The Bad Boy Computer Programmer At Wattpad

STARBUCKS (Part 2)

An accidental snicker escaped Amanda's lips. "Designer? Were the coffee beans shaken in maracas by Keebler Elves while prancing around in Jimmy Choos?"

The young Starbuckian pointed to the pastry display. "I'll get the muffin."

"Did you say you wanted Moroccan coffee?" Velma asked. It seemed another one of Amanda's jokes had bit the dust and buried itself--as millions before it had done.

"Actually, I'm looking for something with lots of caffeine--but not coffee or tea." Amanda stuck out her tongue and made a bleh sound. "Coffee and tea are gross."

Velma glanced at a Starbucks sign and playfully drawled, "Girrrrrl?" She chuckled, then added, "You're not from around here, are you?"

"I grew up here."

"And Seattle hasn't kicked you out its borders for not drinking coffee?"

The Starbuckian returned with the muffin. Amanda put her hands in front of her face as though she were praying. "Is there any way you could deliver that muffin to the man at the table over there reading the poop book?"

"The what?" Starbuckian questioned, eyes wide like a deer in headlights.

"Are you trying to make a love connection?" Velma asked with a grin.

"Oh, no!" Amanda waved both hands in the air. "I'm incapable of real life love connections. I'm just replacing a muffin I knocked on the floor. Poop guy would probably feel more at ease if someone besides me delivered it to him."

Velma turned to the Starbuckian. "Why don't you also grab the broom and dustpan, Love." The girl nodded and disappeared into the back room. Since no one else was in line to place an order, Velma rested her forearms and the weight of her upper body on the counter. "Incapable of real life love connections?"

Amanda shrugged her shoulders. "I think it's the Dunbar and Encyclopedia Effect." She scanned the menu again. "Screw it. I'll take a Grande mocha. Just make it extra chocolatey to mask the coffee taste."

"Do you want a hot chocolate instead?"

"I need caffeine!"

"Got it! One chocolatey Grande mocha coming up."

As Velma gathered the supplies to make the mocha, she casually asked, "What's the Dunbar and Encyclopedia Effect?"

Amanda bit her bottom lip, not sure how to explain her self-created concept.

The Dunbar and Encyclopedia Effect was one of Amanda's labels for technology's clusterfucking of humanity. She'd read about a respected anthropologist named Robin Dunbar and his studies on the maximum number of relationships the human brain could process. The result was roughly 150 people. Maximum. In a world where collecting followers, friends and suitable dating prospects by the hundreds and thousands was considered normal; Amanda often wondered how this translated--or how it clusterfucked the population. Had people become a product of virtual operating instead of biological functioning?

The encyclopedia part of Amanda's Dunbar and Encyclopedia Effect referred to the pre-internet days when ignorance was bliss and access to information limited. Although Amanda believed knowledge was power, she often wondered if drowning in infinite knowledge clusterfucked the brain. Personal experience had taught her that absorbing knowledge in every boundless direction only lead to feelings of inadequacy and suffocation. As a result, Amanda rarely took chances in life because she never felt ready or prepared for anything. Her life was a clusterfuck.

Fortunately for Velma, the Dunbar and Encyclopedia Effect was a boring Ted Talk Amanda wasn't in the mood to lecture on. "It's nothing," she said in response to Velma's question about her odd phrase. "Just a silly theory I have about technology separating us more than connecting us."