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Fantasy Stories

Midnight at the Quantum Cafe

Written by K. D. Wentworth

Illustrated by DT Yang

The torrid summer air tasted of industrial sludge as I stood ankle-deep in the rubble at the edge of the street and gazed into the darkness. A car rolled by, its occupants skittish and silent, then I caught the acrid stench of smoke. Somewhere, not too far away, Chicago was burning again.

My heart lifted. When this reality was at its nastiest, I always felt there was a slight edge in my favor. Foolish, I know. With each roll of the universe's proverbial dice, the probability of any particular outcome remains the same, but a man grasps at whatever straw glimmers before him, and I thought if I went to the cafe often enough, I might find another Marissa, one just different enough from the one who left to still love me.

I hurried down into the nearest station, took the next train, its gang-marks worked in fanciful chartreuse, and got off two stops to the south where the air tasted of ketones and shimmered like a veil even a few feet away. I stepped out of the car, eyes stinging, shoved my hands in my pockets to create the illusion I was carrying, and waded through discarded paper wrappers and beer bottles up the stairs to the street.

No use hurrying, I tried to persuade myself as I turned my face east. Either it would be there, or it wouldn't. No variable I could introduce would make any difference.

I rounded the corner and squinted down the block as I had so many times before. The haze refracted the glow of each street lamp into a nimbus of light so that I seemed to be standing inside a nebula and could make nothing out from more than ten feet away. Drops condensed on my cheeks. Tiny bursts of electricity tingled against my skin. The air trembled as though afraid.

Transition, I thought. The cafe was either coming or going.

From behind, a pair of brutish Otts shouldered me into the bricks as they passed. Their hide gleamed blue in the uncertain light; their eyes were black pits. Crimson jewels had been implanted into their elongated skulls, more scintillating than any mere ruby. They snarled as they passed, baring jagged yellow fangs, but did not strike. I had not been so fortunate on other nights. I rubbed a scar on my ribs through my shirt and slowed to let them get well ahead.

Otts hail from some other unimaginable Earth where evolution evidently took a hellish turn, or perhaps alien invasion repopulated the planet at some point. Either way, they disdain humans, whatever the variety. I could only hope enough of them hadn't gotten through to crowd the rest of us out tonight.

It always seems to be midnight at the cafe. Why it doesn't manifest anywhere during the day has been the subject of much discussion amongst the regular patrons, but Jaeko, the bartender, never volunteers any answers. Dressed in a worn leather jacket, he stumps back and forth behind the bar, reminiscent of a marmot crossed with an ape. His black eyes, bright with an old wisdom, blink in that hairy face of his and he serves another round of drinks, never what you ordered, but always some concoction that does what you need.

Electric pink gleamed through the haze, then I caught a green so bright, it seared an afterimage into the retina, neon lights spelling out letters in some language I've never been able to decipher. The cafe was within reach, at least for the moment. One can never be sure until it is observed. The act of conscious attention somehow opens a passageway when conditions are right. In hundreds of other locations on alternate Earths, the cafe also existed tonight because someone like me had looked up and seen it.

The double doors swung open at my approach and two women, eight feet or more tall, swept through. Their spiky hair was the gaudy pink of roses, their cheeks pierced with glittering brass symbols of rank. They walked arm in sinewy arm with long sleek weapons slung across their broad shoulders.

Rammats from a savage world of violent warrior cultures. I stepped aside and bowed my head and they let me live, one more time.

The air drifting out the double doors had a subtle spice I'd smelled before, familiar, though I couldn't place it. I remembered how bewildered I'd been on my first encounter, the strangeness of the speech and dress, the bizarre foods, the predominance of nonhuman life-forms. I'd left my apartment earlier that evening, feeling restless and lonely, then caught sight of a woman who looked like my lost love, Marissa, and followed her down street after dark street, until we both turned a corner and suddenly the cafe was there, garish against the black night sky.

There was no sign of Marissa, if that was really who I'd been following, so thinking she'd gone in, I entered myself, then slunk into a shadowy corner and stared until Jaeko brought me a seething blue drink and patiently fit my trembling fingers around the glass. It had been hot, not cold, and tasted like sugared formaldehyde, but after a few sips I could string thoughts together again.

"Firs nigh?" Jaeko leaned on my table, propping one hairy arm over the other. His vocal apparatus, though capable of speech, has difficulty shaping final phonemes.

I nodded, still shaking, then let another sip burn down my throat.

"Jus keep you head down," he said with a wink of his surprisingly humanlike eye. "No one ever bother a firs nighter unless he get out of line." He raised a slim black rifle from its hiding place below the counter, then slid it back out of sight again. "Nex time, though, you got you own bac."

With that sage advice, I watched the bewildering parade of customers in silks, leathers, naked blue hide, and armor, even a few who could have been from my own Earth, who glanced at me with indifferent eyes, then looked away.

I stayed for hours, but no Marissa appeared, not even someone who resembled her slightly. When I finally summoned the courage to try to leave, I'd feared I was trapped there forever, but then walked right back into the shabby, vandalized remnants of my own gang-ruled Chicago.

The next night I came back and found only a burned-out building that had once held a pharmacy. Broken glass crunched beneath my shoes as I walked up and down, looking for some sign the cafe had ever been here.

I stayed away for a month after that, convinced I'd hallucinated the whole episode, but then, on a glacial December evening, when ice crystals stung my face and the brutal wind sledgehammered out of the north across the lake, I walked that way again and saw the pink and green letters gleaming through the darkness like an overpriced strumpet on the stroll.

That was the night I first encountered Alont. I was sitting at the long curving black bar, staring down at the reflection of my face in a spill, when the noise died. I turned and a woman stood framed in the double arch of the doorway, taller than most men, straight in a way models only dreamed of being, her hair and eyes both an intense orange. I'd never seen anyone more different from my sweet wife, Marissa.

A raw, half-healed scar snaked down her temple and cheek. She wore silver-gray leather harness on her upper body that concealed nothing, along with a worn belt and knife sheath at her waist. Those audacious orange eyes flicked over me and moved on.

Jaeko nodded as she passed, drawing stares in her wake as a magnet draws iron. "Alont," he said. "Big trouble. My advice: Fin a rock and bash you head in instea. Less painful."

Hell, most of what walked in that door looked like trouble. I picked up my drink, something pungent and lukewarm, reminiscent of spoiled lemonade laced with antifreeze. A body slid onto the stool next to me and naked skin pressed against my trousered thigh. Heat pooled between us like a lava flow. I shivered.

"Hey there, Rafe," she said, somehow knowing my name. "How's it hanging?"

I looked up, startled. Orange eyes gleamed at me like twin suns. My mouth gaped as I tried to think of something to say, then a hand seized my coat from behind and jerked me off onto the tile floor. I hit my head and sprawled there, blinking up at the ceiling, while a kunj soldier in dull-brown combat gear stepped over me and sat in my place with the clank of metal.

"Hullo, Alont," he said, his voice the deep subsonic rumble of a bull elephant. Black smudges gleamed beneath blue eyes.

"Shag off," she said in what sounded vaguely like an Australian accent. "I got no time for hair-faces."

"What about that?" He turned around and kicked me in the stomach. I gagged and belatedly crawled out of reach.

"That there's fresh meat," she said as I fought to breathe. "You, you're just last week's kill."

"Not too dead for you," he said, "as I recall." He ran a hand over that creamy expanse of naked thigh.

She drew a rippled blade and sliced two of his fingers off with no more fuss than if she were swatting an insect. They dropped close to my face on the floor, curled like question marks. "I said, shag off."

Blood fountained as, with a cry, he staggered away, staring at the stumps. She turned back to the bar and shoved three small black triangles at Jaeko.

He nodded and hobbled back to the rows of bottles to concoct something. Alont reached down with one hand and plucked me off the floor by my shirt. "I been to your world," she said, settling me back on the stool as though I weighed nothing. "Couple a times."

Something clicked in my left ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a snub-nosed gun aimed at Alont and jerked back.

She twitched, then her knife bloomed in the soldier's right eye like a steel flower. He fell backwards and lay spread-eagled on the tile. Red pooled around his head like some hellish crimson lake and the coppery stink of blood filled the air. His mouth gaped open as though he wanted to ask something.

The hairy bartender was now wielding the slim black rifle he'd shown me on the my first night. I got a better look this time. It seemed to be made of ceramic. Two bright red jewels pulsed at its business end as though about to fire. "Tha wil be doubl, for the mess," he said levelly. "Don't get your knickers in a twist," Alont said and dumped a handful of black triangles on the bar. "Rules say I'm allowed to finish what someone else starts. Won't go no further, boyo." She turned back to me. "You ever slip into 'nother world?" I noticed a bruise on her jaw and livid finger tracks on her throat.

"Uh, no," I managed around the pain in my gut. "I didn't know it was even possible."

"Is," she said. "All them other worlds is out there too, every time you leave, but you have to learn the trick of seeing them, 'stead of your own."

"It's hard enough just to get here," I said.

She wiped the bloody knife on my shirt, then slid it back into the sheath at her waist with an air of abstraction as though, like breathing, it required no attention. "I can show you."

"Thanks, but I'll pass," I said as two salivating Otts dragged the carcass behind us away. What they were going to do with it, I didn't want to know, any more than I wanted to see the brutish worlds my fellow customers hailed from.

Grinning, Alont seized the back of my coat and hustled me outside. The double doors swung closed behind us and I stood shivering in the bitter wind, tethered in her grip like an errant poodle. The night sky glittered above us, an river of dark-blue ice.

"You was beginning to look a bit soft around the edges," she said. The biting wind whipped her orange hair across the scar on her cheek. "Means 'nother you is close. Not good to hang out in there too long. Lots of you scattered through all them worlds. Spend too much time in that damned cafe, one comes along and—bam! The two of you might overlap like old Jaeko."

I subtly tried to free myself without success. "He didn't always look like that?"

She looked around, as though searching. "Used to be downright pretty. I danced him in the back room couple of times before he forgot to go home one night and got himself thoroughly spliced."

Had Jaeko once been human, then? The nape of my neck prickled with dread.

"Now, you, you're not pretty," she said, "but I'd hate to see you spliced all the same." She turned, looking over my head, her orange eyes intent. "There!"

I followed her gaze and saw a glimmer of white headlights in the murky air. "What?"

"'Nother world," she said. "Not mine. We don't have them sort of groundcars. They'd get smashed inside a day, tops."

As we watched, an elongated, glimmering green car swept toward us through the shadows. Judging by its sleek lines, it was not from my world either. Two passengers sat inside, but neither seemed to be driving. Their faces were illuminated pale blue by the interior lights. Absorbed in conversation, they didn't seem to notice us.

"I recognize the clothes," Alont said. "Soft sort of place. Been there a few times. They talk nice enough, but got no bottom."

"What's your world like?" Crystallized breath hung around us like a fog. Shivering overtook me and I fought to keep my teeth from chattering. Was it this cold on all the worlds tonight?

"Tough," she said, then grinned so that the scar on her face stood out. "No one on my world takes guff off no one." She stared up at the sky. "No one lives too long either. You just do what you want while you can."

I tucked my rapidly numbing hands under my arms. "So why do you come here?"

"Why do you?" Her eyes mirrored the frosty stars above. "I always ask you that. Figure one of you might actually be able to tell me some night."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "We've never met before."

"Not this you and me," she said.

Two Otts burst through the door and stared at us. Alont threw back her head and snarled, brandishing me like a weapon in her left hand, her knife in her right. Hanging there, I did my best to look fierce as well.

They hesitated, then dropped their eyes and moved on. She followed them with her savage gaze, bare breasts heaving. Her teeth gleamed pink and green in the light from the cafe's neon. "Too bad," she said as the pair disappeared into the darkness. "A tussle would've cleared my head right nice."

"Yeah," I said and this time did manage to extract my arm from her grip. My heart pounded as I backed away. "What fun."

She stepped into the hazy night and was gone, as though between one step and the next, a light had been extinguished. I followed, but found myself instead in the smoldering rubble of my own Chicago.

Tonight, almost two years later, I didn't see Alont when I pushed through the doors. After the suffocating summer heat of my world, it was cool inside, as though the depths of winter were just a few feet away. Jaeko's hairy form was behind the bar, looking more human than usual.

"She's not here," he said, mopping at an invisible spill on the bar's gleaming black surface. His words were much clearer too, in keeping with his improved appearance.

"I'm not looking for her, or anyone else, for that matter," I said and slipped onto my usual bar stool. "I just want a drink."

"Sure," he said. His eyes, bright with some emotion, perhaps disbelief, flicked to the door, then back.

Did other versions of me come here sometimes, I wondered, looking for Alont, or fighting with Otts? Did I leave my blood as a scarlet offering on the floor some nights? Maybe in other worlds I was tougher or smarter. Maybe in other lives, I had something important to do and someone still to love.

Jaeko brought me a hot, bitter concoction, which reeked of sage like Thanksgiving dressing. I let a sip burn down my throat.

Then it seemed suddenly, as though I remembered another life, one without hostile, disinterested students and gangs and rubble, one in which a stainless-steel-and-glass Chicago gleamed under the sun and impeccably dressed people hurried to work. I was one of those people, confident and assured. I carried a briefcase, talked with an elegant woman who walked along on my arm, had friends . . . associations . . . prospects . . .

I blinked and shuddered, mired in someone else's life. Where had that come from?

Jaeko seized the glass out of my hand. "Time to go," he said briskly. "Pay up and hit the road."

"But I'm not finished!" I said as he dumped the steaming contents of my glass down the sink.

Three Rammats strode past, their long dirty hair clicking with beads, the last one bleeding from the shoulder. Her blood was curiously dark, almost purple, but perhaps that was only the cafe's lights. Over in the corner, someone, or something, sat down at an unfamiliar instrument, a bit like an oversized vacuum cleaner, and played music born of no tonal scale ever favored by humans. The raw notes battled with one another and scraped my already bruised nerves.

"Go!" Jaeko said and motioned an ungainly waiter with the face of a toad over to a side table with a tray of spoiled-looking food.

"I'm not ready," I said and dug a few wrinkled bills out of my pocket. "Look, I haven't been here for weeks. You can't be tired of my company already."

In the back, someone was smoking a substance that smelled like burning plastic. My eyes began to sting as the red smoke feathered along the ceiling.

"Terrible night," Jaeko said without meeting my gaze. "Trouble all round. Come back some other time."

"If I leave, I may not get back for months," I said. "You know that."

"Not exactly the worst that could happen." His hairy ears twitched.

The black doors quivered, then Alont walked in, but she was different, her orange hair cropped short, her face unscarred. She wore long robes of flowing red, a hood pushed back on her shoulders. A kunj soldier took one look at her, then edged away as she flung herself into a chair at one of the tables and stared down at clenched hands.

"New look," I said and slipped into the chair next to her.

"Shag off," she said and her hand darted to the sheath on her belt.

"Whatever you say." My chair scraped across the tile as I stood and retreated out of reach. The memory of severed fingers danced behind my eyes. "Have you been in one of those other worlds you were telling me about?"

She looked at me sharply. "You and me've talked before?"

"A bit."

"Some of me do that sometimes," she said, "talk to fricking strangers. Don't know why."

"Just friendly, I guess." An Ott with blood on its face peeked out of the back room, grinned at me savagely, then withdrew.

"I shouldn't waste time on hair-faces," she said. "Got too much to do."

I studied her weary face, the bloodshot orange eyes that gleamed in the dimness, maps of someplace I wouldn't want to venture. "Like what?"

"You're real nosey," she said and drew her knife. At least it was the same, the metal rippled and evil looking.

"Sorry," I said and found a small round table set back in the shadows. Maybe Jaeko was right and I should leave. Tonight wasn't looking promising. Only the thought of my boring, cramped, empty apartment kept me from heading back.

Two Lobos burst through the doors, their faces painted gray and black to mimic wolves, their eyes as feral as anything that ever bayed at the moon. I looked away. In the way of the cafe, if I didn't see them, then maybe they weren't really here.

Feet shuffled, then a hand seized my shoulder and artificial claws bit through my shirt. I jerked to my feet, warm blood trickling down my ribs.

"Howl much, brother?" a voice rasped in my ear.

"Sure," I said, rigid with pain, "every night, just like clockwork."

The claws tightened and agony shimmered through my brain like sheet lightning, white and fierce. I tried to twist free, but the claws only tightened in my torn flesh.

"I don't think so," another voice said, higher, female, probably. "He don't look to have the knack."

Something cold sniffed the nape of my unprotected neck. My skin crawled. "L-look," I said, "I don't want trouble. Just tell me what you want!"

"A good hunt." The female's breath was hot and moist against my bare skin. "But you don't look like the one as could give it to us."

"Oh, that there fellow's soft as mallow," Alont said. "That all you're up to?"

"You got something else in mind then?" The male cast me against the hard edge of a table, where I sank to the floor, winded and trembling.

Above, Alont's rippled knife gleamed in the cafe's dim lights. "Come ahead and find out!"

The three of them stared into one another's eyes, hackles raised, noses twitching. The Lobos weren't just painted fools, I suddenly realized. There was more of the true animal in them than I had ever credited. Obviously, I never looked closely enough all those times I'd encountered one here. I gathered my knees to my chest and shivered.

The Lobos glanced aside, then backed up in tandem until they reached the doors.

Alont crinkled her eyes and laughed until the pair turned and fled. "They always do that," she said, reaching down to pull me to my feet. "Got no bottom, if you just stand up to them."

"I guess I n-need to come armed, then," I said, my teeth chattering with reaction. Cold sweat glued my shirt to my back. "I'll do better next time."

"What you need, bucko, is to stay out of here, if you can't take care of yourself," she said. "This here's no playpen."

Jaeko emerged from behind the bar long enough to shove a glass of something cold and blue into my hand. I threw back my head and downed half in a single gulp. Molten ice seeped into my shattered nerves and eased my shaking, chasing the pain of my clawed shoulder before it.

"Your world's too soft," she said. "Hell, you're too soft. This place is not for the likes of you."

"Then I'll have to toughen up," I said and sat down heavily at the bar, staring at my hands around the glass. Jaeko snorted and turned away to stock bottles out of surprisingly mundane-looking cardboard boxes on the floor. "I bet you didn't have it so easy the first few times you found your way to the cafe either."

"This? This here's nothing," she said and resheathed her knife. "Fact is folk from my world come here to relax."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot," I said. "Your world is so terrible, much worse than this." I tipped the last of my icy blue drink down my throat.

"You want to see bad?" she said and seized my arm.

"Hey!" I tried to pry her hand off.

"Come on, then. I'll show you!" She dragged me backwards off the stool and out the double doors.

Outside, the black night sky shimmered red and gold, like some mad aurora borealis. I struggled to free myself, but Alont just laughed, her coarse orange hair flying in the wind, and marched me onward as though disciplining an errant child.

"It changes, you know," she said, "every time one of you lot comes through the door. You bring the Lobos and the Otts, and even me, when you decide to see us. We don't just come here on our own."

My shoulder ached as I dug my heels in and managed to slow her down. "I do not!"

"It's the nature of this fricking place." She released my shirt and stood back, hands on her solid hips. "Everyone who walks in changes it."

I looked around. The ruined buildings I'd expected to see were gone. The dark horizon was flat and remote, unimpeded by construction of any kind. Overhead, a black shape swept through the sky like a bird, but far too large. I shivered even though it was hot. We weren't in my Chicago. Just a few steps beyond the cafe's doors, she'd forced me into unknown country. How did she keep doing that? Overhead, rose and green streamers intertwined like snakes and danced across the sky. "Where are we?"

"In the place I made." She blinked up at the unseen stars. "I didn't mean to, anymore than you meant to make yours, but I didn't know any better back when I started out."

The black shape banked and turned toward us. Alont drew her knife and stared upwards with a fierce joy. "Nasty creatures about—got to be careful here."

The air was cleaner than my world's, filled with unfamiliar woody scents. My heart was racing as the eerie lights overhead reflected from her knife. "How do I get back?"

"Open your eyes and decide to see it," she said, her own gaze fixed on the dark flyer. The wind picked up and swirled her tattered red robes around those long, bare legs.

"See what?"

"Whatever you want." With a sharp screel, whatever-it-was angled its wings and plummeted toward us like a stone.

I swore and fell to my knees, arms over my head. "Get us the hell out of here!"

"Do it yourself," she said. "Me, I fancy a good fight!"

The cafe still lay behind me, I realized. I lurched back onto my feet and fled toward its familiar face. Inside, a trio of Otts were quarreling over a bloodied body that looked a bit like Jaeko, but he was still unpacking bottles behind the bar.

He nodded his hairy head, his eyes gone red this time, where before they'd been black. His human aspect had faded. "Troubl, tha one," he lisped. "Didn I tel you?"

I slid onto the stool and tucked my hands under my arms, unable to stop shaking. Jaeko was right. I really had to stop coming to this place. With a sudden strong pang, I wanted to go home, but feared what might lie beyond those swinging doors.

"Go hom, Raf," Jaeko said. "Haven you had enough fo one nigh?"

The doors opened again and a man stood framed in the blackness of the night outside. He was of middle stature and clearly human with wavy brown hair tousled by the wind, puzzled hazel eyes, a deeply wrinkled brow. A battered briefcase was clasped under one arm. He turned to scan the room and I could see someone had scratched a gang sign into the black leather with the careless tip of a knife. I remembered that day, the briefcase lying on my desk, my back turned for just a second as I wrote on the board, then the burst of laughter that filled the classroom.

"Too lat." Jaeko shook his head and reached for a damp cloth. "Shoul hav lef when I said." He raised his