Your Move

Chapter 11 - Some Things Can't Be Bought

This Robocart thing — that's what the sign on the charging dock called it anyway — is so high-tech. I've seen similar robots being used to make deliveries and shelve books in libraries, but never as grocery carts. This is genius though. You never have to worry about leaving your cart somewhere and having to find it again, or having to push it through a crowd of people... The size of the basket doesn't make sense though... Why is it so small? It certainly wouldn't fit the list of items that Mike mentioned he was buying...

Several store employees greeted us with a smile, but they never offered to help us. Soon, I figured out that only the people with red carts got offered help, and I was sitting in a black one. Apparently, Mike didn't think we needed any help. When we reached the first aisles of items, I noticed something was off immediately.

"Uhh Mike? Why are there only demos of everything and no actual stock?"

"Oh I can just scan the barcode with my cyrano and it'll be added to our virtual cart. We'll pay at checkout and then pick up everything from the dispensary. Here, you wanna help me scan? That should give you something to do other than look around and keep you from being bored to death?" He fished something that looked like a large signet ring out of a pocket and handed it to me.

I took the device from him. It was really light and seemed to be made of plastic. "That is such a brilliant idea!"

I couldn't believe that no one in my dimension had thought of this shopping model before. I never liked online shopping because I couldn't see and feel the actual product. VR previewing was a thing, but that could only go so far. We'd yet to perfect reproducing textures and the feeling of holding a physical sample in your hands with haptic feedback. On the other hand, in-person shopping was slow and frustrating. People spent way too much time getting things off shelves and into their carts, not to mention all the checkout lines.

"I know, right? Best of both worlds." He seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

I twirled the ring around my finger. "Kay, how does this work?"

"Point the lens at a barcode and press on the back — there's a pressure switch under the polycarbonate there. The scanner will vibrate every time it reads the code. If we get two of the same item just scan the same thing twice, and so on; one scan per count."

We reached our first stop in an aisle full of all sorts of different diapers, and Mike tossed me a Frozen-3-themed sample, covered in little snowflakes, Elsas, and Annas. I caught it like a frisbee and brushed my fingers over the fabric of the padding. It felt like I was touching a cloud!

"Whoa, this is so soft! Makes the ones I've been wearing feel like sandpaper."

"MapleLove. It's a Canadian brand, and we tend to do things right, even if we don't really advertise that on the international scene. Scan it twice for two cases for now, eh?" He smiled.

"Kay," I nodded.

"Oh right, what size are you?"

"Err... I'm not sure?"

"Okay, stand up and let me check."

I begrudgingly complied and let him lift my dress up to see. It felt like my wet diaper was exposed for the entire world's viewing pleasure, and I was definitely going to die from embarrassment!

"The princess is of size four," Mike proclaimed in a whisper, chuckling when he saw the color of my face. "What's wong, pwincess don't wike her diapees shown off?"

I whacked his arm. "Not funny, Mike. You try it sometime."

He smirked and handed me another diaper from the same brand. This one was covered in little translucent robot characters that reminded me of EVE from WALL-E. I didn't recognize the characters though, so it was probably a Disney movie from this dimension. Hang on...