Anachronis Eats

The New Orleans Amazon/Pepsi-Cola Prime Time Temporal Portal isn’t actually in New Orleans. Neither is Google/AT&T’s Big Time or Disney’s Flux. They’re in the nearby suburb of Kenner on the opposite side of the airport. Other than that I couldn’t tell you much about the “Big Three” Temporal Portal Service Providers as the whole retail time travel economy is still a new thing. And I’m definitely not the one to explain how temporal portals work––I’m a Political Science major, not Physics. But you don’t need to comprehend the mechanics of zero point energy and quantum computing to be a delivery driver for Anachronis Eats. You just need a driver’s license.

It was the summer after my sophomore year and I needed a job to put a dent on my mounting student loans. I figured working at Anachronis Eats would be an opportunity for me to both make money as well as gain some familiarity with the new economy. For my first day on the job I was to sit shotgun with an experienced delivery driver who would show me the ropes. What’s to know? You get in a car, go through a temporal portal, subvert the time/space continuum to pick up some takeout from a restaurant that is no longer in business and bring it back to the present. What’s so complicated about that? While I waited for my trainer, I skimmed through the company’s delivery manual and familiarized myself with some of the industry terms.

A beat up Hyundai Sonata with the Anachronis Eats logo on the windshield pulled up to the curb blaring some Bro Hop Country. When I crawled into the front passenger seat I was immediately assaulted by the smell of dank pot and the spilt remains of food orders from defunct restaurants spanning decades.

“Hi, I’m Reggie,” I greeted.

The trainer gave me a chin nod. “Bo Nguyen. Hey. Did anyone tell you that you look like a young Donald Glover?” I was about to take it as a compliment until he added, “but fat.”

Our devices chimed with the first order of the evening. I flicked my wrist and the fiber optic light from my iPalm displayed the text onto my palm––I was still getting used to this new type of device while Bo pulled it up on his smartphone. It was an order for a large pepperoni and mushroom pizza from a restaurant called Mama Rosa’s, made sometime in 1985.

“Let’s use Prime Time,” Bo said. “ I got another stop there.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever works.”

I didn’t care which retail would be my first portal experience, I was just excited to finally get to travel back in time. I had taken an Introduction To The Temporal Integrity Act the previous semester, which addressed a wide spectrum of regulations governing the TPSPs, but I hadn’t ever shimmered through one of the portals. My excitement eroded after waiting in line for over thirty minutes. We were idling in one of the commercial lanes behind a Budweiser 18 wheeler that was exporting micro brews up in the 21 to the retail past. The truck would return with regular Budweiser, produced comparatively cheap in the retail and then sold here for today’s prices. The hastily drawn up Temporal Integrity Act tried to minimize the impact of trading products and services between the past and future, but there were a lot of loopholes. Case in point: since Budweiser was the same company both here in the 21 and in the retail past, they were simply moving their own product from one distribution location to another, thus bypassing the tariffs.

It was a Friday, the height of the weekend rush hour and the lanes were hardly moving. At this rate we’d be late. The woman placed the order to be delivered by…I looked at my iPalm and panicked.

“This can’t be!” I exclaimed. “She wants it before she ordered it!”

I wasn’t being figurative. The order was placed at 7:30PM and she wanted it delivered by 7:15 PM. Bo rolled his eyes and gave me a “you’re a moron” expression. And then I remembered.

“We have a preturn, don’t we?”

“Preturn,” an industry term, was an option to return to the relative present from the retail past before you left. The TPSPs added on a hefty fee for a preturn over the default return where your return date and time matched the time you were in retail. The preturn premium was like paying for first class over economy. That said, preturns were useful not only so you can get your pizza before you ordered it, it had other uses like when you’re running late for an interview or you realized you forgot your anniversary. It then occurred to me.

“Huh, that means we already returned, right?”

Bo nodded. “Yeah, I saw us drive out from the inbound lane a moment ago.”

“So, there’s two versions of us now––you and me here and a you and me who preturned delivering the pizza?”

“And they say college kids don’t learn anything useful.”

“Wow.” I was trying to grok the implications. “That’s… really disturbing!”

“What is?” Bo asked.

“The whole two versions of us right here, right now, each with his own sense of agency and awareness.”

Bo grimaced and slapped the steering wheel. “Damn it!”

“What?” I asked.

“I told them to stop hiring Philosophy majors.”

“I’m in Poli Sci, not Philosophy.” After a beat I asked, “Why? What’s wrong with Philosophy majors?”

Bo snorted “Bruh, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with them. I trained three Philosophy majors. One ended up having a nervous breakdown the first time he preturned. Another sued the company when he ran into his earlier self, and the third became radicalized in the retail by the Temporal Liberation Front.”

“Serious?”

“I don’t know what it is. Some people get all caught up with the...what was the word he used?...ontology of things. ‘What does it all mean?’ ‘Am I really me if he’s also me?’ ‘Am I just a memory of what I was?’ Blah blah blah...I swear, Philosophy majors make the worst temporal delivery drivers.”

“So how did the guy run into his earlier self?”

“It was an order mix up. He went to Kaldi’s to pick up a coffee order. Great coffee by the way. It’s a shame they closed. Anyway, as he approaches the shop, another him opens the door for him. Weird, right? But he soldiers on in, gets the order, returns to the 21, but then finds out that he picked up the wrong order. So he shimmers back to the same day and arrives a little earlier, picks up the right order this time and as he walks out he sees earlier him approaching and he opens the door for him. The moment he became the later him seeing earlier him, he remembered being the earlier him looking at later him and it bugged him out. The guy went all fetal. ’Did I choose to open the door?’ ’Could I have not opened it?.’ The Tokker sued Anachronis Eats, claiming it ‘assaulted his presumption of free will’.”

I rubbed my chin where my beard was coming in nicely. “Why didn’t later him just tell earlier him to pick up the correct order in the first place so he wouldn’t have to return to Kaldi’s?”

“Because, he was already later him.”

“Shit, you’re right! That would cause a paradox, wouldn’t it?”

“P’sha! And you don’t want to create one of those. I created a paradox once and had to pay a $150 fine to Disney Flux.”

I craned my neck, confused. “Wait, that’s all? I thought, well…doesn’t creating a paradox destroy reality or something horrible?”

Bo scoffed. “They say it puts strain on the quantum mainframe’s bandwidth and adds dark energy to the cosmos, but I say it’s just another excuse for the Big Three to nickel and dime us. $150 fine for one measly paradox? Come on!”

We sat while Bo’s smartphone streamed Phuc $tation, a Bro Hop Country group that gave evidence that artistry and commercial success were not the same thing when another thought occurred to me about that guy running into his earlier self.

“Would something weird happen if the me who just preturned shook my hand or something?”

Bo gave me a quizzical look. “You watch some weird sci fi shit, Reggie. Nah, Brah, nothing weird would happen. In fact, I know this one dude who works at Big Time who preturned to the same time twice just so he could have a threesome with himself.”

As we pulled up next in line to the Customs booth, I got a better view of the pedestrian lanes. Most of the outbound tourists were dressed in period costume ready to boogie for the weekend. There were some obvious “ deep eggs” in the mix, people from the distant future. They stood out from everybody else, literally. All of them were at least 6’3”, they had no hair, and they wore robes made from a shiny fabric like sharkskin. My guess is that they’re the result of genetic and cybernetic engineering. I had no idea how far in the future these eggs were from, only that they shimmered into our time from yet another portal. A few months ago, another TPSP named Orcon just sort of came to be next to the Hilton by the Riverwalk. Nobody knows who Orcon is. Unlike Amazon and Google who partnered with Pepsi-Cola and AT&T, Orcon doesn’t have a contemporary partner here. Yet Orcon seemed to operate without any interference from the government. We started seeing a bunch of deep eggs skulking around town last semester. They were bizarre. They didn’t do normal tourist things like go to Bourbon Street and debase themselves for cheap beads. Instead they went to grocery stores and bought up all the meat. I also heard they were also buying up property in Colorado.

We finally reached the Customs booth and the Customs officer leaned in.

“Hey Bo!”

“’Sup, Josh,” Bo replied and we offered our devices which he swiped to show our identity and delivery orders. “The newb here is Reggie.”

“Hey Reggie, welcome to the Prime Time portal.”

“Thanks.”

“Destination, March 15, 1985 7PM with a preturn to 6:40PM on today’s date,” Josh muttered and handed us a pad to sign with our fingers.

Amazon/Pepsi-Cola had the standard terms of service for use as laid out in the Temporal Integrity Act. All technology outside of our primary mobile device and Bo’s Hyundai were forbidden to shimmer back. “Scrubbing” intellectual property was forbidden such as claiming any concept, work of art or patent as our own. For example, you’re forbidden to go back to 1960 and start doing Beatles covers and claim them as your original work. “Biffing” was also prohibited––gambling on sporting events, investing, or furnishing any such information to another.

It was an attempt to maintain the purity of the past in each of the Big Three’s retail timelines, but the fact that there were three separate timelines with their own variations and the fact that none of my parents or grandparents grew up with temporal tourists running around tells you how ineffective the laws were at preventing temporal contamination.

Once we signed the pad, Josh handed us stickers. “Place these on your physical driver’s license to show your biological age. Just remember, you’re subject to the local laws,” he warned. “If you do get arrested, call the Amazon Pepsi-Cola legal 1-800 number to relay messages to whoever you need here. There is a $45 fee for relaying any messages.”

He handed us paper copies of the passes that were approved on our devices and we drove into the garage. There was a warning indicator overhead about a degausser and that anyone with a pacemaker should go through a manual search. According to the Anachronis Eats manual, the degausser demagnetizes media such as discs and tapes, things that used to record music and video. There was another sign warning: Possessing or distributing any media or other technology not specifically claimed outbound is a felony according to the Temporal Integrity Act under 18 USC 1795 and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

We parked at a dead end of the garage, Bo was still streaming Phuc $tation. There was a clock that counted down and when it hit zero, the concrete wall around us started to ripple, actually, it was more like a shimmer. The shimmering intensified and I felt light headed, but soon the shimmering dissipated and we were met with a gust of wind. I looked up and noticed the wall that was in front of us was now behind us. Overhead was an older digital display of the date and time: March 15, 1985 at 7:00 PM.

The stream Bo was playing mercifully ceased as there was no Wi-Fi in 1985. I heard Google/AT&T and Disney had established a number of hotspots in their retail timelines, but I think that was missing out on the experience. But what did I know?

We drifted down the garage where we were met by another Customs agent. “License and pass,” he ordered. He stamped our papers. “The stickers on your licenses show you’re both biologically old enough to drink as you’re both over 18. No drugs and no getting gay married or any of that future shit.”