Help to finish this please?

I'm making a beverage server.
I've got a parent script in the root prim that responds to Touch - it sends Linked message to one of child prims to become visible, as well as delivering a beverage to the Toucher. And this is working fine to bring the child prim to visible on the Touch event and deliver the drink.

What I need to finish this is to (without using Touch again, since that would deliver another beverage), know how to trigger the parent script to send a Linked Message after a second or two of 'okay now reset yourself and go back to your default state.. which is full alpha, for the child prim'. Do I need some kind of timer event thingy?

Here's my parent:

integer ON = FALSE;

flow_on()
{
    llMessageLinked(LINK_SET, 69, "flowon", NULL_KEY);
}

flow_off()
{
    llMessageLinked(LINK_SET, 69, "flowoff", NULL_KEY);
}

update_flow()
{
    if( ON )
    {
        flow_on();
    }
    else
    {
        flow_off();
    }
}



default
{

    touch_start(integer total_number)
    {
            llMessageLinked(LINK_SET, 69, "flowon", NULL_KEY);
            llGiveInventory(llDetectedKey(0), "Coffee");

        }

    }

and my child :

init()
{
    llSetAlpha(0.0, ALL_SIDES);

}

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        init();
    }
    
         on_rez( integer p)
         {
             llResetScript();
             
    }


    link_message(integer sender, integer channel, string m, key id)
    {
        if (m == "flowon")
        {
            llSetAlpha(1.0, ALL_SIDES);
        }
         if (m == "flowoff")
        {
            llSetAlpha(0.0, ALL_SIDES);
        }
        
    }
}

Thanks for any assistance!

Yes you need a "timer event thingy".

llSetTimerEvent(float seconds)
will trigger the timer() event after seconds.

note that it will CONTINUE to trigger timer events until you turn off the "timer event thingy":

llSetTimerEvent(0.0);

Which you could do in your timer event to keep it from firing a second time.

I.e:

touch_start(integer total_number)
{
llMessageLinked(LINK_SET, 69, "flowon", NULL_KEY);
llGiveInventory(llDetectedKey(0), "Coffee");
llSetTimerEvent(3.0); // 3 seconds

}

timer()
{
llSetTimerEvent(0.0); // turn off timer
llMessageLinked(LINK_SET, 69, "flowoff", NULL_KEY);
}
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Thanks RJ! I'll noodle around with that

Simplest version for your parent:

default
{
touch_start(integer num)
{
llMessageLinked(LINK_SET, 69, "flowon", NULL_KEY);
while (num-- > 0)
llGiveInventory(llDetectedKey(num), "Coffee";

llSleep(2.0); // chill for 2 seconds
llMessageLinked(LINK_SET, 69, "flowoff", NULL_KEY);
}
}

This will make it sluggish if you have a lot of people clicking at once because it won't respond to any other clicks during the sleep, if that's not acceptable then you can use the timer version.

Thanks Boss for the extra method.

First one worked great, thanks again RJ!