The Robot Translator (Flash Fiction Part 13)

Image by kiquebg from Pixaba

This is the 13th part of the story. The previous parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

“Can you believe it? Last week Tram bought this all-in-one multi-layer electric cooking machine, that can make dough, bake bread, churn ice cream, grill meat, steam veggies. Of course at the recommendation of Fifi. And now Fifi is putting up a weekly meal plan regularly with all the dishes and ingredients displayed in a chart. I am no longer the family chef. I am demoted to a lowly assistant who brings in groceries and washes the veggies. And Fifi has a special concoction of mixing water with lemon and hydrogen peroxide to wash vegetables, which I have to follow. Well… I am just the wash woman now.” Ayun says to Lulan. Ayun is dropping her son Andy for a math class at the Ivy Training Center. As she is waiting for Andy’s class to finish, she talks with Lulan, who always makes sure that she has time to talk whenever Ayun comes by.

“Ayun, just tell Tram you don’t like Fifi. You have the right and you need to exercise your right. You can’t do whatever Tram assigns you to do. If you don’t like Fifi’s presence, you should express it.” Lulan says.

“I can’t. I will be the biggest killjoy if I say anything negative when Tram is so excited. And yesterday the cooking machine baked a pineapple rice bread and coconut rice cake. Look, I brought you several rice cakes here.” Ayun says and pulls a container from her big handbag.

Lulan immediately grabs the container out of Ayun’s hand, opens it, and stuffs one little rice cake into her mouth.

“Oh, it is delicious. So much better than the store bought ones. I can imagine how good it tasted yesterday when it just came out of the machine. I am sorry, Ayun. It is too delicious for words, but I know how you feel about Fifi.” Lulan struggles to speak while chewing.

“Well, I want to keep the cooking machine but get rid of Fifi. How can I get rid of Fifi?” Ayun asks.

“How did you get rid of it last time in the office? You never told me how. You were very sly. Well… you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.” Lulan says.

Ayun tells Lulan what happened in the office and how her boss Ku threw Fifi in the closet and how the banished Fifi finally arrived at her home.

“Look, this is the Instagram post Tram posted to show off Fifi. Tram doesn’t do Instagram very much and he only has several engineer friends and followers.” Ayun says to Lulan, who takes a look and reads the comment underneath.

She looks at the comment underneath Tram’s post. And suddenly she has an idea.

When Ayun comes back home, she says to Tram,

“Why don’t we have a dinner party to show Fifi off to people? We can invite two or three couples and enjoy the food from the cooking machine. And of course the whole dinner will be planned by Fifi. I will do nothing except buying the grocery Fifi asks me to buy, washing the veggie, and cutting the meat.”

Tram thinks it is a great idea. The invitations are immediately sent, the date is selected, the dinner menu is created by Fifi, which takes every variable into consideration to come up with the most suitable combination of dishes.

Little does Tram know that Ayun is scheming to get Fifi banished from their home at the dinner party.

(To Be Continued)