Cakes and More Mistakes

“Alright folks!” A person in an apron yelled from the front of the room. “Who’s ready to bake?”

A few people murmured an affirmative response, but the room was otherwise deadly silent.

“Love your enthusiasm.” They said with a small smile and continued, “I’m Madoa, and today I’ll be teaching you to bake croissants. You’ll be working with partners, so I’ll give you five minutes to pair up and find a workspace! Chop chop!”

Lena looked to Exer, then the counter they were conveniently standing in front of.

“Shall we, you know…” Lena waved her hand about lazily.

“Sure.”

While the rest of the room chattered and shuffled about, Lena and Exer stood quietly in the corner, having already found their ideal baking conditions.

“Have you baked before?” Exer asked.

“Yeah.” She replied, then paused to consider the question. Were there really people here who hadn’t baked before?

“I’ll be relying on you then,” Exer said, looking at the wall behind her, “I’m new to this sort of activity.”

Well, that certainly answered Lena’s question.

“I’ll do my best, but…” She tapped her fingers on the countertop, “I mean, I can’t imagine the baking here is the same as the baking back home. We’re pretty much in the same boat.”

Exer nodded, but both of them spent the remainder of the 5 minutes wondering how different baking could actually be between two different societies.

“Everyone ready?” Madoa shouted again, but didn’t wait for murmurs of affirmation this time. “Wonderful!”

They gently knocked on the wall behind them with a single knuckle. A written recipe materialised in large writing behind them; it wasn’t a hologram, but printed script that looked as though it had always been there.

Each countertop was spurred into life, peeling themselves open like an onion to reveal their next layer. The previously empty workspace in front of Lena was now peppered with ingredients, tools and, most notably, a sink.

Madoa beamed at the transformed space and raised her voice again, “Behind me, and on the screens of your workspaces, you can see the steps of our recipe. Each part of the instruction can be tapped to show you a video example of the step. If you get confused, there’s a little blue button in the corner that you can press, and I’ll make sure to come over and give you a hand. Happy baking!”

Exer tapped on the glass screen which Lena hadn’t seen appear, and began to skim through the recipe. Meanwhile, Lena touched and prodded at the varying items in front of her, and was relieved to discover that she knew what most of them were! But there was something missing from their counter that was quite important. She glanced around the room.

“You alright?” Exer asked, mid skim.

Lena scratched her head. “Where’s the oven?”

Exer placed their hand at the front and centre of the counter, then swiped down. The birch wood panel retreated into the floor, revealing a piece of glass surrounded by metal, and with an array of knobs. Lena wondered how many layers there were to this countertop onion.

“Oh, right…” Lena stared at the oven. “Of course.”

She had an oven like this in her own apartment, though slightly less sleek and not at all hidden. However, she’d never actually used it before. Through whatever strange magic or science, she was able to get tasty hot meals in her kitchen with just the press of a button. And she certainly hadn’t missed the tedium of cooking enough to want to learn how to use this new contraption.

Much to Exer’s relief, the ingredients were pre-portioned so all they really had to do was wash their hands and mix them together in the correct order. Lena took the initiative.

Once the dough was mixed together, Lena plopped it onto to the countertop which suddenly had an unnatural chill to it.

“Are you left handed?” Exer asked, watching her knead the dough with primarily her left hand.

Lena shook her head and kept kneading. “I used to be.”

It was finally Exer’s turn to be confused. As far as they understood, a person’s dominant hand was an innate characteristic. How could someone ‘use to be’ left handed? What could cause it to change? They didn’t dare ask.

Lena split the dough in two and gave half to Exer. She started rolling her half out with a classic wooden rolling pin.

“I thought there’d be machines that did all this.” She idly commented.

“Oh, there are.” Exer said, watching her movements and then copying them with great precision. “But people like getting their hands dirty with things like this. Not literally, of course.”

Lena smiled. “I’d hope not.”

She barely even spared a glance at the recipe as she layered the dough with frozen butter, rolled it out and repeated this a few more times. Exer kept copying her, and soon they both had neat rectangles of dough.

“I’d just let the robots do this.” Lena sighed, carefully cutting the dough into triangles. “I’m sure they’d turn out a lot better.”

“People find that imperfections are what make things interesting.” Exer said, taking the dough triangles and rolling them up into perfectly shaped and identical croissants. “Robots can duplicate, but humans are the ones who create.”

Their deep philosophy was lost on Lena, who was too focused on cutting out perfect little triangles.

Once their croissants were all rolled and trayed up, Exer crouched down to the oven and twisted some knobs. They placed the tray inside and started a 20 minutes timer. Thw two looked around the room, and the chaos seemed to indicate that no one else had reached the baking stage.

Now the two most awkward people in the room had 20 minutes of time to kill. Exer leant lazily against the countertop, and Lena followed suit.

20 minutes of blissful silence later, the timer dinged and automatically turned the oven off. Exer took the tray out and placed it on the counter, which was no longer chill to the touch. The croissants themselves looked near identical to the sample imagery they’d been given.

As Lena took each croissant and carefully lined them up on a cooling rack, their baking mentor – who had done no mentoring – sauntered up to them.

“Well, you two work fast!” Madoa peered over at the croissants, “Those look delish. May I?”

Exer nudged the cooling rack towards them and nodded. Madoa tore a small piece of croissant off the closest one and nibbled.

“Mmh. That’s nice, good job you two!” And with that excellent tidbit of mentoring, they wandered off.

Lena decided to copy Madoa, having a small nibble and making the exact same satisfied mmh noise. She’d never been a big fan of sweet things, but it was good for what it was. Exer followed suit and had a nibble.

“Not bad for non-robots, right?” Lena said.

Exer stared into the middle distance. “…Right.”