The Smart Fridge

Part 2

"Ayo Sayuri babe, guess what I just dug up outta the fridge, would ya?" Hana barged into the room, brandishing a rather unsightly cardboard box. The smell that wafted in with her was... well, let's just say it was a good thing the box was closed. "I was gonna chuck this, y'know, 'cause, eeeewww. But then I remembered my pal Sayurin was havin' some food situation and I says to myself, Hana, my gal, why not share the wealth, right?"
Hana didn't notice the gaggle of girls clustered around Sayuri's fridge, watching Yumi, now sitting cross-legged, with a laptop propped on a pile of textbooks, the laptop connected by a cable to the open panel of the fridge.
"Ta-da! This bad boy's packing mushrooms and extra garlic. Garlic for my favorite boyfriendless friend! Had this like last week or something... maybe more? Hits the spot. Yummy yum!" Hana finally stopped, taking in the room and its occupants.
"What's the haps, girls?" Hana's eyebrows knit together as she noticed the bewildering array of cryptic, glowing symbols and characters dancing on Yumi's screen, her hands flitting across the keyboard. Ryou, standing by, watched the whole scene with a half bemused, half worried expression. "This some nerd shit?" Hana added, tilting her head as she leaned in to try and make sense of the alien display.
"This girl, she's hacking into Sayuri-senpai's fridge!" exclaimed Akari, one of Sayuri's Team Harpy juniors. "She says she's gonna disable the subscription!"
"Hackin'? Huh?" Hana blinked, her gaze flickering from the screen to Sayuri, and back to Yumi again, her free hand finding its way to her chin in contemplation, "What gives? Ain't subs what keep the smarts in our smarts? And they cost moolah."
"Yumi-chan says the corporations are scamming us and the subscription thing is a total con. All of the functionalities we're missing are actually in the software, she's gonna reenable everything!" Aoi, another of the junior girls, interjected. "No need to keep paying for them."
"No need to... are you even, like, hearing yourself?" Hana's head cocked to one side, the unsightly soggy cardboard box still in her grasp, threatening to spill forth whatever grotesque nightmare it contained. "The world's not gonna run without cash, y'all! How are you gonna keep your food from spoilin' or... I dunno, how's the fridge gonna chill or know to call you when it runs out of milk? It all gets sent to the big data center, they send you the bill and make it happen! Like magic, y'know? Tell you what's healthy and all. Subs are how the smart things keep smarting."
"Yakovlev has a point, actually," Sayuri said, taking the cardboard box from Hana, her nose wrinkling slightly as she discreetly tossed it into a nearby trash bin, "Paying a monthly fee just to keep your food from spoiling is ridiculous. Getting ads shoved down your throat for the privilege of owning a fridge is just... well, it's stupid. That's the word I'm looking for. Stupid."
"But..." Hana looked around, clearly out of her element. "You sure this nerd here isn't, like, trying to pull a fast one on you?"
"No tricks. Just facts," Yumi chimed in, her eyes never leaving the screen.
"You're not one of those anarchist hacker dudes, are you? Trying to take down the government and all that jazz?" Hana eyed Yumi suspiciously, taking a step back, as if the petite girl with the oversized hoodie and a laptop was about to spring up and declare the downfall of civilization. Ryou suppressed a laugh. She had known Yumi long enough to be certain she wouldn't be caught dead at a political rally. Her idea of protest was writing strongly-worded anonymous online reviews for companies with dubious data collection practices, and even that was stretching her social boundaries.
"Relax," Sayuri interjected, with a nonchalance as if she had always been the biggest believer in Yumi's talents. "Let her work. She showed me her fridge, and it doesn't need any Internet connection. Very impressive. I always had a hunch Yakovlev was quite the brainbox."
Ryou raised an eyebrow. Really, now. Sayuri had been singing a very different tune just minutes ago, hadn't she? Yumi didn't seem to mind, though, nodding along, her fingers flying over the keyboard, her focus unrelenting. Surprisingly, she seemed to be basking in the attention, the praise, and the chance to flaunt her skills. Ryou realized just how little she knew about her junior, despite all the months they'd been training together. She resolved to make an effort to get to know her better. Maybe they could bond over a mutual disdain for corporate greed, or something.
Hana was still unconvinced. "Still don't buy it, Sayurin. I mean, it feels like stealin' or somethin', right?"
"It's not stealing. It's liberation," Sayuri said, crossing her arms. "It's my fridge. I should be able to do what I want with it. Sure, maybe it won't recommend me the perfect snack for my mood, but who cares? I'm not paying Raijin 2k a month to tell me I should be eating an organic, fair trade, non-GMO, gluten-free, lactose-free, taste-free avocado toast for breakfast. I'm perfectly capable of making that decision myself."
"And besides," Yumi piped up, not missing a beat in her furious typing, "it's not like you're completely lose all the functionality. Most of it is already there in the software, it's just locked behind the paywall. Their 'data centers' are just there to collect your personal info and check you're still paying up. That's what I'm bypassing here."
Ryou watched with a certain level of fascination. She'd never seen Yumi in her element before, and it was quite the spectacle. The timid, awkward girl who'd struggle to string together a sentence in class was now a whirlwind of activity, her fingers dancing across the keyboard, her eyes darting back and forth between lines of code that made absolutely no sense to Ryou.
"I just don't get it," Hana said, her hands on her hips. "If you don't like smart, why don't you just get a dumb fridge? Why all this illegal hacking business?"
"Dumb fridge, hmm?" Ryou interjected, a wry smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Can you, by any chance, find one, Hana-chan? I'd like to see you try."
Hana blinked, clearly taken aback. "What? I mean, they must sell them, right? Ain't that what everyone says? If you're so against tech, just go dumb."
Yumi snorted, still focused on her task. "Propaganda," she muttered, and continued her work. Ryou took over.
"Have you ever tried to find one, Hana-chan? A dumb fridge, a dumb toaster, a dumb TV? Something that doesn't connect to the Internet, doesn't have a voice assistant, or a touchscreen, or a camera? Something that doesn't require a Raijin or a Kagayaki account?" Ryou asked, her tone gentle, but firm. "Something that doesn't require you to accept a terms and conditions document that's longer than 'War and Peace'?"
Yumi giggled, "Voyna i mir," she muttered under her breath.
"I mean..." Hana faltered, "surely, if that's what the customer wants... I mean... you can always go dumb, right? Like they say."
"Try it," Ryou said. "My good ol' dumb toaster sadly died on me, so I tried to buy a new one. You know what? They don't make them. I went to five different stores. Not a single one had a simple, non-smart toaster. Try as I might, I couldn't find one. New or used. I even tried antique stores, just in case. Last one was at least twenty years old. And I couldn't even bring myself to buy it, it just looked in worse shape than the one that I was replacing."
Hana looked at Ryou, her expression a mixture of disbelief and confusion. "No way."
"Way," Yumi said, still typing.
"Way," Ryou confirmed. "I ended up buying a smart toaster. Piece of junk. It has a touchscreen. A touchscreen! For a toaster! I use it once a day, and it has to have a screen, a camera, a microphone, and an Internet connection. They don't make money anymore on selling you a toaster. They make it on selling your data, on serving you ads or pushing subscriptions to their 'Kagayaki Smart Premium' service. You can't go dumb because they've snatched that choice right from your hands."
"But..." Hana started, then stopped. She looked lost, as if the old slogan 'If you don't like it, go dumb' was a life vest that was just torn away from her. Sayuri nodded, never averting her eyes from Yumi's screen. She seemed to be following the proceedings with more than a casual interest, despite not understanding a single line of code. Then, Yumi's hands stopped midair. fingertips hovering above the keyboard. With one last dramatic keystroke, she pressed the Enter key, and a triumphant grin spread across her face.
"Boom! Exit code 0x0, baby!" she proclaimed, slamming her laptop shut with a resounding clap. "I declare your fridge, officially liberated, Sayuri-senpai!" she announced, jumping to her feet and executing a deep, exaggerated bow, her hood flopping forward. The girls around her burst into a round of applause, Hana's eyes widening in disbelief as Sayuri stepped forward to inspect her newly-freed appliance. She opened the fridge door, and it swung open smoothly, revealing the cool, well-lit interior. She reached in, grabbing a carton of milk and a pack of eggs.
"You gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me," Hana whispered, her hands still on her hips, her mouth hanging slightly ajar.
"Yakovlev Yumi, good job!" Sayuri declared, raising the carton of milk like a trophy.
"It was just a script, really," Yumi said, a hint of pink creeping into her cheeks as she fidgeted with the strings of her hoodie, her eyes darting around the room before finally landing on Ryou. This was pretty much as far as Sayuri would ever go with praise, Ryou knew, and that was in itself quite an accomplishment.
"Yumi-chan! Can you do mine, too?" Akari chimed in, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
"And mine!" Aoi added, her hands clasped together in a pleading gesture.
Yumi looked at the two girls, then back at Ryou, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips.
"Are you sure about this, Yumi?" Ryou asked, a note of caution in her voice. Despite finding this whole ordeal amusing, she was well aware that this was, technically speaking, quite-not-legal. Seeing her kouhai open up and be the center of attention for once was nice, even heart-warming. But Yumi was no rebel, she was no anarchist no matter what Hana might have thought, and Ryou knew it well. Yumi was a timid, socially awkward, and painfully earnest individual who just happened to have an innate talent (and a tad of an obsession) for tinkering with tech. It was her playground. It was also the only place where she seemed truly confident. But she wasn't the type to deliberately go out of her way to break rules, and certainly not to be a leader of some sort of 'smart appliance liberation movement'. "If you start doing this for everyone, you're going to end up with a queue outside your door."
Yumi shrugged, her hands still fiddling with the drawstrings of her hoodie. "It's just a script, it runs pretty fast."
It was clear Yumi didn't quite get what Ryou was hinting at. It wasn't unusual for her to focus on the literal meaning of words rather than the subtext, and it wasn't the first time Ryou found that frustrating. She decided she'd have a talk with her later. She had to make her understand that this was a slippery slope, and that the more fridges she liberated, the higher the chance someone might notice. And that someone might not be as understanding as Sayuri. It might not, in fact, be human at all, but an algorithm, and those had a tendency to be quite unforgiving. And they never forgot.
"Don't you have places to be, Fujikawa?" Sayuri asked. Ryou shrugged. She was already late anyway, and somehow she felt obliged to stay with Yumi. Was Sayuri trying to shoo her off? Or it was just her usual bluntness? Who knew.
"What do you make of it, Sayuri-san?" Ryou asked in a casual tone.
Sayuri looked at her, casual and cool. "Of what?"
"Dunno," Ryou answered, "This whole thing."
Sayuri shrugged. "Yakovlev is an interesting girl."
"Hmm."
"Yeah."
This was probably as close as Sayuri would ever come to admitting that she had misjudged Yumi. Ryou had to smile at that. Meanwhile, Yumi was busy explaining to a bewildered Hana that the reason her hair dryer had a subscription was not because the 'cloud' made it work.
"The dryer is... like... a fan and a heating element! That's it! That's all it does. It blows air, and the air is hot. That's what a hair dryer is.."
Hana shook her head. "But... I mean, Yumi-chan, I wouldn't want my hair to burn. The smart dryer knows how to dry without burning."
"That's a misconception," Yumi explained. "The smart dryer just has a thermostat. Like... a thermistor, y'know... it's there, it doesn't need a 'cloud'. It's already in the device!"
"But then why does the app..."
"Bloat."
"How do you know all this?" Akari asked, staring at Yumi, clearly in awe by Yumi's seemingly endless knowledge of electronics. Yumi's cheeks turned slightly red.
"Just... read up, I guess. I mean, you just need to open one of these up and look inside, there's nothing really magical about it..."
Akari's eyes lit up with curiosity, and she leaned forward. "So could you take a look at my Sparky 5000, too?"
"I..." Yumi stuttered, caught off guard. She glanced at Ryou, but Ryou offered no cue. "I guess I can try..."
"Thanks, you're the best!" Aoi exclaimed, landing a kiss on Yumi's cheek. Yumi's face went beet red, but Ryou... Ryou's mouth dropped. Like a goldfish, her jaw opened and closed, no sound coming out.