Easy on the Onions
A Downtime Café Story
By Dana Short
I was just coming out of my office, when I heard a familiar voice resonate trough the Café from one of Sue’s tables. “…and make it easy on the onions.”
Looking up, I saw a face I hadn’t expected to see in a while, and certainly not here.
Where is here? Here is the Downtime Café, and it’s really not anywhere, or more accurately, anywhen, because the Café, as well as the Tower and resort behind it, and the timescapes in front of it, doesn’t really exist. I should know, my name is Jake, and I’m both the manager and bartender for the Café.
Sitting in a booth, ordering lunch was my old college roommate, Keith Harrison. Keith had been a software engineer, hoping to make a killing in the videogame industry after graduation. Then he dropped out and disappeared, and I never herd from him again.
Which I why it was so surprising to see him here. After all, the rates Time Travel Incorporated charges for either six hours, or three weeks, depending on how you look at it, worth of access to the system is generally between $75,000 and $100,000 a head. They can get away with that because they only have 40 slots they can sell at a time, with the last 10 reserved for those of us who work here on the Inside, keeping an eye on things and helping the Guests with whatever problems may arise. No one really knows how the software in the Simulator works. Not since the system’s creator Terrance Rendlow passed away a while back. Oh, they understand all the components, and the general theory behind it all, but none of TTI’s programmers has been able to replicate the Overprocessors which run the “world”. And Terrance’s code was too complicated for them to disassemble and make sense of. So, TTI is stuck with one machine, originally designed to let up to 50 researchers share up to 4 wavefronts of simulated reality anywhere and anywhen in the 20th century. The simulations are kept on track by a huge historical database, which consists of literally millions of “waypoints”, known historical events and facts which the system will do whatever it can to replicate. Of course, once you toss guests and the staff into the system, the ripple effects of their actions will sometimes make it impossible for the Overprocessors to hit a waypoint, and once that happens, they’ll give up and start to focus on the next one, assuming that there is any way to bring the simulation back on track. The weirdest things happen when all the waypoints are blown. Then we have to shut down the simulation and re-initialize it. Nothing less will work.
Anyhow, as I was saying, this was the last place I’d have expected to see my old roommate Keith, as there was no way he could have afforded the cost of a session in the system. And yet, here he was. He was in the Café, so he couldn’t be a Simulated Independent Manifestation, or SIM, the entities created by the system to populate the worlds outside the Café, as they couldn’t even notice the Doors into the café, let alone use them. And the SIMs inside the Tower, Café, and the resort around it are all pretty much fixtures, limited to the location they were designed for. A Tower SIM can’t leave the tower, a resort SIM can’t leave it’s job, and similarly the three SIMs in the Café, Oscar the assistant chef, our hostess Katie, and Billy, the Bus Boy, can’t leave here either. Of course, there is Angel. But she’s the exception which proves the rule. Oogie, the IT SIM doesn’t really count, as his designed location is the entire system. And Terry, well, while no one is sure Terry is real, no one is sure Terry is not, either. Heck, no one is even sure from day to day what race or sex Terry is. If it wasn’t for the nametag, which always reads “Hi, my name is Terry How can I help you have a better day?” even those of us who work here wouldn’t know who Terry is. All I can say for certain is that Terry is the head cook here at the Café.
I walked over to the table, and asked, “Keith?”
Keith looked up, his eyes widening in surprise, then he shook his head and started chuckling, “Don’t tell me, your name is Jake, and you’re the bartender, right?”
I nodded, and added, “As well as the manager. What are you doing here? I haven’t heard from you since you dropped out of school in the middle of the semester.”
Keith looked impressed, and said, “They really did a good job on you. You even sound like Jake. The face is a bit off, too old. But otherwise, you are simply the most impressive simulation I have ever encountered. I thought I was impressed before with this whole setup. But meeting someone I really know. Wow.”
“Uh, Keith, I’m not a simulation. I’m really here. I work here for TTI. I run the Café, and help out when needed. Just like the rest of the Third Loop crew.” I explained.
At that point, Terry, currently a tall, thin black man, looking more like he would be at home on a Basket Ball court than in a kitchen came over, holding Sue’s ticket in his hand. “Uh, before I make it, I just want to make sure this is what you want. You want a cheese steak, but with only a small bit of onions, not without onions, and not with the normal amount, right?”
Keith nodded, and replied, “You got it my man.” Then, apparently on an impulse, he asked, “Say, Terry, are you real?”
Terry got an odd expression on his face, and replied, “That’s a question you may as well ask your self. It all depends on how you define the word real, or the word define, for that matter. I think I exist, and that’s enough for me.” With that, he returned to the kitchen.
Keith looked up at me with a smug smirk on his face. “See. E knows he’s not real He just doesn’t want to accept the fact. And the fact is you can’t be Jake. I know Jake Harrison very well, and as I said before, he’s more my age then yours. You’re just another simulation, like everything else in here. A really good one, but honestly you aren’t real.”
I was starting to feel exasperated, so I asked him “If I wasn’t real, how would I know about that night when Susie Jessup tried to frame you for date rape after you two broke up? It was only the fact that I was able to testify that you hadn’t been out of the room, and the fact that she said you had been driving your car, which had been disassembled at the time in the garage down the street that kept them from charging you.”
Keith rolled his eyes, and responded, “Public records, for one. And if you want to get technical, since the simulation is accessing my brain, it could just as easily pull the information out of my own brain. That’s why they can make these simulations look so real – you see what you expect to see because that is what the computers show you. So any little factlets you may be able to dig up don’t prove a thing. After all, it’s all a part of the simulation. Although of all the people in the universe, why they would choose you to be a bartender here, I have no clue. I’ll have to look the real Jake up after I get back and see if he has any ideas why an older version of him is working here in this place.”
“I am the real Jake, Keith. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And you never did answer my question about what you’re doin here.”
Billy came by at that moment, and Keith stopped him with a wave of his hand. “Hey kid. What’s your name?”
“Billy.”
“And tell me Billy, are you real?”
Billy nodded, and replied, “As real as that booth you’re sitting in, sir. Would you like a glass of water?”
“Sure. That’d be great.” Keith replied.
As Billy headed away from the table towards the bar, Keith looked back up at me, and asked, “So, is he real?”
I shook my head, and answered, “No, Billy, Oscar, and Katie are all three SIMs. Terry is Terry, and no one is sure what the story is there. But the rest of us here, we are real.”
Billy came back, holding the glass of water. “Billy, another question or two for you” Keith asked. As Billy nodded, he went on, “Your boss here, is he real?”
“Of course he is. Granted, he’s only around part of the time, taking more time off than on, but he’s real.”
“Ok, one last question, then I’ll let you get back to work. When was the last time you were home?”
Billy shrugged, and answered, “Oh, a few weeks ago. I visited my Mom and got to see her new cat. She’s real proud of that cat for some reason. Me, I’m just glad she’s not all alone any more. She was so lonely after her dog died a few years ago.”
“Ok, thanks Billy. Here’s a buck for your trouble in answering my silly questions.” Keith said, slipping the kid a dollar.
As Billy walked away, Keith looked back up at me. “So, when was the last time YOU were home?”
I thought about it, sorting back trough the jumble of Inside time and Outside time. “Been a while. Not since before I started this job. At least a year and a half. I really should put in for a vacation, now that I think about it. “
Keith nodded, and asked, “So how long have you been working here at the Café?”
Again, I sorted back through the memories, and added up the time. “Oh, about twenty years, all together. Of course, that’s only a bit over a year, in real time, depending on how you count it.”
“And you don’t see a problem with that?” he asked me, shaking his head. “I sign up for one hour, and over that time period I will experience three and a half days inside the system. That’s one week for every two hours. Yet you think you have been working for Time Travel Incorporated for a bit over a year, and at the same time think you have been working for them for over twenty years. I don’t see the point in trying to explain reality to you any more. Just take it from me, you are indeed a simulation. Just like everything else here.” With that, he turned back to the book laying on the table, and proceeded to ignore me.
I eventually returned to the bar, and pulled his file up on the computer. According to the system he was here to study the software, having been hired on as a new programmer for TTI to try again to replicate Terrance’s code. He was swapping out for Greg, Hank’s assistant for an hour to get a feel for the simulation, so he would know what he was trying to recreate. He had already been inside for three days, touring the various timescapes with Kat and Mat as his guides. I hadn’t seen him before because I’d been off, either relaxing in my suite in the Tower, or somewhere around the resort, and I did take tat little trip to 1964 Australia yesterday, so it wasn’t surprising I had missed him up ‘till now.
Unfortunately, that meant that he’d be leaving today, after finishing his tour of the Tower and the resort with Hank.
Fine, I’ll wait ‘till my shift is over, then when I’m back in the real world I’ll look him up. Then I will have a bit of pleasure showing him just how real my foot is when implanted deeply up his butt.
And after that, he can tell me what has been going on with himself these past three years. After all, what is time when you work for TTI.
End.
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