Virtual Georgie shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you think we’re supposed to carry the baby?”
He plucked the hovering Faby and tried to move forward, but with every step, the simulation sent him back to the beginning.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, Georgie,” he said, anxiety coursing through his body as the child’s unrelenting cry threatened to burst his eardrums.
“Sanitizer!” VR Georgie called out, plucking a wipe from a dispenser and virtually cleaning the cart’s handle and the baby seatbelt buckle.
Jesus! This had to work otherwise—high-tech dream equipment or not—he was ready to chuck this VR headset into next week.
“Try now,” she said.
He walked over to the VR cart and gingerly slipped the baby into the seat and buckled the little belt.
“Bingo!” he cried as the wailing Faby digitally switched to happy Faby.
“That was intense!” Georgie said as they pushed the cart down the virtual aisle, and very non-virtual sweat trailed down his back.
Holy Faby wails! It was one thing to hear a kid cry at the store. But when it’s your own kid—even your own virtual kid—it flipped a switch inside that had adrenaline drilling through his veins.
“Let’s get our bearing’s, and then we can work on the grocery list,” Georgie said when a timer appeared in his line of vision.
“Are you seeing this?” he asked.
“The clock? Yeah, it’s set to five minutes.”
“Is that how long we have to shop?” he asked.
“Five minutes to diaper blowout,” came the robot lady’s monotone voice.
“A diaper blowout?” he repeated.
They stared at VR Faby, who had stopped crying, but now looked as if it were contemplating Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Oh shit! Literally, oh shit!
“I’m pretty sure this baby is going to take a massive dump in.” He glanced at the countdown. “In less than four minutes.”
“We have less than four minutes to shop for ten items, or else the baby will poop all over?” Georgie replied, her voice back in the freak-out octave.
“That’s my best guess, babe. Look at Faby’s face.”
The VR baby scrunched into a pruny expression as it stared into space.
“What’s the first item?” Georgie pressed.
“Milk.”
“Almond, soy, cow, or oat?” his wife rattled off.
“I don’t think it matters.” He looked around and spotted a dairy case. “There, to the right.”
They booked it through the virtual store, and VR Georgie touched a jug labeled milk.
Ping.
“Objective met. Proceed to the next item,” chimed the eerily calm robot.
“We need bread,” he answered, checking the virtual list.
“White, wheat, rye, pumpernickel, potato, or raisin?” his wife listed off like she was the spokesperson for the world of bread.
“Just like the milk, I don’t think it matters,” he said as they steered the cart toward the virtual bakery.
Georgie swatted a loaf on a high shelf.
Ping.
“Objective met. Proceed to the next item.”
“Gherkins?” he said, staring at the weird word.
What the hell was a gherkin?
“It’s a fancy pickle!” Georgie exclaimed, reading his mind.
“Pickles should be with condiments,” he replied, then did a quick Faby check. The kid was still contemplating the meaning of life.
Okay! They could do this!
“But it doesn’t say pickle. It says gherkin. Maybe they’re back in the produce section in a refrigerated case,” Georgie replied.
He shook his head. “Everything in this store is pretty cut and dry. Bread, milk…”
“But the list says gherkin,” VR Georgie interjected, waving her digital arms.
She was right, but it didn’t matter.
“Three, two, one. Diaper blowout,” came the robot lady’s calm voice.
They stared at the digital Faby, who seemed quite content.
“I think we should keep shopping. The kid seems okay,” he said when three distinct pings pulsed through his headset and…
Sweet Montezuma!
Like a breached dam, a brown substance burst from Faby’s diaper, flowing like a roaring river.
“Faby! No!” Georgie cried, lifting the virtual infant from the cart, only to have the VR crap shoot out in all directions.
He couldn’t move. The virtual Jordan Marks watched in horror as Faby spewed poop like a brown Niagara Falls.
“Twinkle, twinkle…” Virtual Georgie began to sing.
“What are you doing?” he called.
“Trying to stop the blowout!”
“With a song?”
“Do you have a better idea?” she cried, rocking the baby from side to side as an ungodly amount of virtual poop roared out of the VR infant.
“Here, pass me the baby,” he cried, reaching through the curtain of brown when everything went black, and a voice called to him from the virtual baby beyond.
“Simulation terminated. Status: failure.”
9
Georgie
“Babe, say something!”
Georgie stared at her husband—her real husband, not the digital version. He stood in front of her, holding both of their headsets. She looked from side to side, then gazed at her hands. Relief, that wasn’t brown or shooting out of a baby with the furious force of a firehose, washed over her.
“Thank God we’re not covered in virtual baby diarrhea!” she said, the words tumbling out like…oh, forget it! Enough with the poop talk!
“That was…” her husband began.
“Intense,” she finished as Jordan nodded, looking as shell-shocked as she felt.
The plexiglass door swung open, and Lenny and Stu rushed in, then headed toward a tower of servers in the corner of the room.
“Sorry about the diaper glitch. We thought the developers had worked that kink out,” the tall Lenny said, opening up a laptop, then plugging it into the server.
Stu nodded. “You’re our first couple to do the grocery store simulation, and we sure weren’t expecting that.”
“Yeah, neither were we,” Jordan said, placing the headsets back on their respective hooks.
“Do babies do that?”
Georgie turned to see a white-faced Barry standing in the doorway. Wide-eyed, he stared at his iPad.
“You saw all that?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to un-see it,” the man replied, his gaze locked on the screen.
“That makes two of us,” she said under her breath.
But it wasn’t the glitch that sent a shiver down her spine. Sure, she may never touch another VR headset for as long as she lived, but all she could hear was that judgmental robotic voice’s final word.
Failure.
It echoed. It resonated. Yes, the simulation had glitched, but she and Jordan weren’t exactly kicking ass and taking names at the digital market. Quite the opposite. She hadn’t even thought to decontaminate the shopping cart. It was dumb luck that she saw the wipe dispenser.