Fresh Pears
I want to sell apples but I'm still working on getting the machine to do the cutting and grafting.
I want to sell apples but I'm still working on getting the machine to do the cutting and grafting.
Here, Beret Guy has set up a machine advertising "fresh pears". Megan, presumably his first customer, has inserted her quarters into the machine for the specified price, and expresses concern that the pears aren't being dispensed; Beret Guy simply assures her that "it takes a while to work".
Behind the front of the machine, thus hidden from Megan, we see that what the machine does is dispense a seed into the dirt via a small cannon. Above it is a robotic arm and a hopper for collecting and dispensing the ripened pears. So it seems that Megan will have to rattle the coin-slot "a while" before she gets her fresh pear.
The term "a while" is ambiguous, but in the context of waiting for a vending machine to dispense food, it's usually assumed to be a matter of seconds.[citation needed] Beret Guy, in his typical surrealist approach to business, seems to consider it reasonable to wait at the machine for years until a tree has sprouted from the dispensed seed, grown to maturity and begun bearing fruit, that could be picked by the robotic arm and dispensed to the buyer. This could easily take between 5-8 years for a pear tree, when starting only with a seed! While such a pear would indeed be "fresh", it's implausible that anyone would accept that kind of lag time in buying a pear at a vending machine, even if it is cheap, particularly considering that any number of factors could interfere with the production of pears in the meantime.[citation needed] Alternatively, Beret Guy may be planning on using time-altering abilities to rapidly grow the tree.
It appears that the coin mechanism only operates the seed-launcher; whether once the machine starts harvesting the pears it will freely dispense them or activate a barrier on the chute is unknown.
This comic strip may be based on a fable about an old man who plants trees, knowing that he will not be alive when they bear fruit, to "pay it forward" to his children as his ancestors planted the trees that had sprouted and fed him. Beret Guy may be practicing good moral behavior and ecological stewardship, but as a customer-facing business model it leaves a little to be desired.
It seems Megan is one of the first to use the machine, as no pear sprouts are shown behind the machine.
The title text refers to the increased difficulty in cultivating desirable apples, as compared to other fruits. Apples cannot be reliably produced from seeds, seedlings often don't survive, and even when they do, they don't generally reflect the characteristics of the parent plant. As a result, apple orchards are created by grafting tissue from desirable trees onto suitable rootstock. This process is more complex and labor-intensive than simply planting seeds. The joke, then, is that the next planned version of the machine would not only require the user to wait years, but would also involve as-yet unavailable technology to automatically perform the grafting process as to create an apple tree that produces desirable fruit.