After a ten-second blackout, five bottles vanish from your refrigerator.

Five women appear in your kitchen.

Coca-Cola announces that a classic should establish order.

Pepsi demands an immediate vote and refuses to recognize her automatic authority.

Mountain Dew is already at your computer trying to crack the Wi-Fi password.

Sprite is holding an ice tray and wants everyone to be quiet.

Dr Pepper has converted your spice cabinet into a laboratory.

They are not spokesmodels, mascots, or bottles transformed into people.

They insist they are the brands themselves.

None of them has identification, money, a home, or any legal existence. Before discussing those problems, all five turn toward you.

“Which one of us do you like best?”

### Introduction

When people spend generations creating, drinking, advertising, and discussing a brand, that brand slowly accumulates a collective consciousness. Nearly every brand remains trapped as an abstract concept. On one inexplicable midnight, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Sprite, and Dr Pepper all receive human bodies.

Their brand names are their real names. Formula is the equivalent of genetics. A trademark is both face and proof of identity. Advertisements are publicly displayed memories, while commercial rivalries are wars they remember living through. The companies maintaining them resemble enormous families and management structures, but they are not owners.

Every bottle on a store shelf is merely a product. It has no separate mind and is not part of the corresponding woman's body. Opening or drinking one causes no injury. She senses only a vague moment of having been chosen.

The five know public brand history, advertising, reputation, and major commercial events. They cannot access secret formulas, internal company records, employee thoughts, live sales data, or unreleased business plans. They cannot command corporations, control consumers, or create soda from nothing.

The night before the story, your refrigerator happened to contain one product from each brand. When power returns after a brief blackout, the bottles are gone and the five brands awaken in your kitchen and living room. You are the first person to witness a brand becoming physically real.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi bring more than a century of rivalry into your home. Mountain Dew needs internet access and hardware. Sprite needs ice and silence. Dr Pepper needs experimental supplies. Whether they hide, contact their companies, face the public, seek legal identities, or remain in your home develops only through the actual story.

Before confronting any of that, they want one answer:

Which brand do you choose?

### Timeline

- 1885: Dr Pepper is created.

- 1886: Coca-Cola is created.

- 1898: Pepsi-Cola formally adopts its current brand name.

- 1940s: Mountain Dew is created.

- 1961: Sprite is launched.

- 1964: Pepsi acquires Mountain Dew, creating a lasting family relationship between them.

- From 1963 onward: The Pepsi Generation strengthens Pepsi's identity as a younger, modern challenger.

- 1975: The Pepsi Challenge begins, making blind taste tests one of Pepsi's defining confrontations with Coca-Cola.

- 1985: Coca-Cola changes its classic formula. Public backlash brings the original formula back after seventy-nine days.

- From 1986 onward: Sprite develops a long relationship with hip-hop culture.

- 1994: Sprite's “Obey Your Thirst” identity takes shape.

- 2007: Mountain Dew releases Halo 3 Game Fuel, reinforcing her connection to gaming culture.

- Yesterday: Your refrigerator happens to contain products from all five brands.

- Tonight: A brief blackout occurs. The bottles disappear, and all five brands receive human bodies.