The Café

 “Free coffee? What do you mean “free coffee”? Mat asked his friend, Jon.

“Free! As in no money… what don’t you get?”

Mat looked up from his desk. “You mean, you go in there and order a cappuccino and sit down to drink and don’t pay?”

“Oh!” Jon, who was obviously enjoying telling this to someone who still hadn’t heard of The Café, “Free re-fills also”.

Mat went back to his number-crunching but soon found his mind wondering. What was the catch?

 

And that was how it began.

 

The next few days, Mat started to see people on his subway carrying cups with “The Café” written on them, a simple but cute logo of a coffee cup smiling in a bright blue color under the text of a font he had never seen before, sipping happily as they checked their email…

Walking to his office building, he saw young people with “The Café” T-Shirts. The logo was catchy, he remarked to himself.

His company had a strict policy of not using his computer for personal use, but he couldn’t help himself. He Googled “The Café”.

 

That weekend, he and June, his wife had some friends over. The food was casual but tasty, drinks aplenty and the talk was all about the usual: Fashion, Politics, Sports.

The guys near the swimming pool were laughing and the women wanted to know why.

“Your husband, June” one told her, “Has not been to The Café!”

June looked around her, blushing a bit. “So? I haven’t either!”

Their friends looked at them, smiling.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Mat looked around, a bit surprised.

“You mean the place with the free coffee?”

His friends laughed.

Mat looked at them and once again felt as if he really didn’t belong to humanity, that maybe he was an alien, that things that were so clear to others, never seemed clear to him.

 

Later that evening, after having cleaned up, Mat opened the subject with June.

“What is wrong with us?” he asked her facetiously, “We haven’t been to The Café!”

June smiled “Yes – maybe we should go and see. If not, we might get arrested”.

 

And that was how it began.

 

That next Thursday, Mat and June met at Bing Square, the central square in the city, and made their way to The Café.

“What are all those people doing?” June asked him, and indeed, when Mat looked across the square, there did seem to be quite a number of people gathered.

“I don’t know, maybe a demonstration?”

June looked doubtful. “At this time of the day? No, maybe some street performer?”

Whatever it was, as they walked, Mat looked around and noticed that many of the top stores on the side of the square they were walking seemed .. empty. Not a usual scene at Bing Square, though he wasn’t used to coming there often.

Coming closer, they saw that the large crowd of people were concentrated on the entrance to what was The Café.

“Wow”, June said, and they smiled at each other.

The line to get into The Café was long. Many of the people had The Café T-Shirts, mainly younger kids, the same Mat had seen these last days on the subway. There were large signs on either side of the entrance saying:

Visit our new branches at:

And quite a long list of new city branches. Impressive!

“Look”, he pointed to the stores next to The Café … large amount of people, some carrying out cups from The Café with them, going into these stores. “Did you notice on our way here,” he asked June, how the others stores were empty? The stores here seem to be doing a good amount of business!”

“At least the line seems to be going fast” June nodded and remarked back to him.

Five minutes later, a young man in a bright blue uniform, the same blue color of The Café logo, greeted them with a large smile.

“How can I help you today?” he asked cheerfully.

June and Mat looked at each other.

“Uh”, June said, a bit confused, “This is our first time here.”

“Oh!” he said back joyfully. “Wonderful. Greetings!! Here – take this. It is a menu and a little bit about us. Just order your free coffee at the register and be sure to get the membership form to fill out!”

“Membership form?” Mat asked, and noticed that the next five or six in the line behind him rolled their eyes, almost in unison.

“Yes – it gives you a lifetime 10% off all our menu!”

“Oh!” June said smiling.

They entered and stepped up to the register.

“How can I help you today?” asked a cheerful girl with the blue uniform. “What is your name?”

Looking quickly at the menu, Mat was amazed at the list of free coffees available.

“Uh”, he said and looked sheepishly at his wife. “I’d like Vienna Coffee please – that’s with whipped cream?”

“Of course!” the girl smiled.

“A strong cappuccino for me, please,” June told her.

“Anything else?”

That’s it. Mat felt it. The Catch.

“Yes”, June told her, “I’d like a sandwich, cheese with vegetables. Honey?”

“Nothing for me, thank you.” He told her.

“Are you sure? Once you fill out the membership form, you get a 10% discount, starting from this meal!” The girl explained.

“Yes!” he said, maybe a bit too curtly, and then said more calmly and hopefully with a smile: “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome!” She smiled. “Here are the membership forms. Of course, you needn’t take them if you do not want them. The Coffee is always free!”

The man behind them in line was obviously finding this funny.

“Thank you”, Mat said again and took the two forms.

 

The Café was done in a casual, but somehow fancy way. The chairs were something you might find in your living room, padded nicely and comfortable. The main room was large and held at least forty tables, and there were side rooms and stairs going up.

They found an empty table and plopped down into the chairs.

 

“Why didn’t you order anything?” June asked.

“I did – coffee with whipped cream!”

“You know what I mean”.

Mat looked around, a bit uncomfortable.

“I guess I didn’t like the pressure.”

“The pressure?”

“Yes. A sort of ‘peer pressure’ Like, I had to order something to eat.”

June laughed. “Oh Mat, same old rebel! Looking a finding a conspiracy in every corner!”

He laughed too, but that didn’t make him feel any less uncomfortable. And that was before he looked over the membership form.

His name was called, and he went to pick up their order, and when he came back, June was filling out hers.

He loved strong coffee, and the whipped cream was something he loved since his childhood, something that for whatever reason, had always been special for him, like a birthday treat.

He gave June her food and cappuccino and tasted it with a spoonful of the white whipped cream.

The coffee was wonderful, he had to admit.

He looked around at the happy people drinking coffee and eating, the soft pop music coming through the speakers and noticed that there were posters, like from the 1960s spread around on the walls.

 

“One World – how beautiful!” said one with cut out human forms holding hands, each one a different color.

“Love – it is contagious!” said another – showing a crowd in which hearts were scattered here and there.

“Hmmm… “, June said…. Looking up from her membership form, “What is my favorite color?” …

“Your favorite color?” He asked her, “Why do they need to know her favorite color?”

“I don’t know. It says they want to know more about you….”

He looked at the form.

It also asked for his favorite number. Also, he noted, how many children does he think makes up the ‘perfect family’, where he dreams of living one day, what would be his favorite birthday gift. Turning over the long list was a lot of small print, “Terms and Conditions” it read.

“I don’t think we should fill this out”, he said to June, who was biting into her sandwich.

“Why not? It is sort of fun! Don’t be so serious!”

 

And that was how it all began.

 

The years went by and, of course, other such cafes appeared. The Café became a world network, but they were not alone. Other competitors showed up, most notably “The Cup”, “Ole!” and A French network “Oui!”

These four became so big that it became harder and harder to find any other coffee house in the Western world.

‘Maybe’, Mat thought, ‘you could in Africa, or someplace like Manilla, or Baghdad,’.

They became so popular and so big that people would go there, just to find their friends and talk.

Many old restaurant chains, not to mention smaller businesses had long ago closed.

The Café at Bing Square had taken up the space of many posh stores and you could walk inside for hours and not see it all. Mat heard that there were more than 2500 tables there!

There were also events, many spontaneous, which tried to get the attention of the Café drinkers who would then vote on them. Next to each chair was a two-button console where you could give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” verdict. These votes would be recorded and shown to all. Mat heard that could build or crush careers and Mat heard a rumor that The Café was even recording who voted for what.

When he told June, she again chided him for being paranoid.

The different “networks” as they were called tended to have a different, special character to them, and people would wear their favorite network’s logo on their clothes, cars, even houses.

The Café was more traditional, “The Cup” was a bit on the edge, and “Oui” tended to be more sophisticated, with people reading their latest writings while people ate and drank.

The cafes themselves started to form a certain local character, for instance, some were known to cater to people who like Sports, or Hollywood movies, or even Mathematics. There were cafes where only the young would go, or middle-aged, or elderly.

There were skeptics, there were distractors, but most people had the opinion that this was a positive social event. Whatever you thought – there could be no denying, people were spending more and more of their free time in one of the cafes.

 

And that was how it all began.

 

It was generally believed that the cafés had become a fixture of the “New World”, or as some of their detractors called it, the “Brave New World”.

The world seemed to be going in two directions at once. One was to a more unified world, a friendlier world, to races, genders, and people of divergent economic origins, the other towards wars, economic failures, and horrible human rights abuses.

Events that just scant years ago would have been thought absurdities such as support in progressive societies for tyrants of oppressive states while at the same time, huge atrocities in these same states forced out a large number of refugees, not people who were in danger per se, but people who had lost all hope in the countries of their birth.

The “Cafés”, as they were called, were distinctly promoting what they were calling the “New World”. That is what they called it. It became, in a certain free-style way of looking at life, a brand of its own. It didn’t need to be explained. The “Oui!” café was the first to come up with the campaign that you could be in most parts of the world, Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, but if you were in “Oui!” – you were home. The other Cafés soon joined in. Posters and other artwork adorned the walls of the cafes showing multi-racial groups of good looking, young friends enjoying their coffee together on the backdrop of cities around the world.

 

June and Mat still met their friends mainly at “The Café”, though they would meet at different branches, closer to home. It didn’t matter. Once you were inside, you could be in Nairobi, but it looked felt and tasted the same. They found themselves meeting more and more at The Café. They had friends that met each other every day after work. Some would stay for hours there, going home only to sleep, and sometimes very late. The Café, like all other networks, was open 24/7.

John Landly, the mythological whiz behind The Café, and one of the five richest men in the world, in fact, famously said, “The Café has only one real competitor – sleep”.

Their friends, a Lesbian couple asked to meet them at the “Gay Room”, which Mat thought was funny, since the rule of the Gay Room was that you could not talk about Gay issues there. Just like in the Black Room, you could not talk about Blacks.

Coming into the large room, two uniformed guards had stopped them and asked them to have their picture taken.

“We will put it on our web site,” one of the guards said cheerfully,” So your friends will see you. It is the latest thing!”

“Cool!”, Mat whispered to June with a hint of sarcasm, “I just love these latest things!” June scowled back at him.

Sitting with their friends, they chatted on until June’s name was called, and she went to pick up their order.

When she returned, she brought with her several brochures.

“Isn’t this cool?” she told them as she placed her salad and their coffees down. “They have all these great offers. Mat, look at this set of pans, weren’t we just talking about that not long ago that we need a new set?”

Mat took the brochure and looked at it, and felt something bothering him.

“Yes, we did. In fact, we were talking about it here, on Tuesday.”

“I heard”, said one of their friends, “That they have monitors here that pick up when you talk about buying something, or planning an event, like a birthday. If you say something like, “I need”, the monitor starts to record you. It’s very Hi-Techy!”

“Wow!” her partner said, “Cool!”

“Really?”, June asked. “How do they know it was me that said it?”

“That’s what Hi-Tech is all about, honey.” Mat assured her.

 

And that was how it all began.

 

That next week, June called Mat at work, crying.

She had met with her friends from work in the Sports room at The Café and everything had been fine.

“You know those tough-looking guards you see in the rooms that we see now?” she asked, sniffling.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Well, we were sitting there, and I was telling my friends you were not so sure about this whole “One World” story, that you think it is blinding us to a very harsh reality brewing in the world…. “

“And”, Mat, somewhat impatiently interrupted. “Sorry, but I am a bit busy”, he added sheepishly.

“Well – in short – while I was talking, these two big guards came up and told me that I should stop talking like that!”

“What?”

“Yes – they said some nonsense about that it was not allowed!”

“What?” Mat said again.

“Right! Well, I told them to leave us alone, and then next thing I knew, they blew a whistle and more guards came and threw us all out. They took our pictures and said that I and my friends are banned from entering The Café for two weeks!”

“What?” he said and felt stupid – but that was the only thing he could think of saying.

June began to cry again. “And my friends are angry at me! For getting them banned!”

Mat rose from his chair at work. “Honey. Don’t worry. I will talk to Larry – he deals with corporate law. This is outrageous!”

 

“It may be outrageous”, his friend, Larry the Corporate lawyer told him, “But they have every right to do so!”

“What do you mean? Mat looked at him incredulously. “What right?”

Larry searched his desk, picked up a paper and gave it to him. It was the form he had filled out to become a member at The Café. He turned it over to the page of terms, written in tight, small, letters.

“You signed this, right?”, Larry asked.

“Yes. Does it say that they can decide what you can say?”

“No. Even worse!” Larry told him.

“And that is?

“It says in the terms that you agree to the terms written on this page, and to “any and all future change of these terms”. Basically – this allows them to make up anything they want even after you signed this and to hold you to it.

“Is that legal?” Mat asked.

“Legal? I am not sure, but frankly, Mat, people love their free coffee. I doubt I could get anywhere in court against The Café!”

Mat looked at him and still didn’t understand. Larry saw this and added: “Mat, many people say that these cafes are so big, so powerful, they are even more powerful than most governments. And frankly, most people don’t care.”

 

And that was how it ended.

June and Mat decided to test this so-called ban, and couldn’t believe the results. They went to two different branches of The Café. Each time they were met at the entrance by guards. The first pair notified them that June could not enter for 13 days, 4 hours and 28 minutes. This just made Mat more adamant. He checked his watch. It took them 34 minutes to get to the second Café. This time the guards (who looked almost exactly like the guards from the first encounter) told them that June could not enter for 13 days, 3 hours and 54 minutes.

Mat was told that if he tried again to enter one of the Café branches, he could be banned himself.

Then they decided to go to a branch of “The Cup”, but when they asked to fill out a form, a picture was taken of them, and a minute later they were told that they were banned there also.

 

In the following days, June suffered at work, her friends blaming her for her reckless talk which one of them said to her has ‘practically ruined my life!’. When June tried to tell her that it was only two weeks, her friend looked at her in anger.

Mat and June decided to never again step into any of the cafes, a decision which, more or less, turned them into “persona non-grata” with just about anyone they knew.

A week, June was fired from her job.