It’s been a very busy fall, what with kids’ soccer games and Gramps lingering illness. Time has gotten away from you, and suddenly you freeze up with panic. You’ve not done a thing to get ready for Thanksgiving, and it’s your turn to host the family. Four couples, eight kids and grumpy Aunt Ellen will make for a very full house, a big and complicated meal and a thousand other details that need to be managed.
First, of course, is the dinner. You’ve got to decide on a menu and order all the ingredients. Turkey for everyone except your teenaged daughter who’s just announced she’s a vegetarian and will need a special dish. And then, there’s the creamed onions your husband likes, but everyone else hates. And the pumpkin pie. The whole family gave a thumbs down to the store-made pie at your sister’s last year, so maybe you should try apple. Or pecan.
The options crash through your mind as you sit down with the chefdroid to get things started. The humanoid can sense your stress level and quietly releases an herbal mist that almost immediately begins to take the edge off. When it determines that you’ve calmed down, it accesses the family recipe cache annotated with feedback since 2018 and puts together three menus that have a 92% probability of making everyone happy. Even grumpy Aunt Ellen.
You make your choice, and the order is submitted electronically to the local grocer. You receive a text confirmation, your account is automatically charged, and a delivery by driverless van is scheduled. The chefdroid can sense your lingering anxiety, so it reassures you that it will check the order when it’s delivered and immediately begin preparations. It will also keep you apprised of its progress using a timeline transmitted to the heads-up display built into your glasses.
Meanwhile, the maidroid will start to set the table using your best dishes and your mother’s silver place settings. It will also order a fresh bouquet of fall flowers as a centerpiece for the table and strap the kid seats onto two dining room chairs, one for little Emma, age 2, and the other for her brother Jack, age 3. Finally, it will check the database of current family relationships to find out who should … and should not be seated next to one another, and set out place cards so everyone finds the right spot.
Gramps, of course, will sit at the head of the table. In spirit, anyway. He won’t be able to attend in person, but you want him to have access to the sights, sounds and even the smells around the table, so the butlerdroid will arrange for an extended presence to represent him. Thanks to a picture it will include when it places the order, the sensory system will be configured to look just like him and send signals back to him from the table. It’ll be just like being there except he’ll be at home sitting in his favorite recliner.
When the big day arrives, the maidroid will do a final vacuuming of the living and dining room and cue up the videowalls for viewing. It will put the Macy’s automated Thanksgiving Day Parade on the wall in the living room, queue up the football games on the wall in the den, and start a slide show of family photos on the wall in the dining room. It will plump up the cushions on the sofa and make sure no one is missing from the photos displayed on the mantle over the fireplace.
The nannydroid will ready its selection of outdoor games for the kids when they arrive and program their guestpods with age-appropriate entertainment for when they come indoors. It will query each of the family status databases and note that little Emma has a cold, so will stock medication in one of its compartments should it be needed. And, it will refill its built-in cleaning fluids and test its delivery jets, just in case a little one tips over their milk or drips gravy on the rug.
And last but not least, the chefdroid will confirm that the turkey has been prepped and is in the oven, the sides are ready for heating, and the two pecan pies it has baked are cooling on their racks. The smells from the kitchen waft through the house, and you can feel your stress level plummeting. Only your stomach grumbles, and no one’s around to see that it makes you smile.
As you walk into the entrance hall to greet your guests, you realize that everything has been done for you. The meal, the house, the entertainment, it’s all ready. Now, all you have to figure out is what’s left for you and your family to do.