And Everything Nice

And Everything Nice (2016) Ada Maria Soto

Angelo is a coder who has terrible luck with getting a date unless baked goods are involved. So when the company hires a new tech writer, Angelo tries to discover the way to Simon’s heart through his stomach.

I love the tech related bits of the story that make me giggle.

“We used this at my last job.” Simon gestured to the training binders on the table.

Angelo looked at the binder for some new business tool. He had no idea what it was for. He just knew he had training with a date, time, and location listed in his calendar. The cover of the binder had a stock photo of smiling people in business clothes and gave him no hints.

“Is it any good?”

“It’s Microsoft Access with a trademarked skin and any useful feature stripped out. Cost the company a bundle, and no one ever used it.”

But also the baking bits.

“Subliminal programming through cake,” Mark cut in. “The day the Supreme Court released their marriage equality ruling and it was all over the news, everyone here started craving cake. The café downstairs completely sold out. Took us forever to figure out we’d been programmed to associate rainbow flags with cake.”

The problem was that baking was chemistry. The protein molecules in the eggs bonded with the gluten molecules in the flour. The milk reacted with the baking powder. Switching out one ingredient was doable, but switching out everything but the sugar was a good deal trickier.

Rating: 9/10

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