Day 90 - Percolator Story

Percolator Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 Adam thought about the coffee he was drinking and thought about the people standing in line at the coffee shop across the street. Adam had no appreciation for specialty coffee, he had no taste for beans or blends or different ways to brew or boil his beverage of choice. Unless a cup was especially bad, coffee basically tasted like coffee to him and it served one main purpose – to jack his body up on caffeine to the point of nearly crashing it. Adam knew this wasn’t the best system or use of caffeine, but he had drunk so much so often that he had acclimated his body to nothing less. Basically he was an addict and he knew it. The point to him wasn’t his consumption, but the consumer habits of everyone else around him.

“That’s a helluva scam.”

“What is?”

Adam pointed across the street towards the national brand retail outlet across the street from them. Eddie’s eyes followed Adam’s indication.

“Thriving.”

“It’s out the door.”

Adam had bought his coffee at the gas station on the corner and it had taken him all of forty-five seconds from walking in the place, to pouring, to getting to the counter to pay. He had been watching the line across the street and it hadn’t moved in the last five minutes.

“Those people are out the door. And they have been the entire time we’ve been here and they will be after we’ve left. And they all just accept it as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“They’re willing to wait for something they want.”

“They don’t even know what they want. They’re told to want it. They’re told it tastes great and it’s worth the extra money so they sit there and wait. Trained like ants or sheep or… or… sheep.”

“You thought you’d have a third thing, didn’t you?”

“Shut up.  You know what I mean.”

“Maybe it really is better. You’d drink just about anything short of tar or soot.”

“No entirely untrue. But they’re just drones. See I had a third thing. Drones. Advertise, aim, brainwash and presto – captive customers who do what they’re told. Coffee was something that was cheap and easy and they made it complex and expensive.”

“You’re a coffee elitist.”

“Coffee purist. And I believe in the equalization of the brew.”

“That’s just democracy in action. The market voted. Expensive coffee won.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. People are suckers. Studies show it. They always buy the name brand, the most expensive option, not because it is better, but because it is perceived as better. People pay extra to feel like they are right.”

“And you’re going to change it?”

“Change it? I want to take advantage of it. I should start an ironic coffee shop and call it ‘It’s only coffee’ or ‘It’s not that special.’”

“I’m sure you’d free the masses with your quick wit.”

“It could remind them that it’s only coffee and that they’re being ripped off.”

“No one will go for it. No one wants to know they’re a fool.  Call it ‘Expensive Coffee.’”

“‘The Expensive Cup.’”

“‘Billion dollar blend.’”

“‘Bad but expensive.’”

“‘Tastes Terrible but You’ll Really Hate the Price.’”

“That one’s not bad. That could be the slogan.”

Day 89 - Construct Story

Construct Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 It was seven in the morning, it was inappropriately cold and overcast for a spring morning and the girl with the dark red hair was just standing in the shallow end of the pool. She wasn’t wading, she wasn’t walking, she wasn’t treading water, and she clearly wasn’t getting ready to swim. She just stood there. Andres didn’t know how long she had been there, but he had seen her ten minutes ago and she hadn’t moved since then. Perhaps she was acclimating to the water temperature. Perhaps she was about to make a move at any moment. Perhaps there was a key moment she was waiting for, some signal to start or call to activity. Perhaps.

Andres stood in his hotel room peeking through the thin curtain. He was going to go out to the patio and drink his morning coffee and think and plan and dream about the day. Instead he got to the sliding patio door, saw her, and lost his nerve. He wasn’t sure what she was up to, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t intentionally directed at him, but it was quite disruptive. He wasn’t totally sure why he was assigning so much power to her presence, but he was. She had become an enigma, a challenge, and a symbol of his inertia.

Andres leaned in and pressed his head against the curtain and the curtain against the window. He let out a slow breath, the heat from his mouth and from his coffee cup fogged a spot on the window through the thin fabric. She was a mystery to him – he could only see her back. She wasn’t sexually attractive, but the mysterious nature of her inactivity and half naked appearance was intensive and exhilarating.

He wanted to open the curtain and reveal himself and let it be known he was watching her. He wanted to go out to the patio and call to her and ask her what she was doing. He wanted to go down the pool and check to make sure she was real and make sure she was alive. He wanted to get in the water and push her and force her into some sort of action. He did none of these things. He tried to think about her and her stillness. He tried not to think about his life and his own inertia. He didn’t want to confront the reason he was living in a hotel and living an existence that really had no life of its own. There was no value in facing a life which he had no answers for. So instead he watched the red headed woman in the pool that refused to move. If she would just move he might have a bit of hope himself.

He wanted to yell to her, to beg and plead with her to move. He would not beg. He could not bring himself to bend or beg. He wanted to ask her for help, as if she held some secret that he solve the riddle to everything. He could not bring himself to ask others for help. He wanted some sign that things really would be okay and that the problems and the pains of life would fade away and things could begin to fix themselves. But she would not move.

He pressed his head hard against the glass and felt like crying. He closed his eyes and thought about the past and the hurt of a future that was unfulfilled and would likely remain unrealized. He hurt and he hurt those around him and he had no solutions to try and make them stop.

When he opened his eyes and looked again she was gone, but the water was calm and still, unaffected as water would be if someone had just climbed out or had leapt forward and begun swimming. Andres remained, still searching for answers, wondering if any of it had been real; it was as if she had never been there at all.

Day 88 - School Story

School Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 They were young, oh so very very young and it just seemed like they got younger every single year. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Roy knew it was a simple trick of the mind, but he also knew it was happening. They were young in every way, not just in age.  Age, spirit, maturity, mentality, appearance, clothing, music… the list went on and on and on.  You name it, they were it. Roy knew he was in danger of becoming a grumpy old man, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was only forty, but the irreversible damage was already being done.

Roy questioned daily his choice to go back to college. He was never going to leave if he could help it. College was the best four years of his life. The next decade was spent in poverty, struggling to get a step ahead while the economy, frenemies and coworkers conspired to push him two steps back. He worked with purpose, dedication and resolve. He saw the lazy and the well-connected succeed.  It was enough to drive him insane. Roy decided to go back to school. The media and headhunters were always saying people needed new skills and that the skills of tomorrow would require more work today, so why not get started ASAP?

It started with one class. Extra skills to help with job advancement. Except once he had the skills his job took advantage of them, but the extra pay and advancement never seemed to follow. So they became extra skills to have on a resume. The thing that Roy really discovered was that the classes were fun. Much more fun than the work or the headache of a daily job. So if one class was great, why not two or three or more?

And what Roy kept finding out was that the classes were always better than the job and that the extra skills were not enough to make a sizable dent in his workday. So Roy began to wonder if what he needed was really a different degree. Degrees made people qualified and the job websites kept saying that certain key degrees in certain key fields that were going to solve all the economic woes the under employed had ever known. That was when Roy went after the college experience full force all over again.  If four years had been great, why not have six or eight or more?

Six or eight years of school can get to be very very expensive, even with student loans and reeducation grants. Student loans only need paying back once someone graduated, so Roy didn’t plan on graduating. He was after as many degrees as he could get and was willing to work towards a Masters or a Doctorate if it meant he could keep deferring his student loans.

On some level he knew this was not a plan. He also knew that at some point no matter how many deferments he could get, even with post-graduation economic hardships, he would in fact have to start paying some of this money back. And a decade of education is not a cheap thing. Especially when Roy had no specific career goals in mind once he did actually graduate and did have to actually start making actual money to pay back his actual debt.

Roy also needed money to live while he was still in school. Roy sought out scholarships and grants. He became a T.A. in undergrad classes. He joined the work study program and washed dishes in the cafeteria in his spare time. He became a R.A. to save on his living expenses.

Still, Roy was living a life of poverty and facing only a more extreme case of it in his very near future. So he made the only move that seemed to make sense – he pursued his teaching certification. He had basically only known a life within a school system, so he decided to keep it going and embrace that as his complete and total life style. He could teach and take classes. He could live the dream.

It seemed to be working out and he seemed happy, except for that nagging feeling that everyone around him was getting younger and younger and young. He thought he might have been kept young himself, but that is only a fantasy people tell themselves when they are afraid of death. Existing near young people and even associating with them from time to time is not a fountain of youth. Still, that drawback aside, it beat the alternative with all its pointless busy work and office politics. He was going to get old either way, so why not enjoy it? Roy was going to stay a student until the day he died. He wished them the best of luck collecting all the debt then.

Day 87 - Her Story

Her Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 Henley, being named Henley after all, had decided long ago that he must have cruel and unusual parents.  Not only was Henley an uncommon first name, it was also gender neutral, and it was the name of a type of shirt as well as the last name to famous musician Don Henley.  When asked about it, his parents remembered picking the name from a list of Old English names, but nothing involving a secret love of The Eagles.  Their reasoning was that they wanted a unique child so they felt it appropriate that they give him a unique name.  To that effort they had great success.  If they had a secondary goal of getting their son made fun of as a child, they were two for two.

Henley grew into his name and found he appreciated it more than he ever would have imagined.  There is something special about being special, or so he told himself.  Henley found that men and women both just naturally liked him.  They liked his name.  They liked saying it and using it as a nickname.  Henley often wondered if he had been named David or Joe if he would ever have received the amount of attention that he garnered.  Rather than run any experiments with using a different moniker, Henley simply embraced the power of an interesting name and milked it for all it was worth.

To say that Henley liked women would have been putting it mildly.  Henley loved women.  As a teen he had been girl crazy.  He never outgrew that.  Henley dated often and often recklessly, having two or three girlfriends at a time.  This led to messy and painful emotional scenes and breakups, but for the most part he was quite content with this system.

And a system was what he had developed.  Henley hadn’t sat down and written out a system.  He had no manifesto or dating checklist, but conscious or not, he had a system.  If he had been deep enough for self-analysis he would have dubbed it a system of pain minimization.  He dated a lot, cared a lot less, and never got hurt.  Henley had seen too many relationships end and had been part of a great deal himself.  He had no faith in love or belief that there were such things as soul mates or life partners or some destiny or fate awaited us all.  Henley was a realist, or a pessimist as some others might see it.  He knew people were all flesh and blood and chemicals and pheromones.  There as no such thing as love, other than some endorphins that were released and lasted in the body for about seven years.  Holding such a negative view on love allowed him to never seek it and to simply date for the fun of dating.  He wasn’t lonely; there was always some one new.  He wasn’t heartbroken; he never believed he was supposed to be with anyone.  He wasn’t cruel; he was always honest and open about his beliefs and never misled a woman he pursued.

Henley did have one girl that was more important than the others.  He had dated a girl named Hannah in high school.  They had gotten along well together, but neither one was all that serious about the other.  They both used the other one to lose their virginity and it seemed like that was good enough for both.  Years later during summer break from college they had begun another fling.  It filled the summer nights and made them both happy.  When the fall semester came neither one cared too much that it was time to move on.  During their class reunion they reconnected and shared an exciting hour together while both their dates wondered what had happened to them.  Five years later Hannah had decided it was time to settle down and have herself a family.  Henley didn’t think he would be interested.  He had no desire to think about the future or old age or any of the finite elements of existence.

When Henley met Helen, he finally understood.  He finally believed in unconditional love and lifelong soul mates and other such romantic things.  He had never thought about weddings or spawns or what it would be like to be a father.  He was glad he let Hannah talk him into all three.

Day 86 - Flashmob Story

Flashmob Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Melinda stood near the window, pouring a bottle of vanilla vodka out on the floor of Reggie’s dorm room.  Why?  Because it was vanilla flavored and Melinda thought artificial flavors tasted cheap and made the alcohol taste like crap.  Why pour it on the floor?  Because she was young and drunk and just didn’t care.  Why in Reggie’s dorm room?  Because that was where the party was.  And where was Reggie at the time?  Down the hall trying to stop the flow of people coming to the party.  It was not his party.  It was not his idea.  In fact he was the man who was supposed to stop such things from happening.  Little good did his school appointed authority do him in that particular moment.

The B&B girl had thrown the party without Reggie’s permission.  The B&B girls were well known around campus for their flash mob parties.  They were big and brash and only grew in popularity and notoriety.  The word went out and the people showed up because it was an event and everybody wanted to be part of an event.  Part of the draw was that no one knew they would even be invited to participate until mere minutes beforehand.  The B&B girls somehow got a list of every cellphone number on campus and selected their flash mob partiers using different methods each time.  Texts went out revealing where and when and how the party was going to happen.  Not every student had been invited firsthand to one of the parties.  Some students had gone to multiple events.  But that was just the way things went in school as in life.  Some are luck and some just aren’t.  No one other than the B&B girls knew for sure how and why it worked out this way for the participants.  And they weren’t about to reveal their system.

This wasn’t a particularly extraordinary flash mob party, a party in an R.A’s room, and it certainly wasn’t their most daring party to date.  Some people thought the party was part of a vendetta against Reggie who was a stickler for the rules.  Others thought it was because one of the B&B girls had a secret crush on him.  Whatever the case, the signal had been sent, and the campus kids were always ready.  Reggie was taken completely by surprise when nearly one hundred students arrived at his door ready for festivities.  More arrived by the minute and soon most of the quad was being taken over.  The party would shut down within minutes as none of the flash mob parties ever lasted very long.  Length was not the point.  The point was the excitement that they generated.  The point was creating a moment, a memory, and a campus buzz.  The B&B girls were good at that.

Still, none of that helped Reggie in the moment and none of that was going to save his bottle of vodka.

Reggie got back to his room and saw the mess created by twenty kids crammed into one small dorm room, and was able to bear witness to the very last of his vanilla vodka get made into a vanilla scented puddle on his floor.

“Why?” he asked Melinda.

“Because it smelled fake.”

That was not a satisfying answer.

“I need you to apologize.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I could say things.  Maybe some of them would be true.  But what’s the point?”

“That was not an apology.”

Melinda leaned in and kissed him.  For a moment Reggie forgot that he was an R.A. and forgot the party and forgot the pool of his vodka on the floor.  For a moment he forgot all of that and his only thought was wondering if he was going to get in trouble for all this underage drinking going on in his doom room, and if he got in trouble, if he would get kicked out of school, and if he got kicked out of school if he’d ever have the opportunity to kiss this girl again.  So he took a deep breath and let himself momentarily get lost in the moment for just a moment.

“How was that?”

“Better.  But you still owe me a bottle of vodka.”