Exploring the Underside (The Secret Life of Coke Zero)

So today's writing exercise was to Explore the Underside. In other words, take a person and look at the other side of them. If there's a hero, explore their not so nice side; if there's a villain, explore the softer side.

I was drinking a Coke Zero when I was doing this exercise (my consumption from diet soda, with its vile brew of chemicals, has dwindled down the occasional indulgence every now and then). I started to think about Coke Zero, and how Coke Zero has a side no one knows.

The surface of it is chemicals that are horrid for you. I’m trying to imagine that there’s actually another side to this. If Coke Zero were a character, it wouldn’t be a cool rock star heroin addict. There would be this corporate chemical quality to it, and it would shake your hand with an insincere smile.

But maybe, if you spoke to Coke Zero, there would actually be a sensitive side. He would speak of his rich heritage, having descended from the mind of pharmacist Joseph Pemberton, and he would read about his great grandmother, who was a wild party animal with traces of cocaine in her system.

And then he would study the fashions of that decade, and though he was a ruthless chemical corporate public relations officer would could make the public believe that the BP oil spill was good for the ocean, there would actually be this touching moment where he would nostalgically long for the days when everyone wore green tinted glass, and came from machines that sold you for a nickel, when people sung about you by telling the world they wanted to teach the world to sing.

“Coke was it,” he would say wistfully, thinking of the jingles with which people remembered his relatives. “People would have my relatives, and have them with a smile. Good times, good times.”

But then the moment would pass. There would be tons of work on his desk. It would be necessary to somehow convince the public that it was a good thing that children were morbidly obese, that their teeth were rotting out of their mouths. As it always had been, as it always was, and as it always would be, people had to believe that he was good for them, or at least that he didn’t cause any harm.

"You don't know the real Coke Zero," he'd mutter to himself. "All of you just think I'm some Aspartame filled cauldron of toxicity. But I have dimensions. Honest I do."

Then suddenly, his fist would slam the table.

"I AM NOT DIET COKE'S LESSER KNOWN BROTHER!" he would exclaim "DIET COKE IS MY BROTHER!"