Читать книгу Beat Space - Tommaso Pincio - Страница 11

8.

The bottling process accounted for a very delicate phase in the production of Space™. The fluorine derivative rendered the carbon dioxide rather unstable, such that if the dosage wasn’t perfectly calibrated, the bottle could very well explode in the consumer’s hand. The consumer would shake a Space™ and it would explode in their face, to devastating effect.

At first they thought to put a warning label on the bottles. Shake with care. Sales dropped by twenty percent in a few short weeks. It appeared that consumers wanted to feel free to shake the bottle as forcefully as they could; evidently they were convinced that the appearance of a bubble-comet depended on the intensity with which they made their wishes. In reality, intensity had nothing to do with it. If a Space™ had a bubble-comet, you needed only to shake the bottle lightly a couple of times to see it spray its luminous trail from the bottom of the bottle. But if there was no bubble to wish on and you insisted upon shaking the bottle, nothing came of it save a little bit of froth that in rare cases began to fizz until it burst the bottle—even with an absence of fluorine, carbon dioxide was liable to pitch a fit. It was pointless to explain such things to the consumer anyway, because these were exactly the types of things the consumer didn’t want to hear. So they decided to get rid of the warning label, concluding it made more sense to form a legal department that dealt exclusively with exploding bottles.

Bottles of Space™ continued to explode, disfiguring the faces of young women and their beaus, and when, wrapped up like mummies, they appeared in court to claim damages, the judge—after having listened to the Coca-Cola Enterprise Inc. lawyers—would tell them, tell the mummies that is, that the burden of proof regarding the company’s negligence lay with the consumer. Which meant they’d never see a cent. After the verdict was read, one of the lawyers, moved, had the habit of going up to the mummies, to express the heart-felt understanding of the company. The lawyer would pull out a bottle of Space™ and say, “A gift from Coca-Cola Enterprise Inc., in the hopes that we can continue to call you a customer despite this unfortunate inconvenience.” Often he’d even add, “This is one of the good ones. It won’t explode.”

One time one of the mummies said, “Thank you,” and, taking the Space™, gave it a good shake and agreed, “You’re right, it didn’t explode.” She then hit the lawyer upside the head with it, knocking him out cold. The bottle, however, remained intact.