Dr. Carbonell would put everyone at ease with his superbly esoteric explanations that graciously dodged all voiced concerns and brought calm to the most belligerent doubts. In his expert opinion, Willis and Chandra had delivered choice data. Of greater importance than any single data outlier representing a key event or character flaw for any single actor specimen — they provided multiple data points for every last category of variables described in the modified PiPP guidelines. Dr. Carbonell looked upon Willis and Chandra as data super heroes in their own right. Rita hardly felt the urge to celebrate, as the process had not delivered anything useful to date. Dr. Carbonell was a contractor of the company, and therefore, in Rita del Pando’s mind, he was a PhD subordinate. He was laser focused on his work and obtuse in recognizing Rita’s need for some sycophant suck-up. He did not give any credit to Rita for leading the team and driving the effort. Rita was not pleased with Dr. Carbonell, and she was skeptical of his ability to produce anything concrete for her to act upon. One week until the launch of Super Ramen Nikomu, and Rita del Pando’s fantastical vision of a preemptive strike against the same demons who betrayed the Sentinel Lizards, was taking her to the next level of self-delusion.
Once all of the data for all five actor’s was entered into the Pervasive Invasive Paradigm Plotter program, printing the one hundred and twenty-seven page results was more time consuming than the actual proprietary program processing. Stuck somewhere within the generic consulting pages of the resulting white paper was a single page of relevant findings. Intelligence that might qualify and fulfill Rita’s paranoid vision of something that needed to be suppressed and hidden from public knowledge. Something that could remain hidden until after product launch, and possibly beyond confirmed sales of thirty-four thousand units worldwide, which was the projected break-even mark. That number would have been much lower if not for the super hero license deal, but without the super hero license, the product would have remained in R&D storage — awaiting a reconfiguration to something more desirable in the realm of making life better in kitchens and bathrooms of civilized nations across planet Earth.
The Super Ramen Nikomu was going to make life better for people in civilized nations everywhere. Only one thing stood in its way. One seemingly inconsequential detail. A detail discovered near the bottom of the single page of relevance within the voluminous Matrix of Self Destruction document produced by Dr. Carbonell and his modified PiPP program. Nathan Meprizer, of The 5th Dimension Time Protectors, the actor who portrayed the character of Pulsar Jones, did not like ramen. In fact, he detested ramen and the high sodium content associated with a single bowl of ramen.
Years before Nathan Meprizer became the sometimes introspective, but always outspoken and decisive member of The 5th Dimension Time Protectors, he was the late night updater for sports scores. Nathan Meprizer was not a full fledge sports news journalist or an on-air personality. At that time, Nathan appeared on occasion with late night updates for west coast sporting events that reached completion well after everyone went to bed on the east coast. A jocular and friendly character, who also performed prop-based stand-up comedy on the weekends, Nathan was a stand-in when local celebrities inevitably cancelled their scheduled appearances on the morning cooking segment, or special segments covering home repair. It was on the occasion of a morning news cooking segment, which took place many years ago, that Nathan Meprizer balked at tasting a dish prepared on-stage by a very enthusiastic guest from the audience. That prepared dish was a shoyu ramen with chashu meat and topped with chopped leeks and bamboo shoots.
Willis and Chandra had discovered this tasty tidbit of a story through the archives of a newspaper published in Nathan Meprizer’s hometown. The hometown newspaper offered and op-ed section critiquing that particular morning cooking segment, because it had offended the author so deeply and so personally.
The author described the on-air misdeed of one junior associate sports newscaster by the name of Nathan Meprizer, as having the distasteful audacity to not only shun the good hearted offering of a guest to share that guest’s lovingly prepared ramen dish, but this junior associate upstart displayed his ignorance of culture and his fellow man, by making a disparaging remark directed toward Japanese people and people of Japanese descent.
There wasn’t an actual quote within the op-ed article stating what the disparaging remark was verbatim. Later in the article, the author revisited the disparaging remark item, and described it as implied by virtue of the fact that Nathan was unwilling to partake in the smallest slurp of the broth. The issue of high sodium content was described as a direct quote from Nathan, but it wasn’t clear if that was a genuine concern, or an afterthought cover-up for his ill-treatment of an innocent guest from the television audience. Regardless, it was in print, and it was the plausible spark that was about to set fire to Rita del Pando’s deepening paranoia of a product launch about to implode.
Why was the author of the op-ed piece so deeply offended by Nathan Meprizer? Why was the author willing to go out on a limb and elevate Meprizer’s distaste for shoyu ramen to a dislike of an entire people? As it turns out, the author was one quarter Japanese on his father’s side. He had dealt with haters of raw fish, fermented soybeans, and colorful pickled vegetables throughout his childhood. His classmates were always looking over his shoulder to examine his daily bento box lunch packed by his Scotch-Irish mother; out of respect for her Japanese mother-in-law. Throughout his adult life, the author lived with a chip on his shoulder, believing that anyone who could dislike any traditional Japanese foodstuff, must have a dislike and possible hatred toward the culture and the people. The week after the author’s op-ed was published, he was confronted by another author’s op-ed claiming that prior to the twentieth century, ramen was a distinct part of traditional Chinese culture and it was a cuisine enjoyed by Chinese many moons ago, but with lower levels of sodium. The two authors battled it out in the op-ed section of Nathan Meprizer’s hometown newspaper for many months, and subscriptions to the paper actually spiked during that time frame.
Rita del Pando needed confirmation. She needed to find out whether Nathan Meprizer, to this very day, still had a dislike for all things ramen. Forty-eight hours before product launch day, there was going to be a press event in which The 5th Dimension Time Protectors would appear in full costume, in-character, and prepare a ramen meal in their respective super hero branded Super Ramen Nikomu. The show producers and a small production crew from the 5th Dimension Time Protector’s ongoing television episodic would also be on hand. They wanted to capture the food preparation demonstration by each character, along with the eating of the ramen. The captured footage would go towards an episode in which the heroes temporarily lose their super powers and are enlisted to sell appliances to the inhabitants of Earth in order to get back their super powers.
Willis and Chandra were onto a new installment of their ever evolving missions for Rita. They were to get in touch with Nathan Meprizer and invite him to lunch to go over new details related to the press event. Willis and Chandra would take a two hour flight to visit Nathan in person, and look him in the eye over a strategically planned meal. Chandra found a highly rated Japanese restaurant with a variety of traditional Japanese dishes. What stood out at Frank and Natsuko’s Fuji Palace was the sub-culture of ramen connoisseurs who raved about a discrete special menu, dedicated to ramen dishes. They didn’t put this special menu on the table when the hostess sat you down and provided detailed information relating to who your waiter or waitress would be. You had to ask for it.
