08 Mar The Mafia: Chapter Sixteen

*This rough draft is entirely a work of fictional writing*

Rose, Lilly, Isabella, the three lovely ladies and the three brothers are in the large meeting room for their routine Tuesday briefing. Isabella is standing in front of an old-style projector – the type that still requires physical imprinted slides to be inserted around a mechanical reel.

The first slide projected on the screen reads: A comprehensive exploration into Sounding Like Cocaine. An informative lecture detailed by Isabella.

Isabella closes her eyes, takes a deep, whispers to herself, ‘You got this.’ Then proceeds to start the lecture, “My dear and fellow colleagues – hello and welcome. I would like to personally thank each of you for attending this brief, yet important symposium this morning. Seeing as how we have unanimously agreed to pause all production of our product, I can only assume that our entertainment venture also falls under that same umbrella. With that said, I’ve opted out of updating my peers on the finances of the business and decided to shift focus to some ideology and concrete research.”

Isabella takes out a laser pointer and traces the title of the first slide, “Now I don’t want the title of this lecture to deceive your mind into wandering, unnecessary tangents or for you to think that I am an abuser of drugs – that is the furthest from the truth. The point of this lecture is to highlight amalgamated empirical research and I felt the title to be appropriately abstract. Next slide.”

Isabella presses the remote clicker and the projector switches to the next slide, “Most of my colleagues present in this room know me to be a very direct person – so I won’t beat around the bush with fancy nomenclature: It appears that the entertainment company that our family had invested in has figured out how to put cocaine into sound. As you know, most theses are innate without solid research backing it up so we secretly employed 100 of the top scientists around the world to study the effects that our newly developed cocaine sound has in humans.

Why? Because we’re badass and we cherish facts.

These scientists used every diagnostic machine known to man to study what happens to a human’s biomechanics/brain after listening to the organized sound – and let me tell you, the findings are astonishing, but not surprising. To make a long story short, the effects that our sound has mimics the effects that cocaine has – while its not as intense or strong – the comparisons of data are unavoidable and quantifiable. ”

Jane raises her hand, “I have a question.”

Isabella smiles, “Please Jane, go ahead. I would be delighted to answer any questions that you might have.”

Jane speaks, “I’m not quite sure I understand how sound could be like cocaine…”

Isabella takes a sip of water then clears her throat, “Jane, my love, I simply do not have the time to get into the minutia of analyzing wavelengths, atoms and sound frequencies as potential vectors affecting the unified processes of physiological systems… I just simply do not have the time to do that today.”

Jane appears to be off put, “Oh okay… gotcha.”

Isabella continues to speak, “With that being said, I would like to take this time to bring up our first guest speaker and in-house registered nurse, Miss Lilly to the stage. Come on up.”

Lilly gets up from her seat, walks to the front of the room, whispers into Isabella’s ear, “You’re doing great.” And then begins to speak to the room, “I can assure you that everything Isabella said are indeed concrete facts. I personally read through all of the hundred scientific studies and if you would like to read them for yourself they will be in your email box before the end of this meeting – I highly suggest that you all do… it is quite incredible and fascinating. Most of the studies showed heightened awareness, a noticeable increase in energy, increased stability in mental health assessments, heightened muscular endurance and elevated, euphoric type of moods within each of the patients.

Now, there were some documented side effects… primarily being an increase in heart rate and a subtle increase in blood pressure – however, more research will need to be conducted into the validity of those claims. I must also add that a majority of patients began to exhibit feelings of addiction. That’s all that I have for you.”

Isabella claps her hands while Lilly walks back to her seat. Isabella presses the clicker again to move on to the next slide, “So… what is an over-the-counter sound narcotic and how do we market it?”

Jay raises his hand, “Isabella, my dear, I have a question for you.”

Isabella motions Jay to ask his question. Jay continues, “What is the legality of this? Would we have to face any sort of unprecedented restrictions?”

Isabella warmly smiles, “Hi Jay. I had a feeling that you might ask a question like that so I came prepared; I would like to call up our next guest speaker and in-house lawyer, Miss Rose to the stage. Come on up.”

Rose walks up to the front of the room, whispers to Isabella, “You’re killing it.” Then begins to speak to the room, “Jay, I had the same initial suspicions that you currently have, but upon further examination from a legal perspective – no. What we are creating would not be considered an illegal narcotic. The reason for that is quite simple… we are damn good storytellers telling fictional stories, nothing more nothing less. In addition to the innocence of our fiction, we are also covering the same themes that almost every other artist, entertainer, musician and filmmaker is doing – to single us out would be unjust prejudice and downright illegal. Like every other citizen of the United States, we are granted the same protection under the ‘Freedom Of Speech’ amendment – as governed by the U.S. Constitution. In other words, my dear friends, we have created the first legal narcotic administered as sound. Welcome to Capitalism.”

Isabella claps while Rose walks back to her seat. Isabella then places both her hands on top of her heart and sincerely says, “Now… while I still have all of your attention, I would like to take a moment and thank all of those that helped raise awareness to an issue that is dearly important to me…” She clicks the clicker to the next slide and it says: Thanks for supporting the Free – D! movement. #HeNeverSaidThat #HeNeverSang.

Avi and Jay slouch in their seats, covering their faces trying not to laugh. The room is dead silent for a few moments.

Maria looks at Isabella and starts laughing, “Well, aren’t you just a little angel. You really are something else. I don’t know why you all are making such a big deal about this…” Maria then takes out her phone, takes a selfie and posts it to her social media with the caption: Okay, I admit it. #HeNeverSang to me. My sincerest apologies to the confusion that it may have caused some people.

Maria looks back over at Isabella, “Happy now?”

Isabella cups her hands in front of her and speaks eloquently, “Ladies and Gentlemen… my work here is done. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I must go – I have a lot of work to do today.”

D stands up and gives Isabella two thumbs up, “Terrific performance Isabella… simply brilliant.”

—

Papa G and Sly are dining at a private golf-club restaurant; they are sitting at an outdoor table.

Papa G cuts his cigar and then sparks it up with a vintage Zippo lighter, “The wussy family actually stopped their production.”

Sly replies, “I know. I can’t believe it.”

Papa G continues, “I wonder how they were able to get the message out to all of the chefs. Did they hold some sort of secret meeting?”

Sly shrugs his shoulders, “I don’t think so. I camped outside of their house for like a week and no one other than the immediate family came or left. And you know that they don’t talk or do any business over the phone…”

Papa G concurs, “Yeah they definitely don’t handle business over the phone. It’s always in-person meetings…. Much like how we operate.”

Sly takes a sip of an Arnold Palmer, “Word on the street… again, this is just through the grapevine type of chatter… is that they changed the name of one of their restaurants. People think that was a signal to their chefs to stop production.”

Papa G takes a puff of his cigar, “If that is true…That is really clever. It appears they always have a non-verbal circuit breaker. Shit man, it’s like the more we that we press… the deeper the whole we dig for ourselves. We weren’t even able to get the name of one of their chefs – we can’t make their product. Our clients are starting to get upset, they said that our product smells like it’s cut with laundry detergent… which is probably true.”

Sly takes another sip of his drink, “Once people get a taste of that pure – that’s all they want. Anyways, I wouldn’t feel too deflated about it – we still have the upper hand. I imagine that some of their chefs will attend their family event next week – and don’t forget that we’ve got some people on the inside now. We can try to get them to pinpoint some of the chefs while they’re there. We’ll be good – don’t worry. We’re still on top.”

—

*To Be Continued In Chapter Seventeen (Only 3 Chapters left)*