machine produced in Lola.
To be more specific, Mai Mai is a robot with autonomous thinking ability from the Tianyunying galaxy foundry. It is worth mentioning that it is an old model that has been eliminated by the Milky Way. Although Mai Mai does not want to admit this.
Mai Mai still remembers the day when she boarded the Tongue of the Star Sand. It all happened a long time ago. A total of 1,024 MTA robots were produced in that batch, and only Mai Mai (at that time it was still called MTA-R-07-521) was selected. Later, Mai Mai's number was clearly listed in the purchase list of the military procurement department.
The news spread quickly in the foundry, and the foundry craftsmen were all excited about it. This was undoubtedly a supreme honor. The Star Sands Whisper was one of the few most glorious ships in the galaxy. All foundries in the galaxy hoped that their products would be selected, and Mai Mai had achieved this honor.
So, amid the cheers of the foundry craftsmen, the brand new Maimai was sent on board. Its creator, the father and mother recognized by intelligent life, left the foundry code on its body. They wrote the instinct of obedience and loyalty into Maimai's code. They firmly believed that in the future Maimai would follow this glorious starship and bring the name of Tianyunying Foundry to all parts of the galaxy. But the fact is that Maimai is just a small office robot on the Star Sand Voice.
No one will pay attention to which factory a clerical robot responsible for serving drinks and snacks comes from.
After serving for many years, Mai Mai, as an old model robot, was naturally eliminated and laid off. It was taken over by Sergeant Wen De. Originally, Mai Mai would be sent back to the factory for refurbishment or dismantling and recycling like most eliminated robots, but due to some accidents, Mai Mai accidentally came here and was forgotten in this remote place isolated from interstellar civilization.
At first, Mai Mai waited quietly in the warehouse, but a sudden earthquake caused the warehouse to collapse. When Mai Mai walked out of the collapsed warehouse and stood on the street to absorb the sun's energy, several students passed by him and stopped to poke his body.
“Vending machines?” a student said.
"It looks broken." Another student kicked it.
I have no damage.
I can still serve.
From that day on, in order to prove that it was not damaged, Mai Mai seriously became a local vending machine. This was no different from the duties it performed on the starship in the past. The only difference was that the goods had to be exchanged for local goods, and the target was also local residents.
So Mai Mai sneaked into a local supermarket to buy goods.Every time he saw customers successfully pay for their products with the machine, Mai Mai felt that his new career as a machine was continuing.
No matter where he is, Mai Mai is an excellent robot that lives up to the name of Tianyunying Foundry.
Now, Mai Mai is standing at a street corner, waiting for customers to come.
For Mai Mai, standing quietly is not boring. The planet has abundant sunlight, and absorbing light energy during the day is like the ultimate gluttonous enjoyment. At night, it will automatically clean up its own programs and remove redundant junk codes. Mai Mai is a vending robot with good habits, which makes it run smoothly even though it is an outdated old model.
An intellectual woman wearing glasses stopped in front of Mai Mai, selected a bottle of grapefruit tea, and pressed a button on the screen.
The grapefruit tea rolled out and landed in the delivery port.
She bent over to get the grapefruit tea.
She was a frequent customer of Mai Mai. Her name was Li Xinyi. She was a university teacher and lived in the neighborhood around the street corner. Mai Mai also knew that her daughter was called Rourou, a lovely middle school student. Mai Mai thought she was a good customer because her movements were always gentle and she bought things very quickly. She was never like some young intellectuals who were strong and heavy and sometimes kicked things. When she touched him just now, Mai Mai felt that her hands were frozen. For this reason, Mai Mai specially adjusted the temperature of the grapefruit tea to the most suitable temperature before rolling it out for her.
The moment she picked up the grapefruit tea, she felt the warmth and couldn't help but smile. She held the grapefruit tea in her hands to keep warm and left.
At around five o'clock, a middle-aged couple walked past Mai Mai carrying shopping bags. The man paused for dozens of seconds before walking past Mai Mai. His wife immediately shouted, "What are you looking at? The things in this vending machine are the most expensive. They are just trying to make money."
The man shrank his head and quickly followed his wife. The couple were also residents in the community. The man's surname was Zheng, and everyone called him Lao Zheng. According to the community's view, Lao Zheng was a weak henpecked husband. As long as his wife Tan Mei raised her voice, Lao Zheng would give in. But in fact, the two had a big quarrel every three days and a small quarrel every two days, but it was just that his wife Tan Mei's voice was louder and Lao Zheng's voice was quieter. Every time Tan Mei wanted to stop, Lao Zheng could always use a short and harsh word to make his wife jump up three feet in anger and her loud voice could float three miles away. At this time, the residents in the community would think that the female demon was angry again, and lamented that the husband's authority was not strong.
Every time Lao Zheng and Qin Mei quarreled, Mai Mai, who was outside the community, heard it clearly. In its opinion, both sides of the couple had the responsibility for communication skills, which was a common problem in conflicts among Homo sapiens. This was not because the robot was keen on gossip, but because its sound wave receiving ability was extremely excellent .
In the past, when it was on the Star Sand Voice, Mai Mai was not only an ordinary automatic snack and beverage vending machine, but also had the task of monitoring and recording the private conversations of the crew. Some recordings of the conversations of the Star Sand Voice crew are still preserved in its storage area. Some crew members later learned about Mai Mai's purpose, and since then they have never approached or used Mai Mai again. For many years, Mai Mai has always believed that it was the aging of its functions that made the crew feel inconvenienced, which led to its fate of being eliminated later. After Lola became a local vending machine, it had more and more regular customers, and Mai Mai finally regained some affirmation of its own functions.
…
The time was six fifteen.
Mai Mai knew he was coming.
He is a middle school student named Choi Ming-chi.
Sure enough, he appeared at the intersection on time again.
He lowered his head, kicked a stone away listlessly, and walked to Mai Mai.
Mai Mai knew he would definitely order a bottle of white peach flavored soda.
Since the middle school student had his winter break, he would stand in front of the vending machine almost every day to buy drinks and food. For a while, he always bought instant noodles in front of the vending machine, but after the winter break, he bought white peach soda. Mai Mai wanted to give this underage Homo sapiens creature some advice from the perspective of human physiological health, but vending machines are not allowed to talk to customers.
Maimai heard the residents in the community whispering about the boy and knew about Choi Mingzhi's situation.
His father remarried, and he has a stepmother and a younger brother. But now his father took his stepmother and younger brother to travel abroad, leaving Cui Mingzhi behind in China. His aunt wanted to take him to her house for dinner, but he refused. At first he was eating instant noodles, but later the neighborhood committee noticed that no one in the boy's family cooked, so they invited him to eat in the community cafeteria. So Cui Mingzhi stopped buying instant noodles for a long time and instead bought drinks and snacks from Mai Mai. Every time he came, he would buy white peach soda.
Maimai directly rolled out the white peach sparkling water, and then he saw the surprised expression on the boy's face.
For robots, the emotions of intelligent creatures are very interesting expressions. They go beyond language and can express their moods simply by controlling the subtle fluctuations of the facial skin.
At this moment, Mai Mai understood Cui Mingzhi's mood. His face was full of doubts.
Cui Mingzhi did not choose white peach sparkling soda water just now, but chose Wanglaoji herbal tea.
Choi Ming-chi stared blankly at the bottle of white peach soda at the delivery counter.
Mai Mai: ...
Mai Mai rolled out the Wanglaoji herbal tea.
In order to make up for his mistake, Mai Mai released another bottle of fresh fruit vitamin C drink.
Because in Mai Mai's eyes, this middle school student's body needs to take in the necessary vitamin C.
The fresh fruit vitamin C drink rolled out and was shaken in the delivery port.
Cui Mingzhi: “…”
He only took the Wanglaoji herbal tea and turned away .
A bottle of white peach soda and a bottle of fresh fruit vitamin C were left at the pickup port.
The fluctuations of electromagnetic induction oscillate in Maimai's circuit.
It can read Choi Ming-chi's expression when he left. The boy's face was filled with the thought, "Is this machine broken? It's better not to take advantage of such a small advantage."
This cognition put Mai Mai's internal circuit in an extremely unstable state of fluctuation. It began to clean up its own program again and remove redundant information. When this behavior was repeated for the twelfth time, Mai Mai realized that it really cared about whether it was damaged.
And it also hopes that the boy can realize that his skills have not deteriorated due to old age or anything like that.
The electricity buzzed unsteadily within its body, and Mai Mai thought this could be called melancholy.
Choi Ming-chi returned home.
He turned the key in the door and switched on the light.
The house was empty as usual.
This was a matter of course. His father, his stepmother, and his younger brother Yiyang were all gone.
The room was full of garbage and lunch boxes, and Choi Ming-chi was too lazy to clean it.
He came to the living room, where a photo of his father was placed on the coffee table. In front of the photo frame was a box of pickled fish fillet, a box of braised lion's head, and a box of fried asparagus. These were his father's favorite dishes in the past. He placed the Wanglaoji herbal tea next to the takeaway box. His father didn't drink alcohol or beverages, and he only drank herbal tea when he went to a restaurant. Cui Mingzhi remembered it very clearly.
"Happy birthday, Dad," he said to the empty living room.
Not long ago, the moth that represented his father kicked its legs and died. The younger moth died as soon as it emerged from its cocoon, but the stepmother moth held on for quite a while, laying eggs the size of half a sheet of paper before it died.
Now he is the only one left in this family.
Cui Mingzhi looked melancholy at the egg-laying paper in the box on the table, which was covered with hundreds of eggs. They were yellow when they were first laid, but now they have turned black. According to the information he found on the Internet, if he wants to overwinter, he should now seal all the silkworm eggs and put them in the refrigerator at about 5 degrees Celsius.
He stood up and stuffed all of his unborn half-siblings in the box into the refrigerator.
To be honest, he was not mentally prepared at all for the birth of more than 400 brothers and sisters.
