Chapter 18

Sally and Otterly slipped into the room, trying not to make any noise. They were trying to settle a bet. It was a simple bet, really. They were betting to see if Otterly’s parents would notice that they were there within five minutes. The reason for the bet was a little more complicated than the assumption that they were not observant. Upon entering the house, Otterly had overheard her parents start one of their infamous discussions that resulted in them being unaware of anyone else.

“What do you want to eat?”

“I don’t know. What’s frozen?”

“Burritos.”

“Not today. How about we send out for Chinese?”

“I’m tired of Chinese.”

Sally was surprised that Otterly’s parents hadn’t yet noticed they were in the room. After all, discussing what to eat didn’t seem like one of those topics that could be all consuming like building a robotic dog or bird.

“How about Indian?”

“I’m tired of delivery food. How about we go somewhere, and eat out?”

“We need to stay around here in case there’s a problem with Otterly.”

Sally looked over at Otterly wondering what kind of problem Otterly might have. She mouthed the word, ‘problem.’ Otterly shrugged her shoulders indicating that she was clueless about any kind of potential problems.

“I wish we had some way of having meals prepared, here.”

“How about we make a robotic chef?”

Sherry and Alex could easily afford to hire a housekeeper/cook, but they weren’t wired that way. To them, it was more logical to build a robotic vacuum cleaner if the carpet needed cleaning, a robotic lawnmower to trim the grass, and a robotic watch dog to ... well ... be a family pet. They were probably the only house in the country that had two dish washing machines, one to hold the dirty dishes and the other to hold the clean dishes. They just did things differently than most people.

“That’s an interesting idea.”

“Just think about it, we could have our own completely computer controlled cooking robot.”

Although it wasn’t stated, both of them were on the same page when it came to what a robotic chef should be able to do. Given a collection of ingredients, it should be able to create servings of whatever could be created from those ingredients. Why should everyone have to eat the same thing, when a robot could create individual servings of whatever someone might want?

“That would be a challenge.”

“Where would we start?”

One might think that such a question would relate to kicking off a new project. After years of working together, that wasn’t an issue. (Gantt Chart? Who needs a frikkin’ Gantt Chart?) They could skip a lot of steps that others would find essential. The whole question of where to start, was much more advanced than that.

“How about ‘breakfast?’”

“That makes sense. Start with the first meal of the day, and work towards a late night snack.”

Having established what they meant by success, it was now a matter of collecting the necessary information to make it a reality.

“Do you know how to cook?”

“Not really. I can do scrambled eggs and pancakes. Do you?”

“No.”

“That’s a problem.”

“Who do we know that knows how to cook?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know! Your mother!”

“My mother hates robots.”

“How about Otterly? She’s always making cookies and hot cocoa with your mother.”

Sally looked over at Otterly, wondering what she thought of this discussion. Otterly rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“That’s an idea. Maybe we could get in a little mother daughter bonding in the laboratory.”

“Your mother would be overjoyed to learn you were learning to cook.”

“We probably shouldn’t call it a laboratory around Otterly. She hates our lab.”

“We’ll call it a prototype kitchen.”

“I like the sound of that.”

By now, Sally and Otterly were having a hard time keeping from laughing. That whole bit about renaming the lab as a prototype kitchen struck both of them as funny.

“We’re going to need stuff to cook with.”

“That’s true. Let’s go to the store and buy stuff.”

“We need to stay around here until Otterly gets home.”

It was obvious to them that Otterly’s parents were not aware that the two girls were even there. Sally handed Otterly a dollar. Otterly silently mouthed, “Told ya’.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

It was hard for Sherry and Alex to sit around and wait once a new idea had latched onto their souls. This was one of those times. It should be noted that this was the kind of project that could last the rest of their lives.

Sure, there are production facilities that make snack foods, canned stews, and frozen dinners. The point is that they are production lines. They crank out one product, with carefully monitored ingredients. To change to a new product, the entire line has to change.

Nothing — absolutely nothing — is as difficult to program as cooking dishes from scratch. To create any dish from basic ingredients, is far tougher than monitoring equipment, updating a database, or signal processing. There are basic cooking activities such as mixing, stirring, and blending and different preparation approaches, such as baking, frying, broiling, and boiling.

The act of preparing the basic ingredients is difficult. Just think of what is required in order to peel a potato, dice an onion, tear apart a head of lettuce, or slice a tomato into quarters. For each of those basic preparation actions, there is a machine or device that can do it, but by the time one gets through the need for all of those machines, it would take a warehouse to hold them all.

The judgment required to know when a sauce has been fully reduced, is not trivial. Cooking involves hundreds of little skills, tricks, and an ability to observe and react to highly nuanced changes in the food as it cooks. How can a program judge when something is finished when the recipe says to bake it in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown? The whole process is not written in concrete.

They may not have known much about cooking, but they did understand the difficulty of creating a robotic chef. It wasn’t the first time they had discussed the matter. It was now likely that it would be the only topic of conversation for a while.

“How will we know what to buy?”

“We don’t have to know. We’ll just buy one of everything.”

“We don’t have to go to a store to do that. We can go to the store’s website.”

“What store?”

“Good question.”

Otterly nudged Sally with an elbow, and then rolled her eyes. She knew that her parents were more than familiar with stores that sold kitchen equipment. That was one of their favorite places to go, to find new gadgets to take apart.

“Otterly?”

Surprised, Otterly responded, “Huh?”

“Give Sally her dollar back. You owe her a dollar. We knew you were there the whole time.”

“Arrgh!”

Sally grinned and held out her hand. Otterly handed over two dollars.

“Sally? Would you like some cookies? We have the store bought ones you like so much.”

Sally said, “Your parents are so cool.”

“We’ll see just how cool they are in a minute,” Otterly said.

Returning from the kitchen, Sherry was carrying a bag of soft, store bought, chocolate chip cookies. She put it on the table in front of Sally. She said, “I bought your favorite kind.”

“Thanks, Dr. Cage,” Sally said.

“Would you like some milk with that?” Sherry asked.

“Yes.”

It was a minute later when Sherry returned with two glasses of milk. She set one in front of Sally, and the other in front of Otterly. Sally already had the bag of cookies open and had a pile of cookies in front of her.

“Enjoy your milk and cookies, girls. We’ll be out in the lab if you need us.”

“Mom,” Otterly said.

Sherry stopped and looked back at Otterly. “What?”

“I thought I would let you know what I want for my next birthday,” Otterly said.

Sherry and Alex looked at each other somewhat surprised. Alex signed at the camera. Secretary stated the current date.

Alex said, “Otterly. Your birthday isn’t for another six months.”

“I thought you might need some extra time to get this present,” Otterly said.

Sherry suddenly looked very happy. Extra time to get a present suggested that it was something they would have to build. She asked, “Do you want your own Digit? Or maybe your own Owl?”

“No, Mom.”

“Oh,” Sherry said obviously disappointed. “What do you want?”

“A Mustang.”

Apologetically, Alex said, “We can’t do that honey. The backyard is too small for a horse.”

Sally and Otterly looked at each other in surprise. They hadn’t expected that for an answer.

Otterly said, “Not that kind of Mustang.”

“Do you want a robotic horse?” Sherry asked hopefully.