Forward

Coffee Shop is the fourth and penultimate story in the A Mortal God series, which relates the tale of Damien, an otherwise ordinary man who can change pretty much anything around him according to his whims and desires.  The preceding three stories (Acid of the Mind, Evening Commute, Jaywalker) are revisions of stories posted previously.  Coffee Shop is new.  The stories can be read independently, but this and the final story (Fallen God) may make more sense if the reader at least glances at the preceding stories first.  As always, I hope you enjoy this story enough to overlook any inconsistencies in the storyline, and perhaps to consider reading Fallen God with the same forgiving attitude.

– Downing Street

November, 2016

“Are you quite certain we’re in the right place?”
       “This is where it happened!” Dr. Wolfe replied, almost sharply.  “Right here, four-thirty yesterday afternoon.  Readings were off the scale.  Of course, I am not completely certain what the scale is . . . or whether there can be a scale for this sort of thing.  It may not be quantifiable in the usual sense, given the – ”
       “All right, Anton, I think I get it,” Roma interrupted, before her colleague could get lost on one of his impenetrable rambles.  Physics professors were like that, apparently, older ones especially so.
       Roma’s scepticism was well founded.  The coffee shop they were sitting in hardly seemed the kind of environment for the weirdness Dr. Wolfe claimed to have found there.  It was a cozy place to while away a rainy afternoon, with its glassed-in fireplace and round-backed chairs.  Big windows in front looked out over the rainy street.  A pair of efficient young women served coffee and condiments from a curved wooden bar along one wall.
       Dr. Wolfe said:  “Surprised the soul right out of me, I will say that.  Unfortunately, yesterday I did not have the detector set up to record, so I have no verifiable data.”  As he spoke, he opened a shell case on the low table in front of him, to reveal a complicated electronic apparatus inside.  He pushed a button.  Several miniature screens on the apparatus lit up.  
       “Much as I appreciate this excuse to avoid the rain,” said his co-worker, “I don’t see why you need me here.  I do have work waiting in the laboratory.”  Roma directed the laboratory for one of the other research scientists.  The unit had decided that, as a courtesy, someone should indulge Wolfe when he asked for a witness to his absurd observation.  Roma had drawn the short straw.  
       “Oh, no, you must not leave!”  He looked up at her sharply.  He was a heavy-set man with a florid face, wearing glasses halfway down his nose.  His shock of red hair was perpetually standing on end, as if he had just now stuck a fork in an electrical main.  “You are my independent verification, Roma,” he explained.  “If something happens, you are a second set of eyes and ears to observe.  I need steel-clad data to convince the skeptics.”
       “If something happens.”                                
       “If it happened once, it is very likely to happen again.  Wait and see.”
       Roma shook her head.  “I’m sorry, Anton, but this doesn’t make any sense.  Maybe Paul Harmon is right.  What you saw was a blip in the background radiation, not some fundamental change in the structure of space-time.”
       Now he shook his head.  His round glasses glinted.  “The phenomenon is real.  Something is different.  The Stefan-Boltzmann constant has been determined to thirteen decimal places.  It is the most constant of all universal constants.  But yesterday afternoon it was reading point zero zero zero two percent greater than normal.  That cannot be.  The only explanation is a Richmond shift:  a jump into another space-time continuum.”
       “Yes, I sense a great disturbance in The Force.”
       He looked at her blankly.  “What?”
       Roma tried not to roll her eyes.  She mostly succeeded.  “Look, theoretical astrophysics is your department.  Mine is common sense.  Why, if there has been a real Richmond shift – if such a thing even exists – would it be somehow associated with a riverside café?  The whole idea is silly.”
       This time he hesitated.  “I confess I do not understand that either.  I had the detector with me when I stopped for tea yesterday.  I was calibrating it, trying to tune out the neutrino signature, when it started giving me readings.  Utterly unexpected!  The outputs were startling.  Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.”
       “A glitch in your machine, nothing more.”
       “No.  I examined every wire and circuit with the greatest attention.”
       “A shift in the space-time continuum,” Roma said thoughtfully, “in a coffee shop.  Well, it’s convenient, if nothing else.”  She lifted her white cup and drank. 
       Wolfe made no response to Roma’s sarcasm.  They both waited quietly for several minutes.  Wolfe fussed with the detector; he arranged two microphone-like extensions on either side of the table.  A few people came in for coffee, others left.  A parade of umbrellas and macs passed on the street outside.
       “What ho!” shouted Wolfe.
       “What?  What is it?”
       “The anomaly!  It has returned.  Look at the gauges.”  He pointed toward a couple of small screens built into the apparatus.  Yellow lines danced across the fields, like seismic recordings during an earthquake.
       “That’s the anomaly?” Roma asked.  “I thought it would be a little more dramatic.”
       “Do not be droll, Ms. Fyne.  The detector is merely recording the existence of the anomaly.  The real shift would be a change in the surroundings, possibly something we could see, or feel, or . . . something.”
       “Nothing seems different to me,” Roma replied reasonably.  
       She looked around the shop for a few seconds, humouring him.  What exactly were they supposed to see?  A tripling of the speed of sound?  The earth cracking open beneath their feet?  If there had been a restructuring of the cosmic order, it didn’t appear to be upsetting commerce. The customers in the café continued chatting, or working, or reading, as before.  
       A young man came in out of the rain.  He was neatly dressed and sported a trendy goatee.  Yet for a moment Roma wondered if he were drunk.  He looked confused.  His eyes were wild.
       The man made no effort to join the queue at the coffee bar.  Standing just inside the door, he steadied himself with one hand on a wall.  He surveyed the room, apparently uncertain if this was where he should be.  When his gaze landed on Wolfe and Roma, it lingered for several seconds.  Roma almost gasped.  The man’s dark eyes betrayed an endless well of turmoil and anguish, like a glimpse into Dante’s inferno.
       At length the newcomer found a seat near the fireplace.  He sat down heavily.  He unrolled a copy of Foreign Affairs from under his arm, but didn’t read it.  He leaned his head back against the cushion and stared at the ceiling.
       There goes one deeply troubled man, Roma reflected.  She continued to scan the room.  The business couple at the next table was poring over some sort of report.  The woman was a sharp-edged brunette in a grey business suit and low heels.  She kept interrupting her male partner to check her text messages.
       While Roma watched, the woman set down her mobile.  She looked away, as if struck by an idea.  Her demeanour changed.  She said something to her co-worker, smiling at him for the first time.  She laid a hand on his arm.  He looked up from the report.  He said something in return.  
       The throat of her blouse had fallen open.  He kept glancing at her cleavage.  She pretended not to notice.
       “She’s looking for a promotion,” Roma muttered.
       Wolfe said:  “That is all very well.  You were young once too, I suspect.  Let us keep looking.”
       Roma contemplated that comment as she scanned the room.  She had always played close to the line between plain and pretty, with her slender figure and aquiline face.  Now, divorced and with touches of grey in her short-cropped hair, it hardly seemed to matter.  
       Roma was dressed in a loose red sweater and black slacks, with low heels.  That was as close as she ever came to dressing up.  Anyway, most men were so intimidated by her raging intellect that fashion sense never entered the equation.
       The man seated by the fireplace raised a hand.  He was still staring at the ceiling.  Instantly one of the baristas abandoned a customer and fairly trotted over to take the man’s order.  She was a fetching young woman in a green T-shirt, leg-hugging jeans and white sneakers.  Her white belt highlighted the sway of her hips as she walked.  She smiled indulgently at the young fellow.  Roma sniffed; he wasn’t that cute.
       Wolfe was scowling at his equipment.  The readings had settled from their initial spike.  There was still plenty of activity.   He said:  “Maybe we need to conduct some experiments.”
       “Right,” Roma replied.  “We’ll explain to the management that we’re astrophysicists studying an obscure, strictly theoretical possibility about space-time and we’ve decided, based on a few squiggles from an untested apparatus, that your café is the locus of a point disruption in the structure of reality.  Do you mind if we set up a bank of instruments the size of a small car?”
       Wolfe looked deflated.  “I had not considered that,” he said.
       Roma nodded.  “Your specialty is astrophysics; mine is common sense.  If you were right about the Richmond shift, surely we would notice something.”
       She took another look around the room.  The man with the goatee was looking her way again.  Those eyes!  
       Everyone else was going about their business exactly as before.  Three college students at a nearby table were hunched over laptops, probably working on a joint project.  They were all dressed in the standard college uniform of sweatshirts and black leggings, sport shoes.  At another table, a slender woman in brown trousers was reading a book.
       Wolfe was alternately toying with knobs and settings on his machine and scanning the room for anomalies.  He looked disappointed.  “Anton,” Roma said carefully, “I think you should accept –”
       “Would you like a refill?” a chipper voice interrupted.  One of the baristas was standing there, smiling, with a coffee urn in her hand.  
       “Oh.  No thank you.  I’m fine.”  Coffee kept her awake.  When did the café begin table service?
       “It’s on the house,” the girl persisted.  “It’s our new house blend.  Give it a try!”  She was already pouring.  Her green pullover outlined the swell of her breasts as she bent over to pour.
       “Oh, all right,” Roma conceded.  The beaming girl handed her the cup.  Roma added a precise aliquot of cream from the decanter on the table as the bubbly barista scampered away in her trendy white high-tops.
       Roma watched the sway of the girl’s ass beneath her tight jeans.  So did every male patron in the room.  “Exceptional young woman,” she commented.  The girl’s smile could be on toothpaste commercials.
       “Yes, quite lovely I am sure,” Wolfe replied absently.  He gave the receding barista a quick glance before returning to his apparatus.  “What were you saying?”
       “Hmmm?” Roma murmured.  For some reason the image of the comely coffee server was stuck in her head.  She sipped coffee.  “I’m sorry, I got distracted by that sweet ass; mmmmm – I mean, gracious, distracted by her two full cups – No!  I mean, by getting a second full cup of coffee.”  She drank some of that coffee to cover her word slips.  Then she went on more seriously:
       “Anton, I think it’s time to admit that the Richmond shift doesn’t exist.  Whatever your gizmo is measuring, it has nothing to do with the structure of space-time.  This is an ordinary coffee shop on an ordinary, rainy day and there is no nick in the nature of nature here.”
       His scowl was a storm cloud.  “These readings – ”
       “Are amplifying noise.  Or picking up wifi signals.  Or reflecting an overheated diode you didn’t allow for.  Look around for heaven’s sake.  There’s nothing here!”
       Her outburst drew the attention of the couple at the side table for a moment.  They were still going over the document on the table in front of them.  They were sitting closer together now.  She kept finding excuses to touch his arm.  The woman was attractive, in a mature, sensous way.  Roma hadn’t realized that before.
       Dr. Wolfe was implacable.  “There is something here.  I am certain of it.”
       “What makes you so sure?”
       “Because – because I can feel it.”  He sounded uncomfortable confessing something not based on data.  “Do you not notice it as well?”
       Roma looked around the coffee shop.  “Maybe,” she conceded.  
       She was loath to admit it, but something did seem different.  She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.  A sense of strangeness had descended on the room, as if it were bathed by a setting, summer sun that washed everything in soft light and shadows.  Outside, the rain tumbled down.
       She considered the business woman at the next table.  Something about her seemed unexpected, though Roma couldn’t say how.  She was blonde, and strikingly pretty.  Her skirt-suit was dark blue, snug, and short.  Her legs were fully displayed in smoky hose and open-toed, blue slings.  More conspicuously, her white blouse was half undone.  And overflowing.  Her blue lace brassiere was totally unprepared for the mammoth task it had been given.
       The man beside her had a hand on her knee, beneath the table.  She was stroking his hair, murmuring.  She’ll get that promotion, Roma reflected.  She pretty much deserved it just for that awesome rack.
       She heard laughter from the two bar girls, sharing a joke.  One of them poured a steaming cup of coffee, then brought it to the man with the goatee.  She looked right sexy in the coffee-bar uniform: a bust-enhancing top of coffee-brown over shiny green tights.  There were no panty lines tarnishing the girl’s perfect behind.  Her boot-heels clicked on the terrazzo floor.  
       “Mmmmm, nice ass,” Roma murmured. 
       “What was that?” asked Wolfe.
       “I said she has a sweet –  Wait, why would I say that?”  She frowned.  Something about the girl’s uniform . . . .  
       She glanced over at the coffee bar.  The other girl, at least as fetching as the one on the floor, was dressed in an identical outfit of brown pullover, green tights and shiny black boots.  She filled her top amply.
       Roma found herself studying the two girls longer than necessary.  This blatantly sexy outfit had always been the uniform for the serving girls here.  She was certain of that.  It was supposed to be reminiscent of coffee trees.  The café wasn’t called Perky’s for nothing.  
       But hadn’t the girls been dressed differently a few minutes earlier?  Or was her memory confused, or . . . something?  She ran her fingers through her deep brown hair.
       She looked over at Wolfe’s detector.  The lines on the monitors were still wobbling.  Another miniature screen showed lines of data scrolling upward: energy fluxes and particle densities.
       What exactly did this information mean?  If the whole universe slipped onto a slightly different existential path, would anyone notice?  No one had attempted to address the consequences of a Richmond shift before.  
       She watched an attractive blonde leave the shop carrying some fancy coffee confection.  She was dressed in glamorized office attire: a snug white jacket mostly compensated for the absence of a blouse beneath it. Only an inch or so of her miniskirt extended beyond the bottom of the jacket.  Her white, stretch boots ended well above her knees, yet still well below the hem of her skirt.  She swung a white umbrella up as she approached the door.
       Her umbrella matches her suit, Roma realized.  She admired women who could dress that sharply.  The gold, spike heels on the blonde’s tall boots seemed impractical though.  The two-inch heels on Roma’s black ankle boots were more reasonable.  The boots matched her leather stretch-pants.
       Something felt not right.  Like she was in a waking dream.
       She took another look around.  Anton Wolfe was alternately scanning the room and inspecting his instruments.  He looked puzzled.  No one else seemed to be feeling the sensation of oddness that he and Roma were suffering.  
       The three college girls were laughing over their computers, looking fit and sexy in their bright-coloured yoga pants.  The shapely woman in the brown shorts was still reading her magazine.  Her glossy nylons glinted in the overhead lights.  She idly toyed with a lock of permed blonde hair.
       Seeing her reminded Roma that she hadn’t checked her own face for a while.  She dipped into her purse for a small make-up kit with a mirror in the lid.  She looked herself over.  Her face was long but symmetrical, with wide-spaced, grey eyes.  Her make-up looked good.  
       There was something funny about her hair.  It swept forward in a short, modern cut, smooth and dark brown.  She had been to the stylist just a week earlier.   Why was she remembering it being frizzy, with streaks of grey?  
       Her uncertainty extended to the make-up kit itself.  It was silver, ornately decorated around the outside edge, with her initials inscribed in the centre.  A gift from her grandmother, many years ago.  So why did it seem like she had never seen it before?
       A reflection in the mirror distracted her from her self-assessment.  A couple had come in through the door behind her: two women in their forties, plump and doughty.  They were both in boring, sensible attire, dark slacks and sweaters, and looking irritated by the rain.  They folded up umbrellas as they advanced on the coffee bar.  One of the comely coffee servers spoke to them, smiling.  Roma’s eyes went wide.
       “Anton,” she said, setting down her mirror, “I think I’ve found it.”
       He was instantly attentive.  “The Richmond Shift?  You can see it?”
       “Yes.  It’s – It’s not what you are expecting.”
       “Show me!”
       “You see those two women at the counter?  The ones getting coffee?”
       “Yes.  Oh, yes indeed.”  His tone telegraphed that he was not beyond appreciating a well-tended, mature woman.
       The newcomers were indeed striking.  They both looked rich, fit, and well-coiffed.  The one on the left, with the wavy dark hair, was wearing a short leather coat-dress:  shiny, black, and mostly unbuttoned.  The open skirt revealed perfect legs in skin-tight black boots that extended almost to her crotch.  Above, her impressive chest challenged a black-leather bra, inlaid with gold.
       Her blonde companion was wearing a red bolero jacket of some filmy material that shimmered when she moved.  Underneath, her womanly curves were coated in pink lycra tights and a matching top composed mostly of straps.  Her red ankle boots had enough platform heel to elevate her above the deepest puddles.
       The blonde noticed Dr. Wolfe looking her way.  She gave him a smoky look.  Roma was not surprised by the woman’s interest.  Despite his advancing years, Anton Wolfe remained powerfully attractive to women of all ages.  
       Wait.  What?
       “They are both notable,” Wolfe said, still admiring the new couple, “but I do not see – ”
       “They didn’t look like that a moment ago.”
       “What?  What do you mean?  I suppose they were under their brollies, of course, but – ”
       Roma persisted.  “They didn’t look like that.  I know it sounds bizarre, and I can’t properly explain it, but when they came in, those two were ordinary.  Frumpy.  They became different.  I didn’t see it happen, but . . . .”  She threw up her hands in bewilderment.
       Her companion drew his attention away from the leather and lycra duo, who were now making their way to a table, backsides swaying like a chorus line.  “Ms Fyne,” he began.
       “Look, indulge me.  We’ll do the experiment.  Watch the door.  See who else comes in.”
       He sighed.  “Very well.”
       They watched.  A lithe brunette in a sparkling black tube-top and low-riding, vinyl tights hip-swayed toward the door.  She tottered away down the rainy street on towering heels, drawing stares.  A couple of businessmen came in, balding and officious in dark suits.  Two women arrived behind them.  The older one looked thirtyish, sensible and almost plain.  The younger, perhaps her daughter, was a sullen-looking teen in loose denim and plaid.  The made their way to the coffee bar, folding up black umbrellas.
       “Those two,” Roma said, “the two women getting coffee.  Watch them.”
       Dr. Wolfe said:  “Very well, but I do not see any – oh my word!”  He gaped, eyes wide.
       The two women were both trim and smoothly curvaceous.  Most of the apparent age difference between them had disappeared.  They were dressed identically in fantasy schoolgirl outfits: sleeveless half-tops above, insignificant plaid skirtlets below, about an acre of smooth, bare skin between.  Both wore immaculate white thigh-highs, completely revealed by the minuscule skirts, and plastic, little-girl rain-boots, in yellow and red.  Mother’s umbrella was patterned with a yellow and black spiral.  Her daughter’s bore giant red polka-dots. 
       Anton Wolfe, normally unflappable, was groping for words.  “I do not – I do not understand.  They were different – before.  Yes?  But how can – there was no change.   I do not – It is impossible.”
       Roma threw back her dark hair.  “It’s everywhere,” she breathed.  “Somehow we didn’t notice.”
       She surveyed the room.  Every woman in the coffee shop was stacked, stunning and sexy.  The office girl at the next table had one leg thrown carelessly over her partner’s knee.  Her travesty of a business suit featured a tight microskirt with a wide gore up one side and a gauzy white blouse that strained over her burgeoning, braless boobs, and their distended nipples.  Her tits seemed even bigger than Roma remembered them.  She was kissing and whispering with her amorous co-worker.  He was stroking the inside of her leg, high up her mesh stocking.  She ignored her buzzing mobile.
       At another table, the three college girls were apparently taking a break from work in favour of watching funny videos.  All three were in stretch tops that seemed a size too small and painted-on dance tights in rainbow colours.  Their high heels matched their tights exactly.  Looking them over, Roma felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.  She was accustomed to being the prettiest girl in the room.
       Nearby, the leggy lovely in thigh-high, suede stretch boots was reading a paperback novel with lurid purple covers.  Whatever was in the book seemed to be distracting her intensely.  She was breathing deeply.  Her free hand quietly stroked the crotch of her suede shorts.  
       Roma watched one of the chesty coffee servers prance over to the two mature beauties who had so distracted Anton.  Her leaf-green tights outlined the exact shape of each ass-cheek as she bent over to pour fresh coffee.  Her coffee-brown pullover was deeply low-cut in front.  The temperature in the room rose ten degrees.  The coffee shop wasn’t called Hot ‘N’ Steamy for nothing.
       “This strangeness must be the Richmond shift,” Dr. Wolfe said, eventually.  He was watching the coffee girl wiggle away in her shiny-tight boots.  “But . . . how can this be?  These changes are organized, detailed.  I expected a random variance in some physical law.  There is clearly agency at work here.  How – ”
       “It’s a person!” Roma cried.
       He looked at her.  “What?”
       “Anton, don’t you see?  The anomaly, here, in a coffee house, not out beyond Jupiter or in an accelerator at CERN or in the heart of the sun.  It’s too much for coincidence.  It’s a person.  A genuine, ordinary human being is behind this anomaly.  He stopped here for coffee and set your machine ringing.”  She gestured toward his instrument, which was still showing wild spikes.
       Wolfe considered it.  He also considered the roomful of sexy women.  “A person is responsible for a Richmond shift?”
       “He is the Richmond shift!  Or maybe he’s at the centre of it, the focal point.  The anomaly propagates from him.”
       His brow furrowed.  Roma had seen that look before.  It meant he was thinking intensely.  At length he said, “I believe you may be correct.  A person is somehow at the centre of this event.  A man, evidently.”
       “But who?”
       Dr. Wolfe pointed over his shoulder without looking.  “Him,” he said.  He was pointing at the man with the troubled eyes.
       It was Roma’s turn to frown.  “How can you know?”
       “Look at him.  Is not something odd?”
       Roma looked.  “Of course,” she agreed, after a moment.  The stranger had come in out of the tumbling rain.  He wore no overcoat, carried no umbrella.  He was bone dry.
       “We need to speak with him,” said Dr. Wolfe.
       “Easily done,” Roma replied.  “He’s coming to see us.”
       The stranger approached their table.  He studied Dr. Wolfe’s detector for a long moment.  The yellow lines danced on the monitors.  
       “Hello,” the man said.  “My name is Damien.  I desperately hope you can help me."