She took a deep breath and knocked on his door; the one with The King’s Office etched into a sheet of brass.
“Yes!” a voice barked, and she went to sit at his mahogany desk. The King was swinging in his racing chair, dissipating his energy in the way effective people pace while remaining seated.
“I’m off now. I’ve tested your new Assistant and he seems good to go,” she said. And, after a long pause, “But, of course, if there are any problems, you know where I am.”
Having worked by his side for twenty years, she knew that he was cynical about assistant technology. But she’d been impressed at the depth and precision of the machine’s insight over its first week.
“Thanks for everything, Ceris,” he said. “And enjoy it. Maybe I’ll get to stay at home more soon too.”
She smirked. She’d been setting this up for years but hadn’t quite anticipated putting herself out of a job, not yet anyway. The new Assistant was pretty much modelled on her, so she figured she would still have some control, if from afar. Heck, she could rest now and spend time doing what she loved — if she could remember what that was.
And with that, Ceris left Better Bitters.
**
Better Bitters made, as you might have guessed, some of the best beer that anyone could still remember. In fact, Better Bitters had become the largest global beverage company on the Global Stock Exchange and had effectively taken over its local state (which was held in cultural memory as ‘Brexitland’), in the way that it had gone in a world which had come to accept that companies held more power than countries, and that we might as well forget about states altogether. Hence its Director, fifth-generation owner and majority shareholder, Alf Pattison, had crowned himself — if only ceremonially, because he held all the power anyway — as King of Better Bitterland.
**
On the new Assistant’s first day, the King thought he’d have some fun.
“Hey, where’s the capital of Better Bitterland?” he asked.
The Assistant responded, without a natural pause, “Deeply in deficit because the accounts have never reflected all our assets, which are now in trouble.”
What a bore, the King thought to himself. But then he remembered that the Assistant was the result of a long Research & Development process incorporating the best of modern science and technology that money could buy.
“What do you mean?” the King probed.
“Your Highness, your business is set to fail on its current trajectory. You’re polluting the waters and degrading the soils with your intensive industrial processes, and not giving the Earth a chance to recover. If you don’t rethink how you operate, you’ll run out of drinkable water and barley soon enough. How will you produce your beer?”
**
After pondering what the Assistant had said, the King decided to send his Chief of Operations, Sally, to the next Global Sustainability Summit to learn the secrets of maximising profits in perpetuity.
**
Sally arrived at the Global Sustainability Summit held that year in Palmoil Inc., in the most sustainable conference centre in the world according to industry magazine Today! And forever more.
The conference centre towered over her, more imposing even than Better Bitters Towers. She’d arrived from the airport by auto-taxi, and was surprised to see that she was sharing the road with rickshaws and user-driven mopeds. Terrified at the prospect of a human behind the steering wheel, she was on high alert as she crossed the crowded mega-city.
The conference centre, guarded by armed security guards and plated in carbon-sequestering marble, was a welcome sanctuary from her journey.
“We continue to face many global challenges,” said the keynote speaker at the opening of the conference. “We’re delighted to be hosted here. This centre is truly a symbol of what we can achieve when we focus on true costs and true value.”
And, over the next few days, Sally learned in great depth about true costs and true value. She learned about the importance of investing in the natural processes that businesses rely on, and a whole host of tools and sector initiatives to help businesses collaborate to drive absolute efficiency to best steward resources and be peak responsible. And she found the grail for which she had come: that to operate in perpetuity, nothing should be left to waste, but instead all production outputs should become its inputs.
**
On her return, Sally presented this concept back to the King, aided by a few simple diagrams of circles. It was so simple! It seemed, when presented in circles.
The King was absolutely committed, so taken by his new Assistant’s eerie ability to predict his every move with irritating accuracy and terrified into action, that he created a new task-force with carte blanche to implement whatever changes they felt necessary to turn Better Bitters into a circular company; truly a Forevermore.
**
Over the next five years, Better Bitters was transformed beyond recognition. Under the close watch of the task-force, machines reigned by their trainers sifted through endless blocks and chains of stocks and flows, nudges and nodes to identify where to begin and how far they should go.
Better Bitters already had a bottle deposit scheme (which they found had a fairly low uptake), so the obvious first step was to change their business model to renting, rather than selling, beer. This instilled an imperative to returning bottles to be up-cycled (lest pay the fine) while retaining a healthy profit margin as customers prescribed themselves a consistent dosage of brew (there was, for you cynics, an alcohol-free version).
After that, the business switched to a 100% renewable energy tariff. The barley fields were transformed too, with the adoption of precision technology which ensured that every seed was productive and received all the water, nutrients and other chemicals it needed to help it on its way and nothing more. (And applying a little ancient wisdom, every fourth year, the barley fields were left to fallow.)
But the nature of Nature meant that these chemicals eventually burrowed their way into the soil and slunk into the water. Better Bitters tried in earnest to collaborate with the water company, but decided that full control would be more conducive to fast-tracking circularity, and so bought it out. Better Bitters installed the latest suite of biomimicry technology to first remove those chemicals from the water (and apply chemistry magic to up-cycle them into new pesticides and fertilisers) and then filter the water to be of the optimal hormonal level to complement the brew.
A new forest was planted with the good foresight of the task-force, which recognised that a fully fledged canopy built over Better Bitter’s processing plants would help with localised climate regulation, come what may. Its thinnings would also be processed into hyper-local and carbon positive paper packaging.
**
In retrospect, it all sounds so easy. But make no mistake: this transition was gruelling.
Better Bitters was no cowboy enterprise. It employed over 200,000 people directly, who at this very time were being replaced by machines. Coded to continue with their predecessor’s job spec and with the utmost efficiency, these algorithms struggled to adapt. (Cheap factory spin-offs, they were not of the same calibre as the Assistant.) How could they be expected to suddenly think in circles when everything they’d ever been taught was linear?
So there were errors, inefficiencies and downright idiocies. But as they learned, even labour became circular as the replacement machines were effectively self-nourishing, powered as they were by renewable energy and installed with self-reflection.
**
Once the forest had reached maturity, Better Bitters had successfully translated theory to practice and, phenomenally, had arrived at peak circularity. There was nothing left to circulate.
And as the world around them grew hotter and the sea level rose, the people of Better Bitterland looked around and saw that their beer supply was unperturbed. Indeed, beer production had soared to ensure a steady return to investors and avoid the ultimate disruption: share liquidation.
Some of the additional beer supply had been consumed domestically by the increasingly non-employed. But as the home market became truly saturated (how much beer can an individual drink, after all?), new markets were sought to stay in the game.
It was discovered that beer did an exceptional job of the bathroom, and so a new product line was marketed initially as toilet bleach, and then integrated into every domestic and industrial cleaning product going.
Beer essence became a de facto ingredient of breads, pastries, biscuits and pasta.
And thanks to its calming effects, one of the brew’s derivatives was re-marketed as InstaNanny: the convenient alternative to childcare for those who still worked, and wanted the lowest-cost alternative to the opportunity cost of looking after their own.
**
And, if only for a brief moment in the history of time, all was well with the world. The skies were blue, the birds were singing, bellies were filled with brew, and the shareholders were delighted.
**
And over the years, the operation became faster and faster, in the way of growth. The machines adapted beautifully, well-oiled as they were through continuous learning, upgraded processors and powered by the abundance of endless renewable energy.
And, Reader, for this demonstration, let us assume that Better Bitterland exists in a much smaller biosphere than our own. Her carrying capacity is more quickly reached, and it is easier to discern Better Bitters’ footprints stampeding across the land from those of the other players.
**
One day, many years later, King Jnr was roused by a knock at her brass-plated door.
“Bad news, I’m afraid,” her Chief of Operations started. “We’re running out of barley.”
“What do you mean, running out? Better Bitters doesn’t run out!” King Jnr cried.
Better Bitters had already expanded their land portfolio to match their growth, but had continued to apply the same circular principles everywhere they operated. Chemicals were salvaged and reused, and the land was allowed to rest.
But they had arrived at a fundamental problem: there was no more land.
**
King Jnr convened an emergency Board meeting.
“We’ve hit a real spanner, and on reflection I don’t know how we didn’t see it coming.” King Jnr started. “The numbers say we have just over a year before we have a serious supply shock. We need to have a radical rethink, and to move fast.”
The Board agreed that, however tempting and straightforward, downsizing the business was simply not an option, their mandate as it was to maximise shareholder profits.
And they locked themselves in the Boardroom for two nights and a day, occasionally calling on technical input from the machines who stood on standby.
And as the second night turned to day, they had their answer.
**
They realised they had been doing circular all wrong. A true circle would not rely on haphazard agricultural inputs, but would keep the product in an endless cycle of human, technological and hydrological pipework.
And so the operation was reformed to recapture consumed beer from the waste water and reconstitute its parts into new product.
And thanks to hard graft and a dose of ingenuity, they were able to make this change within the year, and Better Bitters saw another day.
**
And for a while, the refined operation thrived, spinning with gust ever faster to not fall behind; a drumroll projecting into a single DHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…
**
But its salvation was short-lived and, one day, not so long after, Better Bitters started suffering from palpitations. And on inspection, it was found that the beer had turned to salt.
And the King, Ceris and Sally, all long retired, turned on their taps that morning to find the well had run dry and sea water had flooded in.
**
And this time, endless Board meetings did not find a resolution (desalination was discussed, but deemed too pedantic an option for the sake of a short story). The water, it transpired, was not wholly in the control of Better Bitters after all, but rather held the entire land. And the water had kept to its own metabolism — and why shouldn’t it; forged since the beginning of time — to which Better Bitters had quite simply jumped out of sync.
**
The stock price crashed, Better Bitters ceased, and life carried on.
And despite Better Bitterland being blacklisted by investors and because there are other ways to organise, beer was still brewed and songs were still sung, but this time to Nature's rhythm.