Expediting in a To Go service was like any other job— stretches of frantic activity with longer stretches at boredom.

Or it was like that at my own place. Maybe a larger store would have more franticness. Or frantic boredom, somehow. When it was busy, you were overwhelmed. And when it was not busy, it was tedious, and you were looking for shit to do to look busy.

Right now, it was somewhere in the middle.

We had nineteen orders for the day, total. These orders would keep us busy, but hardly for long.

In fact, if it wasn’t for my frequency triggers, which seemed to somehow quicken the process of shopping, I would have taken my time in the morning. Really drag out the order picking, the shopping “tours,” as they were called. But I didn’t have a choice in the matter and boom, a solid quarter of the order sections were shopped by the time I had to switch to expediting.

It was eight-thirty at the moment and I had orders to audit.

I had already completed a few, but I still had a few more. If I were the closing expediter, I would spend all day auditing orders when not taking them out to customers. Tedious in the extreme, and though I often was given the closing shift, I relished every day that I did not have to close.

In order to audit, one first had to print off the paperwork for the completed order. I clicked on the Order Dashboard— what I was primarily looking at all day— and just made sure that the order sections— Center Store, Dairy / Frozen, and Fresh— were all green; if they were, then the order was completed and it would “fall” into the “Staged Orders” tab, where I could send the customer the email if their order had any substitutions, and then print off the form paperwork. This was the bread and butter of the expediter. Complicated? Maybe, at first, but it quickly, like any job’s expectations, became rudimentary. And I was way past a newbie at this shit.

Humming, the printer did its job and I soon had a whole bevvy of paperwork. Dividing the orders onto their own clipboard, I then highlighted the relevant information on each other— name, pick-up time, order ID, and estimated total. And if their order contained any alcoholic beverages.

With the paperwork sorted into their proper hour, now was the time where I had to begin systematically checking the staging shelves— where the groceries for every order was kept. As I marked off every order, I was also checking for bag weight, extra parcel— indicative of a shopper not properly multi-bagging— and bags from other orders not where they are supposed to be; once all that was done, I would need to grab any produce bins and weigh in the produce to the order, since shoppers could not simply scan such items with their handhelds. At that point, a few scans later, and bam, I was done with the order audit.

Rinse and repeat for every order, every day, up to thirty-five orders per day.

I was wondering how this auditing business was going to work in first-person, but it turns out, very easily, was the answer.

With my orders printed— my actual human limbs still being able to function normally as my kiosk was right in front of me— I felt a twinge in the back of my head. Frequency trigger. I indulged it and found myself gliding through the stacks, ticking off parcel staging locations on my orders and answering questions shoppers and customers had with a direct conciseness that, honestly, I normally lacked. What was happening to me?

Whatever was happening to me, I was sure that Felix could answer it. But even if he couldn’t, I was positive that the answer would reveal itself sooner or later. For now, I resolved to just enjoy the ride: yeah, everything was this strange two-dimensional strip sort of superimposed on the three-dimensional world, but hey, it made work bearable. So it had its up sides.

Ring-ring-ring! Ring-ring-ring!

A customer had arrived for pick-up, their herald being the screaming telephone.

I picked up the phone and said, “Thank you for calling Augustford To Go, how may I help you?”

“Uh, hi, I am here to pick up my order,” the voice on the other end said.

“Absolutely. What is the name on your order?” I hated it when they didn’t give me their name right away. Fuck. You think I am psychic or something?

“Oh, ah, Kim.”

Kim. How odd you don’t have a last name. Oh, wait, the paperwork has your last name. I guess your full name was not something relevant to share with the person trying to sort through orders to find your own. Interesting. But, of course, I did not say that as much as I would have liked.

Quickly searching the metal organizers that was magnetically pinned to either side of the kiosk’s interior, I quickly found Kim-Kim’s order. First and last name the same? Had to be a made up name she used to place orders. Well, whatever.

“Ah, here you are. And where are you parked today, ma’am?” I said extra nice, as if that would make up for my private interior rudeness.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Spot number four.”

“Excellent. Did you receive your substitution email?”

A moment of silence. “Uh, sorry?”

Fuck me.

Ever since early childhood, I had pronunciation issues. With some early intervention speech therapy and slowing my roll on enunciating, my speech had improved. And yet, even in my early-thirties, I had my moments where certain words tripped me up. That and my inability to decide on generic customer greetings, which sometimes resulted in me trying to say both greetings; which, of course, ended up with me just blabbering out nonsense. That and sometimes I talked too fast, which seemed to be the issue here.

I repeated myself, making sure that my tone remained polite, and didn’t (essentially) belittle the customer. “Your sub-sti-tu-tion email?” I said just a tad slowly, being careful to sound out each part of the word.

“Oh, yes! Those are all fine.”

“Awesome. I will be out with your order shortly.”

I put down the phone, still an old cord one, and hit the Save / Recall button on the terminal. I scanned the receipt that had been the result from the audit, and like magic, the entire order was brought into the register. I gathered up the parcels, the bags and items, all through a single trigger, brought them into the cart. I returned to the POS (Point of Sale) terminal and hit the Online Payment button, which officially charged them for their order.

I donned a simply yellow safety vest and out the door I went. But before I stepped foot out the door, man, trippy . . .

I kept telling myself how profoundly strange this first person perspective was in this new partially dimensional framework. Because even though I felt a frequency trigger in the back of my mind, a trigger that I knew would take me to my recently loaded cart and allow me to bring the order out to the customer, before I took the trigger, the world was so limited. Doing my best to glance and shift my head just so in the direction of the cart, I found it nearly impossible; I could see the slight edge, but that was it. Once I indulged the trigger, it was like I was a robot: I mechanically shifted on my feet, took a couple of steps to the cart, and then swiveled on my feet again, turning now to the driver’s side back of the cart; with the physics of this two-point-five dimensional space so limiting, so demanding in how these triggers allowed one to navigate, I thought that— like here— there must be points where the dimensional strip allow more dimension into sections of the strip; that the “bends” of the aisles, for example, must also host additional dimensional-space when navigation calls for it. I thought of this since I felt it odd that my body could turn during a frequency trigger but not when I was in complete control. It made sense, sure, since I was sure if I were looking at my actions in cosmic mode, it would still appear as if the two-dimensional facade was still intact since the world remained a single uninterrupted strip. I guess it was a perspective thing?

And, wait, I should really get this order out to the customer— how long had I been standing idly not doing anything? Kim-Kim must be pissed— wait.

Looking around, I noticed that I was already outside. In fact, I had just finished closing the trunk when I came to and recognized the outside.

Already feeling another trigger, I was about to return inside when the customer came out to speak to me. Crap. I hated it when they did this since it meant they were trying to pull some bull or they were a Chatty Cathy. In either case, I hated them for it.

“Oh, thank you so much for your help. I do appreciate it and you! Honestly!” Kim-Kim said.

“Oh, thank you, ma’am. Not a problem. I do my best, after all.”

“And I can tell. Very good. This is, after all, the ‘good’ Augustford. Not all have top notch service like what you guys provide,” and slyly, Kim-Kim handed me a five dollar bill. A tip.

Technically, retail workers were not allowed tips. But everyone I knew everywhere accepted them. One just had to be smooth when accepting a tip and coy if asked about accepting one by management. I happily accepted her tip and even grinned mildly. A statement for me. “Thank you very much. I appreciate it!”

“Oh, and also have one of these,” Kim-Kim continued, giving me a flyer. “I am not sure if you heard, but a little boy has gone missing. It’s awful. I know his parents and they are a mess. Please, keep your eyes peeled?”

I took the flyer. It showed the photo of a happy child no older than ten or eleven. Underneath the photo in large, uppercase letters was the name Abor Maybrook.

“Awful indeed. I will keep my eyes peeled and place this flyer up somewhere in the department. Everyone doing a little bit, yeah?”

“Exactly! Thank you, and bless!”

Kim-Kim then returned to her vehicle. Taking a frequency trigger myself, my body slid like mercury across the front end of the cart to the back, where I turned the cart around and returned inside, the store’s security system recognizing my “key-fob” around my wrist and automatically opening the door. As my body did this, I again thought that this had to be an instance where extra-dimensional space was ushered into the strip; quickly, as I had been returning to the door, I entered cosmic mode to see. It was inconclusive. From my all seeing perspective, I only saw a vehicle in one part of the screen, then my cart just to the left. When I slid on to the back of the cart, I just saw myself walk behind the cart— an action that, up close, was like back at the police station, where officers glided on by me like water on a rock in the middle of the river; I glided past the contours of the cart and seemed to re-orient it instantly. On my way back inside the store was typical: the world loomed toward me, slightly obscured, like I could only see part of the most relevant side of a building. Inside, I oriented the cart again and parked it, all of this using the same sort of “glide” physics for how to move 3-D objects in a mostly 2-D framework. I still had no idea how my new perspective was supposed to hone my perception, as Felix had remarked, but everything here, to me, was new. So I had to be patient

And yet, patience was not something I had right now.

I clutched the photo of the missing boy and crumpled it up.

Obviously, I felt sorry for the kid. And clearly, I hoped he was alright, but right now, I didn’t much feel like shedding tears. Not when the police believed that I might have had something to do with his vanishing all because there was a ruckus in my apartment the evening he went missing. If shit hit the fan and I was unlucky, I could be convicted of a terrible crime I did NOT commit. It happens and I was uneasy about it happening to me— years of my life gone as I rotted away in a prison cell, the whole world thinking that I was some deranged child abuser. No. It was horrendous for me to think about my life being ruined in such a way. General anxiety. Sure.

I slowed my roll and took some deep breaths. I calmed myself a tad, just enough to focus on work.

Crumpling up the flyer, I threw it in the trash and returned to my work.

I glanced at the clock.

Only five more hours to go . . .