Part 35 - The Sugar Brand
February 1st 2009 11:04
Re was having a wonderful time.
Who knew that industry was his kind of thing? Day and night he was surrounded by small kitchen appliances and sundry whitegoods, all of his design and all of his making. And the Ministry had been completely transformed. The Minister, sick of the political minefield of daily alliteration, jumped at the chance of taking his department from being the government's laughing stock to becoming an overnight franchising sensation. He turned the secret underground facility into a secret manufactory. Re personally designed the machinery that would mass produce the sugar based alloy products and The Minister re-trained The Ministry's staff to forget about analysis, statistics and other worlds to become engineers, production line packers and store people.
The Minister had expected resistance from his colleagues in Canberra but as The Prime Minister pointed out, "It would be a nice change to have one of his spy agencies turning a profit instead of churning a money pit." The Prime Minister was partial to skewed rhyming schemes.
These were exciting times. Re was often left in charge while The Minister scoured the country for suitable shop-front locations. In each state vast tracts of land were purchased to build warehouses so that supply to the public would be fast. The Minister believed that a new age in consumerism was upon them and that people were desperate to buy cheap toasters and kettles. The Ministry had spent ten times its annual budget in one year alone in the purchase of container ships and dock-side space. The lunch of The Sugar Brand was going to take the world by storm.
Thankfully the underground facility was large enough to store the growing numbers of stock as creating the infrastructure to distribute the appliances was incredibly slow. Perhaps The Minister's expectation of an 'Overnight Sensation' was a little generous. Train lines and freeways had to be built from the Facility to all of the major cities in the country. If The Sugar Brand was to work it would need time and planning.
There were egg-heads working day and night on a cashless point of sales system so that purchases would be efficient and sales assistants wouldn't be slowed by counting out coins and notes. Others were working on computers and financial transactions hubs to process virtual money faster than the speed of light. Even with all of this technology there would still have to be provisions for the foolish who insist on continuing to use cash. So The Minister lobbied to have the 1 and 2 cent coins abolished and to devolve the one and two dollar notes into coins. He pushed for the change from paper money (flimsy and easily ripped) to strong resilient plastic notes instead. All of these changes took decades to implement and all the while, Re's stock pile of appliances continued to grow and grow in the perfectly sealed, underground facility.
For Re the nineteen sixties and seventies whirled by in a frenzy of invention and creation. For The Minister the time dragged on as he aged into a body of breaks and aches. Eventually, half way through the eighties, the final high speed modem had been tested (2000 bytes per second), the final computer tape storage and overnight processing systems had been signed off and The Minister knew everything was ready. It had taken thirty years of his life, billions of the tax payer's dollars and a complete educational and technological turn around for the entire country. The new debt to other nations was phenomenal and the shortage of sugar for coffee and cake had almost destroyed some regional centres, but it was all worth it. Now the country could rise, into the nineties and the next millennium beyond to take on and take over the world.
On the night before The Minister was to meet the press and explain the phenomenon that was his Grand (and up to this point Top Secret) Plan he put his head to his pillow, closed his eyes and rested. Moments later he lurched to a sitting position, hands clutching at his chest, and screamed, "Oh, my god!" before his body fell back to the bed, the victim of heart failure. Locked inside his poor dead brain was only complete set of plans for The Sugar Brand.
Not long after The Minister's death a new Prime Minister was voted into government to lead the ailing nation. He took one look at the country's debt and, wondering what his misguided predecessors had been thinking, closed down any operations relating to the preposterous Sugar Brand and set about getting the country on the right course and once again riding firmly on the sheep's back.
Re had been forgotten; his workforce was transferred back to the spy industry or retrenched into retirement. The sugar supply ran out so he could make no more toasters. Nights and days came and went. He wandered around his lonely underground storage facility trying to work out what to do with himself. With The Minister and all his work force gone there was no one and nothing to keep him out there beyond The Black Stump so he decided it was time to go back to the Beige Bummjob and see his old friends. Packing a couple of kettles as presents he took the lift to the surface and set off, on foot, in the direction that he hoped would take him to the coast.
There’s one problem being in Australia and blindly heading off in search of the coast – the country is an island; finding the coast is easy, but finding what you’re looking for is almost impossible.
Who knew that industry was his kind of thing? Day and night he was surrounded by small kitchen appliances and sundry whitegoods, all of his design and all of his making. And the Ministry had been completely transformed. The Minister, sick of the political minefield of daily alliteration, jumped at the chance of taking his department from being the government's laughing stock to becoming an overnight franchising sensation. He turned the secret underground facility into a secret manufactory. Re personally designed the machinery that would mass produce the sugar based alloy products and The Minister re-trained The Ministry's staff to forget about analysis, statistics and other worlds to become engineers, production line packers and store people.
The Minister had expected resistance from his colleagues in Canberra but as The Prime Minister pointed out, "It would be a nice change to have one of his spy agencies turning a profit instead of churning a money pit." The Prime Minister was partial to skewed rhyming schemes.
These were exciting times. Re was often left in charge while The Minister scoured the country for suitable shop-front locations. In each state vast tracts of land were purchased to build warehouses so that supply to the public would be fast. The Minister believed that a new age in consumerism was upon them and that people were desperate to buy cheap toasters and kettles. The Ministry had spent ten times its annual budget in one year alone in the purchase of container ships and dock-side space. The lunch of The Sugar Brand was going to take the world by storm.
Thankfully the underground facility was large enough to store the growing numbers of stock as creating the infrastructure to distribute the appliances was incredibly slow. Perhaps The Minister's expectation of an 'Overnight Sensation' was a little generous. Train lines and freeways had to be built from the Facility to all of the major cities in the country. If The Sugar Brand was to work it would need time and planning.
There were egg-heads working day and night on a cashless point of sales system so that purchases would be efficient and sales assistants wouldn't be slowed by counting out coins and notes. Others were working on computers and financial transactions hubs to process virtual money faster than the speed of light. Even with all of this technology there would still have to be provisions for the foolish who insist on continuing to use cash. So The Minister lobbied to have the 1 and 2 cent coins abolished and to devolve the one and two dollar notes into coins. He pushed for the change from paper money (flimsy and easily ripped) to strong resilient plastic notes instead. All of these changes took decades to implement and all the while, Re's stock pile of appliances continued to grow and grow in the perfectly sealed, underground facility.
For Re the nineteen sixties and seventies whirled by in a frenzy of invention and creation. For The Minister the time dragged on as he aged into a body of breaks and aches. Eventually, half way through the eighties, the final high speed modem had been tested (2000 bytes per second), the final computer tape storage and overnight processing systems had been signed off and The Minister knew everything was ready. It had taken thirty years of his life, billions of the tax payer's dollars and a complete educational and technological turn around for the entire country. The new debt to other nations was phenomenal and the shortage of sugar for coffee and cake had almost destroyed some regional centres, but it was all worth it. Now the country could rise, into the nineties and the next millennium beyond to take on and take over the world.
On the night before The Minister was to meet the press and explain the phenomenon that was his Grand (and up to this point Top Secret) Plan he put his head to his pillow, closed his eyes and rested. Moments later he lurched to a sitting position, hands clutching at his chest, and screamed, "Oh, my god!" before his body fell back to the bed, the victim of heart failure. Locked inside his poor dead brain was only complete set of plans for The Sugar Brand.
Not long after The Minister's death a new Prime Minister was voted into government to lead the ailing nation. He took one look at the country's debt and, wondering what his misguided predecessors had been thinking, closed down any operations relating to the preposterous Sugar Brand and set about getting the country on the right course and once again riding firmly on the sheep's back.
Re had been forgotten; his workforce was transferred back to the spy industry or retrenched into retirement. The sugar supply ran out so he could make no more toasters. Nights and days came and went. He wandered around his lonely underground storage facility trying to work out what to do with himself. With The Minister and all his work force gone there was no one and nothing to keep him out there beyond The Black Stump so he decided it was time to go back to the Beige Bummjob and see his old friends. Packing a couple of kettles as presents he took the lift to the surface and set off, on foot, in the direction that he hoped would take him to the coast.
There’s one problem being in Australia and blindly heading off in search of the coast – the country is an island; finding the coast is easy, but finding what you’re looking for is almost impossible.
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