Excerpt from The Lonely Cafe Club

I order a coffee, small soy latte. 

 

It’s Friday morning, 11. Just after. 

 

There are two groups of four young adults each; the first group is sitting by the window. Their 4-person table crowded with laptops and iced lattes. The cafe is fairly quiet; they could have given themselves more room, an extra table, but they’re crammed in, headphones on. 

 

The second group is by the kitchen at the biggest table in the place. They’re all huddled at one end though; on their phones but all together whispering and laughing. Four screens of data directly uploading trends, drama, gags. They haven’t noticed the music buffering. 

 

In the cold drinks fridge there are 3 rows of fanta and one of sprite. Is fanta an underdog success story here? This little orange-powered hub in central Brunswick. The bottles are glass, the kind that inexplicably tastes better than cans, plastic, or post-mix. 

 

The staff member with their phone hooked up to the bluetooth speaker is moving back and forth between the cafe, the kitchen, and the storeroom out the back. I can tell which room she’s in by how much the song skips. 

 

My mum’s favourite soda is fanta. It’s the only one she ever drinks and I could count on both hands the number of times I’ve seen her indulge. A long road trip, the end of a big shopping day, ducking spontaneously into a petrol station on the way to the pool. 

 

The fridge has both Pepsi and Coke. Like Romeo and Juliet, I don’t know for sure that you’re allowed to do that. Maybe more like Romeo and Mercutio, a real forbidden love. 

 

I’m not sitting by the window, though I had hoped to. I’m directly opposite the drinks fridge. 

 

Group 1 (the ones in my window seat) - let’s say they aren’t studying for exams. Say they’re hackers. Fueled by caffeine, youth, and social justice. They’re wading through a digital minefield while wearing jean jackets from Urban Outfitters. That’s a lie, the jackets are probably from Savers. 

Hacker 1 - she’s the leader of the pack, writing the code that’s going to copy and corrupt the mountain of data. Hacker 2 is coding as well - he’s writing the program that will publish the data globally and alert a hundred leading centre-left journalists to the scandal. Hacker 3 is researching the organisation’s firewalls, finding her way through the labyrinth, weaving an almost invisible thread through each twist and turn for the others to follow her later. Hacker 4 is the security detail - he monitors the external activity and is on high alert to pull the operation the moment they are discovered. 

 

Group 2 isn’t watching a tiktok marathon. Nah, they’re a band. An indie rock band but the kind that you can really let loose and dance to. They’ve just been sent the first draft of their debut EP and are excitedly, uncontrollably predicting the future. Music videos, award ceremonies, a global tour, it’s all coming their way. The drummer wants lights inside her kit and a smoke machine under her stool. Her leg is already tapping out a killer solo. The lead vocalist is squashing her anxiety with a pinterest collage of iconic outfits, but she’s worried about her parents. She told them it was a study group. Bass is playing it the coolest - she’s been in a band before and played a couple of gigs, but she admits this is different, sounds different, feels different. And then keys. She’s never heard herself play before and damn, she sounds good. They all do. She presses play again and bathes in the first chords of the rest of her life. 

 

In the TV show version of this small soy latte morning, one of the girls in the band stops the staff member with the music. They play their song over the speakers, loud, an instant classic. I’m a music journalist and I hand them my card, tell them to call me and I’ll write a piece about them. The hackers are bringing down the Spotify empire and this indie rock song is going to be their anthem. 

 

More likely fanta is the least popular, that’s why there’s so much of it.