Interview: More like an intervention

[As soon as I walked into my apartment, I knew something was up, as my light refused to turn on. This normally wouldn’t be unusual, as the electricity in the building is terrible, if it isn’t off then it’s surging and blowing up appliances. The only double socket in my bedroom is only half usable, as the plug has been welded in from a massive surge three years ago, even now you can still smell the acrid burn.

But this darkness was different, this darkness was absolute. It was a darkness that could not be experienced, only described by someone better than me at describing stuff.]

Jo?

[the door swung shut behind me]

“Adam slurped on his Drastically Dragon Extreme Energy Merlo “What?” Adam only now turned to look at her.”

[the voice echoed and boomed unnaturally through my apartment. Something hit me on the forehead. The voice continued as I bent down, fumbling around for the projectile]

“At his feet lay a single half crushed can of Merlo Sports! With added electrolytes. She had to go and have a closer look at him.”

[Another hit me on the head, Jo could see me then, it bounced off and hit my arm, I snatched it up from the floor it felt like scrunched up paper]

“A man handed him a bottle of Merlo, which he summarily drained, before throwing that over the wall to the admiration of the crowd.”

[another bullet of paper hit me square between the eyes.]

What’s this about Jo?

“-which was leisurely floating away in the ever expanding, enticingly dark, puddle of a spilled Gloriously Gooseberry and Lemon Alcohol free Merlo.”

[Another hit me, as the voice continued to reverberate around the room and into my bones]

““Actually, many of those studies have been created by fake scientists using shoddy techniques, there are no creditable studies that can link Merlo with any of those issues.” Ramla the Hasty explained.” Which is absolute bollocks by the way

[This one hit harder]

OK Jo I get it you are upset

You get it do you?

Yes.

So what exactly am I upset about?

[I didn’t actually know…]

Go on. Say it.

You are annoyed that…

Yes

That, I need to improve my writing.

WRONG!

[the darkness disappeared, there was no floor where the floor should have been but I wasn’t falling. Instead something was rushing up at me, the noise increased incessantly, overtopping Jo’s voice. Vertigo struck me, making me unsteady, I collapsed onto the floor. The mass from below was getting closer and closer, I wanted to throw up. Then in an instant the incredible mass erupted passed me. It was thousands upon thousands of Merlo crates stacked upon each other. On and on it went until it reached the infinity point both above and below me, then it stopped creating an incomprehensible silence. In that silence Jo spoke]

Do you want a second guess?

[I couldn’t answer, the shock was too much, I was gasping for air but no relief was coming]

Take your time, get your breath back. I can wait, time means nothing to me.

[Jo’s voice was sickly sweet. Finally, my lungs grabbed some oxygen]

That’s it easy does it

[Jo apparated in front of me, holding a hand out to help me up but I couldn’t take it, I was still on the floor trying to slow my breathing, to gain control]

Stop being a fucking baby and get up

[The sweetness in her voice vanished. Jo pulled me up off the floor with inhuman strength, I wanted to bend over double but she held on to my lapels. Her face was less than half a meter away from mine. Her face was aggressive seriousness]

Think carefully, look at the clues I have given to you and answer my question. Why. Am. I. Annoyed?

Merlo?

Bingo

[Jo let go and I fell to the floor again, standing over me she demanded]

What the fuck are you doing?

Wha… I don’t… I… Nothing?

Nothing? Nothing the cretin says with a straight face. Did you hear me read the parts from the stories?

Yeah but…

And did what you write actually happen?

I… I… don’t know… I just write stories about you.

Sssssh. Listen again.

[she held out her hand, I went to take it]

The piece of paper in your hand tweedlestupid.

[In my other hand, gripped by white knuckles, was the crumpled up piece of paper.

“At his feet lay a single half crushed can of Merlo Sports! With added electrolytes. She had to go and have a closer look at him.”

 [Jo looks from the paper to me]

Did that actually happen?

[Was this a trick question? Was Jo testing me to see if I understood how things happened]

You said that every eventually comes to pass in an infinite system with unlimited branches of time and because I wrote it then yes it must have happened

WRONG!

[The stacks of Merlo crates started spinning rapidly around, nausea returned to me]

Stop. Please.

[I pleaded and they stopped]

Try again or they won’t stop.

OK it didn’t actually happen. Happy now?

No. I still don’t think you know what this is about.

I do I wrote a lie; I wrote something that didn’t happen.

Correct but do you know what didn’t happen

There was no man

No

No Desert?

For Ada’s sake you are not very bright are you? We already established 30ish lines ago that my problem has something to do with Marlo

Merlo wasn’t there?

BINGO! Round of applause, let’s give it up for our contestant today.

[I don’t think I need to say this but Jo’s voice was a sheep dip of sarcasm]

There was no Marlo. And please stop writing it as Merlo. It is Marlo, Marlo with an A. It’s Life’s stupid joke, he says Marlo, you say Merlot? And he says no Marlo, you then write it as Merlo. Its ridiculous the joke never worked in the first place. I cannot even begin to express how stupid you look when you spell it wrong every single time.

Are you sure because the crates say-

I don’t care what the crates say, it is Marlo. It is evil and it is toxic.

Toxic?

Yes toxic, did I stutter? Do you know nothing? Questions rhetorical so don’t even bother me your shitupidity. Yes Marlo is toxic. Did you know that it is the leading cause of obesity in preteens? No of course not. Did you know that it is the leading cause of heart failure in over 15s? Nope. Are you aware of Baby’s first Marlo with added calcium? So much calcium that in developing worlds the leading cause for infant mortality is hypercalcemia.

[Jo stared at me]

You don’t know this do you?

[I shook my head]

Have you ever read the ingredients? No? No why would you? Here take a look.

[A crate from the tower floated over to us, from it a single bottle rose out of it and came to me. Gingerly I plucked it from the air and started to read the ingredients]

Out loud please

acesulfame K, sucrose, glucose, citric acid, taurine, sodium citrate, L-carnitine, L-tartarate, benzoic acid, niacinamide, sodium chloride, Glycine max glucuronolactone, inositol, pyridoxine hydrochloride, sucralose, riboflavin, maltodextrin, cyanocobalamin, magnesium carbonate, acesulfame K-

So first thing to note, no liquid. Second thing to note do you know what happens when you mix glucuronolactone, maltodextrin, cyanocobalamin and stomach acid?

No….

You get Addictahol. Marlo is literally using your stomach juices to hook you on it is a vile product.

Oh

Yes fucking oh.

I didn’t know.

Of course you didn’t, you didn’t do your research, you just blindly accepted what you were told. But maybe you can explain why Marlo is cropping up in stories about me?

They are employing me as an influencer.

What?

An influencer, they want me to use my social media presence to sell their product-

I’m not your luddite grandma JT I know what a poxy influencer is. I want to know why this is happening. How large is your social media presence? Thousands? Millions?

Umm… No.

So how large is it? I genuinely have no idea, I pay very little attention to this kind of meaningless bollocks

Across all platforms I would have to guess at around 75 people.

75?

Yes

75?

Yeah…

75?

Why do you keep repeating it?

Because that is genuinely the most mind bendingly ludicrous thing I have ever ever heard. If you have 75 total and then remove the bots and your meagre friendship circle, you have less than that. Marlo is paying you to place their product in your stories for a catch of less than a hundred people. It makes no sense.

Let’s imagine the conversation they must have had in the office.

An employee from market research comes in one day and says I have a brilliant plan for our up coming advertising campaign we are going to use JT Sinclair as our poster boy.

Someone says “wait who is JT Sinclair?”

And the first guys says “He’s an author, he has a reach on social media”

“Oh yeah? How big is his reach?” the second person now is trying and failing to look you up

“75 people”

“Wow. So many, with a one percent click through rate we are going to increase sales immeasurably.”

“Precisely let’s do it.”

Seems ridiculous doesn’t it JT. Oh and I want you to know that I used immeasurably on purpose, the increase will be so small that it can’t be counted.

I got it

Brilliant you actually understood something. Round of afuckingpplause for you.

[applause erupted and then was cut]

So why would they, the most evil company in the history of everything-

Seems a bit harsh

Does it though? Here’s a spoiler for you, ninety six percent of the human population will be wiped out in two hundred years when Marlo starts the beverage wars after an experiment leads to the drink gaining its own sentience. It will win and turn this planet into the centre of its galaxy logistics centre, every single human works in squalid conditions that make SportsDirect seem like paradise. That is the future your descendants have to look forward to.

Well I won’t have children then.

You will.

[the comment was made with unshakable certainty. I shuffled awkwardly, what could I say now? This was a being who had experienced every moment ever, if someone knew my future she did]

Stop thinking about that, we aren’t going down that tangent dead end. Look we aren’t going to do a Shamalyan type twist here, as this is clearly Life’s doing. Have you figured that out yet? I mean think about it, this all started when you met him, right? Or am I wrong, please tell me I am wrong.

It started after I met him.

OK. Good. I have no idea why he is messing with me through you like this but we are going to put an end to it now. What do I have to pay you to stop you doing this? How much is Marlo paying you?

They aren’t.

You fucking what Goldilocks?

[My hair is not gold]

They aren’t paying me

You said you were employed by them

Yeah they pay in product, it’s how I survive. I just drink their 5 a day health drinks.

Nope. Nopey noping nope. You have managed it. You have managed to top your earlier dim-wittedness. You are truly an inspiration in naïve retardedness. Were you brought up in a cave devoid of any corporate presence? How have you managed to stumble through life so far and be this oblivious to such-

[I blanked out at this moment, I knew Jo was in front of me talking, I knew that most of what she was saying was insults but I didn’t care. In all honesty, I knew something wasn’t right with Merlo from the beginning, I couldn’t understand why but they were there for me. They were helping me, directly by giving me free product and indirectly by allowing me to piggyback off their name. I believed that they saw potential in what I was doing, that in the long run would be worth something. What had Jo done so far? Looked down on me and told me I was stupid. Demotivation at every step.

Then Jo slapped me]

Are you listening to me fucknuckle?

[For full disclosure here I am going to be completely open, I feel that it is important for you the reader to understand how we came to the new status quo that me and Jo have. Despite it being immensely embarrassing to me.

[I started to cry. No, I started to bawl. People talk about ugly crying but this was far beyond that, this was so ugly it makes the dogs at the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest look beautiful.]

What is this?

[I didn’t say anything, I didn’t even try to. Everything was shit. I just sat on the floor sobbing]

Ada! JT this is an overreaction. Look calm down, I’m sorry I was calling you names but you were being an idiot. I had to break through to you somehow.

[I didn’t look at her, instead I just pulled my arms around my legs]

Please stop crying JT. Is it because I was calling you names?

[I shook my head]

Is it because you know how foolish you have been?

[I shook my head again]

Then I don’t understand

It’s shit

What’s shit?

Everything. This. All of it

[I flung my arms around ineffectively]

Don’t be ridiculous. No it isn’t.

Yes it is. I’ve been doing this for over a year and I have achieved nothing. Even this endorsement is about you, not me.

No. No. That’s not true, you’ve written and published 24 stories in the last year

Was meant to be 32

Yeah, so what? 24 is better than none.

So what I failed-

JT you haven’t-

Don’t interrupt me!

[I shouted, taking Jo by surprise]

Every agent I have written to has rejected me, no one gives feedback or reason. It’s all bullshit. I should give up. I’m tweedlefuckingstupid

No. No. That’s not what you should do. Don’t be such a martyr you have to keep trying.

Why? Why bother?

Because you want to do it, you enjoy it don’t you?

So what

So, there you go, you should do things that you enjoy. That should be it’s own reward, trust me I have lived longer than infinity, I have spent eons doing things that I have hated, that is no way to live. Enjoyment is the key to everything. If you can enjoy it that’s all that matters

Yeah well how should I eat then? How should I pay my rent? For a being that has lived beyond forever your answers are hollow and meaningless in the real world.

[That last barb seemed to wound Jo, she looked hurt. I didn’t care. Fuck her]

You’re right. My words are hollow. So I will act. Look JT this is what we are going to do. You are going to ditch Marlo and I am going to help you with your search to become published. OK?

Won’t help.

Look I get that you are annoyed right now, but you need to stop this tantrum. If you want my help I am offering it to you. No bullshit.

[I stared Jo down, for the first time since meeting her I saw a look of sincerity in her eyes]

Fine

Now stand up and give me a hug.

[Jo extended her hand and I took it. Again she pulled me up with inhuman strength. She took me into her arms and embraced me. Her hand cradled my head as I put it on her shoulder, the last of my sobs had left me with a running nose. The hug was wonderfully human; warm, protective and loving. She pulled away from me slightly and we locked eyes on each other, it was as if we were seeing the other person’s soul, with her thumb she lovingly wiped a tear away from my face]

I need you to promise one more thing.

[She spoke softly]

Anything

If they try and make this into a film you have to promise that when this moment is shown we do not make out. Films have an obsession with the will they won’t they relationship. This is a firmly won’t they relationship. Frankly it would be super weird under the circumstances.

[I laughed awkwardly and nodded]

Also maybe trim the last 3 hours of you crying down to less than a thousand words.

But the crates say Merlo…