| Electric Appliances | |
January 20, 2015
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| In this society, the technology was advanced and people could live a convenient life. But, sometimes, inconvenient things occurred. He installed a new operation system in his computer. Through this system, every operation of the electric appliances in his apartment could be managed by his brain. There was a hearing-aid shaped small device attached to one of his ears. It would receive small impulses from his brain and analyzed what he was thinking and feeling, then it would send a message to each appliance. At this present moment, he was on the sofa thinking that the light was a little bit too bright, soon the light became a little weaker to the brightness that he felt comfortable with. He smiled, "Not bad, not bad." He thought that he wanted to drink a beer. Soon a dog-shaped robot went to the
He opened the can of the beer thinking that maybe after a few more years, a young-woman-shaped robot would be opening the can and serving it to him with an exotic smile. He smiled at this thought. He thought that he wanted to listen to music. He couldn't think of a specific title of a song or an artist but the computer analyzed his present preference and soon Jazz music started playing from the speakers. He became in a good mood. Soon the can of beer became empty, this time the sensor on the wall became aware of it and the dog-shaped-robot soon carried another can of beer to him; and, then, started to slice some cheese for him. The computer didn't missed a slight sense of his hunger. He smiled again. In the corner of the room, there was the feeding system that started to give food to the tropical fish in the aquarium. It was warm and comfortable in the room, the temperature of the room was perfectly kept. He relaxed and became sleepy. He started to sleep, and began to dream. The dream was kind of terrible. Earlier in the day, he made a big mistake at his job. His mean boss appeared in the dream. His boss said, "You fool! Can you understand about our company's loss? If you had finished this earlier, we could find your mistake. Why are you so slow?" But the guy didn't apologize this time, instead, he triumphantly said to his boss, "Maybe you might not be familiar with new technology, because you are an old type of person." He showed his boss a controller, and turned it on. When he moved the lever of the controller, as with the movement of the lever, his boss started to move that direction. When he moved the lever to the right, the boss funnily went to the right, like a puppet. The boss screamed and asked him to stop. He ignored it and moved the lever to the left and then to the right. The boss's body moved quickly to the left and then to the right, it was a funny sight. He laughed, "You like fast things, don't you?" The boss cursed him. Soon the scene changed. This time his ex-girlfriend appeared. She said, "Why are you so slow all the time? Can't you decide things more quickly?" He took the controller again and said, "You might not be familiar with this … " But this time his ex-girlfriend said, "My present boyfriend is an engineer and he gave me this." She took out a controller from somewhere, it looked more elaborate than his. She shifted the lever to the right. Soon his body was forced by a strong power to the right. It was so fast that he felt sick. She cheerfully said, "It's funny to see a person move as I operate. I can't play TV games anymore because this is so much more interesting!" He shouted, "Please stop!" But, she moved the lever more quickly. He felt dizzy, like riding on a roller coaster. "Stop! Stop! STOP IT!" Finally, he stopped because he woke up from the dream. He was sweating. He opened his eyes. For a while he couldn't understand what was happening in the room. The light was flickering on and off regularly like a disco-room. The sound from the speaker was a strange noise, like a broken radio. The robot dog was swimming in the aquarium, the fish was flopping around on the floor. The room was frozen like outside, his breath was white, maybe the air-conditioner went out of control. He was speechless, but after a while, he remembered about the gadget. He took it off from his ear and carefully turned it off. Actually, he hadn't seen the warning which was on the cover of the box of the system, it read: 'Don't use this system while sleeping. Your non-logical ideas when dreaming could give the machine unintentional orders causing unpredictable results.' (The End) |
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*electric appliance 電化製品
*advance 進む
*hearing-aid 補聴器
*impulse 信号
*expect 期待する
*would be doing しているだろう
*specific 特定の
*analyze 分析する
*sense 気持ち
*aquarium 水槽
*loss 損失
*could できた
*triumphantly 勝ち誇って
*familiar 精通する
*puppet 操り人形
*ignore 無視する
*curse 呪う
*ex- 元
*present 現在の
*elaborate よくできた
*dizzy めまいがする
*flicker 点滅する
*unintentional 意図しない
*unpredictable 予期しない