Where to start? There was no beginning or end to Ducky’s nights at the AM/PM, any more than there was a beginning or end to the Highway Through Time outside. As soon as the governor cut the ribbon, the Highway Through Time had always been, would always be there. Like God. Ducky watched, would watch Ducky explain it every time Ducky showed up for his first shift. “Here and now are just points in a four-dimensional spacetime,” Dayshift Ducky droned, would drone to New Hire Ducky. “Of course they put in a highway eventually already. Now go clean the car wash like I showed you.”
New Hire Ducky did, would. Graveyard Ducky remembered, watched. New Hire always cleaned the carwash, because the carwash was always dirty. And when New Hire Ducky finally emerged into the black hours between one day and the next, there was always a road crew working on the Highway Through Time again, their blinding floodlights casting long sharp shadows across the parking lot like the teeth of some prehistoric monster that had the eighteen-year-old in its maw. By the time he toweled himself off and got back out front to pump gas for people from the past, or who had Jersey plates, the road crew would be packing up and driving off, the steamrollers and dump trucks disappearing into the past, into the future, both, either—whenever they parked for the day. When the sun came up, the crisp lanes of the Highway Through Time were always already swollen with Teslas and Model T’s and Studebakers and Aerostar minivans, but the smell of fresh tar still hung in the cool morning air when Ducky and Ducky came off shift, and Ducky arrived again to relieve them. By the time the air had cleared, the sun had fallen, and the road crew was back at it. And so was Ducky. After he got the job, working the graveyard at the AM/PM was all Ducky had ever done. All he would ever do.
Years would pass.
One night, a kid from the future would come in for a Rockstar, some gas, and, as it would happen, a little pick-me-up in the bathroom. Graveyard Ducky, twenty-three, could always tell when people were from the future. They inhaled deeply through their noses and exhaled in big contented sighs, like they were all in commercials for allergy medications. They were always talking to people who weren’t there, giggling half-heartedly at jokes no one else could hear. They blinked too much and too deliberately; Ducky suspected they were taking pictures with their eyeballs. They threw their arms wide and spun in circles down aisles of candy bars and motor oil, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
This kid emerged from the bathroom after a distressingly long time and twirled up to the register with his Rockstar. He placed it on the counter with care and deliberation.
“You mind if I ask, uh,” Ducky began.
“Huh?”
“Why do you all…do that?”
The Boy From the Future cocked his head to the side.
“The spinning,” Ducky elaborated. “Why do you all spin like that? People from the future, I mean.”
“There’s just so much space?” The Boy From the Future replied. Asked? Future people had strange accents. They spoke too fast, and everything sounded like a question. “Oh, and three thousand bucks on pump five?” They also tried very hard to use slang.
Ducky eyed the ancient Prius out by number five as he rang up the Rockstar. “How about I put you down for ten to start. We can go from there.”
“Hella tight?” The Boy From the Future flashed a peace sign at him. “Bro?”
When Ducky looked closely, he could see tiny pornographic images flashing across the kid’s pupils. “That’ll be $12.62,” he said.
“Groovy?” The Boy From the Future slid a long flat pinky nail through the card reader. It rang up as credit.
When the Boy From the Future drove off and Ducky went into the bathroom with a bucket of bleach to clean up after him, Ducky found, would find only a hot pink inhaler on the counter. The canister was transparent, half full of a viscous fluid that looked just like gold glitter nail polish. Ducky had had a girlfriend, once. The words Fairy Dust™ were etched into the side of the inhaler in a sweeping cursive script.
At first, Ducky wouldn’t know what to do with it. Not in the sense that he didn’t know what it was, but in the sense that the AM/PM was technically in 1995, for tax purposes at least, and the local cops were just as likely as not to arrest him for possession if he tried to turn it over to them. The War on Drugs, and all that. He didn’t know anyone he could sell it to. He didn’t know anyone anymore, really. He didn’t even know if fairy dust was an upper or a downer or what. In the meantime, he shoved it into the pocket of his blue employee vest.
Over the next dozen years, he would’ve forgotten about it, too. He deduced this from Ducky’s failure to mention it. Dayshift Ducky—older, paunchier, balder yet also hairier—had returned from teaching New Hire Ducky how to clean the carwash, and was sitting behind the cash register. When Graveyard stepped back out of the bathroom, Dayshift just jabbed a pale finger at him.
“You should’ve taken the three grand from that damn tourist.”
Ducky remembered how terrified he’d been of working with his future self at first. Right now, New Hire Ducky was convinced that they’d tear a hole in the universe or something if they bumped into each other. Ducky had since discovered that the only real consequence of working with his older self was that it made them both depressed. Tonight, Dayshift was working a double to train the New Hire, so Graveyard once again had the pleasure of his company.
Graveyard sighed as he trudged back up to the front to take over. “How would charging him three grand have done anything for us?”
“You could’ve done cash back. Paid rent with it. Bought a car. Signed up for classes at the community college again. I don’t know, put it in savings! Invested it, so maybe I could’ve—”
“There’s only two hundred in the till. Besides, do you know how future money works? What’s the exchange rate? It’d probably have been like stealing three thousand pesos. Three thousand yen.”
“Bullshit.” Dayshift shrugged off his employee vest, wincing as his back refused to crack again. He was only thirty-five. “You rang him up for—what, ten bucks? Whatever it was, it went through. You could’ve punched in as much as you wanted. That asshole wouldn’t have noticed. Come the fuck on, man. Do you wanna spend the rest of our life here? Well, Ducky?”
Ducky hated his stupid nickname. Ducky knew it.
“Hey,” said Graveyard. “Fuck you, man.”
“Hey. Fuck you.”
“I’m not going to steal from some stupid kid to get out of here.”
“No, you won’t,” Dayshift agreed. He grinned a caustic yellow grin, and stuck a thumb back at himself. “You’ll just live to regret it.”
“You regret it so much, asshole? Then why don’t you go find another fucking job?”
“Why don’t you?” Dayshift retorted.
They glared at each other for a moment. Finally, Dayshift shook his head. “Yeah,” he grumbled. “That’s what I thought.” He trudged off to the bathroom. One of the old man’s few pleasures was not using the bathroom on break time. He said he liked the idea of BP paying him to take a shit. He said it was important to take those bastards for all he could.
This was what Ducky had to look forward to.
When the bathroom door clicked shut, Graveyard Ducky took the hot pink inhaler back out of his vest pocket. “No,” he said softly, “Fuck you.”
Gingerly, he pressed the canister down. A cloud of glitter hissed out of the mouthpiece. He leaned in. He took a cautious sniff. […]
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Garrett Highley was, is, will be a speculative fiction writer and book artist, who currently works out of a closet in rural Eastern Washington. He received his B.S. and B.A. from Western Washington University, his M.A. in English from East Carolina University, and is collecting still more letters to append to his name. You can find his other work in the past, but mostly in the future, and this is doubly true of his presence online. He’s got an ancient LinkedIn that’s good for a laugh. He’ll have a website eventually.