Hobbies and notifications

It was 11 p.m. and Il Grande Aukan (1) was playing trump with his adventurous mate Emùh. A notification on his phone reminded him that he would have to create the supermarket and send it to a small planet in the Milky Way. The second notification warned him that he would have to leave clues of His existence to certain individuals, purposefully chosen to prepare humanity for the arrival of the Shopping Cart. He ignored the third notification.

The first two carrelliani

and The Guide to the perfect supermarket 

In the remote Parmagiano Valleys, the well-known desert moorland, which was very often chosen for family trips, two men named Pinolo and Mascarpone were walking when they suddenly noticed a strange rectangular figure emerging from the sand. Seized with curiosity, they approached the figure to find out what it was all about. What appeared to be a transparent wall ripped open before their eyes as if forming a small breach. They felt urged to enter by LiL Fruitjuice’s music - their favourite - playing in the background. The revelation was astonishing: they crossed the threshold and saw a wide variety of utensils that had been neatly arranged in a chromatically pleasing way, and multiple stocks of food.

"It looks like a market." noticed Pinolo.

"Yes, but much bigger." replied Mascarpone.

"And plentiful!"

"Super!"

"Yeah, It's a super! market!" concluded Pinolo, ecstatically. Mascarpone insisted on naming it that way. The interior seemed to be divided into well-defined aisles distinguished by signs indicating the category to which the goods on display belonged. Pinolo noticed that, to his right, strange grey, perforated wrappers, each supported by four small wheels, were wedged together. He approached them and, inexplicably, the first of them stepped out of the line, heading towards him. Mascarpone, wanting to protect his friend and moved by sacrifice, threw himself undaunted with his hands stretched forward to defend him, but the impact was unexpectedly gentle. The object stopped as soon as it came into contact with his hands. Driven by his inner strength, Mascarpone grasped the handle at its end and felt capable of controlling its direction, while Pinolo, fearless, continued on his way to that unknown place. Delighted by the enormous amount of food, they took the opportunity to retrieve some of it and threw it into the new tool Mascarpone had just learnt to handle. At the end of their exploration, they wondered whether it was all a trap or whether there was a way to barter what they were about to take with some of their possessions. They looked around, but there was no one there.

On the journey back to the village, Bresciamella (2), the two men wondered whether they should disclose what they had discovered to their fellow citizens and, to avoid attracting too much attention, they agreed on not saying anything. Both felt they could not let a secret of such importance slip through their fingers. Therefore, they secretly took their loot home and decided to meet again after dinner to look at what they had taken.

Therefore, the two of them secretly met in the evening at their tavern to open the products they had gathered that day. While Pinolo was unwrapping some long cylinders of meat that seemed to vaguely taste like beer, Mascarpone was fascinated by the presence of a bag with unusually shaped biscuits; the writing on it was incomprehensible. But when he tried to bite into one, he felt something strange in his mouth, something inedible, which he felt needed to be removed from his palate. He found a small, rolled-up parchment in his hand. Pinolo asked what it was and Mascarpone, surprised, could do nothing but open it. Unrolling it, an inscription revealed itself:

"Just as a shopping cart is worthy of being full of products, it is only right for a supermarket to be full of humans."

The message was crystal clear: their discovery was to be shared and everyone was to benefit from the super! market. So they took the still-full shopping cart and headed to the central square to tell everyone about it. The people there were immediately captivated by their words and by that perforated basket with small wheels: never had such a tool been seen before. Before they could speak, the people asked them what that basket was called, and Mascarpone, who had no idea, looked at it front and back, sides, bottom and top, until he spotted an inscription, which he slowly read aloud: "Shopping Cart no.1". Pinolo bravely took the floor and in front of the astonished crowd, he explained that it was used to carry a wider array of products away from a large rectangular building. Everyone was thrilled and asked the two to take them there, which they did immediately. When they arrived, they were immensely amazed: there were indeed all those goods Mascarpone and Pinolo had been talking about, neatly arranged. Everyone took their carts and, although they were not sure about what they were, they immediately understood how to use them, guided by a divine instinct. They rushed down the aisles and threw everything along the shelves into their carts, generating much confusion. Some, curious yet lost, even snuck into a private area but, seeing only a glass case in the distance, they returned to the fray. The super! market was quickly empty, leaving everyone satisfied with what they had found. They came out with their carts completely full, except for Lehmm, the village scatoliano, who was using an awkward cardboard box to carry everything around. A party was thrown that same evening in honour of the two pioneers; it went on all night until all the food was consumed.

After a few days, the inhabitants of Bresciamella returned to the rectangular structure in order to stock up but, to their dismay and contrary to their expectations, they discovered that it was still empty, exactly how they had left it. Enraged, they returned to the village, knocking violently on the door of Pinolo’s and Mascarpone’s houses, demanding an explanation. The two looked at each other without understanding: they had not considered the possibility of that magical place being emptied all at once. They had assumed that, just as the super! market had appeared on its own, everything inside would reappear on its own as well, without any intervention on their part. The Bresciamellians accused Pinolo and Mascarpone of lying about that place, which put them in serious difficulty as they could not come up with an explanation. In the general uproar, Lehmm sneaked off to the "scene of the crime" to find out how the place really worked and what the two discoverers had lied about. Perhaps that already much-disputed novelty could be used in his favour to increase the capacity of his business. For the second time, he crossed the threshold of the transparent doors and began to wander through the empty corridors, not knowing what exactly to look for. He hoped for clues, but everything seemed to have stayed the same, with the empty shelves still waiting to be filled with goods.

However, he saw a closed door with a sign on it in the distance. Upon approaching it, he read 'Offices' and cautiously opened the door. At the far end of the room, there seemed to be something shining with a yellow glow. That something appeared to be a glass case, but it was too far away to understand what stood inside. He looked around: could it be that there was nothing to protect what seemed to be a very important component of the whole building? He threw his box forward, to see if there were any hidden traps: it fell to the ground, rumbling in the space around him, but nothing happened. Reassured, he moved on, approaching the mysterious glass case and its lit sign that read: “GUIDE TO THE PERFECT SUPERMARKET”. He looked inside and saw small fluorescent yellow sheets of paper with a list of unclear instructions written on them. Seeing it as an opportunity for profit, he took them with him and ran away, still looking around, worried that anyone might have been watching him or that he may have activated some traps in the process. Returning to his box shop, he realised that it would not be easy to translate those unknown inscriptions and that this operation would take him much longer than expected.

Meanwhile, Pinolo and Mascarpone, besieged by the crowd, looked at each other and came to the conclusion that apologising and admitting their mistake was the only solution. Pinolo raised his hands, in an attempt to make himself noticed and cool the spirits, exclaiming:

"We are sorry! We made a mistake of presumption! Forgive our hazard!"

The crowd fell silent for a few moments and Pinolo and Mascarpone thought the issue was solved, but the shambles resumed in a few moments, between one controversy and another. Mascarpone, given the intense pressure and the failed attempt at mediation, casually remembered briefly seeing the offices, which were still unexplored, and suggested to his friend that he go there to see whether he had missed anything and if some clue was available to settle the matter. He explained his idea to the people there, who agreed to go to the aforementioned place. Once there, they saw that the office door was ajar, probably left open by some onlooker the previous time. Crossing the threshold, they saw in the distance a small doric column, at the base of which lay shattered glass, as well as a box left in the middle of the room. Unable to comprehend what had happened, Pinolo and Mascarpone told the others to back off, but a voice rose from the many heads of those present, shouting:

"The glass case has been destroyed!"

Asked for an explanation, a woman told them that, at the first shopping rush, managed to go there and see, if only in passing, a glass case placed on the column, protecting a possible unidentified treasure. Everyone cautiously approached the site of the misdeed and read the sign hanging above. Only one possible explanation could be deduced: the instructions had been stolen!

The mystery of the missing instructions and the concept of the super! market soon fell into oblivion, no one knowing what to supply the place with, or how. It was hard to accept the idea that they had irretrievably lost the keys to get that fortune back, but the road seemed barred and they were forced to return to their usual spending habits. Lehmm, on the other hand, managed to translate the stolen writings with relative ease, meaning to expand his business of boxes, which would then become a family tradition, passed down to the next generations. However, he certainly could not afford to emerge so quickly after the theft of the Guide; people would be highly suspicious, so he waited for the dust to settle until the most appropriate moment would come.

One day, years later, he went to the town centre and he loudly announced the redesign of his shop: it was now much larger and sold not only a greater variety of boxes, but also new and exclusive products! The town citizens were immediately intrigued and rushed to check it out themselves, except for Pinolo and Mascarpone who hesitantly listened to the entrepreneur's speech. Their friends asked them why they were so reluctant and they replied that they were not sure of his good faith. Therefore, their friends tried to convince Pinolo and Mascarpone of the box man's honesty, while still trying to understand why they were so ridden with doubts. Since they did not have a precise answer, but only intuition, they were left in the square, unable to explain their hunch. Lehmm's business soon flourished in the village and one step at a time, he added newer goods to his extensive shelves, one by one, to go unnoticed. Those goods looked a little different from the boxes he would usually sell. Someone slowly began to ask questions, because the place was, not surprisingly, beginning to take on familiar connotations. So much so that, as time went by, the idea spread, albeit without any apparent basis, that it was the scatoliano who had stolen the “Guide to the Perfect Supermarket”. Yet, there was no evidence to nail him down and many thought it was just a coincidence and that Lehmm’s business owed its success to its creator’s great entrepreneurial spirit, which is why they continued to buy from him. Still, Pinolo and Mascarpone were not convinced: the more Lehmm’s sales increased, the more convincing it was that he was the one who had stolen the instructions. The only way to clear their name and discover the truth about the theft was to reopen the super! market that had appeared in the Parmagiano Valleys, the original one, and make it operational again. Equipped with brooms and disinfectants, they set off towards the now abandoned building, not quite knowing how to set up the shop and compete with their rival. When they entered, the doors creaked and a cloud of dust rose up and it quickly became clear that the clean-up would take longer than expected. In fact, it took months to restore it to its original state, but even though they had cleaned thoroughly everywhere, something was still missing: the shelves were still empty, just like they had been left the time before. Pinolo and Mascarpone, tired but proud of their work, looked at each other and wondered how to fill those empty spaces, and only one idea seemed feasible, which was to procure products to put them back on sale. Unlike the first time around, however, they could not simply give them away, because producing them and taking them there would cost time, energy and money. Their assumptions seemed to be confirmed by some lit totems arranged along a row, equipped with a black ribbon and a legend showing the conversion of different currencies. It was the latter that proved their deductions about payments to be correct. This would allow the whole system to be redesigned on a human scale.

It took them years before they could give the only existing monopolist a hard time: in fact, it was at first difficult to find the necessary materials, tools and manpower. Their collaboration requests were often denied, leaving Pinolo and Mascarpone laughed at and mocked for their often misunderstood intentions. They were frequently overshadowed by the figure of their opponent, more capable and quipped with the Guide. However, thanks to their willpower and determination, they managed to carry on with the work, making themselves known and appreciated for what they were doing, resulting in the first duopoly in history. Lehmm could do nothing but watch the rise of what he thought were just hopeless beginners, which started to eat his heart out. This distraction was fatal to him, because one night, before going to bed, he forgot to set the alarm to protect the instructions, which had disappeared by the next day.

(1) Il Grande Aukan: The Almighty. His name was inspired by the supermarket chain Auchan.

(2) Bresciamella: Pinolo, Mascarpone and Lehmm’s hometown. The word itself is a blend between “Brescia”, a city in Italy, and “besciamella”, that is, the béchamel sauce.