Professor Sarah Stenson gazed at the vial with satisfaction. It had taken her almost a decade to reach this point. Her once promising career had stalled as she devoted her time to what her colleagues considered unscientific nonsense.
She smiled remembering the reaction of her old boss Professor Irwin Scheffler, practically purple with mirth which turned to incredulity, then contempt and finally rage as she told him her project.
‘Unscientific hocus-pocus,’ he’d raged, ‘an unconscionable waste of a fine mind and an even greater waste of valuable university facilities’. University facilities, she recalled, that she had been denied – which forced her to stay late at night and at weekends, working secretly hiding her tracks while getting on with ‘proper work’ during normal hours.
But the cost. Her career was sidelined to a failed afterthought as she did only the bare minimum, reserving time for the project. Husband neglected, left her for someone who was home sometimes. Friends eventually stopped calling after she stopped returning calls.
For what? Briefly she wondered if it had been worth it. Then looked again at the vial. Not much to look at. Clear glass, volume 8ml, diameter 17mm by height 61mm. Amazingly, almost £200 each. She’d never worked out how they got away with that. But, now worth everything she had lost. Love, family, friends, career. Sacrificed for science.
Sarah was not given to whooping. She did not want to run through the streets naked shouting Eureka. Nor bellow her success from the rooftops. Instead, she went to the little kitchen by the lab and brewed a cup of tea wondering if it was worth calling her parents.
With the benefit of hindsight the multi-million pound profits, the lives made joyful, the international outrage, the hundreds of deaths, the multi-million pound lawsuits and the prospect of life behind bars, she may have been wrong in deciding not to bother ringing mum and dad.
Newspaper columnist Ros Chaplin checked her tape machine was running, flipped open her notepad and looked at the woman sitting in front of her. Professor Sarah Stenson, internationally-famous, but almost completely unknown.
The few bare facts: Born in Leicester, England. Parents Tim and Virginia. A small businessman in the hosiery business, and a homemaker. Both are still alive. One older brother, Jimmy, took over and still runs the family business. One younger sister, Alice, sometime model, now working in HR at a bank. Sarah: at an early age, a brilliant academic, all the honours that could be conferred by the finest universities. Then a disappointing career. Marriage to Matthias Stenson, a Swedish physicist. Divorced. No children. No known hobbies.
Now, 44. Extraordinary green eyes gazing calmly out of an attractive face, full, red lips, an unruly tangle of dark hair. If her sister, Alice, looked similar you could see why she had been a successful model. A pale green silk blouse and cream mid-length skirt, the outfit of a woman keen to look presentable, but not interested in clothes.
Ros smiled, and decided on her approach. This woman had never talked, and now she had agreed to an interview. She must want to talk… so let her.
“Sarah, may I call you, Sarah?” Ros waited.
The Professor smiled and nodded. “Of course.”
“Thank you,” Ros pointed at the recorder. “I’ll record what’s said and,” she tapped her pad, “I’ll make a few notes as we talk.”
Sarah nodded, “So, how does it work? This is my first interview.”
Ros smiled reassuringly. “Just talk. So, tell me how this all started.”
Sarah composed herself for a moment, took a deep breath and did as she was told.
“I’ll skip over the 10 years in the lab. Nights, weekends, all that, to when everything,’ she circled her arms in the air, ‘went crazy.”
She paused. “Do you know I hadn’t even visited London for 10 years before I turned up at Ideas Warehouse. It’s a venture capital company. I didn’t even know what one was before. Never heard of it.”
SARAH walked in. Externally calm, but inside acid bit into her stomach lining. She’d been expecting a big table, but most of the dozen or so people were sitting in armchairs, with a few around a small table towards the back.
A man stood and smiled. “Danny Rose,” he shook her hand, “we spoke on the phone,” Sarah nodded, “Yes.”
“So?” she gestured to her ignorance of what was required.
“Don’t worry,” he told her, “I’ll introduce you. Then you do your thing.”
He turned to face his colleagues, “Thanks for making the time,” he spoke loudly at first to get attention, then resumed a normal volume, “we have with us Professor Sarah Stenson, a world-renowned chemist and science philosopher, who is going to show us something quite extraordinary.”
SARAH paused in her story, and looked apologetically at Ros. “Of course, I didn’t have anything extraordinary to show them, just a little glass vial and a long, boring, scientific story which they initially didn’t understand and then, when they did at least understand the effects, laughed at.”
“Laughed?” Ros confirmed, making a note.
“Oh yes,” Sarah replied, “Everyone did. You read the papers?”
Ros nodded. “Go on.”
Sarah smiled at the memory and shook her head. “They all just laughed. I think that’s why I had been invited. They hold these investment days a couple of times a year. All serious stuff, people come in to pitch their ideas. Usually about money or finance. That kind of world. Then, at the end of the day, they have some light relief.”
“And you were the right relief?” Ros asked.
Sarah nodded.
THEY passed the vial around the room. Each peering closely, shaking it a little, one or two opening it up and gingerly sniffing the contents.
Tasmin Matsuyama was sitting in the front row. The new girl keen to impress, and be accepted. She eyed the liquid closely and then raised the vial above her head, shouted ‘cheers’ and swallowed the lot.
ROS interjected. “She was Number 1?”
Sarah nodded.
“It all happened to her? The stories?”
Sarah nodded. “You know the rest. In six months it was in clinics in the UK. A year later around the world.”
Ros nodded. “Talk me through the process.”
“The first step was regulation. We got lucky. I still remember the letter:
The Medical and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency regulates medicines, medical devices and blood components for transfusion in the UK.
Magic potions do not fall within our remit.
We wish you every success in your endeavours.
Sarah paused, then went on, “Then the Home Office. Under a new, liberal government. Keen to allow individual freedoms, especially if tax income might follow.”
They wrote:
The Home Office sees no potential criminal charges that could be laid either at an individual or company for the course of action laid out in your submission.
Ros made a note. “Surprising!”
Sarah shrugged. “I think they thought we were nutters.”
“And then?” Ros asked.
“It was the marketing team that really made the whole thing work.”
Sarah took a sip of her coffee, closed her eyes and then went on.
There were about five or six people in the room. The Professor, saying very little, Danny Rose from Ideas Warehouse and the Creatives.
Sarah looked on as the Creatives went into a huddle. Occasionally they would ask a question and she would answer with as few words as possible, or Danny would answer using as many as he could. Bit mainly she sat and watched. Their workspace was nothing like hers and she found herself missing hard, clean edges and clinical fact-based discussions. Here it all seemed like ‘play’ and she couldn’t take it seriously. The female creatives were dressed in bright dungarees and were given to asking questions like ‘but, what’s in it for the female buyer? What’s her why?’ While the men, scratched their unshaven chins and ran their fingers through their unruly hair and used language that they thought was scientific, but sounded laughable to the ears of a real scientist.
But good things emerged. Firstly, the vial was ever after to be called a Magic Bottle and there were going to be four of them – one for life, one for death, and two which did nothing at all. Secondly, they would only be available in dedicated stores – later known as the Palaces of Life and Death.
“But no one will come,” Sarah told them when they ‘showcased their braindump’ later.
“They will,” Mike Z, Head of Concepts, told her. “There will be queues.”
And he was right, of course.
At first the coverage in the newspapers, television and online was incredulous – “Why would someone risk their life for nothing?” they asked.
But, of course, they forgot about people. Sad people, flocked. Followed by the desperate, the dying, the hopeful, the hopeless and the gamblers.
To them the odds looked good. One bottle promised a new, better life – love, money, sex, power, whatever you wanted. Two bottles did nothing at all. And the fourth bottle meant certain death in 24 hours – patrons were strongly advised to be comfortable at home as the clock reached 24 – in reality, 24ers became known as the party animals of every town.
The downside definitely did put off many people. As did the cost. It was extremely expensive. And the media raged against it, backed by politicians and the various world religions. Popular celebrities, sports stars, influencers, they were all persuaded to warn people off.
And the positive results were rubbished. The Advertising Standards regulator did not fall in line with the others. They banned almost every marketing line. Success stories of the Happy Ones – as they became known – were not allowed. So, the internet was quickly filled with rumours that the Magic Bottle didn’t work. And that put people off too.
And the forms. The disclaimers. The waivers. The proof that the person was of sound mind deterred even more.
And still there were queues.
Well, figuratively speaking. There were no actual queues. Once a customer had successfully cleared all the deterrent hurdles, not forgetting the compulsory 10 hours of one-to-one counselling and provided proof that their financial affairs had been put in good order, they were allotted an appointment.
The clinics themselves were comfortably appointed. Attentive staff in luxurious settings. Often repurposed country houses. Although in different countries, different tastes were met. Quality food and wines were served. Some elected to stay on site – for extra payment of course. Others went home to loved-ones.
The bottles were presented differently in each territory. But it followed a similar template. The customer was taken to a place where the four bottles stood. In the UK they were each in their own display case. Under the watchful eye of a ‘companion’ they were allowed to take as long as they like to examine each one before making their selection and consuming the liquid there.
Many people reported it tasted slightly sweet, like apple juice. It did actually contain apple juice to mask the chemical flavour. In the case of the two placebo bottles, it was just apple juice.
Around one in 10 turned back at this selection stage. There was no comment or judgment, they were simply escorted back to their room. No second chance was allowed. And no refunds given.
Many became a 24er and raised hell for what could be the last day of their life. Many people are to this day serving prison sentences for the crimes they committed on that day. And there was quite a battle when the company tried to get their experiences removed from the success story calculation. They failed of course as the establishment started to tighten the screws.
Questions were asked in Parliament, of course. And legislatures around the world. Questions about how this sick business had ever been allowed to open.
Countries which had refused to grant a licence were smug. And tried to hide the numbers of their citizens who travelled to try the facilities – of which there were many.
And come they did. And people told of the ways in which their lives had turned around. Love affairs enjoyed, marriages saved, careers sparked into success, money earned, property acquired, hit records released, prizes won, honours bestowed. You name the ambition, and it was achieved by someone who had swallowed the contents of the Magic Bottle.
Of course, twice as many experienced nothing and they were disappointed. Or relieved. Some were angry. Quite a lot said the whole process had made them re-evaluate and they had changed their lives for the better anyway. The marketing team wanted to portray that as a 75% success rate, but the regulators stamped on that hard.
And the bodies piled-up. The miserable stories filled TV screens and the pages of magazines. The children left without a mother. The families were blighted by sorrow and guilt. The waste of life.
“DID you ever feel guilt?” Ros looked into Sarah’s lovely green eyes.
The two women gazed at each other for a long moment, but the question was never answered.
“OK,” Ros went on, “The story is well-known. Everything started to unravel. The business was closed in territories across the world. Lawsuits started to be filed. You were at the eye of a storm. How did you cope?”
Sarah sighed and brushed imaginary lint of her skirt. “It wasn’t really aimed at me,” she started. “I know it was always that picture they used.”
They both reflected for a second on the picture that became famous. Sarah in a silk Valentina floor-length gown at a very fashionable party clutching a champagne flute in one hand while a man, head turned away from the camera, seemingly whispered in her ear. It was speculated that that was the moment she had been informed that Matilda Harrington had died.
Matilda Harrington had been a bright, loved girl. A star student at her school, lots of friends, a keen member of the local gymkhana, helped-out at the local old folks’ home.
Aged 13, she had become the victim of cyber-bullying by jealous school peers and become depressed. Somehow, she had got through the extensive joining protocols, accessed her parents’ bank account, completed the psychological profiling and drank the wrong bottle. She died, aged 14.
“Were you told then?” Ros asked.
Sarah shook her head. “I was never directly told. I read it in the papers, like everyone else. I remember feeling sick.”
“And guilty?” Ros pressed.
“The press always made it about me,” Sarah ignored the question, “but the truth is I had almost nothing to do with the running of the company. They bought the magic and kept me on as a consultant. But I don’t know anything about running a business. The problems were really all theirs.”
“But that’s when it all came apart?” Ros kept on.
Sarah smiled. “The funny thing is that to this day there are as many inquiries as at the peak. It would still be a very viable business if it was allowed to operate, and I think it will be allowed to operate one day again.”
Ros nodded. “I know there are a lot of questions you cannot answer because of the various court cases, but there are a couple of things I think people would like to know and that you may be able to answer.”
“I’ll try,” Sarah replied, “as long as it doesn’t put me in prison.”
“The magic elixir, or whatever it is, it could end unhappiness, hunger, pain, and solve all the world’s problems. Why not just pour it into the world’s water supply?”
Sarah nodded. “I’ve been asked that before. And it couldn’t do all those things. It works on one person’s life relative to others. There aren’t sufficient resources for everyone to have everything. Some have, others don’t. All the bottle can do is take some individuals and put them in the have section.”
Ros made a note. “OK. Final question. Did you drink the magic potion?”
Sarah nodded and started picking up the few things she had put on the table before the interview began. “No, I didn’t. Why would I? My life’s ambition was to create it. And I achieved that. A fantastic scientific achievement. I proved everyone wrong, even if I say it myself.”
“What about now?” Ros asked, “Your reputation is in tatters. Your fortune is gone, or about to be taken. You may spend years, perhaps the rest of your life in prison. Why not take it now?”
Sarah looked at her puzzled for a moment. “I achieved my life’s ambition. There’s nothing else I want.”
DoubleSpeak 