Five Magic Gummies
October 3, 2021 – Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Julia Rossellini arrived at her flight departure gate two hours early. She fidgeted with the curls in her dark hair while watching for her coworker to arrive. He sauntered up as the gate agent announced they were on the verge of boarding.
“I was worried you weren’t going to make it,” Julia said to Scott Marshall.
“This is one I couldn’t miss,” replied Scott. “If we don’t come back from D.C. with something, you can pretty much close the books on STS.”
STS was the acronym for Saguaro Technical Systems, an uncreative name for a 40-person company surviving on government research contracts. Their advertised capability was solving hard, number-crunching problems.
“Are things really that bad?” asked Julia.
Scott sighed. “We’ll survive for six months as contracts wrap up, but without new money coming in, we’ll all be looking for new jobs.”
Scott was STS’s closest thing to a salesman. Compared to the company’s other engineers and mathematicians, he was a dynamic smooth talker. He shouldered most of the responsibility for landing new contracts and keeping customers happy.
Julia was tagging along for this trip as the designated brainiac, assigned to answer any hard technical questions that came up. She knew she was chosen for the job because she was one of only three women at the company. Showing a little diversity always helped around Washington.
“I took your advice and got those new headphones for the flight,” said Julia, pulling a pair of Beats headphones from her bag.
Scott returned a confused look. “I don’t remember us talking about those.”
“Oh, you don’t? Uh . . . Maybe I just saw you with them. Or maybe I heard you talking to somebody else.” Julia blushed. Being alone with Scott always left her a little tongue tied. “Can you watch my stuff? I need to grab some water before we board.”
Julia left her bag on her chair and hurried to the nearest airport shop. The store’s walls and shelves were lined with snack foods, reading material, and high-priced seat pillows. Julia picked up a bottle of water, worried about how she was going to recycle it, and then got in the line that led to the checkout counter.
Julia knew the Washington trip was important but had not realized it meant life or death for STS. Scott was usually optimistic, so if he was worried, they were definitely in trouble. She could already feel the pressure tightening her shoulders and upper back.
When she reached the counter, Julia discovered a short display holding baby-blue packages of stress relief gummies. The packages advertised that they were all natural. Julia was not prone to split-second purchases in checkout lines, but she grabbed one of the gummy packs.
“What’s inside of these? Any weird drugs?” Julia asked the salesclerk.
The clerk held the package up to his glasses for a closer look. “All natural. If they had weird drugs, we couldn’t sell them.”
Julia paid an unexpectedly high price for the gummies and examined the package on her way back to the gate. The labeling looked professional and legitimate, something mass produced and meant to be sold in stores. The list of ingredients included scientific names which reminded Julia of vitamins.
On the flight to Washington, Julia and Scott sat in the same row wearing identical headphones. Julia leaned against the window and Scott the aisle. A stranger, who had made last minute travel plans, got stuck in the seat between them.
The week’s first meeting, on Monday morning, was the most important. Julia chewed one of the five gummies in her package before leaving her hotel room. She met Scott and they rode a METRO train to a building owned by a local university. Inside, they found a crowd of people milling around a room set up for video presentations. Julia recognized a few faces from competing companies.
“Look at them all. They hear DARPA proposers meeting and they’re circling around like sharks,” Scott whispered to Julia.
Julia knew that DARPA was the biggest catch in town. As the research arm for the Defense Department, DARPA handed out billions of dollars in contracts every year. Julia turned to Scott and asked, “Who do we need to convince?”
“That’s the program manager. He’ll make all the decisions for this thing.” Scott gestured toward a gray-haired man wearing a green turtleneck. The man remained stern-faced as those clustered around him attempted small talk.
Normally Julia would have shrunk away from the crowd and found a seat in the adjoining presentation room. For some reason, she felt like tiny hands inside her head were pushing her toward the program manager. “What’s his name and where did he go to school?” she whispered to Scott.
“Jay Lowell. I’m pretty sure he went to Ohio State.”
Julia waded into the crowd like she was headed for the stage at a rock concert. She reached Jay Lowell while the person to his right was talking about the warm fall weather. Julia interrupted by holding out her hand and saying, “Jay Lowell. So nice to meet you. I’m Julia and I think we have a mutual friend at Ohio State.”
Julia threw out names until she found one with a weak connection to Jay. Then she asked about Jay’s commute and what he did to stay in shape. When Jay brought up swimming, Julia led him into a conversation about scuba diving. They were still chatting when the presentations were supposed to start.
“Nice work,” Scott whispered as he and Julia found their seats. “He definitely likes you.”
“I want to give our presentation, instead of you,” Julia whispered back. “I’m feeling, I don’t know, really sharp. I know I can do it. I want the ball. Isn’t that what they say in sports?”
“If you want the ball, you can have it,” Scott whispered back. “You know what’s on the slides better than I do.”
Julia sat and listened to the first presenter’s promise to solve all the problems Jay Lowell outlined. She did not feel nervous. She did not worry about being smart enough or saying a wrong thing. A wall of energy pushed against her back until it was her turn. She rushed to the podium and began the slideshow advertising STS’s capability.
“Hi everybody. I’m the starting quarterback for STS today. I’ve been studying film on all of you.”
Julia smiled warmly as she clicked through her slides about radar systems. Instead of sticking to the script, she referred to earlier presentations and how they were misleading. She injected enough humor so that no one in the room took offense. Then she threw out new ideas that popped into her head. She spat out numbers from on-the-fly calculations and did not worry about their accuracy. After 15 minutes, she sat down to laughter and heartfelt applause.
“What was that? Who are you?” whispered Scott.
Julia shrugged like it was no big deal.
The meeting finally ended and Jay Lowell motioned for Julia and Scott to join him for a private conversation in a corner of the room.
“I’m impressed,” Jay began. “To be honest, I didn’t think much of STS until you stood up. I can’t promise you anything officially, but off the record there’s a good chance we’ve got funding for you. Just tell me what you need. And Julia, I want you as the STS liaison.”
Scott suppressed an excited scream until he and Julia were out of the building.
“You think what Jay said is a good sign?” asked Julia.
“Are you kidding me? It’s an amazing sign! I’ve never seen anything like it. We have to celebrate. Pick any restaurant you want. We’re charging it to STS.”
During dinner that night, Scott sent messages to coworkers in Arizona, gushing about Julia’s performance. “She saved the company,” he wrote to a group text. “Why has she been holding back for so long?”
Julia thought about that question as she tried to fall asleep back at the hotel. Why had she felt and acted so differently? She remembered the no-stress gummies. Could taking one have such a drastic effect? She had thought of them like vitamins.
The next morning, a Tuesday, Julia took another gummy. With no scheduled meetings, she planned to spend the day catching up on emails and running computer simulations. She spent an hour in front of her screen before calling Scott.
“This room feels like a cage. You wanna go look around the city?”
“Sure. We deserve it after the DARPA meeting.”
“I’ve always wanted to see the Smithsonian.”
Julia and Scott boarded a METRO train fifteen minutes later. Julia greeted people around her, asking if they were locals or tourists and what attractions they recommended. She dragged Scott through the highlights of Smithsonian museums and then through the Capitol Building. On their exhausted walk back to the METRO station, they passed a karaoke bar.
“You wanna go in?” asked Julia.
“Why? You don’t drink,” Scott replied.
“But I can sing and dance.”
Julia ended up on stage, singing to Party in the USA like she was a concert headliner.
“I’ve never heard you sing before,” Scott shouted into her ear after the performance was over. “You’ve got a good voice.”
“I normally save it for the shower,” Julia shouted back.
She chewed up her third gummy the next morning. Scott had scheduled their second-most important meeting with a bigshot from the Navy. On their way over, Scott warned Julia not to get her hopes up.
“This guy, Verne Jacobs, has lots of money to throw around but barely gives me the time of day.”
“Let me take the ball again,” said Julia.
After being introduced to Vern, Julia complemented his model submarine collection. She asked Vern where he got his glasses frames and then asked him about his hardest unsolved problem. Thirty minutes later, Vern was convinced that STS could solve it.
“Why haven’t you brought her here before now?” Verne asked Scott, while still mesmerized by Julia.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Scott admitted.
“Something weird is going on with you,” Scott confided to Julia afterward. “You’re totally on fire.”
“You wanna hear something funny? It might be these gummies I’ve been taking.”
Scott flinched. “Huh? What kind of gummies?”
“I got them at the airport. Ever since, I haven’t been afraid of people laughing at me.”
“Why would you be afraid of that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Having people laugh at you is the worst thing in the world, but for the last three days I haven’t cared. These walls in my head are gone. It’s like I’ve been trapped in a Styrofoam box but now I’m free.”
Scott studied Julia’s face in pseudo-alarm. “You’re usually against any kind of drugs. Those gummies sound like performance enhancers. They’ve turned you into a super extrovert combined with a super introvert.”
“I got them at the Phoenix airport,” Julia replied defensively. “They’re all natural. They can’t sell drugs at the airport. Look at me, I’m in total control.”
“If they’re so great, why isn’t everyone taking them?”
“Maybe they only work this way on me.”
Scott laughed. “You could be right. How lucky would that be?”
Over the next two days, Scott called everyone he knew in Washington who was managing government contracts. He begged for appointments and then let Julia do the talking. By the time Scott and Julia were headed for the airport to catch their flight home, another four research contracts were in the works.
“This is a whole new era for STS,” Scott declared to the folks in Phoenix. “We need to do some hiring to handle all the work.”
After Julia and Scott made it through airport security, they found two isolated chairs with a good view of their departure gate. As a blur of other passengers came and went, Julia stared out at the evening sky.
“I only remember a few times when I knew my life was about to totally change. Going to college. My first job. This feels like another one of those times.”
“Now that you’re superwoman, promise me you won’t leave STS, okay?” said Scott with a nervous laugh.
Julia laughed in return. “Maybe it’s the gummies making me feel brave, but I’ve always wanted to tell you I think there could be something between us. Whenever I see you, my stomach does a little flip. But if you don’t feel that way, it’s totally fine.”
Scott blushed in surprise. “I uh, I don’t know what to say. I mean, yeah, I think there could be something too. It’s just, you never seemed interested.”
They sat in the same row on the plane again. This time, when the boarding doors closed, there was no one in the middle seat. Scott unbuckled his seatbelt and moved closer to Julia.
Four hours later, immediately after entering the Phoenix airport, Julia ran to the little shop where she had bought the gummies. They were not on the counter.
“Excuse me. Do you have more of those no-stress gummies I bought five days ago?” Julia asked the salesclerk.
The clerk stared back at her looking stupefied.
“They were in a blue package. I think the name of the company was Olivander or Olexander. Oh, why didn’t I keep the package?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” answered the clerk.
“No, they were right here. I promise. Can you check in the back somewhere?” Julia cried desperately.
“Everything we have is where you can see it.”
“Can you call the manager? Whoever is in charge of ordering stuff.”
“I order stuff, and I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Julia grabbed her phone and Googled possible names for the gummies. Scott found her almost in tears.
“What’s wrong? Are they out of them?”
“They’re not here. It’s like they never sold them. And I can’t find who makes them.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“What if I don’t? What if it was a freak thing or it was all in my head? I don’t want to go back to being the old Julia.”
Scott put his arm around her. “You’re already both versions. You can choose which one you want to be. And I like both versions.”
Julia was not convinced, but for Scott’s sake, she smiled and tried to look calm. “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” she said.
As they walked down the airport concourse, Scott still holding an arm around her, Julia tried desperately to remember the ingredients on the gummy package. If she could not find the gummies themselves, maybe she could piece together her own version.
At the same time, Scott’s plans had raced past offering Julia reassuring words about finding the best version inside herself. If he had to, he would scour the city and find a gummy which looked close to the original. A placebo might work, perhaps something a little stronger. He was not about to let the new Julia get away.
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