The Manehattan Automat
There are plenty of food options in Manehattan. Thermopoliums and Hayburgers, sit-down restaurants and food carts, catering to practically every taste. Maybe every taste; you’ve been by a few restaurants and food carts where the food is something you’ve never heard of, where the spices and scents aren’t appealing at all—and some of them have lines of ponies or other creatures waiting for food.
Like the Gemmery, a strange (to you) restaurant which—judging by the clientele—serves upper-class dragons and upper-class unicorns. They have a menu out front which you skim; unsurprisingly by the name, everything is gems or is dusted with gems. Even their Unicorn Frappe, which promises two full diamonds in every cup.
The prices reflect that, and even if they didn’t—the maître d' is wearing a tuxedo, and when you catch her eye, she just shakes her head.
She knows just as well as you do that you don’t belong.
Further down the street, the Hayburger is welcome to all, cheap and greasy and a decent value for your bits. Uninspired, yes, but the same experience every time.
The restaurants are a true microcosm of the city in general, where cultures and wealth rub withers on every block, where working-class ponies and businessmares crowd the sidewalks and fast food joints together. Back in the day, you could meet anypony in the omnibus—and now you’ve got the same opportunity in the new trolleys that ply the streets.
You turn your head as one goes by, ringing its bell as a warning. In theory, its tracks make it predictable, but in traffic that’s a disadvantage. Taxi ponies can dodge an obstruction, the trolley has no choice but to wait until it clears, the bell getting angrier by the minute.
Some days you like a familiar meal, often eaten in the company of familiar faces. Other times, you want to try something new.
This is new. It calls itself an “Automat,” and while restaurants and food carts follow a formula, this has big glass windows like a retail store, and a harsh, almost antiseptic interior. Tile floors, linoleum-coated walls, and no waitstaff to take your order or touch your food: everything is encased in glass towers, pre-made and perched on platters which turn at the push of a button.
Salads, pies, sandwiches—they all pass by at the push of a button. Each one with a little card saying what it is.
You’ve got mixed feelings about the place. There’s something to be said about an interaction, however brief, with an employee.
At the same time, there’s something to be said about choosing your food and getting it instantly. No more lies from menus, from attractive pictures of food which are anything but when it’s unceremoniously slid across the counter in a brown paper sack.
You watch a pony in front of you make her choice, spamming the button until a sandwich she likes spins into view. Coins go in the slot and then the door unlocks; she pulls it open and gets her prize.
She’s elected to take her meal to go—they have a couple kiosks set up with condiments and utensils for those who use them, napkins and paper sacks for customers in a hurry. She’s a unicorn and is unfettered by paper sacks; she heads out the door with her sandwich hovering beside her head and joins the mingle of pedestrians outside.
The prices are competitive. Quality is, as yet, undetermined. Ten blocks over and a little to the south there’s a grizzled old stallion selling hash out of his cart, it doesn't look like much but he’s had decades to perfect his craft. There’s no modern tech, just a good old-fashioned stockpot and a ladle he holds in his mouth, portioning out his food two bits at a time.
A favorite of ponies in harness, who usually don’t go far to eat—every muzzle-level surface near his food cart becomes a temporary table.
You step up to the carousel and start pushing the button, studying the food as it revolves by. Some of the trays are empty; that food has been taken. Do the cubbies get restocked during the day, or is the food put out every morning? You don’t know.
Choosing between a daisy sandwich or a bowl of greens holds your attention longer than it should. You know which you want, and you know which your doctor recommends. Getting old sucks.
The elderly mare at the food tower next to you is also struggling; she’s got her muzzle pressed right up against the glass, and she’s slamming the button with more force than it requires. “Condarn these darn fool machines.”
You can feel the line building behind you, the unseen eyes on your back. Salad it is; today’s a day to do the doctor proud. You slide your bit coin into the receiving slot, the door unlatches, and claim your prize, then you move aside and turn your attention to the elderly mare poking at the button.
Her eyes light up. “Sonny.”
You grit your teeth; your weird aunt always called you that.
“Trying to get me a sandwich and this darn fool machine is near impossible to use.” She hoofs the button again and a new sandwich revolves into place. “Won’t talk, and I can’t smell it through the glass—you wanna give Goldie Delicious some help?”
“I guess.”
“I just want something plain . . . and not spicy, that plays hob on my insides.” She hits the button again. “All I want is a nice chrysanthemum sandwich.”
“There are menu cards,” you observe.
“I done forgot my reading glasses,” she says, then points a hoof up at a sandwich. “What’s that? Is that chrysanthemum?”
You read the card—it is a chrysanthemum sandwich, complete with peppers. ‘For the pony who likes spice,” it says.
[CHOICE]
>help her find a chrysanthemum sandwich without hot peppers
>tell her this is what she wants because it’ll be hilarious
[CHOICE A: Hero]
“That’s a spicy one,” you say. “You don’t want that.”
A couple of the customers are grumbling—the automat is for ponies on the go. Ponies who don’t deliberate their food too much . . . One day, they’ll be old, too. Elders should be respected.
You scan up and down the tower, finally discovering an unspiced chrysanthemum sandwich. “Turn it three times,” you instruct her.
Goldie taps the button with more care, her goal rotating with each push. “Okay,” you instruct. “Now you have to put coins in the slot.”
“This reminds me of Los Pegasus,” she mutters. “Pull the lever . . . round and round she goes, where she stops nopony knows.”
There’s a soft click as the final coin goes in, and the door unlatches. Goldie pulls it open and slides out her sandwich.
A smile lights up her wrinkled face. “Are you dining alone?”
“Yeah,” you admit.
“Come sit with me,” she offers, “and I’ll tell you all the secrets of the horseshoe toss.”
[CHOICE B: Villain]
“That is a chrysanthemum sandwich,” you tell her. It’s not a lie.
“Thank heavens.” She starts feeding coins into the machine. “I don’t understand why they have to make things so complicated these days.”
“It’s the march of progress,” you say.
“March of foolishness if you ask me.” She stomps off towards her table, and you also move aside to let the queue advance—they move in fits and starts just like the machine.
Now you’ve got another dilemma. Stick around and wait for the fun to start, or get out before she realizes what kind of sandwich she just bought. You figure she’ll know by the first or second bite, and what then? She can’t get in a fight with the machine . . . or maybe she will.