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Stanford Pines drinks instant coffee.
Not just any instant coffee – this is the kind of swill that dissolves into a grainy sludge at the bottom of the mug, a caffeine delivery system barely distinguishable from chemical runoff. It’s what you’d expect from a college freshman pulling an all-nighter, not from a sixty year old with twelve PhDs. Twelve! That would almost be impressive, the level of self-abuse necessary to accumulate that much meaningless paper, if it weren’t so pathetically sad.
Then again, a masochist is what the portal project calls for, and, Bill observes as he watches the man hunch over some half-legible notes on cryptid taxonomy, scribbling out theories that no one will ever take seriously, wasting his massive, gorgeous, reality-altering brain on posers like Bigfoot and Mothman, it’s abundantly clear that that is exactly what Stanford Pines is.
Bill can respect the grind, of course, but the lack of ambition is enough to make him sick. This human could be in charge! He could be a conqueror, a colossus striding across the multiverse, making and unmaking the laws of physics with a snap of his over-abundant fingers! Instead, he’s stuck in a dingy little pre-furnished apartment with a stack of rejected grant proposals, chasing down fairy tales and collecting field reports from truckers who think they saw Bigfoot taking a piss behind a gas station.
How fortunate for him that Bill’s arrived to inject a little levity into this dreary melodrama.
He briefly considers making a grand entrance: lightning storm, floating objects, pea soup from every orifice – the full poltergeist treatment! He thinks better of it, though; Ford seems like the skittish type. Too much pomp and circumstance and he’ll pull out the talismans, start chanting in bad Latin. Really embarrassing stuff. No, best to ease him in.
Bill needs to send him a message, an invitation, and what better way to do that than to exploit the glaring lack of flavour in Ford’s existence? The man is drinking garbage. That, at least, is a problem Bill can solve immediately.
The espresso machine arrives the next morning, gleaming black and gold, polished to a mirror shine. When Bill tracked it down, it was waiting for its next victim at the back end of an estate sale, already humming with a presence just sentient enough to make a bad deal. Bill cut one, stripped out whatever petty malice was running the show, and poured himself in instead. Now the machine practically breathes; it hums with something darker, richer – a form of energy humans haven’t even named yet. Whatever it was before, it’s way better now.
Bill knows that a scientist like Ford was never going to listen to some disembodied voice in his dreams, even if it did take the form of the strongest shape known to man. He thinks he’s too rational for that, too skeptical to fall for smooth-talking fantasies. What he isn’t immune to is a puzzle, an enigma, a machine that appears out of nowhere, sleek and mysterious, dispensing liquid perfection beyond mortal comprehension. That will gnaw at him. That will keep him up at night.
Bill can already picture it. The cautious first sip, the widened eyes. The slow drip of realization that he has been settling for less in every possible way. Ford Pines is a perfectionist. He doesn’t do ‘good enough.’ He does ‘best.’ And once he’s had a taste of the best, he’s going to want more.
That’s where Bill comes in.
The first few days are fun: Ford, dismissing the machine as a prank, tossing it to the curb; Bill, manifesting on the kitchen counter, patiently waiting to be acknowledged. The opening moves to their game. The invitation.
Ford runs experiments. He tests the machine’s limits. He sacrifices students at the altar of Bill.
And Bill feels it, even from inside the machine. The little moment of hesitant curiosity. Underused neurons whirring to life. The dawning realization that this isn’t normal.
For a moment, Ford looks shaken, like the floor beneath his feet has shifted half an inch to the left. Then, predictably, he scowls. He glares at the machine, as if he can intimidate it into confessing its crimes against reality. His scientific mind kicks in – opening the casing, inspecting the hook-ups, testing the wiring.
Ford doesn’t trust it. Good! Suspicion means he’s paying attention. Bill just has to keep him looking long enough to see what’s really there. Right now, Ford thinks this machine is just an anomaly, a curiosity, but soon, he’s going to realize the truth: that everything he’s ever done has been settling. That his whole life has been instant coffee – grainy, bitter, good enough to survive on but never actually good.
Once he knows that, once he’s tasted better, he’ll be hooked.