It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for Coca-Cola®. In the year 2132, it already controlled more than 99% of the global market. Either newborns and grandpas on their deathbeds consumed as much Coca-Cola® as possible.
It was the cause and the solution to all their problems.
But despite this, the company was in one of the worst crises they had ever experienced: for the first time in the last 100 years, their annual profits had not increased compared to the previous year. In each of these years they had only earned a paltry amount of $1,909 trillion dollars.
Because of this, Coca-Cola® executives decided to hold an emergency meeting taking all possible austerity measures (on this occasion they would have to settle for only two whores and one intern for each of them, and they would have to limit themselves to consuming only cocaine or methamphetamines during the meeting, not both.
They had never felt so humiliated.)
They met in the conference room on the top floor of the Coca-Cola® Tower, formerly known as the headquarters of the New World Order, formerly known as the New Tower of Babel, a much taller and unnecessary building than the Burj Khalifa. It was so high that it was almost impossible to see the ground (although why would they care about what happened down there?)
They were practically closer to heaven than to earth itself.
"So, what can we do now?" Asked the CEO of the company. He, like the rest of the executives, was nothing more than a bundle of meat, diabetes, anemia, kidney stones, sugar, aspartame (and possibly cancer, multiple sclerosis, lupus erythematosus, Gulf War syndrome, brain tumors, epileptic seizures and etc., according to old studies, which were immediately and imminently questioned by 99.999% of the scientific community, which was made up of multiple coalitions, organizations, institutions, universities, groups of experts, citizen councils, think tanks and so on, whose funds came mostly from Coca-Cola®, but this fact is so obviously irrelevant that none of these groups bothered to even report it. In fact, these groups organized multiple global symposiums, openly sponsored by sponsored by Coca-Cola® under the name "Aspartame: so good for your health that you should consume even more").
"We could increase our prices," said the CAO (that's Chiel Accounting Official).
"If we do that, we'd lose an important sector in the market" said a CMKTO (Chief MKT Official). "This sector is the lower class and is made up of 99.99999% of the population."
"Then we can reduce costs," continued the CAO.
"I hope so, but I don't see how," said a CPO (Chief Production Official). "The Coca-Cola® that we sell is extremely reduced in water. It barely tastes like anything. We still sell traditional Coca-Cola®, but that's a luxury product, right?"
"Yes," answered the CSO (Chief Sales Official), "but practically only we and the politicians consume it. Nobody else can pay it."
"And what if we lower the employees' salaries?" The CHRO asked. "Or if we convince the government to remove even more OSHA regulations?"
"With less salary" the CMKTO, "they will not have any money left to buy Coca-Cola®, and we will lose those customers. And with fewer OSHA regulations they will die more often at work, and we'll lose them as clients."
"And what are they spending their salary on?" asked the CFO. "They should be more responsible and spend it on the important things, like Coca-Cola®."
"They have to pay their monthly rent and food," replied the CAO.
"And can't we lower those down a bit?" asked the CFO.
"No, we can't," responded the Coca-Cola® Real Estate Company's CEO. "The apartments where they live are practically made of cardboard, and the food we give them are Happy Meal® (Coca-Cola® bought McDonald's® in the year 2099). If we give them less, they will die faster, and if they die, we will lose customers."
"So, if so many die, governments should do something, right?" —the CHRO asked indignantly. "Why don't they do something about it? Why don't they manufacture better medicines or something?"
"No!" The CPRO shouted. "If they invest in science again, there will be more and more activists and lying scientists who will say all of people's health problems have to do with all the Coca-Cola® they consume. All the work we've done to convince people that the life expectancy of an average adult is 32 years and that diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart attacks, strokes and others are not diseases, but a normal and healthy condition will go to the trash. Furthermore, there are already many capable doctors, all of them graduates from the Coca-Cola® University."
"Exactly," said Coca-Cola® University's CEO. "Thanks to our studies we have proven that Coca-Cola® is the healthiest product in existence, and that any illness or disease is due to the patient not drinking enough Coca-Cola®."
"Whatever," said the CEO. "So, if people are dying so much, we just need them to have more children, and thus more clients."
"And more employees," added the CHRO.
"We already did that," responded the CPRO. "We used the media to convince everyone that Coca-Cola®, in addition to being the healthiest product in existence, is a powerful aphrodisiac. Consequently, people began to consume even more Coca-Cola® and have even more sex, which caused a constant increase in pregnancies and unwanted births."
"In addition, we lobbied all governments around the world called 'Coca-Cola® for Humanity' to make abortion globally illegal. The slogan was: 'these babies have the right to enjoy all the joys that life gives us, such as drinking a delicious Coca-Cola® in every moment of their existence.'
"So what else can we do?" the CEO asked, and the other executives looked at their assistants, hoping that they had some idea they could take as their own (since, technically speaking, it was; the contract stipulated that any idea created within the company belonged to the company. Therefore, they can't steal something that was never yours in the first place.) But, apparently, there was nothing they could do to increase their profits or, failing that, reduce their expenses (since all the company's expenses were more than essential, especially executive salaries, transportation, meetings, business meetings, family meetings, drugs, escorts, all the Coca-Cola® they consumed, travel expenses, vacations, vehicles, real estate, lobbying and a countless number of etc. that they simply classified as "expenses").
Suddenly, one of the executives stood up. He was a young man who, like the rest of the executives, had been nepotically and despotically placed in his position, but he, like the rest of the executives, assumed that he must be a genius and a fundamental part of the company because all his colleagues were as useless as him, and it is simply illogical that a company as large as Coca-Cola® would have people as incompetent and unnecessary as its senior management.
Anyway, these last few days were the busiest of his entire career, so in his free time he only managed to watch the 9 complete Star Wars movies in his office (maybe he could watch all the other ones, and all the series and spin-offs in the following week). And while he was doing that, he had an idea that might solve everything:
"What if we expand to the Moon?"
The other executives remained silent and stared at their assistants so they could tell them how to react.
But no assistant said anything.
"I mean," the executive continued, "a long time ago people talked about space colonies and such, but it never happened. Maybe it's possible now."
"Yes," said the CEO. "Maybe it's possible now. We can make colonies on the Moon and appropriate all the market there."
The rest of the executives suddenly agreed with the idea.
"There are still no laws on the Moon," said the CLO (Chief Legal Officer). "We can make monopolies legal there."
"And we don't have to pay taxes," said the CAO; "there is no IRS on the Moon."
"No labor rights, no OSHA regulations or anything like that," said the CHRO. "We can create factories there."
"There is no real estate market there," added the Coca-Cola® real estate director's CEO. "The land is technically free. We just have to claim them as ours."
"And we don't have to pay salaries or taxes," said the CAO.
"But before someone accuses us of labor exploitation or even slavery," added the CPRO, "we can make the media convince people that we are aware that capitalism has not worked as well for society as we expected. So, now that we have the opportunity to conquer the Moon, we can create a business model where money is not used, since it is the source of all evil, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a capitalist pig who only wants to profit from it, from those poor people."
"And Aliens," said the executive who had idea in the first place, and everyone looked at him as confused as at the beginning. "If we go into space, maybe we will find Aliens. And maybe they like Coca-Cola®."
"And if they're not so smart, we can use them as labor," said the CHRO.
"Legally speaking, they're not human, so they have no rights," the CLO said.
"Since they are not human, we do not have to pay them a salary, nor do we have to pay their respective taxes," said the CAO.
"We can run a campaign," said the CPRO, "where we convince people that these working conditions are normal in alien culture, so treating them any other way would be racist, colonialist, and alienphobic."
After this, the board of directors rewarded the executive of the idea by promoting him to some position where he would also have to do practically nothing, for a change, and would also enjoy a raise, although, considering that he already made too much money in the first place, that did not mean absolutely nothing to him, really.
And that's how the meeting ended. The board of directors would contact the first world governments to see what they could do.
A year passed, and there were still no colonies on the Moon.
And even worse: this year Coca-Cola®'s annual profits were the same as last year's.
The executives, truly enraged and desperate, went to investigate what had happened. The executive who had the moon idea entered the office of one of the people in charge of building the Lunar colonies. At that moment he was in a meeting with different people, but that didn't matter: the executive snapped his fingers and the people there left as quickly as possible.
"You think you were smarted than us?" the executive kicked him, and he fell from his chair. "You think we wouldn't notice there aren't any lunar station yet?"
"No, sir, forgive me," the guy in the floor, A.K.A. the President of the United States, responded as he was trying to get back on his feet. He looked like a cockroach on his back. "But we don't have the budget to do that. It's very expensive to go there, you know, and even more to build something there. Also, there's no oxygen, so…"
"Don't give me that shit." The executive stomped on the president, and he rolled on the ground. "All the fucking taxes we pay and it's not enough for you, motherfucker."
"No, sir. I'm sorry, but we already check your annual tax returns, and it appears that this year you only paid $3.23."
"Yeah, 'cause we're trying to run a business over here," the executive stomped on the president's face. "You come out with your fucking abusive tax rates of 0.00001% on companies. With these conditions there is no way we won't send our profits to all our tax havens. There's no tax there for us to pay, and no one there seems to mind. But you have to be so fucking greedy. I'm telling you: if you continue like this, you will destroy the economy. And besides, why do we have to pay for everything? Don't the peasants pay their taxes?"
"Mostly not, sir."
"Well, why don't you do something for once and lock them up or kill them?"
"I'm sorry, sir." The president grabbed the executive's shoe and received a stomp in response. "But all the prisons are already full, and we don't have funds to build more."
"If they don't fit, kill them, then. They are living out of our taxes."
"We can't, sir. I'm sorry, but your company lobbied us to criminalize death penalty. I think their slogan was: 'these prisoners have the right to enjoy all the joys that life gives us, like drinking a delicious Coca-Cola® in every moment of their existence.'"
"Well, I'm sure you can fit even more people on those jails. Do I have to solve everything for you?" The executive stomped once again on the president's face.
"No, sir. Sorry, sir. But we can't, sir. Excuse me. By law, we can only have a maximum of 1 prisoner per cell."
"Well, remove that stupid law."
"We can't."
"Why not, you stupid bastard?" The executive stomped on the president harder and harder. "Who the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck told you what you can and can't do?"
"You, sir. You were the ones who made that law. You told us that, if there were more than one prisoner in each cell, they would end up fighting and killing each other; you told us: 'these prisoners have the right to…'"
"Shut the fuck up," the executive kicked the president's mouth as hard as he could. The president rolled and screamed in pain. He still looked like a cockroach on his back. "And what about the rest? The people that pay their taxes. They can pay more. Or what the fuck are they spending the rest of their money in?"
"In Coca-Cola®."
The executive picked the presidential chair from the floor and sat there. He had never been so stressed. He took out his phone and saw the texts the other executives had sent.
At least no one had been more successful than him.
Then he thought what would happen next. Would the company's profits remain the same this year? And the next one? And the next one? And the next one? Could they ever increase their profits? And if they couldn't what was the point on even trying?
At that moment he thought about resigning. Or dying (to tell the truth, the two options are practically the same). He could simply go to one of his many properties and fill it with alcohol, drugs, whores, and Coca-Cola® for the rest of his life. There would be no stress or work or austerity measures or constant failure or anything.
This sounded like the best thing he could do.
But if he died (or retired) he would practically lose everything: his money, his properties, his position in the company, his respect and recognition, his achievements. Everything would be left in the hands of people who did not deserve it, like his partner, his children, his government, his co-workers, his company. He would be quickly forgotten and replaced. His whole life would then be as irrelevant as any other. Once he was dead, there would be no difference between him and any of the thousands and thousands (even million) of Coca-Cola® employees who died on the job.
This sounded like the worst thing he could do.
The executive then put the phone back in his pocket and stared at the president. He was standing up while covering his bloody mouth.
So, he kicked him in the calf, and he fell to the ground.
"And what about aliens? Did you find aliens?"
"No, sir… Nothing," The president was trying to get up again. "According to our scientists, they are either too smart to make contact with us or too dumb to make space traveling. Although this is just a theory, and not everyone agree—
The executive kicked his mouth again and left.
What a shame! Those moon colonies and aliens could have momentarily solved all their imaginary problems. But there was nothing that they could do about it; they were just executives and directors and CFOs and such. They could only do so much, and they surely did. After they all failed to something helpful for the company for once, they all organized a meeting to plan their next move. There, they decided to give themselves a raise and countless bonuses for particularly no reason (as they have always done), fire their assistants and most of their staff (because they didn't stop them from pursuing such a bad idea, and someone has to be at fault) and pretend all of this never happened. From then on, everything was back to normal: all the executives continued living on a diet of Coca-Cola®, expensively mediocre food, unnecessary luxuries, no real responsibility or accountability, sheer incompetence, the same hobbies and personality as anybody else, a sad god complex, jaded whores, harassed interns, new and more-humiliating and self-harming fetishes, a constant need to humiliate everyone else in order to feel important and superior, an ever-growing list or disappointed ex-wives and forgotten children, nepotism, an unending inferiority complex, an ever-increasing sense of loneliness, constant dread, and an overall unsatisfactory life. Still, everything seemed fine at that point, so fine they didn't need to worry about anything at all.
Until next year.