Robert slipped into the liminal void. Then he waited for a few minutes and was ejected from it. He entered again, spent a few seconds, and left. He repeated it several times, making poses as he went back and forth. After several repetitions, he sighed. Taking the recording crystal, he tapped it to the side of the TV set and navigated the menus to play the recorded video.
With the advent of rifts and Ether, the science and technology of old Earth went to shit. Quantum mechanics, electronics, heck, some scholars even said electrons no longer existed. Lightning did, but it was magical energy traveling from point A to point B. Earth had moved to an upper state of existence. Conservation of energy was totally broken when a wisp could enter your sealed system and make a mess of everything. Some conjectured that if you considered the several stacked dimensions, you could still measure the energy and find it remains constant, but others said that the stacked dimensions were infinite.
What Robert knew was that he was now living in a one hundred times time frame as compared to others, and he was blatantly violating causality by using the liminal void as means of instantaneous transportation. He was teleporting around without displacing air. Going into the liminal void and exiting in another spot was completely soundless. If two hundred pounds (ninety kilograms) of depressed writer were to suddenly vanish, air would move in to fill the vacuum with a loud pop. Reappearing on another spot would also displace air but that's not what the recording crystal picked up. He had even left some streamers hanging near where he vanished and reappeared, but the ribbons of cloth remained dead still.
So, the verdict was that magic was bullshit and trying to understand it was a massive waste of time. Even having one hundred times more time than other people, Robert wasn't willing to figure out what was going on with air. Call it anything you want. Magic bullshit, a wizard did it, shenanigans. What concerned Robert was to confirm the stuff was real and if he tried to use his power in a place with even the faintest chance he was being observed, he would need to be incredibly careful.
Big fat chance of that remaining a secret for too long. He would need to measure his pose when he entered the liminal void, to go back to the same spot in the exact same position as he exited. One, he didn't have that kind of coordination and memory, and two, he had no idea when he would leave the liminal void. It's not like he could set an alarm for when he entered, count the seconds without working clocks, and all that stuff.
Speaking of alarms, he now decided that he would set an alarm for the next ten seconds every time he went to the liminal void to sleep. That way, he would wake up the moment he left the void, even if he would remain asleep.
Another hard rule he set for himself was to enter the liminal void whenever possible. Keeping the visits "short", or not lasting days or months, was the best bet to keep himself sane. Considering he would be away for the time people took to play a game of soccer for every minute or so was still overwhelming.
If only he could use that time to write. But he left his computing crystal, what went for personal computers these days, back home. The insurance company surely had seized it. He had all his data saved on a data crystal on his person but no way to access and manipulate the files. A new computing crystal would cost him a fifth of his remaining cash.
And judging by how nervous he got just from thinking about writing, he wouldn't have any use for such an expensive item.
"I should go and buy the stuff I need to move into the void," he mused.
*
*
Robert went to the twenty-fourth district to do his shopping. He didn't want to pay the prices shops on the more affluent districts charged.
"Welcome to Charat Hypermarket," the smiling cashier said with a tired voice as Robert approached the checkout. "If you put your items in the conveyor belt, I'll scan them immediately."
Her smile didn't go all the way to the eyes. The eyes who had bags underneath them. The cashier's nametag read "Jenny."
"Thank you, Jenny. Are you okay?"
"Peppy as a puppy," she replied with a white lie. She looked and sounded miserable. A very miserable gothic puppy.
Beep, beep.
Robert noticed the slump on her shoulders. And decided it wasn't his business. He started to put items on the conveyor belt as the droning beep of the barcode scanner drummed on his ears.
Beep, beep.
"You are buying this much stuff?" Jenny asked after the second cart. "Would you want to pack your purchase in boxes rather than plastic bags?"
Beep, beep.
Robert blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You walked in from the street access, not the parking lot. It will be hard to carry all this stuff on foot."
Beep, beep.
He hadn't thought that further. "Yes, boxes it is."
Jenny sighed again, stared at a portrait on the wall, then shouted, "Charles, get over here!"
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Robert somehow expected her to shoot a harpoon at Charles, but the young man approached on his own. He followed her gaze. it was an employee of the month portrait. "Freddy Stern", he read, vocalizing between his teeth.
Beep, beep.
"The crazy asshole got fired," Jenny rambled. "Good riddance but now I have to work the day shift."
She really didn't look like a morning dove.
Beep, beep.
"Can you believe he started a fight with a client over a two-dollar pack of cookies?" She went on her own. "The old lady got over a hundred dollars in coupons."
Beep, beep.
"You don't have any coupons, do you?" Jenny gasped. "Oh! You are not one of those crazy hoarders that attempt to drive the price of a huge purchase down to cents because you have a spreadsheet and dozens of coupons, do you?"
Beep, beep.
Robert checked the total of his purchases so far. He could afford it. "No, not really. I have no coupons on me."
Jenny sighed with relief. Robert entered the liminal void and sat on the ground. He had to burn his void timeout debt to keep it from growing too big.
Beep, beep.
"I got the boxes," Charles returned.
"Get to packing. The tray is almost overflowing," Jenny barked.
Robert finished unloading the first shopping cart, pulled it to the side. He glanced behind him. The checkout line was full of grumpy faces and scowls. He still had four carts to unload.
Beep, beep.
A middle-aged man approached. He wore a better version of the uniform Jenny and Charles wore and had that manager feeling around him.
"Is everything alright, Jenny?"
"Peppy as a puppy, Mr. Jason, sir," Jenny replied with her catchphrase.
Beep, beep.
If Jenny was an Arch, her power was to multitask and scan things with her hands while half her brain slept and the other half managed the social interactions.
Jason watched the items Robert was buying. Then he stared at the checkout line and counted the happy faces. Zero. The other checkout lanes were empty. Right now, only Jenny was working the checkout. "Ether-damned bastard," Jason grumbled. "Just because he found a passage, he thought he could suddenly..."
Beep, beep, groan.
Jenny's vocalization joined the manager's as they berated the former employee. Probably that Freddy guy.
"You have coupons for this purchase?" Jason asked Robert. "I can help process them if you do."
Beep, beep.
"No coupons here," Robert replied.
"How are you paying for all this?"
Were they trying to help him or get rid of him? Or were they suspecting him of some shenanigans? Robert's clothes weren't that bad or smelly, were they?
"Cash? You accept cash, don't you?" Robert asked, putting a bit of weight on his voice.
Beep, beep.
"You're paying for all this with cash?"
"Yes. Not real cash, though. I want to use my debit card."
Jason's mood shifted a bit. The manager smiled. "Good, good." He flagged the bag boy, "Charles, can you do a cashier's work?"
Charles dropped a bag of rice. It split and scattered rice everywhere. No beeps came from the barcode scanner as Jenny stopped to stare at the young bag boy.
"I can, sir!" Charles beamed. For the bag boy, it was his first opportunity at a promotion.
Jason groaned. The shoppers behind Robert started to prepare to rush into the new checkout line that was about to open.
"Then go man the checkout five while I get a replacement rice bag," Jason said and turned to Robert, "I'm sorry, sir."
"No problem," Robert replied.
The race was on. Everyone tried to reach checkout five at the same time. Shopping carts crashed; people started to yell at each other.
"Can we resume scanning the items?" Robert asked Jenny. The woman was staring at the shopping cart crash as if it was a train wreck.
"Sure," she said with a startle.
Beep, beep.
Jason unlocked the cash register for Charles and vanished between the aisles full of groceries. That Freddy guy, he was surely missed as much as he was hated in that supermarket.
*
*
Understaffed, it fell to Jason to help Robert move all the boxes of groceries away from the checkout station so other shoppers could get on with their day.
"Do you have a car?' Jason the manager asked. "Thanks for your purchase, by the way."
Robert bought almost five figures worth of groceries. All the items on sale he could find and then some.
"No, not really. I live close by," Robert answered.
The stack, no, pyramid of cardboard boxes was as tall as them.
"If you want, I can ask one of our delivery trucks to ship them, as a courtesy."
"Let me try something," Robert said. "Stack boxes on my arms until I tell you to stop."
Jason placed four.
Robert then balanced his stance, tried to memorize the position of his limbs and feet on the floor. Jason looked away and Robert seized that moment to enter the liminal void.
There, he emptied the boxes on the sidewalk outside the supermarket, then returned to the same position as before, carrying the now empty boxes. Next, he waited until it was time to leave the void. Then when color returned to the world, he placed the boxes to the side, studying Jason's reaction carefully. When Jason didn't look surprised or anything.
"Do you have packing tape? I think some of these boxes might open," Jason requested.
"Sure, we have tons of tape. Let me go get some for you."
With Jason gone, Robert started going through the boxes. He would grab a stack, go empty them in the void, then pile them up on the side. By the time Jason came back with a spool of packing tape, Robert was almost done absconding with his groceries in the liminal void. Jason was watching Charles scan the customers' items like a hawk.
"May I?" Robert extended a hand.
"Sure, you can keep the spool too." Jason said.
"I bet you are busy, running a shop this size," Robert said.
"You can't imagine. And it all got worse when I had to fire one of my employees."
"The employee of the month guy?" Robert asked.
"Yes, Freddy. Was a cool kid, hardworking, never caused much trouble. Then all of a sudden, he stumbled upon this passage and changed completely. The guy became arrogant, started to mistreat the customers, I had to let him go."
"A passage?"
"Yes, the big one nearby. They blocked a whole district. And now dozens of Archs of all guilds and government officials are delving into it. This is supposed to be a huge thing. The world on the other side, it wasn't new but people had to go through a maze of passages to reach it. Now, all they have to do is to take a step in the right place."
Jason rubbed his brow. "I thought it would be good for business, you know? More traffic around us, more customers, but it was the opposite. Those Archhumans, they don't care about the little guy. The supermarket is for mortals, they get their fancy Arch food and fancy Arch sundries elsewhere. Where everything costs ten or a hundred times more than our prices! And the cherry on top is that my best employee gets so traumatized in that passage he starts using drugs and goes mad."
"Can't find more employees?"
"It's hard. People around these parts don't want the jobs, and the people on district nineteen have to go around the passage if they want to work here. The distance is too far. Worse, they are forcing people out of their homes because the buildings are going to be demolished and rebuilt to accommodate the people working in that other realm and all sorts of administrative jobs. I fear this supermarket is at its death throes."
Gentrification was a bitch. The rope snapped always in the little guy’s hands.
"I am sorry for your predicament," Robert said.
"Say, do you want a job?" Jason said, half of it in jest.