The late winter gleams with empty sunshine, casting faint, spindly shadows upon the road. Grey snow lingers at the curb in mounds and ridges carved by the early traffic. At a quiet intersection, where the stoplights operate faster than normal, a sweet, ancient café called The Moon bathes in the white dawn.
Weaving from its entrance to the counter is a path worn over many years by its patrons. Beside the door, there leans a blackboard, littered with graffiti, which would've been a menu if anyone ever came in ordering something different. The morning filters into the shop in a way that captures the chalk dust floating in the air. Lightbulbs hang from the ceiling at random heights; they shatter the daybreak into stars.
Like usual, Amelia Wakefield has a table to herself, the one at the corner by the window.
The door chimes every few minutes to welcome a somewhat familiar face and a stiff draft. Among the constellations and the bitter-sweet aroma, there lingers a feeling of nostalgia. The Moon appears to exist along a tear down the middle of a moment, between the ledges of an untimely fissure. Every second within feels removed from regular progression, and leads one further down the assumption that something strange is inevitable.
This little coffee shop on the corner has a reputation for bringing people together by some matter of lucky happenstance.
Not to mention, the coffee's amazing.
Amelia rests in her chair as if she were constantly about to fall off. The winterlight bathes her corner in the sort of ambience one remembers in a dream or a faint memory. Her eyes glow in the morning deep shades of caramel. They narrow. She leans against the table, her elbows fitting into shallow grooves at its surface and narrowly grazing a large cup of coffee. Her keyboard clacks loudly, for a concerningly long time.
Amelia is a freelance editor.
Staining her laptop is an entry which, according to her client, "came out of nowhere." Its author, seemingly unaware they're writing to a magazine about science fiction, appears overwhelmingly confident the Earth is flat.
Amelia's dealt with this sort of mindlessness a dozen too many times.
One can only assume the writing was deliberately arranged to unravel the mind like a shoelace. Then again, deliberation and conspiracy rarely overlap. Amy clicks into a separate tab and discovers an email from her client:
(no subject)
It would be funny if you could make it into a story, like aliens come down and their very first contact with humans is someone who thinks there's a dome or an icewall or something.
I get if you're too busy though. I can always just delete the submission, save us both time.
Jacob
She laughs. Her keys rattle a few iterations of one reply until a final patchwork emerges.
The Aliens Took Australia?? >>
To be honest, I have nothing better to do, and that sounds really fun.
Amy
The instant she returns to her potential story, her eyes latch onto the phrase, "gravity doesn't exist."
Make that a baker's dozen.
Sitting across the shop is someone who's unable to come up with his name. The man's leg bounces up and down at three Hertz and there isn't a second when his hands aren't moving. Both the chair and table sit with uneven footing. His shadow constantly changes shape.
YOU ARE READING
The Book of All
Science Fiction"Knowledge is power," most say, but power corrupts all the same. See, knowledge exists as a pyramid. Very many things know nothing, but only one knows everything. To climb the pyramid isn't difficult, up to some point. The climb can be a taxing thin...
