|
|
|
Chapter 6: mocha latte freedom fighter
May 26th, 1994
It was a sunny drive down the dirt road into Berney: a refreshing start to a trip that would only get worse. Calm roadways would turn to thick asphalt highways. Increasing traffic meant passing cars in oncoming traffic lanes. And the closer their little data packet got to the SuperNode the more complex the roads would be come, the less time they'd have to make turn-offs until finally entering, getting lost and withering on the spaghetti overpasses in San Francisco. Even thinking about going to the big cities reminded Will of why they had moved out to Redwood.
Heather, as usual, had been asleep when they got up. Mark and Dwayne, as usual, had been up for several hours - playing with their Genetically Altered Lizard Beasties?or whatever the toys were called. Dwayne's mom was going to come pick Dwayne up at ten.
"You think the house will be alright while we're gone?" asked Kendra.
"I'm sure it will. We've left them home for several days before."
"But not both together. And before we've had someone check in on them a couple of times?" The muffled sound of gravel crunching under the wheels of the car filled the cabin for a few moments in the absence of a remark by Will. "I hope they remember to walk the dog," Kendra said absently.
"It'll be fine. We're only gone two - maybe three days. They're easily old enough. Heather's 15 and Mark's 12?11? Yeah. 11." Will smiled to himself. "Besides, it's not like you have to worry about Heather throwing a big party or having boys over," he said in reference to their conversation over dishes the other night.
"Yeah. Actually, it will probably be a pretty boring weekend for them." Kendra smiled, peering out at the rows of coniferous trees rolling by. "It'll be nice to get away. Well, it would be if we weren't going to San Francisco to look at real estate."
The sounds of crunching gravel returned.
They were set for the drive at least, Kendra thought. Tapes and trail mix. She loved trail mix.
STUFF FACE WITH TRAIL MIX
Mmmmmmm. Tasty. Salty. Raisiny. An eclectic mix of pure carbohydrates. You're throat is getting thirsty.
DRINK COFFEE
What coffee?
DRINK HOT COFFEE TO QUENCH THIRST
You don't have that.
CHECK INVENTORY
You have:
Money
Driver's License
Trail Mix
A comb
"Strange Brew" A book adaptation of the hit movie.
Tapes
Staple remover from Will's office.
"Damn!"
"What?"
"I forgot to pack the coffee. After I went to all that trouble of preparing it."
"Don't worry. I'm sure the kid's will drink it," quipped Will. They looked at each other for a moment and laughed - picturing a caffeine frenzied Mark and Dwayne burning down the house. "No Problem," continued Will. "We'll just stop in Naught? Latte as we pass through town. I'm itchin' for a pastry anyway."
Will brushed through the doors of this modern day saloon, swaggered over to the counter and bellied up to the cash register. It was a long pilgrimage today. To see a man about some new pasture to graze on. He'd need supplies. Beans. Bacon. Coffee.
He recognized the young woman behind the counter. They didn't wear name-tags here - the management thought it was tacky - but Will knew her name. He'd forgotten when he'd learned it - but being a regular customer, for personal and professional reasons, he'd seen her quite a lot. She often delivered the coffee to Madre's meetings. She was kind of cute.
"Hi!" she beamed, genuinely glad to see him. "How are you doing?"
"Pretty good, Nicole. We have a coffee and pastry emergency."
She smiled. "At this time on the weekend?"
"Yeah. Business trip, unfortunately." Will motioned to his suit and tie. He liked wearing the suit and tie, though. Especially at the beginning - when Madre was just an office of 18 people. He was the only one who wore the suit then. Now he was the only one among the creative and programming teams. All the lawyers and accountants wore suits and ties now, though - almost as if an excuse for their lack of personality. As Madre got bigger, the less Will felt special for wearing it. He did look good in it, though. Especially with that red striped tie. He had to wear it today for the meeting. Well, he was the boss. He didn't have to wear it, but the circumstances demanded it. It's unseemly for cowboys to be seen without their chaps.
"What kind of emergency supplies would you like?" Nicole asked.
"I'll have a Mochaccino and a large caf? au lait. Whole milk."
"Sure," she confirmed and began to do that thing with the machine that makes the coffee?with all the gurgling and steam and stuff. You know.
Will had been sceptical when these fancy coffee places first started opening. They were just the latest fad, he thought. What happened to pouring grinds in a sieve? But then he'd had a few 'specialty' coffees, as they called them...sure the atmosphere was a bit precious with the couches and book shelves and coffee-making do-hickies that looked like they had once belonged to eighteenth century royalty, silver and clunky - but the coffee and selection was good, he discovered. And the atmosphere was actually nice. It wasn't pretentious and it wasn't quite hipster doofus either. Though without proper care, the whole trend could easily cross the line into either one.
Will began to inspect the pastries. He loved pastry. That pastry case wasn't big enough to hold all of them, he thought. Some of them were going to have to go. "I'll have a cheese and dill scone. Oh. And I'll have two Cinnemellon Danishes too."
After flipping the hoopy and spinning that there wammer-wuzzle to get the froof on the latte and topping off the mochaccino, Nicole handed over the two cups in a made-from-100%-recyclable-material, unbleached cup holder. Grabbing the requested pastries, Nicole handed those over too, wrapped in made-from-100%-recyclable-material, unbleached paper napkins.
She punched up the register. "That'll be $3.45. Oh. And do you want to sign our petition?"
Ooh. A cause! Actually, Will wasn't much into these flaky petition signing extravaganzas that seemed to be so much a part of the nineties, but he was always interested in seeing what people were concerned or making a stink about. And if he agreed he'd usually sign.
"What's it about?" he asked, the seductive aroma from his mochaccino trickling up into his nostrils.
"It's to prevent Che's Coffee Revolution from kicking us out."
"Che's Coffee Revolution?" The name sounded vaguely familiar to him.
"Yeah. You know. The big coffee chain? They bought our lease right out from under us. They're gonna evict us and set up shop here. They've done it in several towns in California and throughout the country. They find a successful shop, go directly to the landlord, buy out the lease from him and then convert the shop to an another cog in the Che's Coffee Revolution franchise - with very little overhead costs for them since we've already put up the money and worked up the customer base."
"Geeze!" Will was appalled. That was appalling! Could they do that? It seemed so sleazy!
"In Willem they bought the lease out but there was so much protest that Che's was forced to continue renting to the local coffee shop. We're hoping if we get enough awareness and signatures we can do the same thing."
"Yeah," said Will. He was appalled! "Of course I'll sign it. That's awful. Is that even legal?"
"Yeah. I guess," Stella shrugged. "They did it anyway. They own the lease. We have until the end of July. They were really clever too. Bought it just as our re-negotiation was coming up?so we wouldn't have time to organize against it."
Will was appalled. He scribbled his name and number down on the sheet. Under comments he wrote the only thing that could come to mind: I'm appalled! He stood back up and just stared blankly at Nicole. He wanted to talk more about it, but he was stunned. And he had to go. Kendra was waiting out in the car.
"Well, how are you doing for signatures so far?"
"Pretty good. We got a couple of sheets full already. We only learned about this two days ago."
"Wow. Well, I really wish you luck," he said as he turned to go.
"Yeah. Thanks. We'll need it. Have a nice trip."
"Yeah. Thanks Nicole." Will exited the saloon, deflated. It was like he'd heard they were just putting fences up on all the land. You couldn't roam free any more.
They were ripping along a paved road now on one of the major arteries into civilization?though they were still very much in the country. Cows grazed in the field beside them as they whipped by. Fenced in.
It was a sunny day out. But Will felt sour. "I can't believe that that's legal. I know it is, but it just seems so sleazy."
"Definitely," agreed Kendra. She found it funny that he was so worked up about it - especially after his tirade four years ago, when all these high-end coffee shops first burst on the scene, about how pretentious and faddy it was. Still, she'd always liked these coffee shops and agreed with him.
"I mean. We moved to a small town to get away from this sort of thing. This sort of thinking. It's like a cancer. The city just eats up the small towns."
"Sometimes," added Kendra, "I feel like we're nomads or something, being hunted by the cruel, but dominant race. Being culturally eliminated. Ainu. Neanderthals. Cree." Kendra was surprised she'd managed to think of so many astute examples.
"Che's Coffee Revolution?!" Will exasperated, "They don't have anything to do with revolution! They sell coffee! Not even decent coffee. Pre-fab, instant coffee, faux-caf?-coffee. How do they get away with that crap? Who believes it?"
They drove a while in silence. "Have you ever heard of them?" he asked Kendra.
"Che's?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah. But only a little. Only recently."
"Yeah. Me too. I never heard of them before. So how come they're suddenly everywhere. You read about them in the paper. People make jokes about them. Yet they didn't even seem to exist two years ago. I don't get it."
They were pulling through Milner now. Will remembered 12 years ago when this was just a small town you drove by. The town used to be on one side of the highway. Now it had enveloped it. They stopped at a light, turned towards the city centre and followed the signs towards San Francisco.
Suddenly they were driving by a Che's Coffee Revolution coffee house - with its slick logo on the outside; its polished, smooth, clean, hep image; its flawless, over-replicated brand colours of green and purple; its stylized, vector-graphic logo of Che Guevara's face, as if a computer had drawn a serious, artful cartoon of Che half submerged in shadows? Will didn't know much about that point in Cuban history, but he was pretty sure Che wouldn't have approved of the absconding of his visage to sell coffee. Will and Che were equally appalled. Brothers in disgust.
"Look! There's one here now!" he said. Last time he'd driven through Milner, maybe a year ago, there hadn't been one. They continued to drive on. About 5 minutes later they were driving through the thick of the small downtown. Suddenly there was another one. And, but a few blocks later, another Che's Coffee Revolution. Perhaps the term revolution wasn't such a misnomer. To Will it was revolting.
Three towns later, passing through the outskirts of Sacramento, the biggest town on their way to San Francisco, they had seen two more Che's and a couple of other small chain coffee shops with similar stylings and cloned reproducibility. They dipped into Sacramento to stop for lunch and, as they passed through the downtown core, Will saw something shocking. On his left there was a Che's Coffee Revolution, full of people. Then, on the kitty corner, was ANOTHER Che's Coffee Revolution! Will could feel his eye's pop out of his head and his brain strain as it tried to find an explanation. It went against all of Will's accumulated business sense. He was self-trained, so maybe it was some of that high-level business?but Will couldn't figure it out.
When they were back out on the highway and heading along Will spoke up. "I don't understand how they can open all these stores in the same area? How can that possibly make money? What kind of business model are they using? Doesn't that eat into their profits? I'm just blown away by those two in Sacramento. I mean, there was one on one corner?and then another one on the exact opposite corner. I mean, that's weird enough for two differing coffee shops, but for the SAME chain? I don't get it!"
Kendra was stunned too, though a little less na?ve. Maybe she got out more. She'd seen this pattern developing over the last year. Still, that twin set-up in Sacramento had surprised her too. "Yeah. It's strange. I mean?why can't homeless shelters or schools grow like that?"
They drove in silence for a bit. Kendra had an idea.
"Maybe they have two stores in that one street because they're so popular they couldn't fit all the customers in one store. So they decided another was profitable."
"Hmmmm." Will thought. That was a clever point. Kendra was a smart woman. "Yeah. That could be. Still?seems weird." He stared off into the horizon. He could see San Fran, way off in the distance. They'd be there in an hour.
"It's like a bad simulation game," Kendra thought aloud. "Sim-Corporate coffee"
"I don't understand how they can expand like that. Do they put cocaine in the coffee? Must have something to do with stock valuation or something. The expectations for their stock among the stock buying public must be so high that they have all this money to expand like nuts. Everyone sees them expanding like nuts so they think they are wildly successful and so they buy more stocks." Will shook his head. At first he'd just been kind of upset, and it was hard to make Will upset, about closing down his favourite coffee shop - his company's favourite coffee shop. But now he was more incensed at new business?business that didn't seem to have any goal or logical rationale. The closer he got to San Francisco, the happier he was they were secluded in Redwood. These trips were always like this, ending with him happy he didn't live in the city. He would be glad to dump the business stuff off at the SuperNode. If business like this was necessary to keep Madre alive, he would do it?but let someone else handle it. Will liked the small, production and people-oriented business.
"It's sorta like the Holy Roman empire, I guess" Kendra offered. "As long as they're expanding, as long as the people have a goal - they're doing incredible. But as soon as they run out of places to expand or conquer?it'll all collapse. At some point they're going to have to change their name to Nero's Coffee Revolution and play their violin as the walls of Caffeine come burning down. It's just like that huge big box book-chain everyone's talking about. Dickens' Diction. It's like the Holy Roman Empire in a micro-culture: I'm not sure it's sustainable."
With all the expanding and rearranging of Madre in the past year, Will hadn't been able to focus on much else. Even, ironically, business theory. The topic didn't really interest him - though it didn't bore him either - but it was, at least, something he tried to brush up on every now and then. He didn't want to follow the latest business trends. Will felt that trends destroyed true originality and management. Madre wasn't just a business. It was a unique collection of individuals and talents. Ruling by peer pressure and fads was a ridiculous idea that, somehow, seemed to fly in the city. None of it made sense to Will, but he liked to see what was being said in the business magazines every now and then?if only to stimulate his mind in the area. But, in the last two and a half years he hadn't been able to do much of anything except scramble under all the changes. He didn't even know what the latest business fad was. He hadn't even cracked a book in probably a year and a half. Come to think of it, he hadn't even taken a real vacation in that long. He'd been surviving on his cherished monthly family picnics...but he hadn't had a vacation.
"You know, I think we should take a vacation again sometime soon," he said.
Kendra thought about it in silence for a bit. He was right. They hadn't taken a vacation in?two?three years.
"I mean. We've been so busy?but we could do it. I'm hiring this new manager so that they can do all this expansion stuff that I don't want to do and takes up all my time. But when he's all settled in?well, I should have the first break I've had in years. We could go somewhere. Somewhere nice. The stocks are soaring. I believe we're loaded at present."
Kendra smiled. God, she would love an excuse to get away from designing another game. She needed a break. She had a couple of ideas running around in her head?for a new type of game?one she was even marginally excited about?but all the time and effort to make a game? A vacation would be great.
"We'll go somewhere nice. Tahiti. Hawaii. You know, one of those vacations you don't need a vacation to recover from - no travelling. Just lying on the beach, swimming, eating, drinking. We could go in March. Maybe February even."
"That sounds great." Kendra reached over and took her husband's hand. This trip to San Francisco wasn't a total loss then.
As they drove on Will felt like he was on a field trip. An unpleasant, but very informative one. He was surprised he was getting so riled up about this coffee stuff. It wasn't like him. He didn't really like city ways but he bowed to them sometimes in running his company. Companies are a city thing and if he wanted his company in the country?he'd have to bow every now and then. But the coffee stuff was invading on his personal space. He definitely felt like he should be learning something from this field trip. Somehow it seemed about something more than just coffee.
Will brushed through the doors into the saloon. It was two days later and dusk was just setting on the small town of Berney. Will had parked his horse outside and marched in with grim determination on his face. He wasn't the fighting sort. He was the stoic cowboy. But undesirables were riding in and bullying people around in the town. Encroaching on this peaceful settlement. It was time to take a stand. This here town wasn't big enough for the both of them. Someone had to go.
Will sidled up to the counter. Nicole was working again today, but the caf? was pretty silent. She smiled as she recognized him.
"Say," he said, "Do you think I could have a blank photocopy of that petition?"
"Uh?sure! I've got a spare copy here." She handed him one from under the counter.
"Great," he said examining the sheet. "Oh, and a double mocha-latte to go, please."
www.gamequestnovel.com
A New Chapter Every Friday
Click here to receive mail when a new chapter is up.
Don't like reading online? (I don't blame you.)
Click here to receive an email when Game Quest is published.
|
|
|
