Hooray! My business cards came in the mail and they look pretty good. More important is how they make me feel (like a freakin’ professional!) and how great it is not to have to fumble around for paper and pens every time someone wants my blog or email address. I’ve been told, too, that they’re an absolute must to take with you to cons, so I’m glad I got a bunch because I’ll be attending VCon in Vancouver in October. If anyone out there has any con attending advice, I’d be glad to hear it.And now I’m off to brew a pot of a most delicious Guatemalan to have for breakfast, I mean, to have with breakfast, so here’s a little dystopic-future-coffee-related story to keep you occupied:
You’re sitting in the airport, exhausted, waiting five hours for a three hour flight. In the corner of the departure lounge there is a little machine. A black box with lurid yellow and brown signage that claims to be the Best Coffee Bar.
Even though you know you shouldn’t you peel yourself off the faux leather seat and trundle over to investigate this strange, immodest machine. After all, you’ve all ready exhausted the entertainment value of a crossword, a copy of the Telegraph, a bag of chips and a packet of gum. So over you go.
Best Coffee Bar, eh?
Well, you reason, how can it be worse than canned coffee? Or that syrupy stuff the airline steward smilingly poisoned you with, that stuff that played havoc with your bowels.
Commence inspection of buttons. They are big and glossy as the buttons on a child’s toy, with words, offerings, slightly distorted under curving plastic. On offer are the coffee shop standards: espresso, Americano, latte. One button even makes the dubious claim of providing the purchaser with “filter coffee”. You know, just know, that is a lie.
So what’s the least offensive of the lot? To be on the safe side, you choose the latte. Fish three-seventy five out of your pocket and feed it into the machine. Ka-shink, ka-shink, shink, shink, shink.
DO YOU WANT SUGAR? Y/N
Y. Most definitely.
A paper cup is projected like a missile into the clear chute. Some brown substance jets into the cup, spraying the glass, the drain-tray, splattering the cup. The machine is shaking, rumbling. Noises coming out of the lurid box make you wonder if you’ve activated a self-destruct mechanism.
Then the storm passes. Silence. As if nothing untoward has happened, the door opens with a little whir.
ENJOY YOUR BEST COFFEE EXPERIENCE
Take the cup, take a sip.
Well, it’s foamy. Foamy in the way that spray insulation is foamy. It tastes faintly bitter, too sweet, but it doesn’t matter because after the first sip you can’t taste it any more. This is due to the terrible viscosity of the tongue coating UHT milk.
Three seventy five. Outrage. I am incensed!
The machine just shot you a cup of unpalatable liquid that cost you the same as the Sunday edition. You’d crush the offending cup in your hand if the liquid wasn’t well over three hundred degrees and caustic enough to clean spray paint off a wall. If this was a café, you’d demand your money back, would leap across the bar and give a few lessons in brewing to the staff.
But it’s not a café.
It’s a machine in the airport and it’s no wonder there’s a bin of half-empty paper cups beside it. The machine is shiny, digital, brand new. You could probably get internet access from it right now if only you knew how. None of that does you any good.
The little screen talks to you but won’t hear a thing you say. It’s deaf to your complaints, dumb to your pleas.
Oh, you could kick it, put a fair, size ten boot print in the fiberglass front, but that security guard over there is watching you. He knows how long you’ve been waiting in this airless lounge with the incessant chatter of the news coming from televisions with bad reception, the screaming of exhausted kids. He knows how bad the coffee is, suspects it might put you over the edge.
Throw the cup away. Walk stiffly back to your seat. Maybe nod as you go by the guard to show him this airport hasn’t defeated you, not yet. Sit down, feel your butt begin to ache again. Rifle through the Telegraph for a story that slipped by you. Check your watch. It’s only been three minutes.
