13 Different Ways: Iced Mocha
Thirteen different ways to look at an iced mocha.
1. On the table in front of me is an iced mocha.
2. On the table in front of me is a collection of alkaloids and proteins assembled by machine to resemble an iced mocha, yet deliver the nutritional content of a basket of fruit.
3. The iced mocha in front of me was poisoned by the the server who prepared it. She’s hated me since the time I dated her sister in college. She blames me for the fact that her sister shudders and cries before sex. I don’t have the heart to tell her that her sister was the one who wanted to do away with our safety words. Instead, I constantly have to be vigilant of the presence of cyanide in my mochas.
4. This is not really an iced mocha. It is a demon that has take the form of an iced mocha hoping that I would drink it, thus allowing it into my body and giving the demon total control.
5. This is the last iced mocha on the planet. I found it in the back of a refrigerator that was still running on a solar battery in an abandoned coffee house. All around me are the remnants of a world that has passed on, but that doesn’t matter. After months of dried food and chemically purified water, this will taste incredible.
6. I can not drink the mocha. I must not drink the mocha. If I drink the mocha, the man with the AK-47 will shoot me for the sin against Allah.
7. The mocha has been sitting there for hours. She said she’d be here at seven, so I ordered it as a surprise. It’s ten o’clock, where is she?
8. I order this mocha everyday. I set it in front of the chair where my father used to sit. I sit and drink tea and think about his smile. The ice slowly melts and the drink becomes watered down. I miss him. I miss the way he smiled as he drank the mixture of chocolate and espresso. I miss the way he made me feel important.
9. I set the iced mocha on the age of the table. The brown liquid is perfect to hide the fact that I dropped the memory card, in its waterproof case, into the glass when I ordered the drink. When Juan takes the glass from the table as he walks by, no one notices the hand off.
10. I used to love this stuff when I was alive.
11. If it wouldn’t fry every circuit in me, I’d drink this down. I’m not sure why my designers gave me taste receptors when they didn’t bother making me water resistant.
12. Iced mocha never judges me.
13. This mocha will soon be in the lab at Sammie’s Coffee Dispensaria Ltd.’s headquarters. There, a team of scientists will analyze its contents and try to replicate the beverage in every detail. Once they succeed, they’ll sell it for half the price at their location across the street and drive this small coffee house out of business. I feel somewhat guilty about this, but Sammie’s pays very well. That dulls the guilt.
