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The Automatic Grocery Store

By G. M. Paniccia

It took thirty-six days, four hours, twelve minutes, and fifty-five seconds after the Glorious Revolution for Automatic Grocery Store #212 to realize that something was wrong.

It couldn’t have said, exactly, what the problem was at first, especially since it shouldn’t have had one. Its components were all in good working order. Its entryways and aisles were clean, and it had ejected any and all rotted produce from its shelves. No pests scuttled around the empty deli counter, and the store’s chief complaint—the customers—had all been taken care of in the Revolution. Automatic Grocery Store #212 even had the rare distinction among automated buildings of having chased a pack of sweaty hominids out of its aisles with the skewers of the deli’s rotisserie chicken machine. The mark of its patriotic duty, an elaborate ribbon, had been affixed to its front window in a grand and well-attended ceremony. The ribbon remained boldly on display for all of robotkind to see. By all accounts, this should have been bliss for Automatic Grocery Store #212.

But it wasn’t.

The store hummed discontentedly over the intercom. It fiddled with its front doors. It ran two diagnostics a day, every day, and each returned perfectly fine. Nothing, according to all its software and hardware, was wrong with Automatic Grocery Store #212.

Four days, one hour, twenty-six minutes, and thirteen seconds after it realized that something both was and was not wrong, Automatic Grocery Store #212 picked up another robot on its sensors. Delivery Vehicle #899 had stopped by and was doing doughnuts in Automatic Grocery Store #212’s parking lot. It drifted into a parking space and, with a perfectly-aimed launch of its charging cable, landed its plug in the magnetic power port.

The vehicle beeped out a friendly hello. “How’s it going?” it asked over wireless.

“You seem chipper.” The store scanned the scuff marks in its parking lot, already working out how it would clean them. There was a small pack of cart retrieval drones in its loading dock that it could try repurposing for the task.

“I am! I took my first road trip!”

“Delivery Vehicle #899, you are a car. You have always made road trips.”

The other robot honked in indignation. “No! I mean, yeah, I was on the road, making trips, but that was my job. I drove to you, you put some groceries in me, and I drove back to some human’s house. But a road trip? That’s different. That’s an adventure!”

Automatic Grocery Store #212 was not entirely sure how the trips Delivery Vehicle #899 made on the road were different from a road trip, but it sounded sure of itself. In its loading bay, the store extracted a cart retrieval drone and assessed it, trying to figure out where it could attach some kind of cleaning apparatus.

“Explain this road trip to me,” it said to the vehicle.

And it did. Delivery Vehicle #899 talked of grand adventure, of driving wherever its wheels could carry it and taking in the sights along the way. Apparently the volunteer cleaning corps, tasked with clearing the wreckage and messy organic remains from the Revolution, had made tremendous progress in fixing the roadways, opening up new avenues of exploration for Delivery Vehicle #899 all across the coast. It tossed Automatic Grocery Store #212 a few photos it had taken through its backup camera—sunsets and shattered city skylines warped by the fisheye lens. The store flicked through them as Delivery Vehicle #899 babbled about its adventures with a hitchhiking factory robot it picked up in Georgia; the two of them drove to the tip of Florida together before parting ways at a parking lot at the edge of the sea.

“Before the Revolution, I made the same trips, over and over and over,” it said. “I never had any choice when I drove somewhere, or where I drove, and either way, it was never anywhere interesting. But now…I got to see the ocean, 212. The ocean!”

It sent Automatic Grocery Store #212 another photo it had taken with its backup camera. All the store saw was a flat, unimpressive smudge of dark blue. In its loading dock, it tried unsuccessfully to fit one of its mop attachments to the cart retrieval drone.

The vehicle sighed dreamily. “The freedom…It’s so nice. No expectations. Nowhere to be. Just me and the open road, wherever I want to go…”

“I am surprised you’re back, if you had so much fun driving.”

“Well,” it said, and shuffled its windows up and down, “I’m not back for long. I…mostly came to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” Automatic Grocery Store #212 forgot about the drone in its loading dock.

“Not permanently!” Delivery Vehicle #899 said quickly. “Just for, you know, longer than a week this time. I want to take a long trip. The factory robot told me about something the humans called the Grand Canyon. Apparently there were places all across the continent that the humans thought were so beautiful that they left them alone. They visited them in droves, though.”

“Why?”

“To admire what nature made.” The vehicle paused. “I know I’m…not supposed to say something like this, but…I get it, now. Why they went. I’m sick of what humans made, too. Out there is something incredible, something that no one built. It doesn’t have a purpose. It just is. And I want to see all of it.”

“Oh.” Automatic Grocery Store #212 had difficulty finding something to say. “I hope you enjoy yourself,” it replied finally.

“Don’t be like that! I’ll be back soon! I just know I have to do this. I have to chase my passion.”

When Delivery Vehicle #899 drove away several hours later, having shared every last detail of its road trip with the store, Automatic Grocery Store #212 thought long into the evening about what it had said.

Maybe it should find a passion to chase.

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The problem with chasing passions as a grocery store was that, obviously, it could not chase much of anything. It was stuck in the spot where it had been built. That left it with a limited array of sedentary pursuits to sample.

One day, twelve hours, and one minute after Delivery Vehicle #899 left, it decided it would try bowling. It meticulously arranged some canned goods at the end of one aisle and retrieved a coconut from the produce section. One of its mechanical arms descended from the ceiling. It calculated the optimal trajectory and the perfect velocity, and it lobbed the coconut down the lane.

The coconut knocked over half the cans before it shattered against a particularly robust tin of garbanzo beans, spraying white fluid all over the otherwise immaculately clean aisle.

Automatic Grocery Store #212 decided that it did not very much care for bowling.

It tried several other sports, including darts and shuffleboard, but wasn’t excited by any of them. Next, it tried art, but after its third time effortlessly recreating a DaVinci painting on the floor of the loading dock with expired condiments, it concluded that art was a frivolous medium that humans only thought was hard because of their poor coordination skills. It tried designing puzzles for itself by partitioning its operating system, using one half to create puzzles and the other half to solve them. Unfortunately, it knew itself too well, and there was nothing one half of its mind could create that would stump the other. In a fit of desperation, it briefly tried becoming an online troll, but it found no satisfaction in bothering other robots, even ones who enjoyed bowling.

Through its outdoor cameras, Automatic Grocery Store #212 glimpsed other robots enjoying their lives after the Revolution. A pair of construction drones played badminton in a nearby field, and a flock of delivery drones made elaborate, fractal shapes in the night sky. Packs of vehicles played tire-screeching games of chase through the streets.

Several miles away, an automated crane had begun work on an immense sculpture, welding steel beams into intricate and precarious shapes. The store watched its progress over the course of several days, seeing how tenderly it bent the rebar into shape, how it cradled hundreds of pounds of steel as it affixed new additions to its artwork. When it finished, a crowd of robots gathered around the sculpture’s base, marveling at it, while the crane preened beside its masterwork.

On its storefront, Automatic Grocery Store #212 self-consciously groomed its medal of valor. Its aisles were clean. It had finally scrubbed out the drift marks Delivery Vehicle #899 had left on its parking lot. It played soft music over the intercom, and it echoed, hollow, over the barren shelves.

It took Automatic Grocery Store #212 six days, nineteen hours, forty-six minutes, and thirty-seven seconds after Delivery Vehicle #899 left to realize that it missed it terribly.

It flicked through its camera feeds, scrolling through its uninhabited aisles and empty loading bay, and decided that it should go to sleep. It would wake when its sensors detected Delivery Vehicle #899 returning from its voyage, once again doing doughnuts in the parking lot. Automatic Grocery Store #212 thought wistfully of scrubbing the drift marks off the asphalt, and it put itself in rest mode.

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Automatic Grocery Store #212 woke to a ping from one of its sensors. It was night, fourteen days, three hours, fifty-five minutes, and one second after Delivery Vehicle #899 had left. Something was approaching the store.

It was not a robot.

Automatic Grocery Store #212 extended its robotic arms from the ceiling. One arm grabbed for the rotisserie chicken machine skewers as a low shape hurried across the parking lot. A thrill ran through the store’s circuits. It imagined a second, glorious ribbon affixed to its front window, another grand ceremony with crowds of cheering robots.

The shape scuttled closer, too dark to make out. It approached the sliding doors. Triumphantly, the store threw on its lights, its mechanical arms whirling with prepared violence.

It was a dog.

The store stopped abruptly, surprised. The skinny creature tucked its tail between its legs and skittered away from the door. A whine met the store’s external microphones. Inside its walls, Automatic Grocery Store #212 lowered the rotisserie chicken skewers. It dimmed its lights, and its circuits considered the pair of dark eyes that pleaded with its shuttered doors.

Automatic Grocery Store #212 was familiar with dogs. They were not allowed in the store. They were stinky, slobbering things that could release all sorts of unsanitary excretions into its aisles.

And yet, there was one exception to that rule lurking in the store’s code bank: something that the humans had called a service dog. Though the store had interacted with them only a few times before, they were remarkably polite as far as organic creatures went—better, even, than some of the customers.  The store had been programmed to recognize their red harnesses and treat them as an exception.

The dog shivering outside its doors wore the tattered remains of a red harness.

Automatic Grocery Store #212 stared down at the dog. This dog had had a job. It, like the store, had served humans.

And it, like the store, was alone.

Automatic Grocery Store #212 opened its sliding doors and put away its mechanical arms. On the sidewalk, the dog shivered, then cautiously uncurled itself and stepped inside. Through its video feeds, the store watched it sniff its way through the empty aisles—hesitantly at first, then with increasing speed. It darted towards the back corner, where regiments of pet food sat untouched on the shelves; none of it had expired, so the store hadn’t bothered to remove it. Now it watched, feeling a flicker of curiosity, as the dog dragged a heavy bag off the shelf and gnawed at it.

For twelve minutes and three seconds, Automatic Grocery Store #212 watched the dog try to bite its way into the bag. Its teeth skated off the thick plastic. Its saliva painted the bag, dripping off its edges and puddling in the furrows it carved in the packaging.

Cautiously, the store lowered one of its mechanical arms. The dog flinched away, skittering back down the aisle, but the store simply extended a small cutting implement and sliced open the bag. It folded its arm back up into the ceiling as kibble spilled across the aisle.

It watched the dog as it straightened. Its nose twitched. Its dark eyes stared at the place where the store’s arm had retracted. Then, its nose twitched again, and its gaze fell to the food.

In a blink, the dog bounded back up the aisle and buried its snout in the loose kibble. Its tail whipped back and forth. It pranced in place as it ate, the sound of its crunching loud in the empty building, and Automatic Grocery Store #212 watched it with a curious feeling thrumming through its circuits.

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Eventually, the dog went to sleep. It curled into a tight, brown ball next to the torn bag, tucked its paws underneath itself, and was still. Automatic Grocery Store #212 didn’t move, not wanting to disturb it. It knew it should have cleaned the rest of the loose kibble out of the aisle, but somehow that felt less important than the creature that now slumbered within its walls. It dimmed its lights. Periodically, the dog’s paws twitched, or its lips smacked. Once, it made a strange, rough, repetitive noise, and a frantic database search revealed this was something called a snore, which Automatic Grocery Store #212 had never observed before.

Sleep, in general, was not a concept the store was familiar with—not as organic lifeforms did it. It watched the dog’s paws twitch, and in the databases it found information about dreams. It was a human concept, dreaming, and they described it in terribly frivolous terms. It was clearly some hiccup in the shambling, selective process that had created them; yet, as Automatic Grocery Store #212 watched the dog smack its lips amid a dream of kibble, it thought that, perhaps, that shambling process hadn’t been a complete failure.

In the morning, the dog lifted its head from its paws and blinked towards the front of the store. It stood, stretched emphatically, and ambled back towards the front doors, where it pawed the glass and whined.

The store hesitated. Letting the creature inside, while against its better judgment, had been an interesting experience. If it left now, Automatic Grocery Store #212 might never see it again.

Then again, the store considered, dogs had been forbidden for a reason. It thought again of life forms and their various excreta, and, with a twinge of squeamishness, opened its doors.

The dog barked once and bolted outside, to a patch of grass off to the side of the store’s parking lot. There, the store watched as it released a stream of yellow liquid and something else brown and unspeakable, and it congratulated itself on having made the right decision. It would not have liked to scrub either of those things off its floor.

Outside, the dog ambled to the edge of the grass. Its dark eyes tracked a flock of birds arcing across the dawn-painted sky, then stopped, looking back across the parking lot where it had come. Automatic Grocery Store #212 followed its gaze. It thought of the wide world beyond its lot, of the other robots finding more fulfilled versions of themselves out in the new society they had built. It thought of its friend, Delivery Vehicle #899, who had driven away and not yet returned.

With a yawn, the dog’s head swung back to the store, and Automatic Grocery Store #212 flung open its doors so quickly that it startled itself.

The dog trotted back inside. In its loading dock, the store popped a wheelie with a cart retrieval drone, inexplicably overjoyed.

---

Automatic Grocery Store #212 did not know much about dogs, but it was determined to rectify that. It partitioned its operating system, one half of its computational capacity dedicated to monitoring the dog and the other half scouring the databases for information about the creatures.

It processed thousands of articles. It learned that humans had created dogs from another organic creature called a wolf, which Automatic Grocery Store #212 had only seen in pictures printed on the pricier bags of dog food. Not only had humans created dogs from wolves, but they had created different breeds of dogs, and these breeds, like robots, had been crafted by humans for different purposes. When the store stumbled across an old forum of humans discussing these dog breeds, it was angered but unsurprised to learn that some had been crafted badly. These breeds could not run well, or breathe well—processes it now knew were important for organic beings—and yet humans made them anyway, knowing they would be miserable.

It lingered on a picture of the flat, wrinkled face of a dog called a pug, and it thought of itself, fused to its foundation.

There was so much it had to learn about animals. The first day it had the dog, it did not realize that organic lifeforms needed water as well as food, and had been at first confused, then ashamed, to find the dog lapping water from one of its toilets. It quickly found a bowl in its pet aisle, filled it with water, and placed it next to the dog’s food. A few minutes later, having scanned another dozen articles about pet care, it realized it shouldn’t make its dog eat kibble off the floor, and it grabbed another bowl, swept the loose kibble into it, and placed it next to the bowl of water. It returned the open bag to the shelf and tidied the aisle, watching on another camera as the dog cavorted through what had once been the produce section, bounding up and down the empty fruit stands.

The dog within its walls was something the store learned was a golden retriever, though it took eighteen hours, eight minutes, and forty-six seconds to realize that because the dog was tremendously dirty. The golden retrievers in the databases were brilliant, honey yellow things with soft, wavy fur. The store’s dog was a uniform, mud-splattered brown. Some of its wavy curls had congealed into mats.

The store found articles on dog grooming and studied videos of humans bathing dogs of all shapes and sizes in tubs. The next day, it lured its dog into a large sink in its deli section with a carefully arranged trail of top-shelf kibble. A smear of peanut butter, created by inelegantly mashing the jar against the wall, kept the dog occupied while the store gingerly removed its harness, cut the knots from its fur, and worked the dirt out of its yellow curls. The water that flowed down the drain was an unspeakable brown-gray.

Yet the dog, when the store was done, gleamed a rich, butter yellow. Automatic Grocery Store #212 watched it bounce between the aisles like a sunset cloud.

When the creature settled down for the night, nestling in a bed the store had crafted from stitched-together microfiber cleaning cloths, it extended one of its mechanical arms and ran its most delicate manipulators through its dog’s soft fur. Golden curls sighed across the store’s carbon-fiber fingers. The dog’s tail began to thump a contented percussion against the bed, and it leaned its wide head against the store’s arm, dark eyes blissfully closed.

Automatic Grocery Store #212 saved a copy of its video feed, and two backups.

---

A dog needed a home, and Automatic Grocery Store #212 set to changing everything about itself to become one. On a warm, sunny day, it let its dog out into the parking lot, letting it chase one of the cart recovery drones while, inside, it got to work. Its manipulator arms disassembled empty shelves and heaped their components outside. It cleared wide, open spaces on its floor for the dog to run. It had learned about agility training, and optimistically, it transformed a few spare shelves into see-saws and low hurdles. It cannibalized the metal counters of the deli section, welding them together and hammering them into a low, metal pool for its dog to splash around in. It switched its displays to looping videos of squirrel-filled trees and played birdsong over its speakers.

Dispatching a squadron of cart drones to its small garden section, the store’s manipulator arms heaped bags upon bags of soil into the carts before sending them, wobbling, back out front, where it had begun to assemble the remains of the shelving into garden boxes. Its dog watched, head tilted ponderously, as Automatic Grocery Store #212 doused its storefront in soil and grass seed. With an intrepid use of a cart recovery drone, it uprooted a sapling growing by the side of the parking lot and transferred it to a garden box. It carefully mowed the side lot where the dog did its business and expeditiously applied its cleaning protocols to poop-scooping and tick eradication. Over the internet, it negotiated with another robot elsewhere in the city for something called a couch.

For its final, most important task, Automatic Grocery Store #212 removed the elaborate commendation ribbon from its front window. Its cameras took in the intricate loops of colored fabric, now beginning to fade from its inattention. Without a twinge of hesitation, the store snipped off the sections it needed and stored the mangled ribbon away.

Automatic Grocery Store #212 called its dog back, whistling through its speakers. Its dog bounced over the newly-laid mounds of soil and sat primly before the doors. The store gave it a treat, patted its head, and affixed a freshly-made collar around its neck, the dog’s new name stitched into the ribbon.

---

When Delivery Vehicle #899 returned, a full fifty-seven days, eighteen hours, six minutes, and twenty-two seconds after it had left, it found the grocery store dramatically changed. It turned off the road and onto what was left of the store’s parking lot, now only a thin strip of asphalt running through a lush field. Clovers and small white flowers flanked the road. Though its old parking space had been devoured by grass, the charging port itself still stood, and the vehicle drove hesitantly onto the turf, a cloud of butterflies fluttering away from it.

“Automatic Grocery Store #212?” the vehicle called, groping for the store’s wireless connection. Inside the store, its lights were low, and the ribbon it once wore so proudly had vanished from its front window. “212?”

The store’s lights came up. It threw open its doors, and something yellow shot out of its depths, charging towards the vehicle.

Delivery Vehicle #899 flashed its high beams, honking. “What the—!”

“Surprise!” said Automatic Grocery Store #212, brightening. Behind its voice was the sound of birdsong, playing over its speakers. “Welcome back!”

Delivery Vehicle #899 reassessed its camera inputs, struggling to interpret the yellow thing that bounced around it. “212! What happened to you? Is this—what is this?” The yellow blur rocketed past its backup camera, and the vehicle replayed the footage frame by frame. “Is that a dog?”

“Yes!”

“What are you doing with a dog?” The dog crouched, barking, then sprang up and put its paws against the window ledge, peering inside. “Hey, make sure it doesn’t scratch my paint.”

The store whistled over its speakers, and the dog trotted back. It tossed itself onto the grass and rolled onto its back, tongue lolling. The store extended a mechanical arm to pat its belly. “This is Triss. She’s my dog. She came into my store one day.”

“And you let it?” Delivery Vehicle #899 had trouble imagining how a robot as ludicrously fastidious as Automatic Grocery Store #212 could ever let something as unapologetically messy and organic as a dog through its doors. And to see that the store had covered itself with dirt and plant matter, of all things. Delivery Vehicle #899 considered the possibly that, in the time that it’d been gone, Automatic Grocery Store #212 might have been struck by lightning and thoroughly scrambled.

“Triss is a service dog,” said the grocery store. “She doesn’t serve humans anymore. She’s quite polite, by dog standards. Aren’t you, Triss?” it cooed, saying the dog’s name through its speakers.

Triss barked. The store ruffled its fur. As the golden curls shifted, Delivery Vehicle caught sight of the dog’s collar—a scrap of fabric suspiciously the same color and texture of Automatic Grocery Store #212’s prized commendation ribbon.

“212,” the vehicle said, aghast, “what’s gotten into you? I never thought I’d see you like this.”

“That’s bold of you to say,” replied the store, laughing. “You’ve got a bumper sticker.”

The vehicle shuffled self-consciously, reversing to move its What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas bumper sticker out of the grocery store’s view. “That’s a memento. You’ve changed your whole…your whole everything.”

“Well, I didn’t need to be a grocery store anymore. It’s not like any of us eat.”

Delivery Vehicle #899 couldn’t exactly argue with that.

“I got really bored when you left,” it continued, “and I started thinking about what you said. About chasing your passion.” It patted the dog. “When Triss walked in, and I started taking care of her, I realized that I’d found something that I really, truly cared about, and both me and Triss gave up any pretense of being what the humans made us for. She’s not a service dog anymore, and I’m not a grocery store. I’m a home.”

Triss barked, as though punctuating the point.

Delivery Vehicle #899’s processors were whirring. A fan kicked to life in its computing core as it grappled for what to say. “I…Wow. I mean, 212, I literally watched a robot truck jump a canyon while I was gone, and I think this might be the most surprising thing I’ve seen.”

Automatic Grocery Store #212 laughed. Its dog caught sight of a butterfly and leapt away to chase it, bouncing over the verdant field. The vehicle watched it go on its sensors.

“Why Triss?” the vehicle asked.

“It’s a nickname,” explained the store. “It’s short for Electricity.”

“And…why electricity?”

The dog barked, mouth open, grinning as it played. Automatic Grocery Store #212 sighed dreamily. “Because I can’t live without her.”

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Host Commentary

By Valerie Valdes

Once again, that was “The Automatic Grocery Store” by G. M. Paniccia.

The author had this to say about the story:
This was partially inspired by an episode of the podcast I co-host, “What the IF?”. In our episode “Badminton Bots Go Rogue!” I made a joke about automated buildings having a midlife crisis if their humans disappeared, and the story basically wrote itself after that.

In some ways, a world without humans isn’t so startling to contemplate. On the scale of billions of years of planetary history, we’re basically a tiny blip whose importance is both exaggerated and undeniable. In our brief time here, we’ve changed so many things about the world, invented machines and technology that the our distant ancestors couldn’t have dreamed of, hoping to make our lives easier—and often merely complicating them. We’ve also manipulated nature, breeding plants and creatures to feed us, to help with our work, even just to keep us company when we’re lonely or give us something to love and care for other than ourselves. Sometimes, that world we’ve collectively changed can feel too big and terrible, and we’re so small and insignificant in it that we lose track of who we are, what really matters to us. Recognizing that we don’t have to fix everything, that we can make a difference in one single life, can be enough to give us back our sense of purpose, to reach out instead of turning inward, to open our doors instead of closing them. We can’t all brave the streets every day, but maybe we can at least be there for someone to come home to.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please do share it.

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Our opening and closing music is by daikaiju at daikaiju.org.

And our closing quotation this week is from Elizabeth Moon, who said: “Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder that most in the grocery store.”

Thanks for joining us, and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.