First heard through an installation by Centrul Dialectic at the “New TEMPOralities: the Xenogeneses of SF” exhibition, Bucharest, 2021. Retold in Rijeka in 2022. Brought to bonfires in Mošorin in 2023, Berlin and Orléans in 2024.
In the 1990s, ████████ migrant workers staying in motels in Germany had discovered a way to heat their rooms without the need to buy tokens for the heating machines. The company running the heaters investigated the matter, but could not find anywhere the fake tokens used to cheat the system.
The trick was clever. The workers had discovered that the company token fit neatly into a Pepsi cap. So they collected Pepsi caps, filled them with water, put them in freezers, and made cast ice tokens. Once inserted in the machine, they would trigger the heating but then disappear into a small puddle of water, which the heat would quickly dissipate.