Warren Murphy: The Ultimate Death

He stared with a tight frown at the tureen top, his hands behind his back. "There is a season," he sang, taking a jaunty step forward. Between him and the tureen was a small table, upon which was a small plate, upon which was a single portion of the product which was being mixed in the vat at that very moment.

Gregory G. Gideon looked down at what he was promoting as a "Bran-licious Chunk Bar."

"It looks like a cow pat," he complained to his staff. They could only look stunned and stare reproachfully at each other while clutching clipboards. "You call that a Chunk Bar?" he asked, motioning toward it. "We can't call that 'Bran-licious.' " He pinned his top researcher with a stare. "What does that look like to you?" he demanded.

Despite his years of testing products that would make bulimia seem a viable alternate lifestyle, Gideon was still small, rotund, and balding. He had the shape and demeanor of a child's clown punching bag. The kind with the smiling face and round red nose. The kind that, no matter how hard you hit it, rolls back upright with the same pleasant smile.

The researcher lifted his square granny glasses, poked his sharp nose at the flattened, lumpy brown thing on the plate, and sniffed. "It looks," he said dryly, "like a cow pat."

"Exactly," said Gideon. "Exactly. And there's no way we're going to rename this 'Bran Turd.' When I say 'Bran-licious,' I mean 'Bran-licious.' "

"What's the difference?" wondered a firm, female voice.

The air conditioning seemed to get cooler, and quieter. An unspoken gasp hung in the air, like a popped soap bubble. The group parted like the Red Sea to reveal Elvira McGlone, the head of marketing.

Gideon had gotten her straight from Manhattan's prestigious University School Of Business. They turned out corporate warriors who were as tight as hemp and as tough as railroad spikes. They produced graduates who could convince the Nazis they lost the war only for lack of effective PR.

McGlone was no exception. And Gideon liked that. Truth be told, he had recruited her because the rest of his staff were retrograde hippies hibernating in Woodstock. She stood out among them like Teddy Kennedy trying to pass himself off as one of the New Kids On The Block.

The entire staff were in lab coats, but beneath those all was jeans and flannel. McGlone was in a tailor-made Lady Brooks suit that might have been stitched around her as she stood fuming impatiently. Her dark blond hair was tied in a bun so severe people swapped unfounded rumors of a face-lift, and her makeup seemed to have been applied by a sharpened tongue-depressor. Her expression might have been chopped from ice. She made the word "sexy" sound like a curse.

"Mr. Gideon," she replied in a condescending tone, "if only you'd let me show you how to position your products in the marketplace."

"I already know our 'position in the marketplace,'" Gideon said testily. "We are the company with the solid product. Not," he stressed, "the hard sell." Then he added, his voice acquiring an edge, "I don't want a new ad campaign, I want a Bran-licious Chunk Bar!"

He stared at them. And they stared back. They stood that way for a full fifteen seconds before Gregory G. Gideon blinked. "Oh, go on. Go on," he said, waving them away. "Get out of here. We'll mix it in yogurt cups and freeze it if we have to."

The others mumbled their full support and shuffled out the side door.

Only McGlone remained behind to try to reason with Gregory Green Gideon.

"If only you'd put in a little more glucose . . ." she began.

Gideon sighed. "Ms. McGlone," he said. "You still don't understand. Our customers don't drink a product simply because the latest singing star is being paid to do so. Our customers don't eat a product just because they see a dozen dancers in leotards singing their hearts out on television. They're the kind of people who read labels. They're the kind of people who notice the word 'glucose,' and its positioning in the ingredients list. And if it's anywhere other than the very, very last, they don't put it in their bodies. And, what's worse for you and me, they don't buy it." Her face still wasn't registering anything but stiff impatience. He tried one last time-not knowing it was truly the very last time.

"Ms. McGlone-Elvira," he pleaded. "We are not selling cola. We can't take something of no nutritional value and create a sensation through packaging and promotion. We're selling physical well-being here, not peer pressure. We're selling self-control, not self-destruction. Turn your thinking around. I know it tastes bad, but it isn't bad. In fact, if you eat enough of it, it actually begins to taste good."

It was useless. There was a "gone fishing" sign inside the frosty blonde's eyes. She was deep inside her own head, double-checking her mental market-share.

"Think about it," he said anyway.

"I'll write a report," she replied tightly, and turned away, removing her white jacket in defiance.

Gideon watched her go, eyeing with curious detachment her firm, workout-toned rear beneath the tight, tailor-made skirt. Shaking his bald head, he turned away.

The sun warmed his face, and the garden blew in the upstate breeze. He inhaled deeply, feeling the expensive shirt, knotted silk tie, and tailormade, three-piece suit give with the breath. No piece of his wardrobe was cheap, or itched. He had money in his pocket and in the bank. He had a solid company, and a future.

Life wasn't bad. No, it wasn't bad at all. If only he could figure out how to make this brandung look like a bran bonbon.

Gregory G. Gideon put his hands on the edge of the giant tureen. The stainless steel felt thick and cold to the touch, creating its own strange comfort. He looked down into the lumpy brown mass, and tried to think like a health nut.

What did the mixture require to make it work? Gideon closed his eyes and saw a vision of Fru-Nutty Balls, wrapped in recyclable paper, with the G.G.G. imprint on the flat bottom of every single one. He imagined hands pulling open the paper seams to reveal a crunchy, chunky nugget of fiber, fruit, and pasty nuts, all held together with . . what?

"Color."

For the first time in years, Gregory G. Gideon began to think in color. There was more to the health food life than pasty white, deep black, sticky brown, or shades of gray. There were blueberries, and yellow corn, and oranges, and ripe red strawberries.

Gregory G. Gideon saw red. Ruby-red apples. Rich red cherries. Rose-red raspberries. He saw a swirl of red curling through the Bran-licious Chunk Bar. He saw the scarlet vein corkscrewing up along the sides of the circular muffin, giving it just a touch of sin and holding it together.

But what should it be? he wondered. Which berry should it be?

"Blood," a raspy voice intoned from somewhere in the room.

Gregory G. Gideon blinked. "What?" he said.

"Blood," the raspy voice repeated.

Gregory Gideon turned around, his hands still on the tureen lip for balance. He found himself staring into the face of the most beautiful girl he had seen since his wedding day.

She was as different from Elvira McGlone as a gem was from a rock. She shamed McGlone's sex. There was absolutely no purpose for McGlone to be a woman as long as this creature existed. Her hair was red-strawberry blond, in fact. Her eyes were green. Her nose long. Her lips curled in a tiny perpetual smile. And freckles danced across her smooth flesh.

She was a vision in white. She was dressed all in white; from the tip of the strange cap nestled in her fiery mane, through her zip-front dress, down her stockinged feet, to the bottom of her sensible white shoes. She was absolutely lovely.

But she was not the one who had spoken. She couldn't be. That voice had been raspy and thin, with a singsong tone. It had ended, even the single word, with a slight sound of complaint that grated on the ear.