THE FUTURE FRIDGE

Do you control the computer or does the computer control you, in the advanced technological world of today many people must ask themselves this question, as Rupertheimer did when he went up against a racist Future Fridge. Because this fridge was not your normal household refrigerator, this Future Fridge was controlled by a Plentivoom 2000 Computer. Which was the jewel of Rupertheimer Computers, the most powerful computer yet seen in the world, and industrialist Randlord Rupertheimer was inordinately proud of it.

Rupertheimer Computers are world leaders in the field of African Intelligence (AI), which would later be synthesized into African Consciousness. Now try to imagine the awesome intelligence of a Plentivoom 2000 Computer, coupled to an ordinary household refrigerator, this is what the brilliant engineers of Rupertheimer Computers achieved.

This amazing Future Fridge was a thinking device, able to decide what food is needed and order it. It would record food entering on bar-code readers, offer menus based on what was available; or extend sympathy if there were nothing. This fridge could ease the life of any house person, alleviate her daily drudgery, and offer an enamel shoulder to cry on. But if the Future Fridge were truly intelligent, it might decide that humans are germs, and attempt to eradicate them,

"I tell you, Uncle, the fridge is trying to kill us, Rupertheimer whined, but bossy Randlord Rupertheimer would hear nothing of it.

"Tripe 'n nonsense, my boy, you're not doing it proper.”

Uncle was dying to try his Future Fridge out on someone, and his nephew was conveniently placed, because his wife Penny had left Rupertheimer after one of their periodic tiffs. It was fortuitous Penny wasn't there, as engineers swarmed over her Rivonia residence, interfacing that amazing thinking fridge. This fridge not only concerned itself with edibles, it could activate Easy Sliding Ironing Boards, monitor air-conditioners and evaluate electricity. This fridge commanded security and operated fire sprinklers, locked doors or switched lights, and it went rather chilly if lights were carelessly left on.

Zero activity in lounge area - Switching lights off now. This curt admonition appeared on a screen above the fridge.

"You cold-hearted, iron-guts!" Rupertheimer cursed as he stubbed his toe in the

dark, He'd been asleep in front of the TV, so the movement sensors missed him.

It was lonesome without Penny and not much fun being controlled by Uncle Randlord’s Future Fridge, Rupertheimer swore that the fridge was racist.

"It’s not a Future Fridge it’s a Fuehrer Fridge. The fridge is racist, it hates Sanna." But Uncle Randlord refused to listen, Penny would have soon sorted a racist fridge out, but she'd walked out on Rupertheimer after an almighty row. She had naturally taken young Roy, and just to spite Rupertheimer, Penny also absconded with all of the servants.

"Stuff her, let them all leave, I don’t need servants" Rupertheimer said scornfully, he had a Future Fridge now; he'd defeat Penny with technology. If this didn’t work there was always his back up team, there was his faithful Bushman nanny Sanna of course, and believe it or not the two old Fawkes College school porters. Back in the early eighties Rupertheimer had attended a Fawkes Old Boys Reunion, he decided to motor down to Natal, when he drove back to Johannesburg Stoffel and Adam both drove with him.

Such was the caliber of Rupertheimer’s team, the A-Team he liked to call them, or maybe the Three African Musketeers. Sanna, Stoffel and Adam alone in the house with Rupertheimer, but of course there was a Future Fridge?

"I don’t need Penny or the servants," Rupertheimer scoffed, he had his two loyal Zulu retainers, and his beloved Bushman nanny Sanna. The only problem was, without Penny's guidance, Sana’s cooking carried a government health warning.

Something simple, Rupertheimer thought, so sudsa was chosen for the trial run:

healthy maize meal like unhealthy black people ate. That should be easy,

Rupertheimer thought, as he keyed his request into the Future Fridge keyboard,

then awaited instructions.

Sudsa? the fridge screen queried. It wasn't so much what it displayed, but the

icy manner in which it displayed. Rupertheimer could almost taste the mocking

sudsa disdain. Grits, the Americans call it, this fridge didn’t cook food like that.

"Yes! Freaking sudsa" Rupertheimer’s fingers stabbed at the keyboard, as he put a spoke in the coils of the uppy fridge.

Put the freaking grits in the freaking pot the fridge snapped back icily. It was, after all, a cordon bleu cook and a member of the French Chamber of Haute Cuisine, now it had to do common grits?

“Mixa, Mixa lo sudsa," the fridge screen mocked him in pidgin Zulu, as Rupertheimer stirred the bubbling steaming pot of scalding maize meal.

"Are you sure it’s not done, Adam?" Rupertheimer worried as he mixed, eying the writhing concoction in some concern,

"Mira! Mixa! More mixa!" his loyal Zulu retainers Stoffel and Adam supported the fridge; they of course were his prime back-up men.

"Listen here, Stoffel, it's looking dangerous,” and then, PIop!

"I'm blinded! I'm blinded!" as a steamy bubble burst, and shot a scalding lump

of grits right into Rupertheimer's right eye.

"Y'know, Khumalo? I'm sure those two racist old farts knew the sudsa was going to squirt me like that," Rupertheimer whined afterwards, he had phoned Peter Khumalo and met him for drinks, Peter was Zulu so he should know?

“I’m sure they did it on purpose, Peter,” Rupertheimer confided, gingerly dabbing his sore eye, but Peter Khumalo managed to keep a straight face.

"Nonsense, Rupertheimer, Zulu are not that sort of people." Yet Rupertheimer

continued to fret, for there was something arctic going on in his life, so he once again broached his kindly uncle.

"The fridge is trying to kill us, Uncle Randlord, you have to take it out please," but wealthy Uncle Randlord would have none of it, his nephew must learn to interrelate with computers, it was the modern world after all

"Tripe and balderdash, my boy, you’re not doing it proper." Yet Rupertheimer

was his favorite nephew, so Uncle Randlord consulted with the engineer who'd

programmed the fridge. There did appear to be a breakdown in communication.

"Wonderful news, nephew,” Uncle beamed.”Your communication problem is

over. Rupertheimer Computers have done us proud, from tomorrow your fridge

will be able to speak to you, Son."

For decades, computer scientists had been reaching toward the Holy Grail of

computer speech recognition, but thus far they’d only managed to achieve voice

recognition software, requiring the speaker to pause after each word to gain

accuracy. Once more, South Africa made a pioneering technical breakthrough, with the invention of an improved mathematical formula, which could actually recognize the spoken word. In fact, the latest Rupertheimer 3000mhz Plentivoom Processor was so technologically advanced; it could render computer logic into spoken sentences and thus chat cordially with its operator.

Rupertheimer Computer engineers again swarmed through the Rivonia

residence and, before you could say refrigerator, Rupertheimer’s could actually

converse with him.

"Welcome, Rupertheimer. Welcome. "

The metallic voice boomed though the house, and there was no escaping it, for

the Afrikaans programming engineer had wired the fridge through the intercom. Rupertheimer shivered inwardly, the icy voice of that Fuehrer Fridge had an Apartheid sort of sound to it, and Rupertheimer’s retainers were all black.

"Why don't you phone Penny? You know you're like a lost fart in a thunder-

storm without her," his good friend Peter Khumalo advised wisely.

"That’ll be a frosty; Friday," Rupertheimer vowed, he was a tough man.

“I got 'n edge against Penny," Rupertheimer boasted, which was indeed true.

Rupertheimer did have a Future Fridge, and he also had his A-Team, which was why none of his friends put any money on Rupertheimer.

“Eggs exemplary, move munchies to mudguts," the cultured metallic voice grated, in its effort to speak good English, the fridge fanatically fractured alliteration.

“The fridge wants you to take the eggs out the microwave, Sanna," Rupertheimer sighed to his old Bushman nanny, hoping she’d remember her entry code. Access to appliances was through personal codes only now, Sanna’s code was l23 and she damn well kept forgetting it.

“I work not for machines,” Sanna muttered rebelliously, as she bent to remove

the eggs. The fridge was getting pretty pissed off with Sana’s whining, yet who

knows why a tough-yoked egg chose that moment to burst. Perhaps the racist

fridge did arrange it, or more likely Sanna forgot to prick the yolk? Whatever it was it caused that egg to blast out of the microwave like a rocket, catch Sanna square in the eye, and put her down like a shooting gallery duck.

"I is blind! Blindl' Flat on her back, Sanna shrieked from the floor, yet refused

to take it lying down. Realizing she wasn't blinded she weaved to her feet, then

hopped about in ritual circles, tearing out her crinkly hair and beating her

bosom less breast, while screaming at the top of her lugs,

"Little master’s voking fridge is voking me!"

Sanna had a large jar in her hand, and then it arched rapidly through the air, to

catch that racist fridge square in its steel guts. Perhaps the jar from the jar scrambled binary logic, for it's a fact that Rupertheimer’s skin crawled, as in horror he heard a new guttural growl from that Fuhrer Fridge.

"Voking Goffel."

The brilliant Afrikaner computer engineer who'd programmed the fridge,

hoarded a lifetime of racial jibes, but Goffel was a barb too far. Neither the San

nor colored, nor even the Sancoloured, are fond of the epithet Goffel. Sanna

had grown up discriminated against from all sides. The colored people despised

her because of her Bushman blood, yet because of her colored blood, producers

of Bushman documentaries refused to even consider her. It had not been an easy life and Sanna believed she'd taken all the racial indignity her country could offer. Then she was dubbed a Goffel by a racist refrigerator. Is it any wonder Sanna flew into a paroxysm of fighting rage? With spit spraying she ululated the atavistic Koisan war cry. "Vok machine! Vok machine!" .

Sanna had a rolling-pin in hand as she charged down on the Fuhrer Fridge, which turned out to be the incorrect thing to do, for the fridge would have none of it. So it shot the Easy Sliding Ironing Board into Sana’s path, and she folded around it like an accordion. Then would you believe as Sanna lay winded, the garbage disposal backed up and overflowed the sink into her mouth, so Sanna gasped air but got garbage. Then in a fit of icy rage, the Fuehrer Fridge sang Deutschland Ober Alles, and hosed Sanna down with the fire sprinklers.

Bedlam it was, lights flashed and sirens blared, then other appliances switched on. The fridge rumbled with chilling laughter, as shrieking Sanna writhed under the sprinklers, while a waltzing floor polisher walloped the shit outta her. Rupertheimer himself was near to hysteria. He glanced at Stoffel and Adam for support, but his loyal Zulu brave hearts shot out the door. The perverted polisher hadn't heard of a ban on corporal punishment, and laid into Sanna with a vengeance. Sanna’s screaming reached brain blasting crescendo, Rupertheimer cracked and rushed for the phone.

"Penny, please come home, I’m sorry Penny, I’ll do anything you say Penny,” Rupertheimer sobbed pitifully, and the love of his life returned to him.

He had resisted her a long time, so it went to arbitration and the arbitrator was loneliness: who would crack first? The short separation was unpleasant for both of them, they were two lusty people, though Penny was perhaps more dignified.

“Better come home, Penny, I'm a virile man y'know.., so you won't! Well, I got

girls here, Penny, listen to them giggle." Rupertheimer’s telephone calls had been pathetic, because Penny knew it was he who was giggling, so Penny came home.

One shirty phone call from Penny to uncle Randlord Rupertheimer brought the engineers swarming around again, the racist Fuehrer Fridge was removed and household electrics were restored to normal. Only then did the outlandish events at Rupertheimer’s mansion fall into perspective, with a simple technical explanation, because that poor misunderstood Future Fridge had been trying to say.

"Forking Neutral,” and not "Voking Goffel'.'

The jar Sanna had thrown had not only scrambled binary logic, it also induced

back Electro Motive Force from the fridge, which volted through the distribution board causing the neutral bar to fork the red phase. Now everyone knows, in a three-phase wiring system, a neutral forking a phase will jack the 220-volt distribution to a pulsing 380 volts. This high voltage could jump switches, and may cause Easy Sliding Ironing Boards to slide into the paths of crazed Bushmen. Cross-voltage would also reverse appliances, causing garbage disposals to back up, and sinks to overflow into said Bushman's mouth. Sprinklers would activate and sirens and alarms blare, easily mistaken for Deutschland Ober Alles. Now if a forking neutral could cause such havoc, imagine the effect the 380v high voltage would have on an electrical floor polisher- locked in an upright position. That polisher would gyrate like a ballerina stoned on Ecstasy and, flailing tubes, ferociously lash anymore who happened to be in range.

There was no black magic at Rupertheimer’s house, there was no witchcraft or other world interference, there were no boy wizards or creepy vampires. Like most things in life there was a simple explanation, it was merely a technological breakdown, easily elucidated if you have the technical knowhow. With this elementary electrical explanation the matter was put to rest, Rupertheimer was back with his wife Penny and happy again, pushy Uncle Randlord would not dare pull a stunt like that with Penny in the house. All the appliances were now normal kitchen appliances, Penny had tossed out all Uncle Randlord’s computer enhanced newfangled appliances, replaced them with average everyday appliances, like the normal washing machine that burbled quietly in the corner.

“Vokingoffle – vokingoffle - vokingoffle,” the washing machine chanted as it went into its spin cycle, and Rupertheimer ran screaming out of the house.

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