The Real Thing

by Brian Falkner

  BOJUTSU

  Fizzer was into Eastern Mysticism, and that’s how he got through those next two weeks. His dad said it was just a phase, the Eastern Mysticism, and he was probably right, but, true or not, Fizzer threw himself whole-heartedly into his meditation, yoga and martial arts training to take his mind off the catastrophe.

  And it really was a catastrophe. It might seem like a small thing, getting a brand of soft drink wrong but it brought Fizzer’s world crashing down around his tastebuds. Everything he believed in, everything he told others about focus and perception and training, it was all gone. Just because he couldn’t tell one can of cola from another.

  They’d gone back to the corner dairy and bought another can of Coke, except Fizzer said that it wasn’t Coke either. Mr Lim, the dairy owner, wouldn’t have a bar of that though. He said he just sold the stuff, he didn’t put it in the cans, and he didn’t care too much because Fizzer kept buying another can, taking one sip, and saying, ‘That’s not Coke either.’

  As long as he kept paying for the cans, it was fine by Mr Lim.

  Fizzer’s friends all rallied around and tried to support him as best they could, because he was their buddy, he was their mate, and they knew he was really distressed.

  Jenny even joined Fizzer’s karate school, or dojo as they called it. She said it was for self-defence, and that was true, but, just as much, it was about simply being a friend. For some reason Jenny felt a bit guilty about what had happened, although it wasn’t her fault at all. It wasn’t even Phil’s fault.

  Flea joined up at the karate dojo too, but he had reasons of his own. Flea used to go out with Jenny before Phil did, and he never totally got over her. Once Flea and Jenny had joined the dojo, Phil had to as well, just to keep an eye on Jenny and Flea. Which only went to show that he didn’t know Jenny half as well as he thought he did.

  Tupai went along to watch a few times, although karate wasn’t really his scene. He much preferred boxing and hoped to be a professional boxer one day. They even tried to talk Jason into going along but he kept making excuses and avoiding it. He wasn’t much good at sports, Jason.

  It was a Wednesday, seven-thirty-ish, and Tupai was sitting on the floor beside the padded mats of the dojo watching a bojutsu lesson.

  CRACK! The training bo smacked down on Fizzer’s padded helmet with a noise that sounded like his skull had been broken wide open. It wasn’t; it was just the noise the training bo made.

  A bo is a big long stick. King Arthur would have called it a stave or a staff, and it was a common English weapon in the early days. But the big difference between the Japanese martial art of bojutsu and English staff-fighting is in the moves. The English just used to whack each other around a bit, if you believe those old Robin Hood films. But the Japanese had turned it into an art form.

  The difference between a fighting bo and a training bo, is that the training bo has bamboo shafts attached loosely down each side. When you hit your (heavily padded) opponent, the bamboo smacks against the side of the bo and makes that cracking sound.

  CRACK! The upswing of the bo crashed up under Fizzer’s arm, knocking his own bo from his grasp.

  Dennis Cray, the instructor, took off his helmet and bowed to Fizzer, who bowed back before retrieving his bo and scurrying to the side of the mat, where he sat with his legs crossed like the rest of the bojutsu class.

  Dennis was the teacher, the Sensei of the dojo, and possibly the toughest man alive. He was a fourth dan black belt in karate, Okinawan Goju-Ryu style, an expert in bojutsu. He held a private pilot’s licence, and spent the rest of his time mountain climbing, caving, scuba diving, and he even combined the lot in a really dangerous sport called black-water diving, where he dived in underground lakes and rivers.

  Dennis was due to go to Japan in a few weeks to attempt the 100 man kumite. That’s a karate event where you have to fight 100 opponents one after the other, and beat at least half of them. Very few New Zealanders have even attempted it, and only one or two have succeeded.

  Fizzer had been learning bojutsu for months, but it was the first time for the others. They all seemed to enjoy it, especially Flea. Even Tupai found himself wondering what it would be like to swing that big stick around his shoulders and under his arms with the incredible speed and precision that Dennis did it. Maybe he would give it a go, he thought. Maybe next month.

  Fizzer enjoyed it too, but overshadowing his enjoyment was this overwhelming sense of loss. The world as he knew it had changed, and it affected everything, even the energy he put into his lesson.

  Somebody had to do something, Tupai realised as he watched Fizzer, and he wished it could be him, but he had no idea what to do.

  Tupai was not blessed with intuition the way Fizzer was, and sometimes laughed at him about intuition being a feminine thing. That used to annoy Fizzer a bit, who said he had read in the Readers Digest an article which said that it was the ‘subconscious connection of seemingly unrelated facts to form a conclusion for which there is no obvious rationale’, or something along those lines.

  Tupai wasn’t very good at forming conclusions for which there was no obvious rationale, but he did occasionally have some good ideas of his own, without the benefit of intuition, and he had one just then. It didn’t make a lot of sense, so maybe it was a kind of intuition, but, either way, he acted on it.

  He slipped out of the dojo, as quietly as he could, and trotted three or four blocks down the street to the superette. He bought a couple of cans of Coke from the pretty check-out girl, and gave her a really big smile, because she was really pretty. She didn’t look up from her till roll though, so it was wasted.

  He walked back to the dojo thinking about Bruce Lee movies and pretty girls who didn’t smile at you, and watched the rest of the lesson.

  When the others had cleaned the floor of the dojo with their towels, which for some reason was part of the lesson, and changed out of their karate gi’s, they emerged one by one from the front entrance of the converted warehouse which was the dojo.

  Tupai met Fizzer on the steps and, without a word, handed him one of the cans. Fizzer froze, as did the others, and Tupai’s big heart stopped beating. He had been trying to help, but from the expression on Fizzer’s face you would have thought he had just been handed a live grenade with the pin pulled out.

  Jenny shook her head. ‘Tupai, I don’t think you should have …’

  Fizzer cut her off. ‘No, no. It’s all right. It’s OK, Tupai; I think I know where you’re coming from. Thanks mate, but no thanks. If you know what I mean.’

  Something welled up from deep inside Tupai and, without thinking about it properly, he said, ‘Drink it, Fizzer, just try it.’

  Fizzer looked dead at Tupai, without blinking, which is really hard to do. Jenny started to move in between them, but before she could get in the way, Fizzer reached out, took the can, snapped the top and took a long guzzle.

  He looked up, and there was a spark in his eyes that they hadn’t seen since the school fair. There was a lot of confusion too, but at least the spark was back.

  ‘Now that,’ he said vigorously, ‘is Coca-Cola!’

  AMATIL

  The offices of Coca-Cola Amatil (NZ) Limited were located in a leafy side street in a bustling, industrial area in Mt Wellington, in Auckland. The head of Public Relations for the company was Harry Truman, who was absolutely no relation to the former US President who shared his name.

  The PR man for Coca-Cola was Harry Seamus Truman, and the former President was Harry S. Truman (believe it or not, his middle name was ‘S’), so they had exactly the same initials, but that was where the resemblance ended.

  Harry Seamus Truman was from Ireland. He was tall and of slim build but strong around the shoulders because he did a lot of swimming. Not quite as much as he would have liked to do, thanks to the pressures of his job, but quite a lot all the same. He looked more like Pierce Brosnan, the actor, who also came from Ireland, than he looked like Harry Truman, the former Presi
dent who didn’t (come from Ireland).

  Harry liked his job. He liked his office, which overlooked a small park at the rear of the building. He liked the people he worked with and the company he worked for. But he didn’t always like the people he had to deal with each day, and, as the PR man for Coca-Cola, that was a lot of people.

  There were advertising agency people, slickly dressed and slickly spoken, with the latest mobile phones dangling from their ears. There were tabloid journalists, who thought there must be some dirt to dig up on the giant American corporation, and who rolled into his office reeking of cigarette smoke, and asking bizarre questions about bizarre things that there was just no answer to. Then there were sponsorship people, who wanted Coca-Cola to sponsor everything from Sea Scout troops to protest rallies for the Concerned Citizens Against Just About Everything. Sponsorship people arrived in his office in ill-fitting suits, or raw cotton shirts and roman sandals, depending on what kind of group they belonged to, and he always listened to them.

  People deserved a hearing, he thought, and he always explained to them The Coca-Cola Company’s strict sponsorship policy, but if, after hearing that, they still wanted to come and see him and put their case, then he always gave them the time.

  As a result he worked very long hours and had far less time for swimming than he would have liked.

  He couldn’t work out just who was standing in his office today but, always hoping to find diamonds in the rough of human nature, he greeted the two boys warmly and invited them to sit down.

  The taller of the two was growing his hair long, but wasn’t there yet, Harry decided. Fraser was his name. He had an awareness about him, a connection with the space around him, as if he were intimately acquainted with every facet of the room, from the dust on the upper shelves where the cleaner could never be bothered to clean, to the cigarette burn on the carpet, concealed by a pot plant, that a journalist from the Weekly Inquisition had left when Harry had asked him not to smoke in his office.

  It was a very strange feeling to have about someone, and Harry wondered if he perhaps shouldn’t have had the double-shot cappuccino that morning.

  The shorter, but more powerfully built lad, Tupai, looked like he could tear the arms off a grizzly bear if he had to, but there was a ready smile to his lips, and a cheeky personality that shone through his eyes.

  On first appearances, Harry decided, he liked these two lads. But he would have to see what they wanted.

  There was a brief exchange of pleasantries, mainly about the weather and the rugby league games scheduled for that weekend. Then, without further preamble, Fraser brought two unopened cans of Coke out of a small backpack and plonked them on the table before him.

  He looked at Harry and, with a very serious expression, said, ‘You have a problem in one of your factories.’

  Harry started to protest but stopped himself, deciding to give the lad the benefit of the doubt. They had made a good first impression after all.

  Fraser took a couple of empty cans out of the backpack and showed the batch numbers on the bottom of the cans and explained dates and described what he thought was wrong with the drink.

  ‘Not enough sugar,’ he said. ‘It’s not sweet enough.’ Then the boy with the not-quite-long hair stared Harry straight in the eye and said, ‘If I had to guess, I’d say it’s down about fifteen percent.’

  Harry let him finish, then took a deep breath. He liked this kid. He had two teenagers of his own, and the only thing they were interested in was playing computer games on a console in front of the television. The thought of them getting off their backsides and making a trip across town because they thought a can of Coke had fifteen percent less sugar than it should have was so unthinkable that there wasn’t even a word for it.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Glenfield,’ Fraser replied.

  ‘That must be four bus trips from here.’

  The other lad spoke up then, the natural smile curling from his face. ‘Only three.’

  Only three bus rides. These boys had taken three buses to tell Harry Truman, the PR man from Ireland, that something was wrong with a can of Coke. The sad thing was they were almost certainly wrong.

  Most people would have politely shown them the door at this stage, but Harry could only think of his own two boys and sigh. He decided then and there, that for the effort they had put in, they deserved an effort in return.

  ‘We have very highly paid people who do nothing all day long but make sure our product is perfect,’ he said. ‘They’re called Quality Control Inspectors. The machines that mix the drinks are worth millions of dollars. It is inconceivable that the Coke could be wrong. I’m sorry but I just can’t accept it.’

  Fraser said simply, ‘Try it yourself,’ as Tupai produced, almost by magic, two paper cups and placed them on the table in front of him. They made a good double act, Harry thought.

  Fraser poured a little of the first can into one cup and a little of the other can into the other cup. Harry stared at him for a little while.

  ‘OK, OK, I’ll take the test,’ he smiled at last.

  He tried the first drink; the one Fraser said was all right. It tasted like Coca-Cola should. He tried the second, and that tasted fine too.

  ‘No difference,’ he said, a little sadly for their sake.

  ‘Taste it,’ Fraser said.

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘No, really taste it, what’s left in your mouth, concentrate on it. Shut your eyes if you have to.’

  This was starting to get a little silly, but once started …

  Harry shut his eyes and concentrated, and damned if he couldn’t almost see what the boy was talking about. Confused, he tried the first cup again, then the second. Again there was just the faintest feeling that the second was not quite as sweet as the first.

  Thoughtfully he picked up the cans and looked again at the batch numbers.

  ‘Different production lines,’ he said carefully. ‘I’m not saying you’re right, but just for interest, and as I have no other appointments this morning, let’s go for a little walk.’

  Harry quickly emailed his secretary to cancel the rest of his appointments for the morning, which included two advertising agencies, one journalist from the Conspirer, and a group from the Save the Paper Wasp foundation.

  A few moments later, wearing ‘Visitor’ badges and funny plastic shower caps over their heads, they were walking through the massive barn-like structure that housed the bottling and canning machines. As they walked, Harry explained a little about the five factory lines of mixing machines and the secret formula that came, already mixed, in twenty-litre drums from the factories that produced it in Puerto Rico, Africa, and the place of his birth: Ireland.

  He pointed out where the water was purified, where the mixing happened, where the carbonating happened, and was going to tell them the quite interesting fact that only three people in the whole world knew the recipe for Coke, and they weren’t allowed to travel on the same plane, when they arrived at the Cobrix machine, and he didn’t have time.

  Kelly Fraser, the QCI for the machine, met them by the control panel, and the operator also hung around in the background wondering about the sudden attention.

  ‘This is a Cobrix machine,’ Harry said. ‘There is one on every line. It constantly monitors the brix of the liquid, that’s the sweetness level. This is how we make sure the mixture is exactly right.’ He turned to Kelly who had an odd look on her face, part concern and part curiosity.

  ‘This young lad thinks,’ began Harry, ‘this line is not mixing enough sugar in with the formula and the water.’ Before Kelly could open her mouth he continued. ‘And I think there’s a possibility he’s right.’

  Then she did protest, quite vigorously too.

  ‘It is not possible,’ she spluttered, after all, her reputation was at stake. ‘Look right here.’

  She motioned to the boys to gather around and pointed to a digital read-out on the control panel.
‘This monitors the exact sugar level as the drink is being mixed. If it dropped as much as you say, an alarm would go off here,’ she indicated the alarm, ‘and we’d know all about it. Look.’ Everyone looked. ‘The number is rock steady.’

  Fraser seemed a little downcast at that, Harry noted. More than he would have expected. Can’t win ‘em all mate, he wanted to say.

  Kelly was still staring at the read-out. ‘That is a little odd,’ she finally admitted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, the machine automatically adjusts itself if there is a small drop, to maintain the correct levels. It does vary slightly, just a fraction of a percent, as it self-adjusts.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s rock steady. It’s too rock steady. It should be up and down just a few fractions of a percentage point, but it’s not moving at all.’

  ‘What could cause that?’ Tupai asked.

  ‘Well, either the level just happens to be perfect at the moment, or perhaps there’s a faulty sensor in the machine itself, or even a loose connection here at the control panel.’

  Before she could stop him, Tupai reached over, grabbed a bunch of wires at the rear of the panel and waggled them back and forth.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ she exclaimed, but far too late.

  Instantly, amazingly, in front of their eyes, the numbers on the read-out dropped, quite significantly, then began flickering, up a little, down a little, just as she had described. At that moment the alarm went off with a loud chirruping sound.

  ‘Oh. My. Gosh.’ Kelly Fraser said in three short sentences. ‘Start a shut-down.’ This was to the operator, who looked even more confused and a little panicked.

  Kelly was a model of efficiency. She pulled a radio from her belt and called in a maintenance crew even as she talked to the foreman and organised for the work-load from this production line to be shifted to other lines.

  Harry just stood there and thought of his two sons and didn’t say anything. He did some calculations in his head though. He took the actual sugar level reading and subtracted it from the correct reading to get the difference. Then he multiplied that by a hundred and divided it by the correct reading. He’d come second in his class (in Ireland) at maths.