Infinite Sample Doom Loop

How many samples would they let us try, we wondered. How many indeed.

Yesterday we saw Gayle.

We saw her at the ice cream shop. Goofy as all hell but nice as a napkin, nonetheless. She stood there in line, three customers in front of us, wearing a turquoise baby doll dress and dark leather combat boots, white hair gleaming in the early evening light.

She was - at this present moment in the story - oblivious to our presence. This was good, as we wished to remain unnoticed. And she was alone, too. Mike, her husband, was probably at home, doing something productive, like re-lacing his shoes or teaching his dogs to speak Mandarin or something.

An employee, a young girl dressed up as a polar bear, beckoned Gayle to come forward. It was an invitation to become the next customer, the next contestant. We looked at Gayle. We watched her step up to the plate, into her role of ice cream initiate. We watched her look up at the menu, where the big bold letters written in big bold marker on the big bold whiteboard pounded the flavors into her brain. We watched her stare upwards, glassy eyes twitching and mouth wide open, digesting this wonderful information. Lost in a maze of flavors, a maze of abundance, Gayle became a little girl, pondering her next move.

We too looked at the menu. Soon it would be our turn, so best to be prepared as they say. But still, we wondered about Gayle. What flavor will she choose, we asked ourselves. We reviewed the options, casually reading over each and every one. All of them sounded incredible.

• Vanilla

• Chocolate

• Pole Shift

• Montauk

• Reality

• Woo

• Touch Grass

• Wormhole

• Clairvoyance

• Demiurge

• Smartphone

• Aether

• Mango

With several customers still in front of us, we were not yet at the counter, and as such we were not currently preoccupied with the task of sampling. Oh, the sampling, how we loved the sampling. A purgatory of possibility, each option presented on a teeny tiny spoon.

How many samples would they let us try, we wondered. How many indeed.

We began to imagine, as we often did when we came to this ice cream shop, various scenarios where some hypothetical customer might ask for some preposterous amount of samples. Single samples, mixed samples. Can I try this, can I try that, they might say. Can I try this and that? That and this with this and that, and this and that with that, that, and that?

We imagined the situation getting out of hand. The number of samples increasing dramatically, exponentially. The employees zoning out, losing track of time. Getting flustered and exhausted, serving sample after sample to the same customer, the exhaustive labor taking its toll on their minds and bodies. Their polar bear costumes becoming tainted, ruffled, torn. Management stepping in. Chaos. Special emergency flavors, known only to the employees, broken out from some secure vault, to be used only in situations like these, situations where a hoggish patron had gone rogue, becoming trapped in an infinite sample doom loop. Flavors like Eraser, which really had no flavor at all, but in fact contained a special enzyme that made whoever was eating it become instantly (but temporarily) repulsed by the very idea of eating ice cream, thus momentarily breaking the cycle and preventing an inevitable bankruptcy.

“Excuse me, would you like a sample?” asked the young girl in the polar bear suit.

We froze. Jolted from our ridiculous contemplation, we were unsure of what to ask for, as we had neglected to deeply familiarize ourselves with the flavors, having instead become lost in the rumination of our terrible infinite sample doom loop scenario.

“Uh…perhaps,” we sputtered, feverishly scanning the menu with our desperate pupils, “Could we try…let’s see…Mango?”

The girl retrieved a scoop. It tasted like mango. Good, but not great. Ok then. We looked up at the menu again, ready to try something else, fully cognizant of the potential dangers of getting stuck in the infinite sample loop, the nightmare which we had constructed in our head moments earlier, but aware that we were still in control. We pushed back against the visions of police cars and tactical assault flavors, pressing onwards. Living on the edge.

“How about Pole Shift?”

The girl smiled. “We actually can’t serve that right now. It’ll cause a worldwide cataclysm.”

“Ok then. How about Reality?”

The girl made a sad face. “I’m sorry, but we just ran out of Reality. Can I get you something else?”

We scanned the menu once more.

“How about Clairvoyance? Does that have…”

We looked down at the young employee, still in mid-sentence. She was already holding an outstretched spoonful, smiling.

“Must be good,” we said.

“Try it,” she said.

I did. It was delicious. Like bergamot, with an extra hint of dustiness and perhaps a splash of mint. But even more impressive was the insight that came with it. And with that, the sudden realization - without even having to look around the shop - that Gayle had already left, having committed to a flavor and purchased a scoop.

A fear that I might never know which flavor Gayle had chosen swept over me. A desperation seized me. I panicked. I looked back at myself, finding the same look of terror in my face as well. I looked all around the ice cream shop, at all of the other instances of me. All had paused their ice cream consumption, all had the same look of need. I had to know what flavor of ice cream Gayle had chosen, and so did I, and I, and I.

I had to know. You had to know. All of us had to know. We simply had to know.

We ordered a scoop of Clairvoyance and paid at the register. Before the girl rang us up, we knew the total price - tax, everything, which made the transaction go even faster.

Outside, we easily found Gayle, as of course we already knew where she was. Her plans for the evening materialized in front of us, premonitions of a short walk home, followed by a quiet evening with Mike, listening patiently to the dogs bark, nodding in agreement with her husband as he explained to her, his face alive with excitement, how quickly the dogs were picking up Mandarin.

And yet still, even with our newfound gift, the flavor she had chosen somehow escaped us. Perhaps it was because she had made her decision before we had tasted ours, and thus our temporary psychic ability did not allow us to see such things. Chain of causation and all of that. So we pursued her with vigor, driven by this obsession eating away at us, eating away at us as we our ice cream.

What flavor did she get? We had to know. We just had to.

We followed Gayle into a grassy field. The sun had already set. Moonlight beat down on us from above, pulsing like a gentle strobe as it fought through the cool velvet fog that now enveloped us, a fog so thick that when a dense patch passed by we could barely see our hand in front of our faces. We knew where she was of course, every step she took we knew in advance. But what flavor did she get? This still eluded us. We followed her, deeper and deeper into the fog. It was the only way to know.

Finally, the fog broke. Everything was clear. Gayle stopped, turning towards us, smiling. Then she took a big mouthful of whatever flavor she had chosen, a grand mystery if there ever was one, while a cool breeze ruffled her dress and tossed her glowing silver hair around in the dark night like the flames of a burning torch.

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This story is my submission for the Soaring Twenties Social Club’s Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month we create something around a set theme. This month, the theme was “Touch Grass.” Consider joining us.

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