Infini-Fridge 9000

Barry loved his Infinity Fridge. Or at least, until he got married, anyway.

At first, it was amazing. As a freshly-recruited maintenance engineer on the Luxury Star Cruiser The Astronut, Barry had found his new home and workplace full wonders. He walked through rooms so tall he couldn't see the sky; he swept up litter from artificial beaches which captured more beauty than the real thing; he watched the stars pass by like rain from the sweeping observation deck.

And, of course, he had his Infinity Fridge.

An Infini-Fridge 9000 was standard-issue hardware for a Luxury class cruiser, but Barry had never seen anything like it. In the slums of his native Bomalomalom, pretty much everything was finite (except perhaps for misery). Water was rationed. Food was served via nutritional pills only. Even electricity was limited to ten tera-watt-hours per day. That was barely enough to run a sens-o-vision sim and have enough left over to purify your evening drink.

So to step into a room with a fridge which could fabricate an infinite amount of anything you wanted... well, Barry had never been so happy.

He'd drink ten glasses of water a day - even though he wasn't thirsty. He'd order Bombassian Uber-steaks every night. He'd pick at Sping's Zero-G Space-Crisps until his bowl had run out, and then he'd order some more. The sheer wonder of plenty was a thrill which never really left him, and Barry returned home every evening to a calm sense of joy.

As much as he loved his dear wife, Colly Flowa, he could never forgive her for what she'd done to the Infini-Fridge.

She'd been working slowly away at the built-in articifical intelligence, getting it to observe Barry's nutrient levels and body-mass index. She'd convinced it to monitor Barry's figure, track his paunch, and map his silhouette vectors. And, worst of all, she'd convinced it to ignore his commands. Completely.

Where once there was a bar which would have stretched across the horizon of a medium-sized moon, there was now just a regular supply of carrot juice. And cranberry-ade. Where once Barry's fridge would mass-produce sausage rolls and those little balls with the eggs in the middle, now there was celery. And carrot sticks.

Where once Barry had found a bottomless supply of gastronomic wonder, now there was just an endless tunnel of disappointment.

He sighed, and forced himself to eat another spoonful of mushroom risotto ice-cream.