Chapter 283: 284: Automat

“I dunno,” says Jubilee as Fresh fiddles around with the large, metal-sheeted construction. “This seems fucky to me,” they say. “Shamrock?”

Shamrock stares from the side, looking down towards Fresh. The man shrugs. “Less weight is good.”

“Mm,” nods Fresh in agreement. With Basil out of commission for a while, they need all of the help that they can get. Sure, they could hire a new employee to just run the store. Their downstairs area is far less suspicious than it was in some of their previous ventures. But they all voted against it, all of them for their own, arbitrary reasons, some of which were more nonsensical than others. Fresh simply didn’t want Basil to feel like she was being so easily replaced. Jubilee just didn’t want to pay anyone extra, simply telling her that she’s just going to have to cover Basil’s work herself, in addition to her own.

Deciding that this wouldn’t be a productive or even enjoyable way to live her life, Fresh has started on her next idea.

“Hand me that metal rack there, please,” she asks Jubilee, pointing at the little spool she had already made out of some small, iron rods she had fused together. Jubilee picks the odd, spring-like thing up and hands it to her.

It is early in the morning of the next day. Basil is still more or less out of it. Breakfast wasn’t really enjoyable today, despite Jubilee being on egg-duty. They didn’t seem to have the same fire to them as they always did. The eggs that is, not Jubilee. Fresh sighs. She supposes Jubilee is just worried about Basil.

Taking the spool, she slides it into place, together with the rest of them. The construction is simple, but effective. Or at least it will be, when it’s done. Which she hopes is before they open. If it even keeps one customer out of the door and away from the counter, it will have been worth the effort on her part. She supposes that this is her way of making it up to the others.

Latching the little chain in the back in place, she nods, satisfied. “Shamrock, can you help me get this upright, please?” she asks and the man obliges, lifting the cabinet upright onto its feet.

She smiles, looking at the odd thing. It’s an open-faced cabinet with eight different shelves.

“So?” asks Jubilee.

“So, uh…” Fresh thinks for a second. “I think it’s just about done.”

“You think it’s just about done?” asks Jubilee skeptically. “Shouldn’t you be the one who knows if it’s done or not?”

Fresh shrugs. “Making art is a process, Jubilee.”

“It’s not art,” they sigh, looking at the wooden cabinet, clad in a thin layer of sheet metal. “It’s a monstrosity,” states Jubilee, poking around at the inner crystal-drakonium lining.

“It’s convenient!” she argues, giving Jubilee her coin to hold. “Here, wait.” She picks up one of the glass box-containers. It looks like the kind she had made for their food-storage, back in the north. On the front is a simple latch, with a slot in the top. Fresh holds it down to Jubilee. “Just put the coin in here and turn it,” she instructs, tapping the lock with her finger.

Jubilee raises an eyebrow and slides the coin into the mechanism, turning it. The coin rattles down a little chute, falling to the floor and the door to the container opens up wide. “Huh…” says Jubilee, looking at the thing. “Interesting,” they say, but they don’t exactly sound like they mean it.

“It is, Jubilee!” says Fresh, taking the box back and stacking it inside of the shelf, together with the rest of them. “We can just fill these up with different snacks or lunches,” she explains. “Then people can buy them outside without having to stand in line!”

“But someone still has to restock them,” says Jubilee. “If each box holds one thing, then there are… what, thirty-two boxes in the cabinet?”

“Mm!” nods Fresh. “That’s fine. That’s a lot of stuff and restocking the cabinet once is still easier than dealing with thirty-two people at the counter, right?” she asks. Grabbing some cooling beads, she sets them into the mechanism, beneath the upper lid of the cabinet.

Jubilee rubs their chin, thinking. “And the money?”

Fresh bends down, pointing at a little drawer. “It all falls down here,” she says, pulling it out and sliding it back in.

“It needs a lock.”

“Mm,” nods Fresh. She thinks that she’s able to do that.

“Will it be ready in an hour?” asks Jubilee, looking out of the window.

Fresh nods, turning her gaze to look at Basil’s bed. “It will!”

An hour passes and, as fortune would have it, the ‘automat’ is done. She recalls this principle from her old life, actually. While of course, she would have rather made a classical ‘vending machine’ type construction, that would require mechanical knowledge that she just doesn’t possess. But this is essentially the same thing, just far older and more crude. But it works and that’s all that matters.

A big limiter is that she doesn’t know how to make a coin-counting mechanism. So they opt to make the shelves with different pricing, based on the denominations of single coins. So the eye-level shelves all cost a single one-hundred Obol coin. The lower and higher ones cost fifty and then the lowest ones cost twenty Obols each. Since their snacks are ready-made and packed, putting things into the cabinet is easy enough and they opt for a varied combination of food and drinks.

Shamrock has the job of lugging the thing not only downstairs, but out of the door. It stands on the downstairs patio. When one leaves their front door, it’s directly to the left and the ice-cream window to the right. This has the added advantage that people passing down the staircase could also just take a single step to the side and buy something from them with no added hassle.

The last step is to make a small sign with the instructions, which she asks Shamrock to do, while she gets the ice-cream ready for today.

“So what do you think that thing was?” asks Fresh. They still have ten minutes to go before opening. “The thing I saw in the dungeon.”

“There’s all kinds of fucky things in dungeons,” says Jubilee, adjusting their mask. Fresh bends down, tucking in a strand of hair that was sticking out into their hood. “Gods know what kind of freaky shit is down there. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t you think we should be worried?” asks Fresh. “I mean, it knew about me, sort of.”

Jubilee crosses their arms, leaning back against the counter and thinking. “This might be something Basil can tell you more about,” says Jubilee. “Dungeon-lore is her territory,” says Jubilee. “There’s a whole bunch of religious bullshit there, don’t even get me started.” Jubilee looks around the store.

“Mm,” says Fresh, looking as Shamrock comes back inside.

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“Done.”

“Should we open early?” asks Jubilee, nodding to the giant.

“Should we?” asks Fresh.

Jubilee looks back at her. “I don’t feel like standing here and waiting,” they say.

“You’re really worried, huh? You wanna go check on Basil before we start, Jubilee?” asks Fresh.

Jubilee rolls their eyes. “Do I sound worried? We’ve replaced Basil with a box. Her spirit can move on now for all I care.”

Fresh nods, understanding as she grabs the shutters. “Don’t worry Jubilee, I’m sure she’ll be better soon!”

The day that comes to follow is exactly as horrifically busy as they had feared it would be. It’s as if the universe had been listening in on them and had just been waiting all the while with glee in its eyes, for the tide of people to wash towards their door.

The automat is, in principle, a big success. Fresh is stuck on the ice-cream window all day, so she never really has time to check on it. But from what she can see out of the corner of her eyes, through the window, is that it is working well. Shamrock seems to have made a good sign and adventurers, being naturally curious about such things, took an instant liking to it.

Not everyone wants to go inside after all and some people are just waiting on their friends to get ice-cream or whatever it is they need, so while they wait outside, more than one person ends up grabbing a bottle from the thing. The same could be said of those who stand in fearful awe of the line outside of the window. They also find some solace in the new thing, simply bypassing the line entirely to grab a simple drink or a quick meal.

Shamrock is in charge of restocking the automat, but he only has to make two runs to do so as the shelves seem to be moving at different speeds. The cheapest ones obviously go much faster, but they do also sell two large shelves worth of snacks as well.

By the time that the sun runs out of energy for the day, the three of them do the same and fall down to the ground, exhausted.

Shamrock’s mood is brightened however by the snack that Fresh offers him and Jubilee’s mood is made better by the full box of clinking coins that Shamrock lays down at their feet, from the automat. Fresh meanwhile, finds renewed joy and energy as she hears Basil calling from upstairs.

Razmatazz

Automats are cool. The past had a lot of cool stuff. There's a trivia here somewhere, but it's hardly worth the effort so I won't spoiler it.

Essentially, the word Automat, as you can guess, stems from the word automaton from ancient Greek mythology. Automatons were essentially statue of people, animals or monsters that were made by the god of metalworking, Hephaestus. Though, a few of them were also made by the famed divine craftsman Daedalus. 

If you've ever seen the name 'Talos' used in modern pop-culture, he was one of the automatons. He was the bodyguard for Europa.

In short, there is no automat mythology that I know of, but a lot of background information. Unless somebody has a good haunted diner story to share. =)

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