Work Text:
My day began when I received an email. Only, I wasn’t expecting an email. At least, not one from myself. All it said was to go to some bar in a sunburnt strip mall. After checking my schedule, I rearranged an interviewer with a tech blogger. It isn’t everyday you receive an email filled with the diagrams to your Big Breakthrough! claiming to be from yourself.
By lunchtime, I’m pulling up on the bar. Just like I said I would.
I swing open the door to the bar. I walk in, shaking the excess water off my shirt off, built up from the day’s sweat and humidity. I sit at a bar stool once my eyes adjust to the gloom that pervades the place, no matter how much light pours in from outside. There's another guy down at the end of the bar. Mindlessly, he drinks a beer and stares up at a T.V…. You'd think he was the one dealt into the poker championship he’s watching..
I nod my head back, brushing wet hair back out of my face. It is enough for the bartender to catch my eye.
"Shot of Jack on ice," I say before she has a chance to be nice.
"Sure," She says as she pulls a glass from seemingly out of nowhere, fills it, and sets it in front of me.
I sip, and look around the bar as she slides a plastic menu. I try not to look down her shirt. Her breasts hang low, her curves no longer perfection. Her uniform is still tight, holding everything in, bulging.
"Order up!" Comes from the kitchen.
"Shit," she says, before she has a chance to ask me if I want anything off the menu. "Be right back."
"Sure." I pick up the menu, glance over it. She grabs a burger from the kitchen window, takes one of the tables near the window. An old man sits in the booth, a half pitcher beside him. Setting his food in front of him, she fills his glass. He pushes his food aside, and taking a long drink before going back to the window.
"He got to eat," The bartender says as she gets back to the bar.
"I gotta eat too!" The man at the end of the bar yells. I can't tell if he's seriously being neglected, or just a crank.
"Hush up, Billy-boy is working on it."
He goes back to drinking and watching his poker. There's a pile of torn napkins in front of him.
"You want anything?" She asks, finally turning back to me.
"Another one of these." I shake my glass before setting it down.
"Any food?" She asks as if my 50 extra pounds might suddenly melt away and I starve down to nothing.
"No." She hands me my second drink.
"What's with the old bar fly?" I ask, finally getting to it.
"Why, you a cop?
"No. Just curious." I take a meaningful sip. “You seem like you care. Who is he?”
"Dunno. He just comes in here, and I take care of him." I can't tell if she's lying. “He tips well. He something to you?”
She pauses for a long second. "Kin? Bail Bondsman?"
I shrug and shake my head. I was about to leave it, before "Writing a book?" The other barfly sidles up beside me, leaving his wings the cook brought over alone.
"I blog," admitted with a shrug. If they knew I was just a University Professor, I’d just be laughed off. I lean forward. "So what's his deal?"
"Like I said, Don't know. He comes in everyday, orders the same thing. Likes to be left alone." She shrugs and leans in. “Between you and me, he don’t look too good. Needs a few good meals.”
“So you’re just taking care of a regular?” I ask.
“So, what’s it to you?” The poker guy says. He sniffs, glancing me up and down. “You don’t look like a pig, but you’re sounding like bacon before it gets put on the grill.”
“I’m not a cop,” I repeat. “But maybe I’m just interested.”
“Just being nosy?”
“Oh, lay off.” The bartender sweeps up the pile of torn napkins he’d left. She smirks slightly and looks me in eye.
“You’re that scientist guy. That Professor.”
“What?”
“You don’t watch the news?” She asks.
“He did something with gravity. Made hoverboards.”
“Well,” I smirk. “Seemed like the best way to show off Drive.”
“You mean like in Back to Future 2?”
“Kind of.” I don’t bother with details. “Seemed like the best way to show it off. Proof of concept.”
“Sounds like you just wanted a toy.”
“So did you once, I bet.”
He chuckled, “Yeah, pal. I was real disappointed when I didn’t get on for Christmas.”
I lean in again, look between them. “So what’s with him then?”
"He was gonna be somebody," The guy croaks out, putting his hand on my shoulder.
"How do you know?"
“Everybody comes down here to be somebody. You, her. And look at you, you made something." He pointed, chuckling. "Everyone 'cept me. I live here 'cause my brother walked his dog in ten inches of snow this morning. An' I don't like the snow."
"Sounds like he's got the problem with snow.” I smirk back at him, carefully shrugging to get his hand off.
"An' I don't living in Miami." He started back towards his seat. "Fuck all that white nonsense. Too fucking cold."
He launches back into his wings. I catch a glance from the old man. His eyes meet mine while nobody’s looking.
I look down at my empty glass. "How much?"
"For, smarty-pants? Sounds like you’re about to make a mint."
I frowned. “C’mon, I’ve got to go meet someone.”
"Let me get you your check." She huffs, going over towards the register. I climb off my stool and follow slowly.
"So who were you going to be?" I asked.
"I was going to be discovered. I was going to be a STAR!" She smiled as she said, glowing in that brief moment before the dream spoiled and drifted into memories.
"Best I got was some porn, and being featured around town at a few strip clubs over on Biscayne," She looked down at herself. "You can guess what happened."
She slides over the bill, I hand over my card.
"Put the old man's tab on the card too." I say as her mouth drops. "Time to pay it forward."
Taking my card, I walk over towards the old man. I sit across from him.
"Took you long enough," He said.
I grabbed a French fry from his uneaten plate, and eat it slowly. "Took me long enough to find you after that email.”
“I mean, it took you long enough to make that discovery.”
The bartender casts a look at me and the old man. She starts over. We both look back at her, slowly, darkly. She stops, and goes back to the bar.
I wait until I am sure she is out of earshot. "So what now?"
"Well." He pulls a small, black flash drive from his pocket. He slides it towards me. "You can read this, and maybe you can prevent me from dying in my own past."
"Or make it worse," I said, taking the flash drive. I held it up, turning it over and over in my palm. "Did you meet our-self here?"
"I asked that other me the same question," He said. "And he said that it'd been asked for as long as he knew. We are born, we live, we go back in time."
"All those notes can't be on here," I said.
"There's more in the cloud," He said. "Tons more in the cloud. The drive the key.
"Right," I nodded, putting it in my pocket.
“This should be simple, right? I just not show up to at a certain day and time?”
“You don’t think that hasn’t been tried before? Or just by being a toymaker?” He scoffed. “You just hit on something powerful. Something even magic can’t just explain away.”
“So, in two years, provided I can’t figure out a way around it, I’ll be tossed back to the 80’s?”
“Yep.”
"What happens now?" I ask him.
"If this works, I'm already gone," He replied. "If not, I got a gun. Just keep adding to the notes if you can’t do it."
"Did the last me say that too?" I asked, swallowing hard.
"Yes. I did."
"So . . . " For once, I don't know what to say. Was reliving the past this painful? "We could have been rich."
"Who says we aren't that already." He nodded back towards my shirt pocket. "All of the keys are there. Memorize them well."
"Eventually," He sighed. "I will get it right.