It was a beautiful day in early April, with the presence of all that was implied by that. The grass was growing. The first leaves were budding. Birds were singing that hadn’t been seen in months. And the President and CEO of CozyCocoa, Inc. was holding a pistol to his forehead with one foot out the window.
“Listen, you’re overreacting. This happens every year. It’s just a –”
“Little dip!” shrieked Earnest Von Hestle, in the tones of one who’s heard it all before and liked none of it. “Just a LITTLE DIP?! Just a LITTLE DROP IN SALES!? Every year it worsens! It widens! It cuts a FURROW into our profits! It makes a CRATER of my stewardship! It lays an IMPASSIBLE CREVASSE betwixt me and the board, and it grows wider year by year as the gap separating me from excellence yawns greater and greater and greater and GREATE-”
“Why not,” said Leslie Green, Secretary and Personal Assistant of the President and CEO of CozyCocoa, Inc., in the tones of one who’s said it all before and can feel the breath wasting itself even as it leaves his lungs, “just launch a new product?”
Earnest’s entire body convulsed for a split second (barring, luckily, his trigger finger). He swallowed, using a few more muscles than necessary. “New?” he gurgled.
“Something that can sell in the warm months.”
“New?”
“Something that’s cold.”
“New?”
“Something that isn’t hot chocolate.”
“NEW?!” screamed Earnest. He hurled his gun at Leslie’s head and missed, utterly destroying his expensive and unused laptop and several acres of test mugs. “We do not do NEW here at CozyCocoa, Inc.! We use my father’s recipe! My father’s recipe that he made from my grandfather’s recipe! My grandfather’s recipe that he made from HIS father’s recipe! My great-grandfather’s recipe that he stole uncredited from my great-great-grandmother! And you would, would, would SULLY these OLD things with your NEW ideas?! No hell is dark and deep enough! No punishment cruel and long enough! An end! An END shall be fashioned and you will be PLACED WITHIN IT PERMANENTLY AND… it would solve it?”
“Solve what?”
“The thing. The seasonal thing.”
“The little dip.”
Earnest’s shoulders slowly began to lower themselves from ear height. “Yes. The little dip. It’s just a little dip, so we won’t need more than a little help. Yes, just a small product. A by-product, even. Something insignificant, it won’t be a big deal. No real fuss. No harm done. Yes. Yes. Good. A fine idea. Order my head of research to produce it.”
“It’ll be done in ten minutes,” said Leslie, who had done it four minutes ago before coming in to see what all the screaming was about this time.
“Make it seven!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome! And get me a new laptop! And a new gun!”
***
Leslie Green sent the email to Michelle Folps, Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email to Gregory Brisket, Secretary and Personal Assistant of the Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email and a few thousand dollars to Peter Frisk, Senior Recruiter of CozyCocoa, Inc. and told him to figure something out.
So Peter Frisk took a cheque for a few thousand dollars down to the street corner and hung around for ten minutes.
“Anyone got an amazing new product idea for a warm-weather beverage?” he called out into the air.
“You’ll never get it from me!” shouted the hot dog vendor. “I told the courts I wasn’t talking, and I meant it!”
“I don’t know what counts as warm-weather,” mused a passing parent, child slung in a harness and child roving on a lead. “Is it sixteen degrees? Twenty-six? Just once it’s no longer cold? What’s cold? And what do any of those numbers mean in Fahrenheit?”
“Blolf,” said the harness-child.
“I don’t know what a beverage is,” said the lead-child.
“Sure I got an idea,” said a man with a cardboard sign. “Or I know how to get one. What’s the pay?”
“A cheque for a few thousand dollars,” said Peter.
“I only do million-dollar ideas,” said the man, putting away his cardboard sign. “But I think I can lower myself to this. Should be easy. Can you buy me a coffee and then wait here for a second humming something? No Beatles, though. I’m done with them.”
So Peter Frisk fetched the man without a cardboard sign his coffee and hummed five verses of Barrett’s Privateers while he voyaged through the six astral seas into the twelfth Realm Beyond The Soul and wrestled with the UnAntiNegaAbsense, which he slew using the shimmering poniard of his own endawnenment and the teeth of his mind-bunker. Then from his chest he drew forth a silver scroll and on that silver scroll were golden words and in the golden words were syllables of purest diamond and darkest oak that seared deep into his body and burned his tongue so that his eyes opened and his cheeks flushed and he spat out ‘Cold Chocolate.”
“Pardon?” said Peter Frisk, who had lost track of whether the privateers sailed again on the ninety-sixth or ninety-eighth day and was really concerned about whether or not this would compromise the integrity of the humming more or less than stopping to ask about it.
“There’s your idea. Cold chocolate.”
“Like, hot chocolate but cold, or…”
“No, it’s more like the fundamental exact opposite of hot chocolate. Sorry, it’s a million-dollar idea, but I’ll take the cheque anyways. Need to get this one off my hands before it burns them. Don’t look for me again.”
So the cheque changed hands, and the idea was brought back to Gregory Brisket, who brought it to Michelle Folps, who brought it to Leslie Green, who brought it to Earnest Von Hestle, who said “what the hell is cold chocolate?”
“It’s the fundamental exact opposite of hot chocolate,” said Leslie Green, who was capable of reading a message past the first sentence and the subject line.
“I don’t like it. I don’t like that.” Earnest chewed his lip and some of his moustache. “We still have that old ice cream factory in the Midwest, right? Could we use that?”
“Tectonically stable and has refrigeration facilities. Should be ideal.”
“Good. Go do that. This. Somewhere where I don’t have to watch it, thank you and please.”
***
So the money moved and the machinery followed, and an old missile bunker and an old ice cream factory were sort of mushed together until the combination yielded cold, cold fruit. Cacao beans, specifically. The things that happened after that were specifically unspecifiable, and very unspecifically unspeakable.
But their product was not. And soon it was on billboards and popups and unskippable trailers.
Cold Chocolate: The Fundamental Exact Opposite of Hot Chocolate.
You could buy a can for two dollars, a bottle for five, a big jug for ten. It froze the tongue and frosted the throat and delighted the soul, no stirring, no mixing, no heating, no shaking. It could be kept on a shelf for over six hours before beginning to thaw; twice as long if out of direct light. It could be used to numb the pain of a sunburn. It could be used to rehydrate the dehydrated. It could be used to keep a cooler full of sandwiches fresh. It could be used as a refreshing cocktail ingredient, or to elevate a milkshake to ultimate perfection.
It sold out, then it sold far out, then it sold totally far out, man. And when the summer’s quarterly review came, it came with news most unexpected.
“There was no dip,” said Earnest Von Hestle.
“It would’ve been hard to imagine,” said Leslie. “Hell, we made more in July than we do some entire winters.
“No dip,” said Earnest. “No itty-bitty dippy. No little-bittle gap. No slumpity-slump, no slouchity-slouch. Only a rise, a glorious, great, engorged, englorioused rise. Profits went up up up up up. You know what this means, don’t you? Don’t you?”
“Well, it means the board won’t-”
“It MEANS,” shouted Earnest, voice breaking into a squeak fit to kill a dog through its eardrums, “that now WINTER’S going to be a little dip for us! We need more! We need to sell more! We’ll sell cold chocolate all winter if we must – damnit, damnit damnit, that won’t do. Can you make hot cold chocolate?”
“No,” said Leslie, who not only could read a message past the first sentence and the subject line, but could remember its contents, too. “They’re fundamental opposi-.”
“You’re fired,” said Earnest, pulling his new gun out of his desk and wildly firing it into the ceiling. “NOW TELL THEM TO MAKE IT OR I’LL FIRE YOU AGAIN!”
So Leslie Green typed his last email – under gunpoint, cc’d it, and as he left the premises in a hurry and booked a flight for the opposite side of the planet it was received by Michelle Folps, Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email to Gregory Brisket, Secretary and Personal Assistant of the Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email and a few thousand dollars to Peter Frisk, Senior Recruiter of CozyCocoa, Inc. and told him to figure something out.
Peter Frisk went down by the street corner for two whole hours and couldn’t find one idea, so he wrote an email to Gregory Brisket telling him that he’d considered every factor and there couldn’t possibly be anything dangerous about combining hot chocolate and cold chocolate.
This was good enough for Gregory, which was good enough for Michelle, which was good enough for the passing stranger Earnest coerced at gunpoint into reading his emails for him.
Which meant that at six thirty seven pm CST, on a nice day in autumn, two great percolating vats of liquid had five millilitres piped from each of them into a test flask, which immediately erupted into a thermal singularity, thus evenly distributing all heat and matter across the entire universe into an omnipresent lukewarmness.
***
It wasn’t all bad.
The flavour, for those who (briefly) had the presence of mind to grasp it, was quite lovely.