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@latentflip
Created November 3, 2013 16:11
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Hydration

With a sigh, Anatoly turned the screens in his glasses off and was plunged into darkness. Where was he, how long had he been hacking for, what time was it? His eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness, he realized he was sitting at the kitchen table. He picked up the empty glass in front of him and sniffed it - whisky. How long had it had been empty? He had no idea. He glanced at the clock on the wall which he could just make out from light from the street lamps filtering into the room - 11:30pm.

Massaging his temples, and cracking his back, he decided he needed some air and a cold drink. He walked past the refrigerator which he knew was frustratingly empty, and slipped on some old sneakers.

Stepping out of the front door of their apartment building, he was hit by the damp warmth of a humid autumn evening. Not unpleasant, but it made him even thirstier, he headed in the direction of the grocery store.

A few blocks from his apartment he came across a body lying in the street. On closer inspection it appeared to be a man in his forties, there was a smashed bottle of beer laying near his hand. He seemed to be very drunk, but alive. Anatoly spotted that the man's wallet had fallen out of his pocket, and picked it up - the man didn't stir. The credit cards in his wallet made him out to be a Mr H. Cornflower. Judging by the notes stuffing the wallet, Mr Cornflower obviously expected to have a longer night.

Anatoly tapped the wallet against one hand, and wondered what he should do. There was nobody around, he could pocket the cash and go about his business. He shook his head. It was times like these that Anatoly was frustrated by his strong moral compass. "Half the people that saw this guy would have just walked on by, and the other half would have stolen his wallet", he thought. He wished a good samaritan would show up and deal with it, but apparently the universe had decided that today, Cornflower was his problem.

But the last thing Anatoly wanted was to get involved with the police, so he didn't want to call them from his phone. He spotted a beaten up old telephone booth down the street that looked like it might still work. Having no change on him, Anatoly grabbed a few coins out of the Cornflower's wallet, and replaced the rest of it in the guy's coat pocket.

Anatoly coaxed the old phone into accepting the quarters and punched 911 into the rusty old keypad. To his surprise it actually rang.

"911 dispatch, do you need police, fire or medical?"

"Yeah, medical I guess, I just came across a guy basically passed out drunk lying on the street"

"Okay sir, can you tell me where you are?"

"Yeah, he's on the corner of 25th and Vaughn."

"Okay, I know where you are, we'll get someone out to him. Now sir, can you tell me what kind of conditi..."

Deciding he'd done enough for poor Mr Cornflower, Anatoly put the phone down, left the phone box, and continued on towards the store. Speaking on the phone made him realize just how thirsty he had been, he could hardly swallow.

"What if he dies?", thought Anatoly, who by now was a few blocks away from the phone. "What if I didn't do enough? Maybe the ambulance gets there, and finds the poor guy dead, choked on his own vomit. Maybe they figure the guy who made the call to 911 should have stayed on the phone and got some advice, and helped the guy. I didn't even put the guy in the recovery position. I should have put him in the recovery position, then he couldn't choke on his vomit. Maybe they'll fingerprint the phone booth, and figure out who I was."

He tried to silence his overactive mind. Cornflower didn't seem to be in that bad a state.

"Maybe the police will show up at my door, claiming it's my fault he's dead. What would Natalia think? Would she understand? At least I phoned the cops, unlike everyone else who would have stolen his wallet. Why am I the one who get's blamed, when I was the one who helped the poor bastard?"

Anatoly massaged his sweating temples, his brain hurt. Why did it do this? Overthink every tiny little situation?

He finally made it to the grocery store, and made his way to the drinks refrigerator. The bright lights made his brain throb even more after the darkness outside, but at least it was cool.

Desperate for a drink he stared at the huge array of brightly colored cans and bottles in the refrigerator.

"Jeez, I just wanted a drink, not a freaking decision challenge", he thought.

He stared at the drinks in the fridge, trying to figure out which ones wouldn't be completely laden with sugar. The last few years had finally seen governments and the public recognizing that sugar was a bigger health problem than fat ever was. Diabetes and heart disease were two of the biggest health costs to society, both in terms of lives and medical bills. Most insurance companies wouldn't even protect against them any more without special cover. Anatoly had been taking heed, particularly as he'd realized how sugar spikes and crashes had affected his ability to work properly.

But drinks companies weren't making it easy. Much like the tobacco companies before them, the drink corporations had all but declared a secret war on public health. They spread lies and propaganda about the vitamin and health benefits of drinking fruit drinks - even though they contained just as much sugar as a can of coke. They increased the sugar content in their classic ranges of drinks, just so that they could launch "healthier" ranges with "50% less sugar, and all the flavor of a classic coke!". They bought up all the refrigerator space in most grocery stores, so that you couldn't even by a chilled bottle of water in most of them. Then there were the "diet" alternatives, which while having no sugar, were laden with aspartame, a chemical sweetener which seemed to be safe, but had the caveat that the entire global production of aspartame was controlled by a single megacorporation, which had various legal, ethical and moral black marks against it's name.

Anatoly continued to stare at the fridge. Unable to decide whether to do a deal with diabetes or the devil. How was it that something so simple, and fundamental to human life as hydration had become so difficult? "What would our historical ancestors, cupping their hands into a refreshing glacier-melt stream of pure and clean water think of me now?" he thought. "Not only have we melted all the glaciers, but we can't get a cold drink without it trying to kill us. Way to go humans, way to screw everything up".

He longed for the old days. At least back then there were still a few independent producers. Back in PDX he'd have been able to find someone selling a locally made, hand crafted, naturally sweetened soda. But no, everyone got lured in by the low prices and cut throat business practices of the corporates, and local production all but died.

Suddenly feeling self conscious about how long he'd been standing in front of the refrigerator, pondering the downfall in modern society, he reached for a coke. "Better the devil you know", he thought.

He walked over to the checkout area. Where he was struck with his next dilemma. Anatoly was just about done with dilemmas for the night, but here was yet another one. Self-service checkout, or checkout girl.

He glanced at the checkout girl, she looked at him in a longingly dead-eyed way that said she hated everything about her job, but at least if she could sell him his coke, she'd hate everything a little less.

He glanced at the self-service machine. It looked back at him, equally dead eyed, but Anatoly suspected it couldn't give a shit whether it served him or not.

Feeling sorry for the girl he walked over to her checkout and handed her the coke, which she scanned and handed back to him: "one fifty please". He handed her a couple of bucks and told her to put the change in the charity bucket sitting in front of her. "Have a great day" she called after him, monotonically. He suspected she neither meant it, nor realized it was just gone midnight.

He stepped back out into the warm evening air, and cracked open the can. It felt good and refreshing, much like the researchers at the coke corporation had designed it to. He tried not to think about the 50 grams of sugar making their way into his bloodstream. He pondered a great ancestor of his, 50,000 years ago, walking a cross a golden pasture, spear in hand, stumbling across a can of coke:

Urg grunted, and stared at the bright object at his feet. He had never seen something so smooth before. He prodded at it with the blunt end of his spear, it rolled a few inches, but was otherwise unresponsive. It looked hot like fire, he cautiously tapped it with his hand to see if it was hot, and was surprised to find that is was in fact cool, like a river. Urg picked it up and inspected it. Smooth like the sticks he used for his spears, but even smoother still. It weighed about the same as a small rock.

At one end he found a small thing attached to the object. He could just about get his dirty fingernail underneath, and he tried to pull it off. After a little trying it sprung, and a small hole in the object opened. He peered inside, and saw a brown liquid - like a dirty stream. He poured some of the liquid on his hand and sniffed it. It smelt good, and sweet, like the things Gru sometimes found on the trees. Urg raised the object to his lips and sipped some of the liquid. His eyes and mouth widened. He felt like he was drinking the sun. His head immediately started pounding, but somehow in a good way. His limbs felt looser, more energized. He took another few sips. Urg couldn't stop grinning. He drunk half of the liquid in the object, capped the hole with his thumb, threw his spear to the ground, and ran off into the distance to find Gru.

Anatoly was brought out of his daydream by a flashing light up ahead. An ambulance was parked up, and two paramedics were attending to a man on the floor who he assumed was Mr Cornflower. They had sat the man upright against a lamppost, and he seemed to be vaguely coherent. Cornflower took no notice of Anatoly as he walked past him, and on to his apartment.


This was written as part of NaNoWriMo - an attempt to write a 50,000 word novely before the end of November, and will fit somewhere into the novel.

If you enjoyed it, (or if you didn't but want to support me anyway) you should totally sponsor me for charity! It's going to a great cause, the Scottish Association for Mental Health.

<3 Phil

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