Jake was high as a kite when he walked into the convenience store. After looking around nervously to assure himself there was no one there besides the clerk, he walked up to the counter, pulled out a pistol, and demanded all the cash in the drawer. Before the clerk could react, Jake heard a voice to his right ask, “Are you sure you want to do this?” He turned and saw a rather nondescript man standing about six feet from him. “What did you say?” Jake asked, jerking his head nervously between the mysterious man and the clerk. The man didn’t answer Jake. He asked the clerk how much cash was in the till. “Less than one hundred dollars,” the clerk told the man. The man turned back to Jake and asked, “You want to commit a felony and possibly murder for less than a hundred bucks?” Jake stood dumbstruck, trying to think of something to say.
The man continued, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you two hundred dollars if you put your gun away and go to the coffee shop across the street with me. Over there you can tell me your story over a cup of coffee, on me, of course. If I find you suitable, I might offer you a job.” Thoroughly confused by the man and his offer, Jake continued looking back and forth between the clerk and the man before he pointed his pistol at the man and said, “You’re messing with my head, man! Are you like a cop, man? Or maybe the Devil? Or what? Well, it’s like it doesn’t matter, man…”
Jake started to squeeze the trigger when he felt his finger breaking against the trigger guard as the pistol was ripped from his hand before he felt the back of his pistol tearing at his face. He only heard the first of three shots that sent bullets ripping through his heart. He hovered over his body that was slumped on the floor at the feet of the man holding his pistol. He heard a voice say, “Never turn down an invitation from the Devil.” Darkness fell all around.
The man ejected the magazine from Jake’s pistol and racked the slide, sending the chambered round tumbling through the air before it bounced off Jake and splashed into his blood pooling on the floor around him. The man stepped over Jake’s body as he laid the magazine and pistol on the counter in front of the clerk, who stood like a statue in shock from the scene that had unfolded before him. “The police will want these for evidence.” The man told the clerk as he turned and walked out of the store, disappearing into the street.
Wormhole part one left off with El clarifying that he had ended up in the past by driving through a wormhole or timewarp.
Wormhole By Timothy Price
Part Two
“A wormhole or time warp,” he explained to the Captain. “No, sir, I’m not crazy, sir. Everything he has with him is nothing like I have ever seen before.
“Hold on a second!” El interrupted as he pulled out his wallet, took out his driver’s license, and handed it to Sergeant Prescott. “Hold on Sir!” He said as he looked at the license with furrowed brows. “Sir. He just handed me a New Mexico driver’s license that looks like nothing I have ever seen. It has a clear coating on it, it’s in color, and it shows that it was issued on 10/15/2015. It expires 10/25/2023. No Sir. I’m serious. You need to come to Building J and look at his things. He told me we should get a scientist and mathematician to come here and see these things. Yes Sir. We will be waiting, Sir.” He hung up the phone and stood up. “We will go back to the conference room and wait for Captain Fremont.”
They walked back through the gray/green hall to the conference room, which was more spacious, with natural light from several windows on one wall, a large table in the center, and chairs sitting neatly around the table except for the four chairs they had pulled away from the table on the side that faced the window wall.
Sergeant Prescott was still examining El’s driver’s license. “What does ‘Donor’ with the read heart mean?” He asked. “I’m an organ donor,” El answered. “If I was killed in an accident when I was in the future, the medics would remove my organs, kidneys, heart, etc., and transplant them into a person who had renal failure or heart disease and needed more healthy kidneys or heart.” He stared at El for a while trying to arrange his thoughts. “Are you telling me they can transplant organs from one person to another in the future?” El answered in the affirmative. “There is much greater demand for organs than there are organs available” El continued. “There is a global black market that deals in organs illegally harvested from people in the 21st Century. Sometimes people are drugged and one kidney is removed, and the person might survive, but mostly, people are murdered for their organs which are worth a lot of money on the black market.” Seargent Prescott looked at El with a puzzled shocked look in his eyes. “That is horrible. I don’t understand all your talk about the future. I can’t imagine such things.”
They stood in silence for a few minutes as Seargent Prescott tried to process the strange talk he’d heard from El. “I could sure use a cup of coffee or something stronger to clear my head listening to you talk about the future” Sergeant Prescott stated breaking the silence. El picked up his Nissan Stainless thermos and shook it. “It’s about half full. Go get that cup that’s sitting on your desk, and you can try some of my coffee.”
Prescott looked a little weary at the offer but turned back and walked through the door. Less than a minute later he walked back through the door with his coffee cup in hand. “I will probably regret this…” he said as he held out his cup, “but I’m really curious about your coffee from the future.”
El poured a little bit into his cup. “It’s very strong. You should try just a taste to see if you like it before I give you more. It’s probably only lukewarm, and since microwave ovens haven’t been invented yet, we can’t heat it.”
He rocked his cup, making the coffee swirl at the bottom of the cup while he pondered it. “Microwave ovens? I’m not going to ask, but your coffee is very dark and black. It looks thick.” He sniffed at the cup. “It smells like coffee. Here goes.” He took a sip, and his eyes widened. “Wow! That is very strong, but the taste is very good.” He held out the cup, and El filled it about half full.
“It’s Italian Roast, “ El explained. “The beans are roasted until they are very dark and oily. I grind the beans to a fine powder before brewing the coffee, which makes the coffee strong. The finer powder runs through the filter, making the coffee ‘thick’ before the sediment settles to the bottom of the cup.”
“I don’t believe I have ever seen coffee beans” the sergeant replied. “Coffee comes in a can already ground.”
“People still buy ground coffee in a can in the future, but there are all kinds of ‘designer’ coffees available as whole bean or ground. There are ’Starbucks’ coffee shops on almost every corner, with drive-through windows. Coffee is a big deal and big business in the future.”
“Coffee is rather scarce here, as most commodities with the war effort.” The sergeant explained. “I don’t understand most anything you say. Did you say ‘drive through the window’? You can drive through a window and get coffee?” The sergeant asked.
“They are really ‘drive up’ windows, where you drive your car up to a window on one side of a building, you pay the clerk for your order, and the clerk hands you the order.”
“How does the clerk know what you ordered?” Prescott asked.
“Generally, several car links before the window, there is a two-way speaker or screen on a kiosk where you place your order. “Key-osk?” Prescott interrupted. “You have the strangest words for things. What does a ‘key-osk” look like?” El thought for a few seconds. “I don’t really know how to describe it. They are like the posts that have the speakers on them at drive-in movie theaters or a TV on a pole” El looked at Prescott to see if any of his explanations made sense. “I’m trying to imagine it,” Prescott answered El’s look. “Continue with ordering coffee.” “Where was I?” El continued. “Oh yes. I think people can order coffee using apps on their mobile phones, also. Since I make my own coffee, I don’t know all the ins and outs of the coffee culture.”
“Can you get other things like food from a window in your future?” Prescott asked.
“Yes. Almost all fast-food restaurants have drive-up windows. You can get hamburgers, French fries, burritos, chicken fillets, and soft drinks from all kinds of fast-food restaurants without getting out of your car. Although, I don’t believe anything like it has been introduced yet. What year did you say it was?”
“1943!” answered Prescott. “You just listed off more words describing foods that I have never heard of. I hear you speak English, but I don’t understand much of what you say?”
Spunk still radiating a blue aura after slipping through a tear in the space-time continuum to get back home.
Spunk’s recollection of his disappearance is that he fell into one of the many wormholes on the property and slipped into a parallel cataverse, like so many other things that have mysteriously disappeared around here. He said he believes he was in the same location, but everything was different. A snow-covered, plowed field was where our house is now. There were other buildings by the cottonwoods, but the only structure he recognized was the “chicken shed”. He said some of the cottonwoods looked similar but smaller and there were trees he didn’t recognize. He said when he stood in the field where our house should have been, he could hear us calling him but he couldn’t find how to get back to us. The days turned into a week and then another week. He caught a few mice and stayed in the chicken shed for some protection from the cold nights. On Monday he said he heard a cacophony of voices, hundreds of voices calling his name “Come home Spunk! Come home Spunk!” He followed the voices and found a spot where he could slip through a tear in the space-time continuum and slipped out of the parallel cataverse he had been trapped in. After he stepped through the rip in space, he thought he might have come to yet a different parallel cataverse than the one he was looking for because the deck now had doors and it was wired in like the catio, keeping him from going up to the French doors on the sunroom. But then Laurie came out and collected him and he knew he had made it back to the proper cataverse.
I called to make an appointment with the vet to have Spunk checked out and they had an appointment available today. Since Spunk was sneezing and acting a little dumpy, I figured I should go ahead and take him in at the first available appointment. I drove home from work, collected Spunk, and surprisingly, he only meowed a lot on the way to the vet, instead of is usual “get me out of the crate!” maniacal behavior he goes into while driving to the vet. I dropped him off and went back to work. He got tested, examed by a young, pretty veterinarian, and he got attention from cute veterinary assistants, so on the way home he acted like his normal maniacal self in the crate meowing, clawing, and rolling around like an alligator trying to drown its prey. It was a long drive home with all the stupid drivers really annoying me given I had a wild cat trying his darndest to break out of the carrier so he could make me crash the car. We finally made it home where I had to bless him multiple times and give him a lot of extra attention for what he thought amounted to cat abuse for taking him back home after being in kitty heaven among all those beautiful women at the veterinary clinic.
All the tests came back normal. He has a slight kitty cold. The vet thinks it’s viral so we will just keep an eye on him. But he does not have a fatty liver or other maladies that can result from going weeks without food or water. The vet noted he had lost “a little weight” but was now about the weight he should be. All our fat cats noted that Spunk being a fat cat himself before he disappeared served him well during his time trapped in a parallel cataverse with little or no real food and water.
Spunk, Laurie and I thank all of you for sending out your hundreds of calls for Spunk to come home that led him to the tear in the space-time continuum that allowed him to slip back into the proper caterverse.
The way Spunk described the property while he was in the parallel caterverse. Our property circa 1958. The chicken shed, which is the only building left standing, is on the right. You might notice there are no towers on the Sandias. That’s an outhouse and goat shed on the left under Resa’s tree.
Silver making what he said is a wormhole between his paws and legs. Silver thinks Spunk is full of kitty malarky.
Off Center & Not Even 