The First Hundred Years

This is a side story connected to Traveler, a story about a person who is trapped in a coffee shop that travels to seven worlds on am infinite loop. You don't need to have read the book before reading this, but it might make more sense if you have.

This was an early draft I wrote of Jaz's first hundred or so years in The Defiant. A few lines even made it into the book.

Ten years passed. Jaz was depressed. She sat on the counter all day, eating blueberry cobbler, refusing to serve another cup of coffee to anyone. She spent another week doing the same with peach cobbler. In a month’s time, people stopped coming in.

She lay for hours on the floor, staring at the ceiling, her mind blank.

She wandered downstairs and explored the basement. Found a working coffee roaster. She found eventual joy in roasting beans (using bags of raw beans also found in the basement). She roasted, alone in the dim basement with the roaster, listening for first crack, second crack, resting the roasted beans; boiling water and brewing a cup; tasting; smiling at her success.

On Sunday a ninja wandered into the shop as Jaz was tasting the latest batch and joined her in sipping. An impromptu cupping session ensued. They both enjoyed the experience and the ninja returned the next day (next week for Jaz). Having had a week to work on the roast, Jaz presented it and the ninja declared it improved. The next time he returned, he brought a friend. Jaz had developed a new roast in the meantime, and they quite liked it. Soon, ninjas lined the counter each Sunday, sipping and slurping and nodding.

For the next ten years, Jaz loved her life. She established routines. She mastered the pourover, the press, the siphon, dialing in the perfect technique for each brewing method. She mastered the temperamental espresso machine.

She won awards for her roasts, in ninja world. They couldn’t get her to attend their ceremonies so they mailed her certificates and presented her trophies over the counter. The Defiant became a renowned cafe and break spot, a landmark on the coffee landscape of Sunday world. Deciding she was ready for more, Jaz reopened the shop to the rest of the week's worlds, so they too might enjoy her brilliant brews.

She found that, in the other worlds, no one wanted coffee. They wanted coffee-flavored dessert; liquid cake. With a sigh, she acquired a blender to accommodate requests for coffee milkshakes.

For the next ten years, Jaz tolerated frozen slush, clinging to walls of blending vessels, suddenly dislodging and bombing the cup and surrounding counter. She slipped on ice chips and congealing powder mixes on the floor. She cleaned gooey splatter from walls and cabinets, scrubbed it from her arms and hair and apron. She catered to endless lines of people wanting coffee milkshakes, coffee smoothies, caramel blends and even fruit blends, each customer wanting their shake sweeter than last time.

For a week, as a joke, she made all blended drinks with ice, half a bottle of simple syrup and handfuls of whole coffee beans. The lines doubled. And tripled.

Finally, when a customer asked for a drink made of only sugar and ice, Jaz...snapped. She ripped the blender from the counter, trailing the cord behind her, carried it to the door and hurled it into the street where it shattered beneath a passing car.

She closed the shop again, except on Sundays. She rewrote the menu. Black coffee, espresso. Sugar was banned. Mochas were eschewed. Lattes were outlawed.

She took her time regaining a sense of humor.

In another ten years she made peace with milk-based drinks. She grudgingly allowed sugar back into the store--regulated though; extreme moderation was the rule.

The shop began to close in on her again, so she reopened it--again--to the rest of the week. The Defiant came to attract coffee enthusiasts, purists willing to sip slowly. She no longer catered to sugar mongers.

Over that first hundred years, The Defiant became a bastion of good coffee, serving new faces in all seven worlds: ninjas, cowboys, tigers, humans, elves, Jingians, Morphas, alchemists, inventors, villains, students, heroes, roboticists, accountants.

Jaz made lifelong friends and lifelong enemies. She collected the obituaries of both and pasted them in notebooks bought from mail-order companies. She became an expert in coffee, and in the cultures, histories and languages of seven worlds. She collected photographs from her customers: images of landscapes, cityscapes, people, animals, plants and streets---all the things she could never see in person.

She forgot doing anything else.