The Business of Time Travel Tourism

Chapter 15: The Extreme Pizza Joint

 June 27, 2014. Friday.

For George, lying on the ground and staring at the same point with little action and no one to keep him company proved to be too difficult. He thought he was a patient man with strong endurance, but waking up after a half days sleep under the sun, with everything hurting and burning from head to toes, his mouth dry, he had to reevaluate himself.

It was long after midday when he headed back toward the motel. The journey through the fields and woods were not made easier by his mistake to forget a bottle of water when going on the mission. Chasing hallucinating vultures away and making the last twenty meters on all fours he was happy to return alive.

The supply of water in Terrible Motel was limited to twenty liters per day per room and he let it all out into his mouth, on top of his head, on the red hands experiencing the greatest joy of his life.

Recovered and happy George got back to the room, wrote everything he learned on sticky papers and put them on the wall. He had seen detectives do it in movies and thought that it would be a cool idea to copy them. He then went to the local internet cafe, printed all articles about Alfonso's success and nailed them to the wall around the small forest of sticky papers. Walking from the bathroom to the door, he stared at the wall and thought. And when he had thought enough, he froze to stare at the belt lying on the bed, the one given to him as a gift by the king of Kakamaqua. He ran to a press kiosk to buy a bundle of local newspapers afterward.

Sitting on the squeaking bed, he looked through the press, taking an interest in only a few pages of every paper. He would pick a marker, draw a circle on a newspaper, take out the whole page and put it in the pile beside him. When he was done, he grabbed the pile and picked an old rotary phone. It was scratched and worn, had an almost naked wire connecting the handset to the housing. From the looks of it, it should not have worked, but it did.

This was the fifth call he made.

"Hello, Extreme Pizza listening, what would you like to order?" answered a lady speaking like an automaton. Giving a feeling as if she had said this sentence for the hundredth time today.

"I'm calling to apply for the job offer of a pizza boy." George looked at the advertisement in his hand. It had a picture of a rusty moped with eight rocket launchers attached to both sides of its rear.

"Can you drive?"

"Yes. Well, I can drive a car."

"Then you're hired. Get your butt here. I've got a million orders waiting for delivery and my driver is hospitalized. I will pay you double if you get here in twenty minutes," said the lady and put down the phone.

What the hell? thought George. He grabbed his wallet and rushed out, not to miss the perfect opportunity to earn a little bit of money and the tools needed for his part of the mission.

It took him a while to get to the location of the pizza shop, which was located on what appeared to be as world's end. At the most distant point of Crossroad that barely made it to the map, stood a lone building at the edge of a cliff twenty meters, beneath which ran a river from hell, its waves smashing violently against sharp stones sticking out of the water. A part of the building extended out and bent under the cliff, giving an impression that the restaurant was built here for a reason.

There were many motorcycles and high-speed cars parked by the shop. Words 'EXTREME PIZZA joint' were blinking in epilepsy inducing red above its entrance.

George entered the restaurant and inspected its wondrous interior. There was a man eating a pizza one meter in diameter, his two friends encouraging him not to give up. Another person with a cowboy's hat was riding a mechanical bull while shoving pizza slices that were given to him by a staff member. Whenever the rider would start to choke, the helper would pad his back or make the Heimlich maneuver, so the client could ride on and keep enjoying the pizza. A man with eyes covered by black cloth threw knives to an old geezer tied to a wall chewing what probably was pizza. Each knife was barely missing the client's vital parts, making him gulp after each throw.