Phar T’Les

He was sure that there was something there when he first realized that a healthy diet with lots of fiber caused an increase in gas in the intestinal track. His girlfriend had gone on the healthy life style band wagon and he was forced to join her or be left behind. A part of her healthy life style included a lot of the physical activity that he was learning to love. It wasn’t the kind of activity that involved a lot of equipment or hours of running in the great outdoors. But it could be practiced in almost any room of the house, and they had tried it in almost every room. Although the back deck of the house he rented was a little scary, but they had waited until after midnight so there were fewer neighbors awake.

He was just finishing his chemistry degree and had a job lined up in a town some two hundred miles away. She still had two more years left and wasn’t about to leave just to keep him company. It was what some would have called serendipity that he decided to try to do something about the excess gas he seemed to be generating. After a little research he discovered that activated charcoal was the main ingredient in most of the gas relief products on the market.

He realized that most people found the idea of eating charcoal unappetizing. In fact no matter what the packaging, the product was used by only a few of the bravest souls. He was finished with his class work and had the summer off before he started the job, so he decided to see what he could come up with. He thought that the main problem was the idea of eating charcoal, so he decided from the start that he wouldn’t use the product’s actual contents as a selling point.

It had to be delivered in a capsule form. There were plenty of those on the market so it wasn’t a problem to get a cheap supply. As he sat there looking at the clear capsule he realized that he could still see inside the capsule, which meant that a user would still be facing the idea of eating charcoal. That wasn’t going to be good for sales. He made a note to make the capsules opaque. He knew that the charcoal inside the capsules wouldn’t actually be in contact with the user until the capsules dissolved in the person’s stomach. That meant that the user would only taste the capsule and not the charcoal.

He took one of the capsules and placed it in his mouth. There wasn’t much taste to it but what there was certainly wouldn’t be called appealing. He wrote another note to make the capsules more flavorful. As he looked down at the paper he sub-noted that since it was supposed to improve the person’s odor perhaps a mint flavoring might be a good try.

He had the makings of the product and he thought that he could probably manufacture it for a reasonable cost, but why would people buy it. There were other products already on the market that could do the same thing. Also, they were being marketed by companies with far larger budgets to promote their products. How could he get people to buy his pills instead?

He remembered reading that people liked to know what they were buying. Products that had strange names didn’t do well as those that told the buyer what they were getting. That household cleaner with the bald guy was one of the best-selling products in its region since I had the word “clean” in its name. So he made another note that said think up name that said what it did.

He started to write down ideas of what the stuff would actually do to see what would work. “Stop your gas,” “relieve intestinal gas pressure,” “Don’t fart,” all of them told a story, but none seemed appealing. He closed his note book and decided to sleep on it.

At three in the morning he suddenly was awake. He had dreamed the answer to his question in his sleep and now his mind was telling to write it down before he forgot the answer. His body was telling him something else in the way of tremendous pressure from the cabbage and bean salad he had for diner the previous night. Since he was sleeping alone that night he let the gas go. It was loud and powerful. So strong that he got out of bed and pulled off the covers. He swore that he saw a brown haze rise from the sheets.

He went into the kitchen and brought out the notebook he was working on the night before. He started to write down what his dream-self had discovered. “Foreign promoters were more believable. If the product did something that people didn’t want to discuss disguise the product’s name. Mysterious is popular. People are used to product names that are almost unpronounceable, after all look at all the drugs on the market. Even the supplements have strange names.”

So that left him with the need to come up with a name of his product idea that was foreign and mysterious. It didn’t have to reveal what it was used for and it didn’t have to be easily pronounceable. He sat there trying to come up with some ideas. He realized it might take some time but then again he was in no hurry to return to the bedroom with the remnants of cabbage salad still in the air.

He thought about some of the mysterious things he had come across, and remembered that servant of the rich guy who adopted that orphan. He was pretty mysterious and he was foreign to boot. “What was his nationality?” he asked aloud. He didn’t know but Egyptian seemed to be about right.

How would an Egyptian talk about his activated charcoal capsules? He might ask, “What does this stuff do?” 

“Why it stops gas,” the kitchen bound creator would reply. No wait, he thought, it doesn’t stop gas it just relives some of the pressure and the charcoal absorbs some but not all of the gas.

“So there’s less gas?” the Egyptian would inquire.

“Yes,” our developer would reply.

“Is that good?” the foreign guy in the room would ask.

“It is,” our brave creator would reply. “It makes you feel better, and you pass less gas so you friends feel better.” 

“Pass less gas?” he would question.

“Yes,” our original thinker would reply. “You know you’d…”

“Oh I get it,” the man in the turban would say. “You mean I’d fart less.”

The Kitchen occupant stopped there and thought, “No that’s not right. He wouldn’t say it that way. Because he’s foreign he’d say it differently.” He sat there for a minute or two trying to phrase it like an Egyptian. He looked up and suddenly could see the large turbaned gentleman saying, “You mean I’d phar t’les.”

And there he had it all wrapped up in one big package. He would call the product “Phar T’Les.” It would tell the user what it was for without actually using the words. The words sounded foreign, and if he continued with the Egyptian theme it almost seemed to be a mysterious drug.

A week later he had convinced a member of the school’s drama club to done a turban and costume and pretend to be an Egyptian. He manufactured a digital back drop of the pyramids and wrote a semi-funny script for the actor to use that claimed to be passing on a mysterious medication favored by the pharos. 

He posted it on the internet video sharing internet site along with a web contact address. Then he created a web site for Phar T’Les and tied it to the commercial. He supposed stranger things had happened, but in less than two weeks he was flooded with requests for Phar T’Les. Two weeks after that he had called his future employers to say that he wouldn’t be joining them.

By the end of the summer break he had five of his fellow graduates working for him filling the mint flavored capsules with the activated charcoal. The art department had whipped up a really snazzy package for the capsules that included the pyramids and several camels.

Health food stores bought it up and that TV doctor who seemed to have a cure for everything even mentioned it on his TV show. A year later he married the girl who had caused it all, and while she finished her degree he finished building the plant for the product with a huge sign on the front that read, “For a home where you can Phar T’Les."