Disqualified

Chapter 1

I did it like we’d learned in orientation. I added just the right amount of ice cream and toppings, placed the collar on the cup, and ran the mixer until it was the perfect consistency. 

“You’re a natural,” said my manager. “That usually takes new hires at least a week to get right.” 

I felt myself grinning at the praise, slightly embarrassed but unable to keep my face neutral. It wasn’t a big deal. After all, it was just ice cream. And besides, I’d worked a summer job at an ice cream shop before; this wasn’t my first rodeo. I took the blizzard to the front so I could give it to the customer. 

“Here you go, sir,” I said, flipping the cup upside down just like they showed us. 

I felt a weird vibration in my hand. I heard a wet “plop” as something hit the floor. I looked down and saw ice cream on the floor, then looked up to the customer, then back to the floor. It felt like the moment had run off ahead of me with a bungee cord attached to it. I felt it snap back as my perceptions collided with reality.

Shit. Shit shit shit. I looked back at the customer. 

“Sir, I’m terribly sorry, I’ll remake that for you right–” 

The customer was standing completely still, his eyes showing hints of surprise and his mouth open as if he were about to say something. 

“Sir?”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t move. Was he having a stroke? I thought back to what my professor had said in lecture and the textbook examples, and looked to see if he was showing any of the classic symptoms. Nobody else seemed to be reacting to his behavior. In fact, the restaurant was awfully quiet. I looked around.

Everything was completely, utterly still. My manager was looking at the fallen blizzard, a look of mild disappointment on her face. A kid in one of the booths had been caught mid-sneeze, his face all scrunched up. Someone emptying their tray into the garbage can was also locked in place, the aftermath of their meal sitting at an impossible angle on the tray but kept from sliding by the same strange force holding everyone else stationary. 

I started looking at more of the scene around me, and was thinking about trying to touch one of the frozen customers when a man with dark glasses walked in through the front door. He and I were the only ones moving.

“Hello,” he said. “Lovely day we’re having.” 

I stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Shy?” he said. “No worries, we can work with that.”

He said something inaudible into a receiver on his shoulder. Suddenly, three more people walked out of the kitchen. Two of them started taking measurements of the ice cream on the floor. The third took the cup I had been holding and placed it in a metal container with a pressure gauge on it. It opened with a hiss, the cup was swept inside, and then it was sealed, causing a small compressor to whine until the needle on the gauge fell down to near zero. 

The man with the dark glasses stuck his hand out. I tore my gaze away from the peculiar scene that was developing in the restaurant.

“Pleased to meet you, we’ll be working together for the time being. You can call me Guard,” he said. 

I was blindsided by his nonchalance. I opened my mouth to say something and immediately felt sick. I doubled over to vomit, but the nausea fled as rapidly as it had arrived. 

“Get her a bag,” said Guard. “She’s going to hurl after we ease up.”

One of the people with Guard handed me a barf bag, the same kind I’d seen at the hospital back during clinicals. I regained the powers of speech.

“What–who–“

Okay, I partially regained the powers of speech.

“Take your time, kid,” said Guard. “It’ll be a minute anyway.” His hand was still extended.

I took a deep breath.

“Why is everyone stopped?” I asked. 

He gave up on the handshake, sighing as he returned his arm to his side. 

“It’s a time-stasis field. We use it for erratic temporal events. Things that shouldn’t happen. We minimize the fallout, investigate the causes, and then correct the errors,” he said.

I puzzled over the statement for a moment.

“What happened here that was unusual?” I asked.

“You turned a blizzard upside down and it fell out. That doesn’t happen,” he said. 

“But that can’t be true,” I stammered. “People must drop blizzards sometimes, I’ve seen videos of it online!” 

I cast another bewildered look at the restaurant, the whole scene had been brought to a standstill like a prehistoric insect trapped in a block of amber. I had the unsettling feeling that I had been banished to a photograph. Was the air frozen, too? How was I breathing? Was breathing even necessary in a purgatory like this? I looked at the puddle of ice cream on the floor with newfound reverence. 

Guard looked at me. God damn, those sunglasses were dark. How could he see anything through glass that tinted?

“Kid, listen. Those videos are always the result of a mundane mistake. Maybe they didn’t make it thick enough. Maybe they accidentally put it in two cups and the inner one slid out when inverted. Maybe they accidentally punched a hole in the cup when they blended it and compromised the seal and didn’t notice until it was too late. The short of it is, we know it when we see it. And we see it here,” he gestured at the spilled blizzard, “all over the floor. You made it perfectly. A textbook example. A product made by a model employee, and it still fell out on you. So you’ve been disqualified.”

I felt dread rising, it started as a small gnawing in my stomach and worked its way upward until it was a thundering stampede in my chest. 

“You mean I’m fired?” How was I going to make ends meet? My parents were still pissed that I’d changed majors from nursing to biology, and if they found out their daughter couldn’t hold down a fast food job and needed help with bills? What then?

Guard laughed at that, and then shook his head. 

“You just don’t get it, kid. This is bigger than your $11.50 an hour part time gig. And given your condition, you probably wouldn’t have lasted long here anyway. We’re gonna take you back to the waystation and debrief you. We can’t hold the roof for much longer.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but it seemed like it would have to wait. I watched as Guard spoke into the device on his shoulder. A spinning white/purple halo crackled into existence. Its edges wobbled unsteadily until it found a stable rhythm and came to a rest between my manager and the drive-through window. Dozens of questions raced through my head. 

My “condition”?
What the hell is a waystation?
What will happen to everyone here after we leave?
Will I be able to come back?
What in god’s name is that purple donut they just summoned into the restaurant?
What if I refuse to go with them?
*Can* I refuse to go with them?
What kind of fake-ass name is “Guard”?

Rather than resist, or run away, or do anything useful, I stood there with my feet rooted to the floor and stared at the halo, awestruck. It was mesmerizing. It looked like it was breathing, or burning, or like it had a pulse. It gave the uncanny sense that it was alive, along with the implicit understanding that it was ephemeral. 

“Are we going in there?” I asked Guard. 

“Hell no,” said Guard. “Unless you want to get broken down into your constituent atoms.” He started unpacking a duffel bag and uncoiling a spool of cable. On one end was a clear red ball with an indent running along its equator. There were little flecks of light suspended in it, like a miniature galaxy. The cable met the ball at its south pole, but I was unsure how it was connected. Probably something more sophisticated than glue or a knot. 

I watched as Guard twisted the two halves of the ball until it turned green. He started spinning it around like a lasso, going faster and faster until it reached some velocity he found acceptable, then he threw it into the big glowing donut. The cable kept unspooling into… somewhere. It didn’t make it past the halo of light between my manager and the drive-through window. 

Guard gave the cable a tug and it went taut. He shouted to the rest of the crew and they all started pulling on the cable, throwing their weight into it. I watched as the donut got larger and larger. The room seemed to point towards it, wrapping around itself like light refracting through imperfect glass. The crew pulled again and the donut expanded, growing to enormous size and splitting the world in half. There was the half of the restaurant with me and my frozen-in-time manager and the spilled blizzard and Guard and the men pulling the cable, and then there was… nothing. I looked up and saw the nothing grow, or did I see the world shrink? It was like the horizon was rushing up to meet us, the radius of the earth shrinking until our little half of the restaurant was all that existed and everyone was standing perpendicular to this new globe like needles in a pincushion.

Then everything stretched out into a long tube, with a light at one end rushing towards us at an alarming speed. I turned to look behind me but found that no matter where I looked, the tunnel extended away from my vision and the light rushed towards me. 

The light approached and enveloped us. Everything stopped. I fell backwards, realizing that I had been anticipating a sudden deceleration. Guard caught me and helped me back to my feet. 

Had we actually moved?

I immediately puked all over the floor.

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” said Guard, plucking the unused bag from me. 

I worried about it anyway. Seemed I was leaving unwanted piles of goo in places a lot lately. 

I felt Guard’s hand on my back and our little group rushed forward. We were in a round room, the walls covered in white tile. A soft white light filled the room but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. There was only one point of egress, which we were heading towards. 

I was expecting a high tech laboratory, or a space station, or a secret lair, or some other spectacular environment. I was a little surprised to find an exact replica of the restaurant I’d just been in, except it was abandoned. We had entered through the kitchen door, which, now that I looked behind our group, seemed to lead to the kitchen instead of the round room we had just been in. 

“What in the hell are we–“

“We’re not quite there,” said Guard. “I’ll answer your questions soon.” 

We walked out the door of the restaurant. Again, everything looked normal, aside from being empty. No cars, no people, no birds. The sky was devoid of clouds and the sun was directly above, even though that shouldn’t have been possible at our latitude. There was something else strange about the landscape, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I felt it gnawing at me as we stepped onto the asphalt.

We crossed the street and entered a small office park. There was an accounting firm in one of the buildings that also provided help with estate planning. I’d never been inside, but had seen the “Death and Taxes” sign multiple times and always found it charming, if a little corny. We entered as a group.

There was a small reception area adorned with Live, Laugh, Love decor. A white board on the far wall had “Romans 9:20” written on it. I wasn’t sure what it meant. Probably something tax related. Or death related. Either way, there was nobody around to ask. 

We moved through a door behind the reception area. There was a small hallway. I could see a bathroom, an office, and what looked like a break room. 

“This will work,” said Guard. We entered the break room, which had just enough seats for all of us. Guard gestured for me to sit down. Cautiously, I did so. 

I looked around. There was a vending machine with the old Pepsi logo on it and paper labels on the buttons that had yellowed with age. There was a refrigerator with a sheet of paper that said “Tax season is coming up!” The calendar on the wall, flipped to June, quietly stated its disagreement. There was also an emergency exit with a bright red “ALARM WILL SOUND” decal on the crash bar. I eyed it, thinking about bolting, but banished the thought when I realized I’d willingly gone along with my abduction and had no idea what sort of circumstances I found myself in. 

“I can tell you’re a thinker,” said Guard. “A bit jumpy, though. And maybe a little too trusting.” He had taken off his glasses to reveal eyes that were sharp but tired, the irises a shade of brown so dark that it almost looked like he had a giant pupil in the middle of each eye. 

He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and weaving his fingers together. “So, got any questions?”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“The outskirts of Des Moines, same place we picked you up.” 

“Is this the waystation?”

“Yes.”

I felt a little frustrated with his answer and followed up immediately. 

“What is a waystation?” I asked. 

“It’s where we are,” said Guard. 

“And where is that?” I asked, quickly saying “Des Moines, Iowa” as Guard answered in unison. 

“Bit of a smartass,” he said, grinning. “I like that.”

“You’re the one talking in circles,” I said. 

“I’m answering honestly,” he said. “Would you like to ask about anything else?”

I looked at the three people with him. They were wearing face masks and dark glasses, similar to the ones Guard had been wearing. I pointed to them. 

“Care to introduce me to your coworkers?”

Guard burst out laughing at that. 

“They’re robots, kid. They don’t even have faces, we just put that getup on them to make them seem friendly.”

I looked at the two figures sitting next to us with newfound scrutiny, and did notice some peculiarities. The small bit of “skin” I could see under the face covering looked like plastic, and they appeared to be identical in every way. It made me uneasy. I could see why effort had been put into making them appear human. 

I still wanted information, so I tried a different approach. 

“Why do you call this place the waystation?” I asked. 

“Now that’s a question,” said Guard. “It’s called that because we’re stopping here on the way to somewhere else.” 

“Where is that somewhere else?”

“We don’t know yet. Probably someplace where you won’t drop ice cream on the floor, but maybe not.”

“Why is that so important?” I asked. I felt my head spinning as the absolute absurdity of the situation came crashing down on me. Here I was, across the street from my workplace, talking to some weirdo and his android sidekicks in the break room of an empty accounting office adjoining an empty street in a city that I suspected was also completely empty. We were the only two people in the world, and rather than explain why that was, I had to tolerate his confounding obsession with my failure to make a blizzard that adhered to its container when inverted. Guard started to say something but I interrupted him. 

“What the hell is going on?” I shouted. I felt tears coming to my eyes. Would I ever see my family again? My friends? My cat? Why had this strange man taken me into this nightmare? Why had I folded over and let it happen? Why couldn’t I have just made the fucking dessert right? I buried my face in my hands, sobbing bitterly. 

I recalled a conversation between my best friend and I after one of his rabbits had choked to death. He had just gotten a new game console that he’d been eyeing for a while, and his rabbit got behind it and chewed through the power cable. Some of the wire insulation got stuck in its throat and the rabbit asphyxiated. He threw the console out the next morning, angry at himself for buying it and feeling like his gaming habit was why his pet had died. “I ugly cried,” he’d said. “There was nothing for me.” He hadn’t played a video game since then.

Guard spoke, quietly.

“What’s your name, kid?”

I looked up, my vision blurry from the tears. He was holding out a tissue. I took it and made myself decent, but I knew my eyes were probably still red and puffy. 

“Who fucking cares?” I said. There’s nothing for me.

“I do,” he said. “Look, I should’ve been more patient instead of leaning into the sarcasm. I’ve had a string of absolute doozies and when I got assigned your case, I thought it would be a nice change of pace. No reactors were melting down, no ships were disappearing, and especially no aliens. God, I fucking hate the alien cases.”

I stared at him. He looked slightly embarrassed. It was the most human he’d looked since I’d met him. 

“What I’m saying is, I was trying to bring some levity into this, and it came at the expense of my being unprofessional. For that I apologize,” he said. “We’ll be working together for a bit, so it would be good to get familiar. I can just keep calling you ‘kid’ if you want, but–“

“Jess,” I said, still sniffling some in the aftermath. “My name is Jess.” I felt myself regaining my footing.

“Pleased to meet you, Jess,” said Guard. “I know this is all quite confusing to you, but I want you to know that it’s important.”

He paused, as if expecting a question. I looked at him silently, as if expecting him to continue. The stalemate held for a moment, and then he spoke again. 

“We need something from you. Once we’re done, I promise that you’ll return to your life. You’ll be put right where you left off, more or less.”

I felt some more tension leave my body, but I was still on edge. 

“Earlier you said I was ‘disqualified.’ What did you mean?” I asked. 

Guard sighed. 

“That’s a tough one, ki–Jess,” he said, correcting himself. “There’s a lot of reasons people get disqualified. Some of them are pretty tragic, some are mundane, and some are downright funny.” 

He glanced at me as if hoping I’d share his amusement, and quickly continued when he saw how apparent my distaste was. 

“The crux of it is this: something impossible happened. It has the potential to be very dangerous and to spiral out of control, and so we’re taking every precaution necessary to prevent disaster. It could have been a fluke based on the environment, but due to limited data, it could also be a latent quality you possess.”

“I still don’t see how dropping ice cream is impossible,” I said. “That must happen hundreds of times a day.”

Guard withdrew a laptop from the same duffel bag I’d seen him with earlier. I was expecting something otherworldly and was taken aback when I saw it was the same model of cheap laptop I used for college courses. He opened it and typed a few things, swore, jiggled the track pad, and then turned it around to face me. It was a video of the restaurant from earlier. 

“How did you get this?” I asked. “It looks like it was taken from somewhere we don’t have a camera.”

“Just watch,” he said. 

I did as instructed. I watched as I put ice cream in the cup, watched as I blended it up, and watched as I dropped it all over the floor. The video continued after time had stopped, but Guard paused it. 

“Did you catch it?” he asked. “It’s subtle, but it’s important you understand it.” 

I shook my head meekly, and recalled all the brain teasers I’d never been able to figure out. 

Guard rewound it. I watched the video as he walked backwards out of the restaurant, then watched the ice cream collect itself up from the floor and fly back up into the empty–

“Wait,” I said. “Play it back from there.”

Guard grinned slightly as he did so. 

I watched as I turned the cup upside down. Ice cream fell out of the cup–spoon and all–and fell onto the floor. But it also stayed in the cup, still with a spoon. It was as if…

“What the hell? Did the ice cream come out of thin air?” I asked. 

“All we know for sure is that the quantity of ice cream doubled when you inverted the cup,” said Guard. “Our job is to find out why. Until then, we have to remain at the waystation. Those are the terms of disqualification.”

“But matter can’t be created,” I said. “It’s a law of physics.”

Guard started to speak, but something in my head clicked. I held up a hand to stop him and continued. 

“Unless it came from somewhere else? Before today I would have said that’s impossible, but this has been a very… unusual day.”

Guard nodded. “There are a lot of potential explanations, but we can’t be sure without investigating. Also,” he paused a moment and looked at me until I made eye contact, “sometimes laws of physics go awry, and they have to be enforced.” 

I kept my eyes locked onto his. 

“I don’t want to scare you, you clearly did this without understanding how or why you did it. But it can’t be allowed to continue. Am I understood?” 

I felt like he was doing a terrible job putting me at ease. 

“I feel like you’re doing a terrible job putting me at ease,” I said. 

He held his palms upward apologetically. “That’s just how this works. Hell, a lot of scientific discoveries only happened because the laws changed. Galileo wasn’t the first guy to drop two rocks at once, but he was the first to try it after the rules changed. Even Aristotle–the guy he ‘disproved’–tried that, back when he still thought he was hot shit after the shape of the earth was revised from flat to round. But until the rules formally get changed, they gotta be enforced. That’s my job.”

“That,” I said, keeping my tone as calm and respectful as possible, “is a load of bullshit.”

“It’s the truth,” said Guard.

“And so I’m supposed to believe you’re some kind of physics cop?” 

“Yes.”

I stood up, the legs of the metal folding chair scraping harshly against the floor, and walked towards the emergency exit. Guard did nothing to try and stop me. My hand touched the crash bar and I pushed into the door, which swung open with a click to reveal a gravel parking lot. 

“Take as long as you need, I’ll be here,” said Guard. 

“You can go to hell,” I said. I walked out into the sun, letting the door close behind me. 

Chapter 2

I didn’t know how long I’d been in the tax office. The sun was still directly overhead, but given the strangeness of the day, I didn’t think much of it. I started to cross the street to get my car and then kicked myself when I realized it probably wasn’t there, I hadn’t seen a car since the unpleasantness in the restaurant. I scanned the parking lot anyway and, much to my surprise, my car was sitting right where I’d parked it earlier in the morning. 

That was half the puzzle, but I still needed the key. I walked up to the front door of the restaurant, the huge “DQ” logo sitting boldly on the door. I heard Guard’s voice in my head. You’ve been disqualified. DQ. Great. What a gut buster. There was probably another name for my apprehension and he was just ribbing me. I pushed the door open and walked into the restaurant, pushed my way into the kitchen and opened the locker. My bag was the only thing in there. I grabbed it and left the kitchen, and was about to head out the door when I stopped. 

I heard a quiet hum. I looked around some before I realized what it was. 

The ice cream machine was on. 

I regarded it suspiciously, and cast a glance at the blizzard machine. I reached out and depressed the switch, and it spun up with a whine. I looked back at the ice cream machine and pulled down the lever. A small dollop of vanilla ice cream started to flow out. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…” I mumbled. I stared at the machine a bit longer. 

“Ugh, whatever,” I said. I grabbed a cup and filled it with ice cream, fit the collar on the cup, added some toppings and blended it up. When I was done, I held it up, inspecting it. It looked right.

I flipped it over. 

It stayed inside. 

Keeping it inverted, I shook it gently.

It stayed inside. 

I shook it more aggressively. A few crumbs from the cookies that had been ground up shook loose and fell to the floor, but the rest remained. 

“Are you kidding me?” I yelled. My voice bounced in the empty restaurant until it dissipated. The only sound was the hum of the ice cream machine. 

Wait. Wait wait wait. Something was missing.

I grabbed a plastic spoon and gently placed it in the blizzard. I stared at it again, bracing myself.

I flipped it over. 

It stayed inside.

I sighed, tossing the cup on the floor, and left the restaurant. I climbed into my car and put the key in the ignition. It started, and I wasn’t sure whether I found that miraculous or unsettling. I pulled out of the parking lot. 

None of the traffic lights were working. I stopped at the first intersection and looked for cross traffic, but I really was the only driver on the road. I started disregarding signals and stop signs, and even drove on the opposite side of the road to cut corners. The odometer didn’t count up as I drove, and despite the sound of the engine, the fuel gauge didn’t decrease. Seemed nothing was making sense. Nevertheless, I made good time heading back to my parents’ house. 

The driveway was empty, but my key still opened the front door. I tumbled inside and locked the door behind me, as if the strange happenings of the day could be kept at bay by a small piece of metal. 

I looked around the house. The shoe rack was empty, as was the coat rack. The clock on the wall was showing 6:00 PM, which didn’t seem right. I looked for my cat, Oscar, in his usual napping spot, but couldn’t find him. All of his white hair that would normally accumulate was missing, as if evidence of his existence had been erased. 

I climbed the stairs and entered my bedroom, which was exactly as I’d left it. Oscar’s cat tree was still there, and the damage his claws had done to the post was visible, but again, none of the fur he’d shed was there. 

I sat on my bed and looked at the photos on my nightstand. There was a picture of me and my ex by a cherry blossom tree. She and I still talked. There was a picture of Oscar curled up with a sunflower. Then there were a few with my parents, a recent one from a hiking trail, and one from my high school graduation, where I still looked… well, it was from before. My friends said I was weird for holding onto it, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. 

I wondered if I’d see any of them again. I felt tears welling up again, and I ugly cried. There was nothing for me. 

In time, I drifted off to sleep. 

I awoke and it was still sunny. My alarm clock read 6:00 PM. I expected that I would be hungry or would need the restroom, but I didn’t. I wondered how long I’d been out, or if that even meant anything. 

I walked through the empty house, noticing all the things that were missing and feeling a bleak loneliness building up inside me. I knew I needed to go back to Guard, but I was angry with him. How could he just whisk me away without telling me what was going to happen? 

I realized I was angry at myself, too. What if I had resisted? Would I still be with everyone else? Was it my fault for accepting the first job offer I got? I felt so spineless and pathetic. I wanted to scream and to break things, but I knew it wouldn’t change anything. So I let myself brood. 

I found myself in the backyard. There were a few tomato plants in a raised bed, and one looked ripe enough to pick. I thought about throwing it at Guard, and the satisfying splat it would make when it hit his face. I reached out and grabbed it, the vine pulling towards me as the stem reached a critical level of tension and snapped. 

At that point, two things happened. 

The tomato in my hand left the plant, and the vine snapped back, the tomato still intact on the plant. 

I dropped the tomato, and felt myself shaking. The panic was rising again

“What…” I whispered to the empty world. 

I reached out again and plucked the tomato from the plant. It came off, and it did not replace itself. 

I looked at the two tomatoes. They were identical in every way. 

I tried harvesting another tomato, but I couldn’t replicate the result. I tried gripping it in the same way I had gripped the first one, but no luck. 

I sighed, frustrated, and left the two tomatoes on a picnic table on the patio. It was time to go back to Guard. 

I found him in the Death and Taxes building in same break room I’d left him in. The robots were gone and he was reading an old issue of TIME magazine. I rolled my eyes at how on the nose it was. 

“Where’d your friends go?” I asked. 

He folded up the magazine slowly and set it to the side. Then he leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. He wove his fingers together and placed his hands on the table in front of him. 

“I thought you wanted me to go to hell,” he said. 

“I thought you said I could take as long as I need.”

He smirked at the remark. 

“I’m glad you came back,” he said. “There’s not much to do around here.” 

“I really don’t want to be here,” I said. “This is just my way out. Can we get started on whatever you need?”

He nodded politely. 

“First, I’ll need to know where you were and what you were doing. Did anything unusual happen?” 

I recounted the events, starting with the realization that my car was still present, noticing the ice cream machine was on, failing to recreate the earlier circumstances, going home, feeling lonely, taking a nap, realizing no time had passed, wandering the house, ending up in the backyard, and then…

“And then I picked a tomato,” I said. “And it stayed on the plant, but also in my hand. There were two of them, identical in every way.”

Guard had been listening intently before, but I could see him becoming laser focused.

“Could you reproduce it?” he asked.

“No,” I said, crestfallen. “I tried, but couldn’t figure out why it happened.” 

“Can you take me to the plant?” he asked. 

“I… uh… don’t want you to know where I live,” I said.

“Oh, I already know where you live, I just don’t know how to drive,” he said. “Not a car, anyway.” 

Finally, it was my turn to laugh at his expense. 

“That’s surprising, you seem so in control,” I said. I felt myself smile for the first time since the whole thing had started. “You really don’t know how to drive?”

“It’s actually not that serious, I just don’t know how to drive a manual, and that’s all we have, so…” he looked at me expectantly. 

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We walked out of the break room and back to the reception area. I glanced at the white board, which read “1 Kings 17:16.” I knew it was different than it had been before. 

“Did you rewrite that?” I asked Guard. 

He looked at the board. 

“No,” he said. “Is it different?”

“I… never mind,” I said. 

He looked concerned, but said nothing as he followed me out of the building. 

I had parked next to the tax office, so we didn’t have to cross back over to the restaurant. I climbed into the driver’s seat and Guard climbed in next to me. I started the car up but didn’t take it out of park. Guard looked at me, confused. 

“What’s the hold up?” he asked. 

I rolled my eyes. 

“Buckle up, your majesty,” I said.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Been a while since I’ve been in a car.” He fumbled awkwardly with the seatbelt. He seemed way out of his element, the behavior a stark contrast with what I’d seen from him earlier. After a little more drama, he was situated. I pulled out of the parking lot. 

For a time, the only sound was the engine and the wheels on the road. Then Guard started speaking and I immediately tried to turn on the radio. I turned the volume up, but didn’t get anything. Not even static. I turned it off with a sigh. Guard paid no mind and continued talking. 

“Sorry your first day on the job has been like this,” he said. 

“Hey, listen,” I said. “We don’t have to be chummy with each other. I just want to get this over with and get back to my life. You don’t have to act all nice and apologetic.” 

“This might help speed that along,” he said quietly. 

I didn’t respond. 

“What did you do before working this job?” he asked. 

“Why do you care?” I said. “Is that part of your investigation?” 

He stared out the window as we passed a car dealership. The lot was completely empty, making the building look strangely naked. A huge sign with a sports car on it boasted “Huge Savings! Great Deals!” 

“It might help us understand each other better, which may make it easier to figure out what happened.” 

“I’m a college student,” I said. “I’m studying biology.”

I took the car the wrong way around a roundabout. Guard turned away from the window and looked at me. I half expected him to criticize my driving, but what did traffic laws matter? There weren’t any other cars. 

“How’d you choose that?” he asked. 

I sped up the car, taking the next turn aggressively. Guard reached up and grabbed the ceiling handle. 

“Whoa, take it easy Jess, we’ve got plenty of–“

I noticed I was clenching my teeth. I felt my grip harden on the steering wheel. 

“I chose it because I thought it was interesting,” I said. 

Guard was quiet for a moment. I hoped my answer would satisfy him. I felt a jolt of frustration rush across my skin when he spoke again. 

“You’re a lousy liar,” he said. 

I slammed on the brakes, throwing both of our bodies forward in the car. The ABS grumbled as the speedometer shot down from 85 to zero. We came to a stop near a “speed limit 35” sign. I was breathing heavily.

I’d hoped to scare him with the maneuver, but he seemed completely calm. He either didn’t think I’d endanger him with my driving, or maybe the strange nature of the waystation meant it wasn’t even possible to harm him.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “But you need to be open with me if you want to get through this.”

I exhaled, long and slow. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, and then closed my eyes and rubbed each of my temples. It was fine. It was going to be fine. 

“I switched from nursing,” I said. “I had credits for biology from the nursing program and didn’t want to start over.”

Guard leaned back in his seat. 

“Not a good fit?” he asked. 

“It was, at first,” I said. “I wanted to help people, and the material was fascinating, but then we got to clinicals. I had a patient who… said things about what he wanted to do to me. It made me feel gross, and unsafe. I was just trying to help him use the restroom.”

“I’m sorry that happened,” said Guard. “You didn’t deserve that.”

I started the car moving again, and kept speaking.

“The other women on the program wouldn’t stick up for me, either. They know I’m…”

I trailed off. I didn’t want to go there. Not with Guard. I decided to pivot. 

“Anyway, after that incident, I kept worrying it would happen again. If I had to interact with patients, I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before. I would talk over patients and rush through things because I didn’t want them to have a chance to say something like that again. Then patients started getting angry with me, and who can blame them? I was doing a shit job.”

We were about halfway to the house. I didn’t know why I was telling Guard all this, but it felt like my feelings had been uncorked and nothing could stop them from getting out now. I kept talking. 

“And so I was constantly worrying about whether I was doing a good job, and behaving in a way that stopped me from doing so. I was scared of the patients even though I desperately wanted to be able to help them. I lasted a month and then had a panic attack. I dropped the program the next day.”

Guard was silent. I drove diagonally across an intersection to shave off a few dozen feet, switching back from the wrong side of the median to the proper side.

“Honestly, I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life,” I said. “Biology is interesting, I guess, but I don’t know why I bother. Nursing was what I wanted, and I couldn’t do it. I feel like such a failure.” 

“You got this job after dropping nursing, right?” said Guard.

“Yes. Does that matter?”

“I don’t know,” said Guard. “It might.”

I saw the sign for my parents’ neighborhood. I was a little embarrassed that I was still living with them, and tried to hide the fact from my classmates. At least there was a silver lining to all this, Guard wouldn’t actually meet my folks. 

Chapter 3

Before long, I was parked in the driveway, and a moment later we were on the back patio. The two identical tomatoes were on the ground right where I’d left them. Guard looked at them, contemplative.

“Let’s recreate the exact scenario,” he said. “What were you doing right before this?” 

“I was just walking around the house,” I said. “I was frustrated with the whole situation.” 

“Talk about the frustration,” said Guard. 

“What are you, a therapist now?” I asked. 

“A little therapy never hurt anyone.”

I rolled my eyes. Felt like I was doing that a lot lately. 

“Fine, fine. I just… I’m lonely. I feel like I’m messing up. I’m embarrassed that I came with you so willingly when everything was crazy earlier. I’m especially mad at you for everything I’m going through.”

“And you came out here and picked a tomato?” he asked. The sentence was shaped to deliver sarcasm, but he was so earnest when he said it. I couldn’t help but be honest. 

“I, um, I wanted to throw it at you, because I was upset with you.” I looked down as I said it, but Guard seemed completely unbothered by my tomato-based violent ideation. 

“And that tomato is the one that was duplicated, correct?”

“The first one, yes,” I said. 

Guard thought for a moment. 

“I want you to pick another one of these tomatoes, and after you do, I want you to throw it at me.”

I paused. 

“Are you sure?” I asked. 

“Yes, throw it right at my face.”

I tried to hide my enthusiasm as I reached out towards the plant. I plucked a tomato from the vine, and in one quick motion threw it at Guard’s face. He seemed surprised that I had actually followed through and cried out in alarm.

It hit his cheek with a meaty thud and fell to the ground. Not the splat I was hoping for, but cathartic nonetheless. I found myself smiling again. 

“Well,” said Guard. 

“Just following orders, sir,” I said, performing a mock salute. 

“That’s not what I’m referring to,” he said. He pointed to the tomato plant. “Look.”

The tomato I had picked was still on the vine. 

“WHAT?” I shouted. 

“Inside voice, please,” said Guard. 

“We’re outside,” I said. 

“Touché.”

I stared at the plant with awe. 

“So I can only duplicate it if I want to throw it at you?” I asked. I looked at the three tomatoes on the ground, the two identical twins and the one that had a dent in it from Guard’s face. 

“All we know is that you picking a tomato and then throwing it at me results in a duplicate,” said Guard. 

I thought for a moment, then picked another tomato. I held it up as if to throw it at Guard, but instead of throwing it, I counted down from three. 

“Three… two… one…” I snapped my arm forward but didn’t release it. Guard flinched, but seemed appreciative that I hadn’t followed through. 

We both looked back at the plant. The tomato was still on it.

“I think we’re getting somewhere,” said Guard.

“It makes sense,” I said. “It worked earlier when I had the intent to throw it, but I don’t actually have to. But I still don’t see why it happened with the ice cream.”

Guard looked off into the distance, scratching his chin. 

“When you were making the blizzard, the one that duplicated, what were you thinking at the time?” he asked. 

“Mostly I was worried I was going to mess up, but then my manager said I was doing a good job, and that reassured me. After that I was…” I trailed off. 

I had been thinking about handing it to the customer. 

I picked another tomato and handed it to Guard. He recoiled slightly, expecting a throw, but he eased up after a moment and accepted the gift. It was a strange contrast to his calm during my brief episode of manic driving. 

As we had earlier, we both turned to look at the plant. The tomato was hanging casually from the vine, as if it had never been picked. Guard cradled an identical one in his hands. 

Before he could say anything, I picked another one and put it in my bag. 

Guard and I both looked at the plant. The vine was bare. The windless space was quiet around us. I wasn’t sure if he’d figured it out yet. 

“Talk to me, Jess,” said Guard. “I see those wheels turning.”

I guess he hadn’t. 

“I think it only duplicates if it’s for someone else,” I said. “The one I just picked… it was for me.”

Guard thought for a moment, then laughed. “Getting a tomato thrown at me isn’t my idea of a gift,” he said. “But the evidence points your way so far. Let’s test your hypothesis some more.” He walked into the house and beckoned for me to follow him.

We were in the living room. My dad’s vinyl collection was sitting by the turntable, and my mom’s couponing pile was strewn over the coffee table. She had started the habit after I’d started classes. She said it was just a hobby, but I suspected I was putting financial strain on them. I felt bad every time I saw her clipping them out of magazines and newspapers. Guard seemed disinterested in the coupons, he pointed to the box of records. 

“Hand me one of those, if you will,” he asked. I reached in and grabbed one at random. I glanced at it and thought about putting it back, but knew that would lead to questions. Reluctantly, I handed him the record. 

Guard turned it over in his hands. “A classic,” he said. “Some of their best work.” Despite his high praise, he tossed the record unceremoniously on the couch. 

“My dad was a big fan of Boston,” I said. It felt a little awkward that I’d pulled “A Man I’ll Never Be” out of the stack. Of all the music in there, of course I pulled that. It was one of the few singles my dad owned. 

“Was?” said Guard. I pointed at the record. 

“He used to love that song in particular. His father never quite approved of him after my dad decided he wasn’t going to enlist in the army. My dad didn’t want to, he wanted to grow flowers. He’s a florist now. My grandpa said he was too soft. Their relationship was strained. Then it got even worse after I–” My voice cracked and dropped half an octave. It happened when I was nervous and I hated it. I felt my cheeks flushing. Maybe dancing around the issue wasn’t a good idea, but I didn’t want to broach the topic. 

“This song was a sort of refuge for him,” I continued. “But I think he started seeing me in it instead of himself, and I was why he and my grandfather had a falling out. It stopped being a comfort for him and started reminding him of his old man. He hasn’t listened to it in years. I honestly didn’t think he still had it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Guard. “But that’s better than what I thought you meant by ‘was.'”

“You thought he was dead?” I asked. 

Guard shrugged. “I was pretty sure he wasn’t, your file was only a few days out of date when I read it. But I didn’t want to be insensitive.”

“So you already knew my name when you asked,” I said. It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. How much did he know about me? “Did the file mention… how far back did it go?”

“Only a few years,” said Guard. “I didn’t do much more than skim it. Why?”

“Just curious,” I said. I hastily tried to change the subject. “Who do you work for, anyway? How’d you end up with this job?”

Guard held up a hand. “First things first, see if that record duplicated.” I turned back to the box of records. It took a while to thumb through it, and I went through a second time just to be sure. 

“No luck,” I said, sighing. It felt like we were getting farther from figuring it out. The dissatisfaction of the moment didn’t seem to be shared, however; Guard was upbeat. He took me through the house, having me hand him various objects. A couch cushion. A painting of a robin. A TV remote. He even had me try throwing a few of the softer things at him, but in all cases, nothing unusual happened. 

I was getting impatient and felt like we should give up. I had sent a ball of yarn careening towards him out of frustration. It hit him in the chest and then fell to the floor, rolling away lazily and trailing a red strand behind it. I looked back at the yarn basket, and sure enough, nothing was different. 

“We should try with food,” I said. “That’s all that seemed to be working before.”

“Fine, fine,” said Guard. He was approaching me with an assortment of items from the medicine cabinet. “I was hoping for a breakthrough. Just try these first, okay?”

I acquiesced, despite my lack of interest. I grabbed a sheet of blister paper with antihistamines in it and pushed a pill out of it, handing it to Guard. I looked back at the blister paper, expecting a tear and an empty pocket, but the pill was still there. 

“Wait, hold on,” I said. Was I mistaken? I hadn’t been paying close attention. I repeated the process a few more times, handing a pill to Guard and checking the blister paper. It was happening again. 

We tried it with acetaminophen, then ibuprofen, then aspirin. Each time, a perfect copy was created. Even the bottle of cough syrup could be overturned an unlimited number of times without exhaustion. We had rivers of analgesic, mountains of laxative and coffers overflowing with expectorant. 

“This is the weirdest shit ever,” I said, having filled a glass with Pepto Bismol–a glass larger than the bottle the medicine came in. 

“Is it just for stuff you put in your mouth?” said Guard. “Did we try the eye drops yet?” 

I couldn’t get the eye drops to duplicate. I tried dropping them into a cup and handing it to Guard, but I could tell the bottle was running dry. 

“Here, let me–” I said, reaching towards him with the bottle. 

“Whoa, whoa,” he said. He backed away from me, bumping into the wall. “I’m really weird about things going into my eyes.” 

“Well, aren’t we learning so much about each other,” I said. “Fine, I’ve thrown enough things at you, let’s try something else.” I set the bottle to the side, watching Guard relax as I did so. 

We were able to duplicate rubbing alcohol, gauze, toothpaste, floss, sunblock and soap. Shaving cream didn’t work, or at least we couldn’t figure it out. Razors didn’t work, either, nor did perfume. We tried water, and had a laugh about how long it had taken to try that. It worked, too. Lotion worked. Lipstick didn’t. Mouthwash was a winner, and nail polish was a loser. Guard even let me paint his nails to double check, although he insisted on black. 

“I’m thoroughly confused,” I said, having just failed to duplicate a different type of toothpaste. I held the two side by side. They were almost identical. The one that had duplicated was anticavity, the other was whitening. I set them back on the table, annoyed. Guard took them and placed them in groups he had been gathering; things I could duplicate and things I could not. 

“Okay, let’s try the kitchen,” he said. 

As expected, food could be duplicated with ease. Milk, apples, cheese, leftover pizza–it was going so well I almost didn’t realize it when I wasn’t able to duplicate eggs. 

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I said, trying again and again until the carton was empty and Guard was holding half a dozen eggs. 

I couldn’t duplicate ketchup, either. Or mustard. Or mayonnaise. Butter was a failure, too, and so were hot dogs, even while hot dog buns duplicated with ease. Raw beef failed, but raw salmon succeeded, as did roast beef. 

“Maybe it has to be cooked?” I said. I hard boiled an egg. It duplicated. I had similar success with the hot dogs. The hamburger was also successful, but I had trouble at first; it wouldn’t duplicate until I placed it on a bun. Guard suggested I try serving it with ketchup, and I was able to duplicate the sandwich from the point of adding the condiment. It was possible with mustard and mayonnaise, too. We did it a few dozen times and confirmed that the condiments were in fact duplicating. It seemed the universe was a picky eater. 

On a whim, I cooked the salmon. Because I didn’t immediately hand the raw salmon to Guard, it did not replace itself in the refrigerator; however, after serving it from the pan, I saw that the cooked fish had duplicated. I had just produced a dozen slices of bread without the loaf getting any shorter and was going to try toasting some when Guard put a hand on my shoulder. 

“I think we’ve got enough information about food,” he said. I nodded and backed away from the counter. It was the first look I got at the scene in front of me. The whole kitchen was a disaster, food was piled up on every available surface. It had spread to the dining room and was covering parts of the floor. I had been so in the flow of things that I hadn’t realized.

“Y-yeah,” I said. “Will uh, will this still be here after we’re through with things?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Guard, gravely. “You’ll be at work and your poor parents will have to contend with this dump.”

I felt my blood go cold. Consumed by a sense of urgency, I started grabbing things and throwing them in the garbage. I glared at Guard. “Well, don’t just stand there–help me clean up!”

Guard grabbed me by the hand and led me to the garage. “I’m just messing with you, this is all going to get reset.” 

It took me a moment to stop protesting and process what he’d said. 

“That was not funny,” I said. 

“Not even a little?”

“If you keep this up I’m getting the eye drops.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Guard. Before I could complain further or make good on my threat, we were in the garage, testing another assortment of items. I had just managed to duplicate drill bits, gasoline and fertilizer when I broached a topic from earlier. 

“You never did answer my question,” I said. 

Guard turned to me, a look of pure innocence on his face. “I told you the mess wasn’t going to stick around,” he said. 

I set down the box of nails he wanted me to try and crossed my arms, giving him a hard look. 

“Who do you work for?” I asked. “The government?”

“After,” said Guard. “Come on, let’s try the nails.” 

“And then what? Batteries? Spark plugs? Light bulbs? Are we going to overturn every object in the world? No, you’re going to explain yourself, or we’re going to stop.”

Guard turned to look at me, his countenance dark. Gone was the man who had made quips and who had recoiled from the bottle of eye drops; the man who had taken control and intimidated me into coming along on his flight of fancy was back. 

“Come on, kid, don’t make this difficult. I’m really trying to help you out here,” he said. 

I noticed he wasn’t calling me ‘Jess’ any longer. As he spoke, I saw that he was writing on a notepad. 

“Let’s just get back to it, yeah? You’ll be home in no time.”

He handed me the notepad. He had written in a large, hurried scrawl.

They are watching us. 
I have a plan. 
No more questions.

Chapter 4

I looked up from the notepad, fully prepared to violate his last request, when I saw that one of the androids from before was looking at us through the window. The glasses and face mask from before were gone. Its head was a featureless glass surface. 

Without thinking, I tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to Guard. He folded it up and placed it in his pocket. I looked at the notepad and saw that the writing was still there. 

“Looks like it works on paper,” I said. 

Guard clapped loudly. “And in practice!” he said, laughing. The darkness that had fallen upon him earlier seemed to have passed, but his behavior came across as a performance. I looked out the window. The android was gone. How many had there been again? Three? I shuddered. 

Guard was gathering things I could duplicate into an empty garbage can, and was placing the rest on the workbench. It seemed strange that he was choosing to keep the rejects on the table and throw the successes in the garbage, but I didn’t verbalize my confusion. I didn’t want our audience to come back. 

He pulled a chainsaw, an axe and a sledgehammer off the tool rack and placed them on the table, along with a length of rope. 

“Are there any firearms in the house?” he asked. I shook my head. “Oh well,” he said, waving dismissively. “I was curious about whether ammunition could be duplicated. We can try that later.”

He pushed the chainsaw, rope, axe and hammer into the garbage can and picked the whole bin up. 

“Let’s head upstairs,” he said, hoisting the cargo. I followed him, confused yet again. 

I looked out the window as we left the garage. The android was back. I saw another looking in through the windows by the front door as we approached the stairs. The doorknob jiggled slightly, as if the robot was testing the lock, but Guard paid it no mind. 

Where was the third one? Had we locked the back door? We continued our trek upstairs. The doorknob jiggling got more violent. I heard the sound of glass breaking–it had come from the garage. 

“Hurry,” said Guard. 

We entered my bedroom. Guard set the garbage can on the floor, turned around and locked the door. There was the sound of the front door unlatching, and then a set of footsteps started climbing the stairs, followed closely by another. Guard withdrew the chainsaw, the rope and the gasoline. The door to my room started rattling as one of the androids started banging on it. 

“Jess,” said Guard, priming the chainsaw. “Would you mind filling this can with gas for me?” He gestured to the garbage can. I swallowed hard. There was a cold sweat forming on my skin. But I grabbed the red can, undid the cap, and dumped far more gas than should have ever been in the gas can into the huge bin. The fumes filled the room. It reeked. 

Guard set the chainsaw down and opened the window, slinging the rope around one of the bed posts and trailing both ends out the window onto the ground. The garbage can was nearly full of gas. 

The door splintered apart as one of the androids smashed its arm through it. It started groping for the lock. Guard swung the axe down on its arm, which was quickly withdrawn. 

“Out the window, Jess,” said Guard. “Grip both sides of the rope. Don’t let it slip, I’ll need it to climb down and we’ll need to take it with us.” 

I approached the window cautiously and gripped the rope. Damn, was the second floor always this high up? I looked down at the bushes below. 

“Move!” shouted Guard. The door was falling apart even more. He was taking a few swings with the axe. The gas fumes were overpowering. God, what if Guard hit the hinges by accident? Would it spark? 

I hurried out the window, dangling precariously. I let myself slide down the rope, pushing both leads together with my hands. I didn’t mind the rope burn, it sure beat dying in a fire. 

I heard the chainsaw start up and then saw Guard quickly exit the room. The air above us shimmered and smoke started pouring out the window. I dropped to the ground and Guard dropped behind me, tugging the rope after him. Miraculously, it wasn’t ablaze. Guard grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the car. I felt the urge to run, but he pulled me back. 

“Don’t worry, Jess, it’s over,” he said. 

“What about the third one?” I asked.

“At the restaurant, no doubt,” he said. “Although it might be hiding until the higher ups figured out what happened here.” He paused for a moment, scratching his chin. “But we should be done by then. We can’t be as sloppy on this next bit, though.”

I looked back at the house and saw the roof collapsing into the blaze, sending dark smoke and a huge shower of sparks into the cloudless sky. I felt a fleeting burst of panic as I imagined my parents and my cat trapped inside, choking to death on smoke as the flames got closer and closer and–

“We should get away from the house,” I said. 

Guard was already climbing into the passenger seat of the car. “Way ahead of you,” he said. I got into the driver’s seat and pulled away from my childhood home as it burned to the ground. 

I pulled the car into a parking lot by a public pool and brought it to a stop. Guard turned to me. 

“Okay, Jess. For real this time. Any questions?” he asked.

“What are you actually trying to do?” I asked.

“I was sent here to kill you,” said Guard. “But I decided to change the plan around.”

I stared at Guard, a fresh wave of mistrust washing over me. Well, there had certainly been plenty of opportunities for him to kill me, and he hadn’t yet. Or did it work like that here? Was everything he said about the waystation bullshit? 

“Well, I, uh. I appreciate that,” I said, laughing nervously. “Who–why–” I felt myself tripping over my words. 

“The higher ups want you dead. You’re not the first person to be able to duplicate objects, just the most recent. They sent me to kill the rest. They say it’s not supposed to happen yet,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘yet’?” I asked. 

“Humanity isn’t supposed to discover this yet. We did the same thing with antibiotics, with steam power, with flight, with electricity–everyone who figured it out was killed until you were allowed to discover it.” 

I felt my head spinning. “Do humans discover anything on their own?”

“Oh, all the time,” said Guard. “We stopped humans from figuring out bronze for a long, long while. Plenty discovered it, all were killed the moment they did it and the evidence was destroyed.” 

I chewed on that for a moment. “Can you get rid of it? The duplication thing, I mean. Without killing me? There’s got to be some way to do it. I don’t even know how I’m doing it or why it started.” 

Guard shook his head. I slumped into the seat, defeated. Then I asked him another question, in a small quiet voice. 

“Why didn’t you kill me? What makes me so special?” 

Guard sighed. “I don’t know. You had figured it out by accident, you were so earnest, you remind me of my niece. It’s all a bunch of bullshit.” He looked out the window towards the high dive. “The thing is, I like you, Jess. You have a good heart. Most people try to duplicate gold or cash so they can live a life of hedonism and worldly influence. But you can only duplicate things if it’s for someone else. You want to help people. I read your file, all of it.”

I slumped even further in my seat. He knew, then. 

“Oh come on, don’t be like that. You just found out I was sent to kill you and you’re embarrassed by that? You were dropping hints all day,” he said. “My niece was the same. She was so scared when she told me she wanted me to start calling her Connie. I had figured it all out except for her name by the time–“

I cut him off. “Does Connie know you kill people?”

Guard looked taken aback. “No,” he said, reluctantly. “She thinks I work at a bank.” 

“Why are you actually doing this?” I asked.

Guard turned away from the window and gave me a scrutinizing look. I felt like a cell under a microscope, and nothing could hide from his withering gaze.

“I think humankind is ready,” he said. “I think it’s time. There are places in the world with no medicine, no clean water, no food. Places that are abused by the rich and powerful. There are parts of the world turning to desert, islands sinking in the sea, but this?” he gestured at me as he said it, “people like you could change all that.” 

“But won’t they find me again?” I asked. “Won’t they just send someone else to kill me?”

“It won’t matter after I send you back,” said Guard. “We can only take you to the waystation one time.” 

“What happens if you try doing it a second time?” I asked. 

“That would destroy the universe,” said Guard. 

I picked my next words carefully, then said something else entirely.

“You sound awfully nonchalant about that.”

Guard shrugged. “They won’t take that risk. Too much of a headache. Something similar happened back when humanity learned about fire. They let you keep it. There are legends about it, but none of them are quite right.”

It all clicked into place. 

“Are your superiors gods?” I asked.

“More like bureaucrats,” said Guard scornfully. “Humankind has all sorts of names for them. All wrong, naturally, but that’s par for the course.” 

I gestured for him to continue. 

“Because humans are stupid,” he explained.

I nodded. I couldn’t contest that one. 

“So you want to send me back, and I’ll still be able to do this,” I said. I took the tomato out of my bag and handed it to Guard, then another, and another. 

“Yes,” said Guard, dropping the tomatoes in the cup holder. They looked like red eggs in a nest of old receipts and grimy coins.

“Are you human?” I asked. 

“Mostly.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Mostly?”

“Mostly,” Guard repeated. “Human enough to interact with humans, to communicate with them, to–“

“To kill them?” I said, interrupting. Guard glared at me. 

“I was going to say ’empathize with them’,” said Guard. “The higher ups can kill humans no problem.”

“Then why do they bother sending you?” I asked. 

“They’re not exactly… precise. They can kill a lot of humans, but they can’t track down just one.”

I looked at Guard a long while before speaking again. There were too many questions. 

“How old are you?” I asked.

“48,” said Guard. 

I didn’t believe that, and changed my approach. 

“How long have you been around?” I asked. Guard stiffened. 

“A while,” he said, evasively.  

I decided to press him on it. “How long?”

He looked embarrassed. I didn’t think he was going to continue, but finally:

“About three and a half thousand years,” he said. 

“And you’re 48?” 

Guard looked back out the window, staring intently at the “LIFEGUARD ON DUTY” sign. I glanced at the empty lifeguard station. 

“Most of the action was in my 20s and 30s. The higher ups would send me from one assignment to the next. Sometimes I’d jump weeks into the future, sometimes decades. Most of my time was spent in waystations, and you don’t age here. Eventually I settled down, said I’d take assignments as they came up.” He coughed loudly, rolled down the window and spit on the pavement. “Met my wife shortly after, Connie is on her side of the family. All my relatives died a long, long time ago.” 

He picked up two of the tomatoes from the cup holder and held them side by side–they really were identical.

“Every now and then I have to go on a ‘business trip,'” Guard gestured at me and our surroundings as he said it, “but most of the time I’m home.”

I took it all in. What a strange life, being whisked from one morbid, esoteric task to the next.

“And I really do work at a bank the rest of the time,” he said, and then hastily added, “as a teller, not an underwriter or anything shitty like that.” 

“Far be it from me to pass moral judgement on the time traveling serial killer,” I said. 

I wanted to say more, to really lay into him. This guy went from place to place killing people to stop society from advancing? My aunt had succumbed to dementia, my grandmother to cancer. Would those have been cured already if not for this asshole and people like him? Would my aunt and grandma still be alive? What else was his fault? The HIV epidemic? The black death? Malaria? How many died at his hand, directly and indirectly? I looked at him with new eyes. 

And I hated him. 

As if reading my mind, he said “I’m not looking for forgiveness. I’m probably irredeemable at this point. But I’m tired. I have to stop. Even if it won’t change everything, even if it doesn’t change anything. This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to breaking out of this cycle.” 

I looked at him, making no effort to hide my disgust, and saw that tears had started to form in his eyes. 

“Please,” he said. “You have to help me.” 

How was I supposed to trust this guy? I wondered if he was just fucking with me, having grown bored with rote killing, like a cat swatting a cockroach every time it twitched. But what were my options? I couldn’t get out of here without him. 

I recalled a time in third grade when I was on a group project with a kid I didn’t like. All he would do was repeat the same few quotes from power rangers–or was it transformers?–and eat paper. My current situation brought back a similar wave of emotions. 

“Eat some paper,” I said. Wait, had I said that aloud?

“What?” said Guard. 

I suppose I had.

“Listen, Guard, I don’t like you.” He looked at me intently as I said it, his attention obvious but his expression otherwise unreadable. “I especially don’t trust you. But I’ll help you anyway. Let’s get out of here.” 

“Excellent,” said Guard. 

I waited for him to lay out a plan, but he didn’t say anything. 

“So, um, how do we proceed?” I asked.

Guard looked embarrassed again. “I don’t know,” he said. 

“You don’t know?” I said. “What do you mean you don’t know?” I took my hands and started massaging my temples, moving my fingers in circles. First one way, then the other. Usually it would calm me down, but it wasn’t working well in the moment. I felt my breathing quicken. 

“Breathe, Jess. Breathe. I have a plan, but it’s half-baked. I don’t know if it will work.” 

I kept rubbing my temples, but took Guard’s advice and focused on my breathing. It calmed me down. I hated that it worked. I hated him. I hated the situation we were in. Fuck him and his guilt and his half-baked plan. Fuck it all. I felt Guard’s hand on my shoulder and shoved it away. It didn’t return. 

“What do you need from me?” I said. I felt tension all over my body, and noticed I was grinding my teeth. I stopped, but couldn’t relax much otherwise. 

“We need to go back to the tax office first,” said Guard. 

I thought about asking why, but instead I nodded. I pulled the car out of the parking lot, and after a drive spent in uncomfortable silence, we were there. Guard told me to stay in the car and went in alone. After a moment, he was walking out, hauling the duffel bag from earlier. 

“No sign of the last one, it’s probably back at the restaurant. It’ll have lost the signal to the other two,” said Guard. 

“What’s the plan from here?” I asked. 

Guard opened the duffle bag, withdrew the sphere and cable from before, nodded to himself, and placed the items back in the bag. I noticed that the sphere was still green. 

“When we came to the waystation, do you remember that?” asked Guard. “You threw up shortly after.” 

I nodded. 

“I was able to do that with a voice command and the bots. There’s a way to do it manually, but the remaining bot can jam it. It’s a precaution in the event an operator dies on the job, it ensures the target will stay trapped in the waystation.” 

I looked around me, taking in the surreal landscape, and thought about being trapped here forever.

“What happens then? After you leave someone trapped here, that is,” I asked.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” said Guard. “It’s only happened a few times. It’s always off to the next job with me.”

“You ‘haven’t really thought about it?'” I spat. “Leaving people alone in an empty world, forever? No sir, no skin off your back.”

“Those cases are always ugly,” said Guard. “Remember, these are cases in which the operator was killed.”

“But you’re just dipping in to kill them anyway, yeah? Or is that an optional act of generosity?” 

Guard looked at the ground. “Come on, don’t give me a reason to change my mind.”

My anger evaporated and was replaced with fear. I hated him, sure, but he was still dangerous. 

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t elaborate. I would focus on the task at hand and get through this nightmare. I gestured at the restaurant across the street.

“So we have to get rid of the bot?” I asked. 

“No necessarily,” said Guard. “Normally, we require the successful recreation of the incident. In your case, that would be duplicating a blizzard. The bots will verify this and then generate the anchor automatically.”

“Will that work while it’s jamming us?”

“It might not, and it might become aggressive when it sees us. If it does, we’ll need to retreat. But it might be possible without confronting the bot directly.”

“Anything else I should know?”

Guard nodded. “When we exit the waystation, we need to make sure our anchor point is close to the origin. The origin is where you duplicated the blizzard, and the anchor point we used last time was about a meter west of the origin.”

Guard removed a flask from the duffel bag. It contained a shimmering purple fluid.

“If we can’t get the bot to create the anchor point automatically, we’ll need to disable its jamming and use this. It will create the anchor point and we can latch on with the grappler.” He pulled out the sphere and cable from earlier. “I’ll twist this until it turns red, then I’ll throw it into the anchor point. We’ll need to pull together to make it work, but if it’s not enough, we can tie the cable to the rope, run that out to your car and tow it.”  

“Makes sense so far,” I said. “How do we deal with the bot if it becomes aggressive? Burn it like we did the other two?”

“I don’t know,” said Guard. “The last time I tried something like this, I blacked out. Next thing I knew, the target was dead, and I was on a different assignment. I have no idea what happened.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“It is what it is.” Guard opened the car door and got out, stretching his arms as he stood up. “I’m going to go check things out. If I’m not back in a thousand breaths, assume the bot got me. At that point you can try dispatching it yourself, or you can open the anchor and jump in.”

“Wouldn’t that kill me?” I asked.

Guard shrugged. “Better than being trapped here forever.”

“Lovely,” I said. 

“It is what it is,” Guard repeated. With that, he bounded off down the road. I saw him duck into a ditch, it seemed he was going to cross through a culvert. I counted my breathing, trying to keep it steady. Out of curiosity, I looked at the clock on my car. It read 6:00 PM. Awesome, it had been 6:00 for god knows how long and my lungs were the most reliable clock available. The pun “air time” flitted across my consciousness; I gave it the barest acknowledgement by pushing a small, frustrated burst of air out of my nostrils. 

Hopefully he’d be back soon. I didn’t know what I’d do if he didn’t come back.

Chapter 5

I was at breath 782 when I saw Guard coming back. A moment later, he was climbing into the car.

“It’s in there,” said Guard. “Right on top of the origin. It’s emitting a jamming signal, the bots pulse a white light when that system is active. The back entrance is unlocked.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked. 

“We’re going to go in through the back. I’ll approach first, and you come behind me. If you bring the car around the block, you can park by the restaurant without being seen. Sound good?”

I nodded. “I’ll follow your lead. Let’s get out of here.”

I pulled the car around the block and approached the restaurant from behind. There was no DQ logo on the back, just the rusting dumpster and the back door of the restaurant. It was set into the bare brick wall, the dark kitchen visible through the door’s small panel of wire-mesh glass. The only other adornments on this side of the restaurant were a drain pipe and a roof access ladder. 

I parked near the building, ignoring the lines on the parking lot. Guard and I got out. 

“Okay, Jess. We’re going to walk in nice and slow. I’ll signal for you to move. Smart money says you’ll be able to make the blizzard and we won’t have a confrontation.”

“Didn’t you black out the last time you tried this?” I asked.

“There was poison gas involved,” he said. “This is a more stable situation.” 

I didn’t find myself feeling particularly reassured by his sporadic furnishing of missing details, but nevertheless I gestured for him to proceed. He opened the door to the restaurant. 

The kitchen stretched before us. It was spotless, as if everything had just been installed. The swinging door was about thirty feet ahead. I could not see the bot. 

Guard gestured for me to follow. I felt my heart pounding. Something felt wrong about all this, but I didn’t know what. I managed to get myself moving and followed him into the kitchen. I jumped when the door latched behind me. 

Guard moved up to the swinging door and gently pushed it forward. It swung forward at a glacial pace. The hinge creaked when it was about halfway open. Guard stopped advancing the door. I felt a chill shoot up my spine, but nothing happened. Guard poked his head through the gap, then opened the door all the way and leaned into the front of the restaurant, looking around the corner towards the drive through window. He held up a hand. I stayed put, although I didn’t know if I could move even if I wanted to. 

What felt like an eternity passed. I became aware of the hum of the ice cream machine, and also heard a deep bass pulsing sound. It was the sort of sound that was felt more than heard, as if the waves were the perfect frequency to resonate in your lungs. I imagined the pulsing sound climbing down my throat and echoing in my lungs, although I knew it was probably bones in my ribcage that were doing most of the vibrating. Lung tissue was too soft and spongy to resonate, but bone would vibrate like a guitar string if the sound was just so. 

Guard pulled himself back into the kitchen, closing the door quietly behind him. He walked backwards towards me for a few paces, then turned around, making towards the back door. 

“It’s shielded and jamming, but otherwise dormant. It did not react to me. Let’s go back to the car for now,” he said. 

I backed out through the exit, staring at the door to the front of the restaurant, expecting the android to come sprinting towards us with lightsabers or buzz saws for hands, but nothing happened. There was a click as the door unlatched, then we were back in the strange, perfect-noon sunlight. Guard went to the car and retrieved the duffel bag. 

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “We’re going to go in there. You’re going to make me a blizzard. When it duplicates, the bot should detect it. This will temporarily drop the jamming. I’ll open the anchor then. If we’re lucky, the bot will go back to jamming, but the anchor will already be open so it won’t matter.”

“And if we’re unlucky?” I asked. I didn’t like the sound of this at all. 

“We’ll retreat and see about relocating or destroying the bot. Right now, it’s shielded, and there’s nothing we can do. If it becomes hostile, it will have to drop its shield.”

“Why would it drop its shield to attack us?” I asked. 

“They can’t move when shielded. It’ll make more sense in a bit,” said Guard. 

He entered the restaurant again. In time, I was at the swinging door to the front of the restaurant. The pulsing bass sound was stronger. Guard held the door open for me and I looked around the corner. I was expecting an android, but what I saw was a metal tetrahedron. It was pulsing between black and white, the bass pulses reaching peak intensity whenever the pyramid turned black. 

“What the–” I had expected Star Trek shields, not whatever this was.

“Yeah,” said Guard. “It’s easier to just show you. It’s in there, but there’s no way through that shell. Not sure what we’ll do if this doesn’t work. Hoping we don’t have to find out.” He withdrew the strange vial from the duffel bag and gestured at the ice cream machine. “Why don’t you get started?” 

I looked at the pulsing pyramid with suspicion. It felt like it absorbed light in the room when it went black, making everything around me darker. I could feel my chest vibrating with the bass. It felt like the light was being shaken from the air, the finer photons trickling down to the earth like grains of sand escaping a sifter. It was surreal being back where I was earlier that day, the familiarity of the space twisted by my exotic audience and the events that had preceded this moment. 

I grabbed a cup and placed it under the nozzle of the ice cream machine. I depressed the lever, and there was a lurch in the machine as it started working. I moved the cup with an expert hand, building the ice cream in a spiraling pattern but making sure it was not hollow. I added toppings, the same ones that had started this mess, and fitted the collar onto the cup. 

I looked at the pyramid. It was still pulsing like before. Had it gotten louder? It felt like my skeleton was going to rattle apart. Or maybe I was just shaking due to nerves. I recalled a time I had to perform a piece on the violin back in high school, in front of the entire class. All those eyes watching me. I had been terrified of playing the wrong note, and wondered: Had the bow always sounded so scratchy on the string? Did I forgot to apply rosin? Or did I over apply it? My arm had been shaking the whole time. Were my arms shaking now?

Guard looked at me expectantly. I managed to snap out of it, for the most part. I felt myself shiver in time with the bass pulses, the rattling of my body at contrast with the anticipation that filled the silence between the sounds. 

I approached the blizzard machine and put the cup into position. I turned it on, the whine of the motor and the immersion blender sounding strangely dissonant. The bass pulse continued, the sound and rattling, the silence and anticipation. I glanced at Guard. He held the strange shimmering vial. Light, dark, light, dark. The pyramid pulsed. Reality was breathing. 

I had made the blizzard the desired consistency. I put the red spoon in the cup. Guard met my eyes, looked at the cup, then looked back at me and nodded. I took a deep breath and felt my body tense, as if bracing for impact. 

I inverted the cup. It was a strange thing, watching a perfect copy of the ice cream slide out and away, as if it was a mixture of light and vapor. 

The pulsing stopped. The light in the room was steady. It was dead quiet. 

I looked at the android, and saw the top point of the pyramid stretch towards the ceiling as the base pulled in. I looked like liquid mercury, flowing over itself, both turbulent and ordered. Guard swore loudly and smashed the vial against the floor. The white-violet torus shimmered into existence. Guard ripped the grappler out of the bag, its sphere a bright green. The android continued to shift until it had returned to its original form. It stood still, watching us. I looked at it, leery. 

“Get ready!” shouted Guard. He twisted the sphere until it turned red, then started whirling it like before. He threw it into the anchor point and pulled it until it was taut. He beckoned to me, and I joined him. We pulled in unison, but it was no use. 

Guard swore again and stepped away. “We’ll need to tow it,” he said. He jabbed a finger at the bot. “Seems like it’s on the fritz, go park the car by the front door.” He grabbed the rope from the duffel bag and tied it to the cable. I rushed out the back of the building and backed the car as close as I could to the front door. I saw that Guard had already used some chairs to keep it propped open. He ran the rope out the door and I tied it to the tow hitch. 

“Okay, let’s–“

JACOB. 

The voice came from the bot. We both whirled around to face it. The bot’s torso was glowing a brilliant white, like a magnesium fire.

“Shit,” said Guard. “Help me out, Jess. We need to try and move it.” He rushed towards the bot. I was dumbstruck, I hadn’t heard that name for a long time, and hated how my ears would still perk up when I heard it. I followed him, looking at the ground to avoid the brilliant light pouring out of the robot. 

We tried moving the bot to no avail, the most we could do was tilt it, as if it were bolted to the floor.  The thought occurred to me to get a hand truck from the back–we could slip it underneath. I was about to retrieve it when the bot spoke again.

JACOB. WE ARE DISAPPOINTED. 

Guard fell down to his knees, as if struck by a strong blow. The torus crackled behind him. 

YOU LACK FAITH, JACOB. 

Guard held his hands over his ears and screamed. I understood in that moment that his name wasn’t Guard. His name was Jacob. He had lied to me. He had read the file, and had seen my old name. I reminded him of Connie. He lied to me because he didn’t want to hurt me, even in a small way. 

WE WILL SEE YOU RETURNED TO PIETY. 

Guard twitched and then stood, moving like a marionette doll controlled by a phantom puppeteer. I looked at him, and then in one fluid motion, he lunged at me. I put my hands up to shield myself and he knocked them away. 

He was unfathomably strong. 

Last time I tried something like this, I blacked out.

His hands locked around my throat and they tightened. I felt my windpipe and my carotid artery squeeze shut. He started lifting me off the floor, higher and higher until I was suspended well above him, his face expressionless as he choked the life out of me. I clawed at his hands in useless defiance, my eyes bulging. Awful wet croaking sounds leaked out of my mouth. Too much weight, too much tension on the neck, fracture risk–

I could see darkness creeping in on the periphery. This was the end, I guess. I didn’t blame Guard–or, Jacob. Not really. He was in over his head, and had been for some time. I felt some drool slip out of my mouth. It dripped down and landed on Jacob’s cheek. 

The thought of him recoiling from the eyedrops rushed into my mind. My survival instinct, that desperate animal urge to never give up, latched aggressively onto this. I mustered every thing left with my dying breath and spat. It was weak, but my aim was true. A glob of saliva–pink with my own blood–fell along a graceful arc and landed in Jacob’s left eye. 

He dropped me immediately, howling. I fell to my knees, gasping for air. Color returned to my vision. I could tell my windpipe was damaged gravely, there was a gurgling sound when I tried to breathe. I wondered if my hyoid had fractured. Jacob was clawing at his eye. I saw the duffel bag on the ground behind him, and the shimmering torus further back, the grapple line swaying like a line mooring a ship. I had to act before he recovered.

I regained my feet, my vision darkening as I returned to the upright position. God, the room was spinning so much. I lurched forward, grabbing the counter for balance. Then, with all of my strength, I threw my body against Jacob’s torso. He stumbled backward and his foot caught on the duffel bag. He was on one foot, his arms windmilling, when I struck him again. This time he fell backwards, his head entering the anchor point. There was a harsh sound like velcro ripping, and his body went slack. As I watched, it started getting pulled slowly into the anchor point

NO. YOU MUST SERVE. YOU MUST!

The bot rushed forward and grabbed Jacob’s legs. It pulled with such force that I was sure it must be fracturing his legs. It struggled for some time, pulling on Jacob’s limp body as it was slowly pulled into the torus. Then there came a sickening sound of suction, like a boot being pulled from thick mud, as Jacob disappeared into the anchor point, the bot clinging to him. The halo vibrated slightly as they disappeared, the only evidence of their departure some scuff marks on the floor from where the android’s feet had dragged on the tile. 

I fell back to my knees. I didn’t know how much longer I had, I could feel fluid in my throat. I coughed red spittle into the tile. It felt like my throat had filled with glass. I was breathing through a straw and there were wasps in the air, stinging me as they infiltrated my throat, filling my lungs with papery nest fibers. 

The car. The line. I had to tow it.

I crawled out the door, stopping every now and then to cough blood onto the ground, marking my progress like a macabre Hansel and Gretel. The sun was hot, the pavement was hot. I was in the oven–the witch had caught me, my bloody bread crumbs marking the path to my doom. I giggled, delirious. 

I reached the car and dragged myself into the driver’s seat. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, teeth covered in my own blood and my neck twisted and swollen. I averted my gaze immediately. As I did, I coughed up more blood. It splattered against the dashboard and steering wheel. 

I got it started and into gear and pressed the gas. I tried turning around to looked out the rear view window–fuck, my neck felt awful–I aborted and looked in the rear view mirror instead, and gave up on that when I my reflection reminded me of my injuries. I had no way to see what was happening. A few more wheezing, gurgling breaths passed. I was starting to think it wasn’t going to work.

Then the world got split in half. 

I felt the car rush forward. Worried that the cable had snapped, I slammed on the brakes and tried to look behind me again. I was punished by a stab of pain in my neck. It ran down my spine and bounced back to my neck like a sonar ping. I whimpered in agony. 

Dizzy, so dizzy. I felt blood pounding in my head. Did it work? I saw light rushing toward me. Every direction I looked, it rushed towards me. Was I dying?

The light stopped. I wasn’t in the car. I felt like I had been wadded up into a ball and then unfolded. I wanted to check myself for wrinkles, but I couldn’t move. There was an awful thud-snap sound. Then the customer from before was there. So was my manager. The blizzard was on the floor, and also in my hand, upside-down.

Air. I needed air. 

I dropped the blizzard and collapsed to the ground. My body hit the floor and a wall of sound hit my ears. 

“Jess? Are you–Jess!” my manager was crouched beside me. God, the lights were too bright. I squinted. I heard mumbling–or was it buzzing?–and then heard the customer from before, the one who had ordered the blizzard. He was talking to an emergency dispatcher. It was so loud, I wish they’d all shut up and let me sleep. 

I turned on my side and coughed up more blood. I felt my manager squeezing my hand. She was saying something, but I couldn’t understand it. Cold. My back was too cold. Had I fallen on the ice cream? 

No blizzard is complete until it passes the iconic flip test! Fail the flip test and your order is free! Participating locations only. Blood in the sputum is a sign of… it’s so cold… pneumonia? I’ll make that again for you sir, right away, one with less blood in it…

Someone elevated my feet. I saw an AED on the ground beside me. My shirt was being cut open. I had the absurd thought that I would need to repurchase my work uniform after this. I wanted to tell them to stop, I didn’t have the money for that, but the words were too heavy to lift out of my throat. My throat, my throat, please–I’m hurt. But not now. Let me sleep. 

My vision was going dark. I felt myself slip away. 

Chapter 6

It had been a couple months since the incident. I’d finally gotten the cervical collar off. Swallowing still felt weird. The doctor said that should resolve sometime in the next couple months. 

The hospital stay had been strange, the closest hospital to the restaurant was the university hospital. I’d seen a few former classmates there and they expressed their well wishes. I was glad to see them, but seeing them doing clinical work was difficult. Every visit felt like a reminder of my own inadequacy. 

The police had reviewed the security footage several times. Nobody was sure why I was fine one moment and struggling the next. The doctor thought it was a case of domestic abuse when she saw me and was sure there must be some sort of miscommunication or record keeping error. She had shook her head mumbling when the mysterious spontaneity of my neck injury was confirmed to her. The incident had officially been ruled a “workplace injury.” 

After the news broke, I was approached by lawyers promising they could win me a massive settlement, but I didn’t have the heart to file suit. It wasn’t the franchise owner’s fault. Even so, he insisted on giving me twelve weeks of paid time off and offered to pay for any necessary medical expenses or counseling, which I accepted without pushback. 

I had been careful to avoid duplicating anything in front of anyone. I would sometimes do it for Oscar when feeding him or filling his dish with water, but not often enough for anyone to notice his food wasn’t running out. It still didn’t feel real. 

At the present moment, I was sitting at the kitchen table eating some toast. My dad was scrolling through headlines on his phone while my mom talked about a story from work. She was a veterinarian and had a habit of telling the same story to multiple different groups of people, but she wasn’t great at remembering who had already heard it. My dad and I were getting the third rerun of her pregnant daschund story. 

We had just gotten to the climax of her story–the results of the ultrasound where it was revealed that the dog was going to have a litter of over 10 puppies–when my dad spoke up. On occasion, he would read random news tidbits aloud. We didn’t often engage with him, and he never seemed to expect a response. This was one such time. 

“Says here the food banks are having shortages again,” my dad said. “They say it’s because the new food stamp rules.” 

My mom offered sympathy and made a remark about organizing something through the church. My dad mentioned that he might put a collection bin in the shop. I asked him to send me the article. 

“I hope you’re not thinking about volunteering,” my mom said. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy until you’re through physical therapy.” 

I waved off her concern, saying I was mostly curious to get an opinion from a friend who was trying to become a social worker. 

Later that week, I was taking dozens of boxes of food out of a storage locker and loading them into the trunk on my car. I slammed the locker door shut, knowing it would be full the moment I returned. 

I made 85 deliveries that week, hitting every food pantry in the area. I asked them to call me if they had a shortage and that I would make a delivery as soon as possible. 

The food shortage was nationwide, not to mention the issues in other parts of the world. I knew it wouldn’t fix everything.

But it was a start.