The Real Thing Read Online Free

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