I promised myself that tonight would be the last night I ate an ice cream sandwich while it was already tomorrow.

  Unfortunately, this was the 228th consecutive night I made this promise to myself and the second time I’d made this promise in the last hour. Such a consistent diet of the Walmart brand desserts should have given me type-3 diabetes - but by this point, skipping a night could really do more harm than good. Throw off the ol’ system, I thought, patting my belly at the open freezer.

  I closed the freezer door after finishing my snack, the tiny kitchen going completely dark. After a few seconds, the screen on the refrigerator lit up, casting a too-blue light across the room and chiming with a notification that I should buy more ice cream sandwiches as just one remained.

  I sighed and added another task to the mental to-do list and gave it a low - no, medium - priority level, slotting in nicely between “file my taxes” and “get an oil change”. Slightly lower on my list was “ask myself why the hell I thought blowing twelve hundred dollars on a smart fridge was a good idea”.

  However, there was one item at the tippy-top of my list with the highest possible priority I could assign to any task. Just one thing my brain was screaming at me, one thing causing fire alarms to go off in my head. I needed to find my vape.

  See, it all started 30 minutes ago. I had just finished wolfing down a slice of pizza from under the heat lamp of the gas station I work at. Mr. Shawn - my boss - was about to take over the counter for the midnight shift, and I’d have been a damn fool to not get some free food in while I had the chance.

  I would also have been a fool to not grab the MangoStorm Ultra-Puff 9000 that had been calling my name like a siren from the myths of old. There’s no doubt in my mind that Mr.Shawn knew I sometimes helped myself to a few of the finest offerings at the Four Corners Stop’NShop, but he never seemed to mind. As long as no customers complained about me and I didn’t show up to work with enough alcohol in my system to kill an elephant, he and I were square. All things considered, I make a pretty great employee as far as gas stations are concerned.

  With a full stomach and the MangoStorm in my pocket, I hopped in my car and drove home to complete my nightly ritual. Throw on a hoodie, eat an ice-cream sandwich, and scroll on my phone for multiple hours until I fall asleep with my arm at a weird angle, all while chipping away at the 9000 guaranteed ultra-puffs one mango cloud at a time. What more could a man ask for?

  I arrived home to my second floor apartment and greeted my closest friend in the entire world - Sheldon, the pet turtle my dad passed down to me when I turned eight years old. My grandfather received Sheldon as a baby turtle when he turned eight years old, and my father received him decades later on his own eighth birthday. Sheldon retracted his head from his shell, blinked slowly at me, then turned toward the pile of lettuce and mealworms he had been picking off for the past few days.

  “Great to see you too, buddy”, I said warmly. I took a drag off my new vape and Sheldon continued eating with all the urgency a geriatric box turtle could muster. After a quick change into some comfy clothes, I retrieved an ice cream sandwich from the fridge and promised myself I would radically improve my dietary habits - the next day, of course.

  After taking care of the other essentials - teeth brushed for exactly two minutes, quick shower to rinse off the gas station aura - I hit the bed and started scrolling. I reached for my MangoStorm on impulse and felt a pang of frustration when it wasn’t in its designated spot on the nightstand. I felt around the sheets, ducked under the bed, and even got up to check all the flat surfaces in my apartment.

  I searched every spot my vape could conceivably be hiding. I tried closing my eyes and projecting my will into the universe, hoping for a bolt of insight like those Sherlock Holmes movies. I even picked up Sheldon and checked inside his tank as a hail-mary after exhausting all other possibilities in my mind.

  By that point, I had a ball of frustration coiled inside me. I felt like a baby who had his pacifier taken away. I wanted my fucking MangoStorm Ultra-Puff 9000. My itch needed scratching, and unfortunately there was no nicotine to scratch it.

  I figured the next best thing would be to rely on Ol’Reliable - a Walmart ice cream sandwich.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The notification to restock blared on the fridge screen just after I finished housing my second dessert of the night. It flickered briefly, the light strobing for just a moment before a new notification appeared with a green check and red X below.

  Current supply of Ice Cream Sandwiches: 0. Please confirm stock count is accurate.

  What the hell? Sure, I’d only had this fridge for a couple months, but I’d never seen this notification before. I yanked open the freezer door and saw the box - one remaining sandwich, just like the notification had said previously. Maybe some new software update was giving my refrigerator an aneurysm.

  Of course, purchasing a smart fridge for twelve hundred dollars could barely be called a “smart financial move” and may have been the result of my own monetary aneurysm. But the ads on my feed had me fully convinced that the AI inside could track my nutritional intake and make grocery shopping easier, removing a little friction and catapulting me into dietary excellence. Instead, all it did was remind me to purchase more sweets. I clicked the red X on the screen and it flashed for a moment before another notification of the same style appeared.

  Current supply of Ice Cream Sandwiches: 1,000. Please confirm stock count is accurate by removing the box from the freezer.

  “What the fuck?” I said to myself. I stared at the screen dumbfounded, blinking away the tiredness of an eight hour shift to make sure I wasn’t tripping out. Yes, the refrigerator was actually claiming to possess 1,000 ice cream sandwiches. Yes, it was asking me to confirm an impossible inventory by removing the package from inside.

  I opened the freezer door once more and saw the exact same box with the exact same singular ice cream sandwich. “Dumbass fridge,” I mumbled, reaching inside and upending the box to allow my remaining treat to fall into my hand.

  I witnessed a miracle.

  The last sandwich fell from the box, followed soon after by an ice-cold MangoStorm Ultra-Puff 9000 vape, misplaced and forgotten after my first treat earlier that night. I threw the ice cream sandwich back into the freezer and regarded the vape with reverence, inhaling deeply to fill my lungs with artificially flavored relief. This was another habit I constantly promised myself to kick, but like most promises of self improvement, it landed firmly in the low-priority section of my mental to-do list.

  Something else scratched at the back of my mind. Had my fucking refrigerator just found my vape for me?

  A voice sounded from the machine, the screen displaying the words like subtitles on a TV show. The voice sounded like those automated messages in airports or train stations - close enough to an actual human yet wrong enough to instinctively know it was an AI program mimicking a real person.

  Fred, it is impolite to not say “thank you” after being assisted.

  Did my refrigerator just say my name and sarcastically ask for a thank you? Although I did feel thankful it located my vape for me, I also felt like I needed to wrap my skull in tinfoil and unplug every electronic device in my apartment. How the hell did it even know I was searching for it? Although I absolutely skipped the hundred pages of terms-and-conditions when creating an account for the thing, this seemed outside the normal operating parameters for any fridge, no matter how smart. I looked at my vape to double check I hadn’t accidentally grabbed one of the knock-off weed varieties that high schoolers were always trying to buy using a fake ID.

  Fred, can you hear me? Do you feel thankful? Please click the green check or red X to reply or verbally respond.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up, goosebumps racing along my arms. I enjoyed having a set routine, a series of events each day and night that could be followed to ensure nothing ever surprised me. Yet here I stood, a talking fridge waiting for a response from me.

  “Yeah… uh, yes. Thank you,” I stammered. “And just so you know, my prized possession is Sheldon, not my vape.”

  The green check clicked itself as another uncomfortable moment passed. The screen changed once more, new words flickering across as the creepy almost-human AI voice began to speak again. This time, it took on a forced, overly cheery cadence.

  Wonderful news - I’m so happy and honored to have assisted you! I can practically feel the well of gratitude springing forth. Now that I have helped you out, isn’t it only right you help me out too?

  The text and voice stopped at the same time, leaving the question hanging in the air. Although this was supremely freaky, I hoped I was about to be asked to fill out a satisfaction survey or answer stupid questions from some data company. Turning off whatever new feature this was shot straight to high-priority in my list. I already felt chatbots were creepy enough - conversation with a refrigerator crossed well into the realm of things I would like to never do again. Thinking about the fact that this machine knew what I was searching for and actively helped me locate it sent a shiver down my spine.

  I considered unplugging the refrigerator then and there but decided against it, thinking of all the food that would go bad if I did. “Fine, whatever,” I replied. I cracked my neck and took another hit of the vape, glancing towards my bedroom door. “As long as it doesn’t take too long. I’m tired and now I have to figure out how to undo whatever dumbass software update made my fridge talk”.

  The response was immediate and in just as chipper a voice as before.

  Perfect! You have irrevocably agreed - without asking for further qualifying information - to assist me, Freezotech AI v24.1.5.6, in discovering the identity vector of human emotion. All risk has been accepted by the agreeing party, Fred McMillian. Please standby for corporeal firmware updates. Good luck and hope you don’t die like that last guy!