Make me an offer

A city manager proposes enclosing the main park with a perma-plast roof controlled by an automated Civic Machine to ensure constant climate and efficiency, but a visitor objects to preserving natural weather for children's connection to the past. He dismisses her, yet his wife, curious about the Machine, experiments with household inputs and meal choices, unintentionally redirecting municipal supply orders into absurd bulk purchases of gelatin molds and related items. The story satirizes centralized automation, the fragility of bureaucratic planning, and how small domestic actions can produce unintended, comical consequences across an automated civic system.