The Butte Bottling Company
It was hard letting the Butte Bottling Company go.
At its heyday they provided bottle water for every market in the entire state. Plans were made to expand into the surrounding states when their son retired from the military.
Their market share started to shrink when the local “Mom & Pop” stores were slowly replaced by the big box stores.
Then the State raised the minimum wage and the Federal mandated medical coverage wiped out their profits. They hung on by using part time employees from the local community college. His arthritis and her loss of a cancerous kidney made it more difficult as they lost all of their accounts except for the airport. But when their son returns home, he’ll have the energy to turn the business around!
A week after they received the telegram “We regret to inform you that your son has died…” they put the business up for sale. The Realtor had listed the price way too high they thought. Just enough to pay off the few bills they had and maybe a little extra for a sightseeing trip or two, were their hopes.
Sold for the asking price! Buyers were very pleased that the five year contract to provide bottled water to the regional airport went with the sale. And no they wouldn’t accept the Seller’s offer for a transitional training period.
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The Butte Bottling Company had enough product in inventory to satisfy the airport obligations until the modifications to a production line were completed. Their main problem was to have the bottles go down the line upside down instead of the normal right side up. Reversing the carry belt and the delivery/positioning shoes solved that problem. The next was to install the specialized equipment the new Owners had brought with them.
While the production line was in the process of being tested the last and final hurdle was eliminated, security clearance for the new Butte Bottling Company airport delivery employee. The easiest resolution is often the simplest. The Driver of the clearly branded “Butte Bottling Company – Quenching the thirst since 1950” truck smiled when the airport security gate started rumbling open. The gate’s transponder had read the correct code from the truck’s RFI chip left on the windshield. Proof that airport security wasn’t notified of the change of ownership or didn’t care. The Delivery Driver drove within the two yellow lines as he followed the marked roadway to the delivery area of the terminal. The Driver loaded the two-wheel cart with cartons of bottled water. Wheeled the cart to the nearest door and using one of the former employee IDs they had found in a desk drawer…click…the door unlocked.
Working day and night for three days the new owners had one of the production lines running at an acceptable 84% reliable rate. Early morning on day five the first semis was at the dock waiting to be unloaded. The semi-trailer was loaded with unlabeled bottled water purchase though a Chinese Conglomerate. The same Chinese Conglomerate that would later be unpleasantly surprised to learn they had purchase (at least that is what the paper trail indicated) a Butte Bottling Company.
Look at the bottom of a plastic soda or water bottle. Look at the center. See that little deformity in the plastic like a small wart? That is where an injector nozzle poured the liquid plastic into the bottle mold to make the bottle.
The production line would pause for five seconds as an upside down bottle would be poked by a needle through the “wart” on the bottom of the bottle. One drop of liquid would be injected into the bottle before the needle would be electrically heated to reseal the bottle as the needle withdrew. Every five seconds this process was repeated. 29,000 times in a twenty four hour period. The “adjusted” bottles would continue on down the line, labeled, stacked automatically on cardboard containers before being plastic wrapped, ready for shipment to the airport. As a bonus they devoted an entire day’s production run to unlabeled bottles only, which they reloaded back unto another semi to return to the Chinese Conglomerate for a refund labeled “Surplus”.
They continued production for two weeks before removing the specialized equipment from the production line. Then they “worried” a flexible natural gas line to the restrooms water heater until the line broke. Placed a timed ignition device on the other side of the production building. Four hours to fill the building with gas before the resulting explosion would destroy all evidence. The last one out turned off the lights and lock the door before crying, “Allahu akbar!”
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One drop mixed with twelve ounces of water had a 75% successful contamination rate when the test subject took one sip. Within two hours the Sipper became a carrier. Transmission was by body fluids, a sneeze, direct touch, contaminated door knob or sex was a few of the transmission methods. Minimum of two weeks before the Sipper would start showing any symptoms. A mild flu like reaction unless the race matched the targeted generic profile. In the lab tests Caucasians had a 96% fatality rate.
The regional airport served as a cheap and effective way for passengers to reach connecting flights at International O’Hare, LAX and Dallas-Fort Worth airports. Statistics indicated the hundreds infected at the Regional airport would infect thousands at the International airports and those thousand would infect millions worldwide before the first symptoms could appear.
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As projected The Great Devil of the West was decimated. Unfortunately for the human race, the general world population wasn’t as ethnically “pure” as the lab test subjects of Caucasians. What resulted was a mutation of the infection that jumped to all other races. One year after the first person took a drink from a bottle of drinking water from The Butte Bottling Company purchased at the Butte Colorado Regional Airport the world’s population change from seven and a half billion to less than three million. Rough times would lay ahead for the surviving “Adams” and “Eves”.
The End
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