This is one in a series about possible futures, which will be published in Booch News over the coming weeks. Episode 6 appeared last week. New episodes drop every Friday.



Introduction



Legacy beverage corporations attempting hostile takeovers of kombucha startups failed to understand the living systems involved. Their sterile production methods eliminated beneficial microorganisms, while regulatory capture backfired as health authorities mandated probiotic content. Mega-Cola’s final CEO, James Morrison, desperately tried fermenting cola using SCOBYs, creating undrinkable disasters. This episode chronicles the corporation’s transformation from global giant to urban composting service, with former executives becoming mushroom farmers in Detroit’s abandoned factories.



The $49 Billion Graveyard: When Giants Couldn’t Learn to Dance



Harvard Business School’s legendary case study “The Mega-Cola Kombucha Catastrophe” became required reading for understanding how industrial thinking proved fatal in the biological economy. Between 2035 and 2042, legacy beverage corporations spent $48.7 billion attempting to acquire kombucha startups, only to discover that living systems couldn’t be purchased—they could only be cultivated.



Mega-Cola’s acquisition spree began aggressively in 2035 under CEO James Morrison, a chemical engineer before ascending to the C-suite. He’d once loved the alchemy of bubbles and sweetness. His father had worked at a bottling plant; he’d grown up thinking carbonation was progress. He viewed kombucha as merely another “disruption” to be absorbed and had become a champion of “hydration portfolios”—a polite euphemism for diversifying out of soda into teas, waters, and ferments. The company spent $12.7 billion acquiring 47 kombucha brands, from market leader Health-Ade to smaller artisanal producers like Portland’s Brew Dr Kombucha. Morrison’s strategy seemed logical: leverage Mega-Cola’s distribution network and manufacturing scale to dominate the emerging probiotic market.



The Sterilization Disaster



The first catastrophic failure occurred when Mega-Cola attempted to scale Humm Kombucha production at its Oregon facility.



Morrison stood before a 10,000-gallon fermentation tank—ten times the size of any used by the acquired kombucha companies. Chief Science Officer Dr. Hiram Walsh explained the modifications they’d made.



“We’ve adapted our quality control protocols from our soft drink lines,” Walsh said proudly. “Every input is filtered, pasteurized, and chemically treated. We’ve eliminated 99.9% of microbial contamination risk.”



Walsh pulled up charts showing their testing results. “Batch consistency is perfect. Zero deviation. Every bottle identical.”



Morrison smiled. “Exactly what we wanted. When do we start distribution?”



“Next week,” Walsh confirmed. “We’re calling it MegaBucha. Focus groups love the name.”



One week later, Morrison sat in an emergency meeting. The first consumer feedback was catastrophic.



Walsh read from report after report: “‘Tastes like carbonated vinegar.’ ‘Chemical aftertaste.’ ‘Nothing like real kombucha.’ ‘Dead and flat.’ Return rates are 87%.”



Walsh looked confused. “I don’t understand it. The bacteria counts are perfect. We followed their recipes exactly.”



On the teleconference screen, Health-Ade founder Vanessa Dew shook her head. “You killed it. Your ‘quality control’ eliminated every living organism. Kombucha isn’t about sterility—it’s about controlled biological diversity. You can’t pasteurize and filter kombucha and expect it to remain the same. You’ve simply made acidic sugar water.”



Morrison spluttered, “We spent $2.1 billion acquiring your company. We’re not walking away because of ‘quality control’ issues.”



“It’s not quality control—it’s biology,” Vanessa explained. “Kombucha cultures need biodiversity to thrive. Your system is built to prevent exactly that.”



Morrison’s jaw tightened. “Then we’ll adjust the process. Keep some bacteria alive.”



Vanessa sighed. “Your entire facility is designed to kill microbes. Your pipes, your tanks, your air filtration, your worker protocols—everything optimized for sterility. You’d have to rebuild from scratch. And even then, you’d need to fundamentally rethink how you approach production. Living systems don’t work like machines.”



The company had overlooked the success of the UK’s ROBOT Kombucha, the “A.I. Cola” replicated cola’s taste in a fermented drink, becoming the beverage of choice for adults who had first tasted it as teenagers when it was introduced in 2025.  Founder Pascal du Bois had selected his ingredients from a range of different organic botanicals from which the flavor was extracted. He then created a complex blend of more than a dozen types of bacteria and four strains of organic yeast. After fermenting for seven weeks they add a teaspoon of 100% organic honey, sourced from France, to each can. This mimics the familiar cola taste without added sugars or aspartame. The result was a healthy alternative designed to appeal to cola lovers, not a standardized Frankenbooch.



Dr. Kenji Nakamura—the former Genentech researcher who later founded the Eastridge Mall Kollective—was hired as a $5 million consultant to solve the Mega-Cola problem.



His report sat on Morrison’s desk—200 pages detailing why Mega-Cola’s approach couldn’t work.



“I’ll cut to the conclusion,” Nakamura said. “Your industrial infrastructure is fundamentally incompatible with living beverages. Your entire supply chain is designed to kill exactly what makes kombucha valuable.”



Morrison leaned forward. “We paid you to find solutions, not problems.”



“The solution is accepting that some things can’t be industrialized,” Nakamura replied calmly. “Kombucha succeeds because of microbial relationships that develop over time through careful cultivation. You’re trying to force-manufacture relationships. It’s like trying to raise children in a morgue—the environment is hostile to life. Your kombucha tastes bad because you’ve optimized the life out of it. You can’t ‘optimize’ life—you can only cultivate it.”



Mega-Cola CFO Samantha Chen pulled up financial projections. “We’ve now spent $14.8 billion on kombucha acquisitions and infrastructure. We need to either make this work or write off the entire investment.”



Nakamura shook his head. “Every dollar you spend trying to industrialize kombucha is wasted. The companies you acquired succeeded because they were small—they could maintain microbial diversity, respond to batch variation, cultivate living systems. Scale destroys those advantages.”



Morrison’s face reddened. “Are you telling me that a bunch of hippies in Portland can do something Mega-Cola, with our resources and expertise, cannot?”



“Yes,” Nakamura said simply. “Because they’re not trying to dominate biology. They’re partnering with it. Your entire corporate culture is about control, optimization, standardization. Living systems require adaptation, diversity, patience. Those are fundamentally incompatible approaches.”



Morrison stood. “We’ll find someone else. Someone who can make this work.”



Nakamura gathered his materials. “You’ll spend millions more reaching the same conclusion. Biology doesn’t care about your quarterly earnings or your market cap. You can’t buy your way out of this.”



After Nakamura left, Morrison and Chen sat in silence.



Chen finally spoke. “He’s right, you know.”



Morrison didn’t respond.






The Regulatory Trap: When Capture Became Captivity



Legacy corporations had initially celebrated the FDA’s Probiotic Verification Act of 2038, which they had lobbied for extensively. The law required all “live beverage” products to contain minimum concentrations of beneficial bacteria, verified through independent testing. Mega-Cola’s legal team believed this would create barriers for small producers while giving large corporations with deep pockets competitive advantages through regulatory compliance costs.



The strategy backfired catastrophically. While artisanal kombucha producers thrived under the new standards—their naturally diverse microbial ecosystems easily exceeded requirements—corporate products consistently failed testing. Mega-Cola spent $20 million on fermentation consultants and biotechnology acquisitions, but its sterile facilities couldn’t maintain the mandated bacterial diversity.



Meanwhile, in the company boardroom, a tense meeting took place.



Chen read the headline from a Wall Street Journal article: “Mega-Cola’s ‘Kombucha’ Contains Fewer Probiotics Than Yogurt, FDA Testing Reveals.“



Morrison stared at the headline. “How did this happen?”



“Our sterilization processes,” Walsh admitted. “We can’t maintain bacterial counts through our production and distribution systems. The small producers can because they’re working with robust, diverse cultures in small batches. We’re working with weakened, standardized cultures in massive volumes. The bacteria die.”



The legal counsel shifted uncomfortably. “The regulation we pushed for is now our biggest problem. We can’t legally call our product kombucha. We could petition the FDA to lower the standards—”



Morrison’s voice was quiet. “How much have we spent trying to fix this?”



Chen checked her tablet. “$20.3 million on fermentation consultants and biotechnology acquisitions. None of it worked.”






The Medical Tsunami: Soda as Poison



By 2040, the medical evidence against sugar-laden sodas had become overwhelming. The American Heart Association officially classified high-fructose corn syrup as a “Class II toxin,” requiring warning labels similar to tobacco.



The crisis came to a head when the Journal of the American Heart Association published “The Corporate Diabetes Epidemic: A Century of Metabolic Warfare” in 2041. The paper demonstrated that diabetes and obesity rates directly correlated with Mega-Cola’s market penetration across 147 countries. Areas with higher Cola consumption showed disease patterns resembling chemical contamination rather than natural illness.



Dr. Harold Lustig presented twenty years of longitudinal research to a packed auditorium. The screen behind him showed stark data:



“Regular soda consumption increases diabetes risk by 340%. It shortens lifespan by an average of 7.4 years. We’re officially classifying high-fructose corn syrup as a Class II toxin, requiring warning labels similar to tobacco.”



Mega-Cola CEO Morrison watched from the back. His phone buzzed constantly—board members, investors, media requesting comment.



Lustig continued: “Children who drink one soda daily show measurable delays in brain development compared to peers consuming fermented beverages. Brain imaging reveals high-fructose corn syrup literally shrinks the prefrontal cortex.”



A reporter raised his hand. “Are you saying soda causes brain damage?”



“I’m saying the evidence strongly suggests regular soda consumption impairs cognitive development,” Lustig responded. “Meanwhile, children consuming diverse fermented foods show superior health outcomes across every metric we measured.”



Morrison left before the Q&A. In the hallway, CFO Chen was waiting.



“The stock dropped 12% during the presentation,” she said quietly. “Investors are calling soda ‘the new tobacco.'”



Morrison stared out the window at the Washington Monument. “We knew sugar was problematic. We’ve been reformulating—”



“It’s not just sugar,” Chen interrupted. “It’s the entire category. Industrial beverages versus living fermentation. We’re on the wrong side.”



“We’re a $300 billion company,” Morrison said. “We can’t just pivot to kombucha. We tried that. It failed.”



Chen’s voice was gentle but firm. “Then maybe we need to accept that some companies don’t survive paradigm shifts.”



The Educational Exodus: Schools Declare War on Soda



The Los Angeles Unified School District’s vote to ban all non-fermented beverages in schools attracted phalanxes of Mega-Cola lobbyists and lawyers.



A Mega-Cola representative presented their case: “Banning our beverages punishes students from low-income families who can’t afford expensive alternatives. We’re prepared to offer healthier formulations—”



A parent cut him off. “You’ve been promising ‘healthier formulations’ for thirty years while marketing addictive sugar-water to our children.”



Dr. Rebecca Scharf’s groundbreaking research demonstrated that children who were given an alternative to sugar-sweetened soda were healthier.



The school district called her as an expert witness. She summarized her findings: “Two years after schools switched to kombucha dispensaries with on-campus fermentation labs, we see 67% reduction in behavioral problems, 45% improvement in test scores, 89% decrease in childhood obesity.”



A high school student approached the microphone. “I’m sixteen. I grew up drinking your soda. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes at fourteen. Since switching to fermented beverages, my health has improved. But my little brother is eight—he’s never had soda, only fermentation. He’s healthier than I ever was. You took my health. Don’t take his.”



By 2052, 43 states had implemented similar bans. The “Fermentation Generation”—children who grew up drinking school-provided kombucha—showed dramatically superior health outcomes compared to predecessors who consumed soda. These children literally rejected Mega-Cola on a physiological level; their optimized gut microbiomes found industrial beverages repulsive.



Medical Prescriptions Against Corporate Beverages



The American Academy of Pediatrics’ 2044 guidelines required doctors to “prescribe against” soda consumption, treating it as seriously as smoking cessation recommendations. Insurance companies began covering kombucha prescriptions while penalizing patients who tested positive for high-fructose corn syrup consumption.



Dr. Chen’s research (detailed in Episode 2) provided the scientific foundation for these medical interventions. Her studies proved that even occasional soda consumption disrupted the personalized gut microbiomes that enabled optimal cognitive function. Doctors began prescribing specific kombucha strains to repair metabolic damage caused by years of consuming industrial beverages.



Morrison’s Tower Disaster: Industrial Control Meets Living Systems



Following his 2050 visit to Aberdeen’s agricultural tower, Morrison commissioned twelve “MegaTower” facilities across North America, investing $8.4 billion in what he called “industrial-scale fermentation infrastructure.” His engineers replicated the physical structure perfectly—1,200-meter climate-controlled spires with alternating tea cultivation and kombucha production floors.



The catastrophe unfolded within months. Morrison’s towers, designed for efficiency optimization, automated every process that Aberdeen’s workers performed intuitively. Computer algorithms regulated temperature, humidity, and nutrient delivery with microsecond precision, eliminating “human inefficiency.”



The tea plants withered. The SCOBYs died.



Dr. MacLeod’s warnings proved prophetic: Morrison had copied the machinery while killing the ecosystem. His sterile protocols eliminated the beneficial fungi, bacteria, and insects that made Aberdeen’s floors function as living environments. His “optimized” nutrient solutions lacked the complexity of naturally composting tea waste. His automated systems couldn’t respond to the subtle biological cues that experienced cultivators recognized instinctively.



By 2053, all twelve MegaTowers stood empty—$8.4 billion monuments to the fundamental incompatibility between industrial control and biological partnership. The failure accelerated Mega-Cola’s eventual bankruptcy, proving that living systems cannot be purchased; they can only be cultivated.






Morrison’s Desperate Gambit: Fermented Cola



Stung by his failed “MegaTower” experiments, Morrison staked Mega-Cola’s survival on developing fermented cola using modified SCOBYs. The “New Cola Kombucha” project consumed $67 million over three years, employing thousands of microbiologists and fermentation specialists. The results were universally catastrophic.



Dr. Park, a fermentation specialist hired from Korea, led Morrison through the lab. Rows of fermentation vessels bubbled with dark liquid. Scientists monitored bacterial counts, pH levels, sugar content.



“We’ve engineered SCOBY cultures that can ferment in the presence of cola flavorings,” Park explained. “It’s taken three years, but we have a stable culture.”



Morrison looked hopeful for the first time in years. “And it tastes good?”



Park hesitated. “It tastes… interesting.”



They entered a tasting room where twenty focus group participants sat with cups of dark, fizzy liquid.



Morrison watched through one-way glass as participants tasted the fermented cola.



The reactions were immediate and universal: grimacing, coughing, one person actually gagged.



“Fizzy coffee grounds mixed with cleaning products,” one person said.



“Like someone fermented tire rubber,” another offered.



“I think I can taste failure,” a third concluded.



Park pulled Morrison aside. “The SCOBY cultures are stressed by the chemical additives in cola formulation. They’re producing unusual compounds—not toxic, exactly, but profoundly unpleasant. They’re causing gastrointestinal distress in 89% of test subjects.”



Morrison stared at the focus group, then turned to Park. “Give me options. Can we adjust the flavor profile? Different additives?”



“We’ve tried 47 formulations,” Park explained. “The problem isn’t the recipe—it’s the fundamental incompatibility between cola chemistry and healthy fermentation at this scale. The bacteria are literally stressed by the environment we’re asking them to live in.”



“So what you’re telling me is that fermented cola is impossible?”



Park hesitated. “I’m telling you that your version of fermented cola—one that tastes like Mega-Cola but contains living bacteria—is impossible. If you were willing to let go of the cola formula entirely and create something new…”



“Then it wouldn’t be Mega-Cola,” Morrison insisted. “That’s what I’m trying to save.”



Morrison sank into a chair. “How much have we spent on this?”



“$67 million,” Park confirmed.



“And it’s undrinkable.”



“Yes.”



Morrison laughed bitterly. “We can put a man on Mars, but we can’t ferment cola.”



Park’s voice was kind. “We can’t ferment cola because we’re trying to put it on Mars. Fermentation requires accepting biology on its own terms. We keep trying to force it into our industrial model. Biology keeps refusing.”



The FDA’s emergency recall of Morrison’s prototype batches in 2059 triggered the final collapse of investor confidence.






The Bankruptcy Cascade: Industrial Liquidation



Mega-Cola declared bankruptcy on November 1, 2060—the Mexican Day of the Dead seemed grimly appropriate for the death of an American institution. The company’s $284 billion in debts exceeded its assets by a factor of three, as brand value evaporated alongside consumer demand. The company was not alone. BigSoda collapsed six months later, then Dr Gipper —the third-ranking cola in the world —creating a cascade of corporate failures worth over $1.2 trillion.



Morrison sat alone in his office as the board meeting proceeded via video conference.



The board chair spoke: “The FDA has issued an emergency recall of all New Cola Kombucha prototypes after test subjects required hospitalization. Our stock price has fallen 89% from its peak. Our debt exceeds assets. We have no choice.”



Morrison knew what he must announce. “Mega-Cola Corporation is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, effective immediately.”



On screens across America, news anchors delivered the story.



Morrison watched employees leave the building carrying boxes. Fifty thousand jobs ending. A century-old brand dying.



Chen entered his office quietly. “I’m sorry, James.”



Morrison didn’t turn from the window. “You tried to warn me. Back in 2035. You asked if we could industrialize biology without killing what made it valuable.”



“I did.”



“The answer was no.”



“I guess I just didn’t listen.”



Morrison was quiet for a long moment. “I spent my whole career optimizing systems, maximizing efficiency, scaling operations. I was good at it. But biology doesn’t care about efficiency. It cares about diversity, resilience, relationships. Everything I knew how to do was wrong for this.”



Chen sat beside him. “What will you do now?”



Morrison laughed without humor. “I’m 62 years old. My entire career has been corporate optimization. I don’t know how to do anything else.”



“You could learn,” Chen suggested.



“Learn what?” Morrison asked. “How to brew kombucha in my garage? I destroyed people’s livelihoods trying to industrialize something that shouldn’t be industrialized. I don’t deserve to be part of what comes next.”



“Maybe that’s exactly why you should be,” Chen said softly. “You understand what doesn’t work. That’s valuable knowledge.”



The liquidation auctions became symbols of industrial obsolescence. Mega-Cola’s Detroit headquarters sold for $47 million to the Georgia Fermentation Kollective, which converted the building into vertical kombucha gardens. The iconic “Land of Cola” museum became the “Museum of Metabolic Harm,” displaying artifacts from humanity’s sugar-addiction era alongside warnings about corporate food manipulation.






Urban Composting: From Soda to Soil



Morrison’s personal transformation paralleled that of his company. After Mega-Cola’s bankruptcy, he founded “Regenerative Detroit,” converting abandoned bottling plants into urban composting facilities that produced soil for vertical tea gardens. His memoir, From Syrup to SCOBY: A CEO’s Redemption, became a bestseller, chronicling his journey from corporate predator to ecological steward.



Nakamura, the consultant who told Morrison his approach would fail, visited the facility.



“You were right,” Morrison said without preamble. “Everything you said in that meeting. I spent five more years and hundreds of millions trying to prove you wrong, only to end up proving you right.”



Nakamura watched Morrison teach a teenage girl how to inoculate a growing medium with mushroom spores. “This is unexpected. I thought you’d retire to a beach somewhere, try to forget.”



Morrison laughed. “I tried that for six months. I was miserable. Spent forty years destroying things. Figured I should spend whatever time I have left trying to build something.”



“Why composting?”



“Because it’s the opposite of what I did at Mega-Cola,” Morrison explained. “There, we tried to force sterility, eliminate variability, control every process. Here, we cultivate diversity, encourage complexity, work with biological systems rather than against them. We take waste and transform it into something useful. It’s… healing, I guess.”



A teenager approached. “Mr. Morrison, my mushrooms are growing!”



Morrison’s face lit up. “Let me see!” He examined her cultivation tray with genuine excitement. “Beautiful! You maintained perfect humidity. These will be ready to harvest in two weeks.”



After the children left for lunch, Nakamura and Morrison walked through the facility.



“How many people work here?” Nakamura asked.



“Forty-seven,” Morrison responded. “Thirty-two are former Mega-Cola employees. When the company collapsed, they lost everything. I felt responsible. So I used what was left of my savings to buy this facility and train them in regenerative agriculture.”



“And the composting is profitable?”



Morrison shrugged. “We break even. Barely. But that’s not really the point. The point is transforming industrial waste into living soil. The point is teaching the next generation that decay isn’t the enemy—it’s the beginning of new life. The point is learning to think like an ecosystem instead of a corporation.”



They stopped before a wall displaying Morrison’s memoir: From Syrup to SCOBY: A CEO’s Redemption.



“I read your book,” Nakamura said. “Brutal self-assessment.”



“Had to be,” Morrison replied. “I spent decades helping build a system that made billions by making people sick. If I’m going to do anything meaningful with the rest of my life, I need to be honest about what I did wrong.”



Nakamura gave him a piercing look. “What’s the hardest lesson, James?”



Morrison thought for a moment. “That you can’t buy relationships. Mega-Cola tried to purchase kombucha companies and force them into our industrial model. But the reason those companies succeeded was because they maintained living relationships—between bacteria, between brewers and their cultures, between producers and customers. We thought we could commodify those relationships. We were wrong.”



Nakamura looked into the other man’s eyes. “Do you regret your career at Mega-Cola?”



“Every day,” Morrison said. “But regret without action is just self-pity. I can’t undo the harm I caused. I can only try to spend whatever time I have left doing things differently.”



The two men stood silent. “And now?” Nakamura eventually asked.



“Now I’m learning that the same principle applies to everything. Healthy soil requires relationships between millions of organisms. Healthy communities require relationships between people. You can’t manufacture relationships. You can only cultivate them.”



A former Mega-Cola executive, now managing the composting operation, approached. “James, the new batch is ready. Want to check it?”



They walked to a massive composting area where industrial waste had been transformed into rich, dark soil.



Morrison picked up a handful, letting it sift through his fingers. “Five years ago, I couldn’t have told you what healthy soil looked like. Now I can diagnose it by touch, smell, and sight. I know the difference between soil that’s alive and soil that’s dead. I wish I’d learned that forty years ago.”







Business School Autopsies: Failed Integration Studies



Mega-Cola’s failed acquisitions became business school case studies teaching a fundamental lesson about the new economy: you couldn’t buy biological relationships, only nurture them. Companies that thrived in the fermentation future were those that learned to think like ecosystems rather than machines, valuing symbiosis over extraction and cooperation over control.



The old extraction-based capitalism of brands, advertisements, and artificial scarcity had dissolved in the acid of transparency. In its place rose a commerce of connection, a network of exchange based on trust, craft, and living value.



No one “sold” kombucha anymore. They shared it—encoded with local identity, story, and microbial lineage. Each brew was a living signature, traceable back to the brewer’s SCOBY ancestry through transparent bio-ledgers—open microbial blockchains that recorded not profits, but relationships.



Harvard Business School’s legendary case study “The Mega-Cola Kombucha Catastrophe” had become required reading for understanding how industrial thinking fails when confronting biological complexity.



Professor George Santos—a reformed fraudster turned champion of ethical business studies at Harvard—projected key figures on his classroom screen summarizing the Mega-Cola meltdown:




$48.7 billion spent on kombucha acquisitions and infrastructure



Zero successful products launched



94% loss of beneficial bacteria in acquired brands



Complete corporate collapse within 15 years




Morrison sat in the audience, invited as a guest speaker. The students didn’t know he was there yet.



Santos lectured: “Mega-Cola’s failure wasn’t about lack of resources or expertise. They had the best food scientists, unlimited capital, and a dominant market position. They failed because they tried to apply industrial logic to biological relationships. It’s a category error—treating living systems like machines.”



A student raised her hand. “But couldn’t they have just left the kombucha companies independent? Kept them small-scale?”



“Good question,” Santos responded. “But that would have defeated the purpose of the acquisition. Morrison wanted to leverage industrial efficiency to dominate the market. He couldn’t accept that efficiency itself was the problem.”



“Sounds arrogant,” another student said.



“It was,” Morrison spoke from the audience. “Unforgivably arrogant.”



The room went silent as students realized who he was.



Santos smiled. “Class, we have a special guest. Mr. Morrison has agreed to discuss his decisions and their consequences.”



Morrison walked to the front slowly. At 72, he looked older than his years.



“I’m here because Professor Santos asked me to help you understand how intelligent, well-intentioned people can make catastrophic mistakes,” Morrison began. “In 2035, I was confident, even cocky, firmly believing we could apply our industrial processes to kombucha. I have degrees from Wharton and McKinsey experience. I’d successfully optimized dozens of operations. I didn’t see kombucha as a challenge—I saw it as an opportunity.”



“What changed?” a student asked.



“Repeated failure,” Morrison said simply. “We acquired kombucha brands. We killed them by trying to scale them. We hired consultants. They told us what we were doing wrong. We didn’t listen. We tried to ferment cola using SCOBYs. We created undrinkable disasters. Eventually, even I couldn’t ignore reality: you can’t industrialize living relationships.”



“Why not?” another student challenged. “We industrialize lots of biological processes. Agriculture, pharmaceuticals—”



“Different scale, different complexity,” Morrison explained. “Kombucha requires dozens of organisms in complex relationships. You can’t standardize that without destroying what makes it work. And more fundamentally, I didn’t respect what I was trying to control. I saw bacteria as inputs to be optimized, not as living partners to be cultivated. That disrespect guaranteed failure.”



Samantha Chen, sitting in the back, spoke up. “I was Mega-Cola’s CFO. I warned James from the beginning that we were trying to commodify relationships. He didn’t listen until we’d burned through billions and destroyed the brands we’d acquired. The lesson isn’t just about fermentation—it’s about recognizing when your core competencies are incompatible with what you’re attempting.”



A student asked the obvious question: “Mr. Morrison, you lost billions of dollars and collapsed a century-old company. Why should we listen to you?”



Morrison smiled sadly. “Because I failed spectacularly at something many of you will attempt: forcing biological systems into industrial models. Climate change, environmental restoration, and sustainable agriculture—you’ll all face situations where industrial thinking fails. If hearing about my failures helps even one of you recognize that trap earlier, then bankrupting Mega-Cola will have served some purpose.”



Cola Coda



The demise of Mega-Cola and Morrison’s redemption was celebrated in song by a young group of Baltimore kombucha brewers whose anthem ‘It’s an Unreal Thing’ was played on college radio stations by retro-70’s leather-jacketed DJ’s with pierced ears. Here’s Hexotronix:




Go now, take what you think will lastBut whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fastAll your failed investments, they’re all going homeYour fermentation formula had the wrong biomeYour scientists who just walked out the doorHave taken all their SCOBYs from the brewery floorThe towers too have failed to come throughAnd now it’s time to go find something new.



[Chorus]You sold your soda to a worldThat you thought you’d taught to singIn perfect harmonyBut it’s an unreal thing, an unreal thing.



You bought up all our breweries, didn’t you?Your fake fermented drinks just didn’t come through .You killed what made kombucha realSo how does it feelTo be completely unreal?How does it feelTo be a joker?How does it feelTo be a bankrupt, down at heel?With the whole world laughingAt your soda?



[Chorus]



Your beverage was a bustYour dreams all turned to dustThe missing partWas our SCOBY heartRight there at the startBut you didn’t seeWhat we sawDidn’t feelWhat we feltDidn’t knowWhat we knewDidn’t loveWhat we loved.



[Chorus]



Leave your corporate life behind, something calls for youThe dream that you once had is clearly through.Forget the drinks you’ve served, they will not follow youGo tell another story start anewThe compost and mushrooms, they now call to you.



[Chorus]







Epilogue: The Next Discovery



Morrison’s transformation from CEO to mushroom farmer illustrates that recognizing failure honestly opens paths to genuine learning. His redemption isn’t about success—it’s about accepting that some approaches are fundamentally wrong and committing to something different.



However, one man’s transformation was only the beginning. While corporate executives struggled to understand living systems, a brilliant citizen scientist was making discoveries that would prove the human brain itself required biological partnerships to reach its full potential.



Check back next Friday as the gripping tale of ‘Our Fermented Future’ continues.



Disclaimer



This is a work of speculative fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, assisted by generative A.I. References to real brands and organizations are used in a wholly imaginative context and are not intended to reflect any actual facts or opinions related to them. No assertions or statements in this post should be interpreted as true or factual.



Audio



Listen to an audio version of this Episode and all future ones via the Booch News channel on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you just want to listen to the music (classic 80’s punk!) tune in as follows:



Hexotronix, It’s an Unreal Thing, 36:17



Lyrics ©2025 Booch News, music generated with the assistance of Suno.
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