Whole Oral Experience
The Whole Oral Experience fiasco is another nail in HPD&MC's coffin. Even the act of brushing gets screwed up in these guys' hands.
It started with a string of PLC tests to determine the correlation between dental plaque and food consumption. The tests showed that each hourcycle between eating and brushing made it 5.6% tougher to remove plaque. The results were forwarded to HPD&MC's Dental Hygiene division. It decided that to optimize dental hygiene, the traditional separation of eating and brushing would have to be abolished. Instead of meals, citizens would have Whole Oral Experiences.
The Whole Oral Experience (or WOE) is a meal, followed immediately by brushing. PLC worked with HPD&MC to set up mandatory brushing stations outside every cafeteria. The WOE Project was a complete success. Within months, citizens instinctively brushed after every meal. Combined with HPD&MC's propaganda, necessary coercion dropped to minimal levels. Dental plaque levels have dropped 70% with only a 750,000 credit increase in annual spending.
Supporters of WOE broke into two schools of thought. The Meal School believed that only meals should be Whole Oral Experiences. The Snack School believed that both meals AND snacks should be Whole Oral Experiences. The Snack School said that the extra plaque potential of tasty treats were just as dangerous as the meals were. The Meal School said that the extra brushes would have little effect, waste dental resources, and lower productivity1.
Despite proofs of the idiocy of classifying snacks as WOE, dental fanatics kept subscribing to the Snack School of thought. The Meal School was larger and brow-beat them into following the norm, keeping their damage to a minimum. But the Snack Schoolers were bitter. They despised the Meal Schoolers' rational dental plans and plotted to work around them.
One daycycle, the Google Gadgets firm came to HPD&MC. They had won the contract to construct a line of Denta-Bots2 and wanted a list of requirements. The first person they asked was a Snack Schooler3, who gave them the "requirements" and referred them to other Snack Schoolers for confirmation. The project was developed on the input of slathering fanatics.
Do I even need to elaborate on what happened next?
The bots' aggressive programming and crude brushing techniques made them a threat to any snacking citizen. Targets were analayzed for carried foodstuffs and stalked until they devoured all of them. Free-roaming Denta-Bots clustered around vending machines, chasing down any clone that bought a Happiness Energy Bar to administer brushing. They even classified drinking water as a WOE; citizens were being treated for dehydration because they were scared to go to the water fountain.
PLC snack sales dropped 96% while the number of black market snacks on KriegsList skyrocketed. We demanded that Google Gadgets disable the bots, but they had made them too well. They were independent and (ugh) self-replicating. After admonishing them for their crimes4, we had no choice but to declare war on the Denta-Bots and their creators5.
Vending machines were outfitted with anti-bot lasers. Troubleshooter teams were given a year's supply of Algaechips to hunt them down. Choco-traps doomed thousands of the critters. Even Frankenstein Destroyer members were left alone as they gleefully bashed their little brains out.
Once the bots were destroyed, we went after the Snack Schoolers behind them. Twenty-six vending machines were sacrified to bring the perpetrators to justice6.
The Denta-Bots were destroyed, the Snack Schoolers were shut down, Google Gadgets was driven out of business, and Alpha Complex's citizens could eat in peace again. The blubbering, dim-witted morons at HPD&MC still wanted Denta-Bots, though.
The contract for the second line of Denta-Bots went to Syntelligent_Systems.
Due to many citizens' habit of snacking while working. I myself am chowing on Vanilla-Prune jerky as I write this. (1)
No relation to the original line of Dentu-Bots detailed in Jan-U's article, which were later integrated into the Denta-Bot line. (2)
Dent-I-FRC-4, who later met his end at the hands of irate PLC workers. See below. (3)
We forced candy bars into various orifices. (4)
Official event name: "Inter-Service Dispute #726". Popular Name: "The Battle of Vendings" (5)
They probably could've been salvaged had we dropped them from the 4th story or lower, but we wanted to make an impression. (6)
Appendeum
Damn Snack Schoolers, don't they ever know when to quit? One of my new Violet supervisors was cross-referencing the confirmed casaulties of the Snack Schooler Extermination campaign with the list of HPD&MC personnel that contributed to the Denta-Bot Mk 1 line when he discovered that we missed a half-dozen of them. Half of them are suspected of involvement in the Zero_Tolerance_Mouthwash_Accident.
Brush-U-TTH, how could you let them get away with that? The records say they're all your personnel.
--Drake-U-LAH-4
Refs: Denta-Bots, KriegsList, Syntelligent_Systems, Zero_Tolerance_Mouthwash_Accident
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