Tales from the Waffle House Teleporter
A story in the genre of choosing a path to adventure, but not to be confused with the trademarked Choose Your Own Adventure, which has venture capital-backed ownership aggressively protecting its intellectual property.
He awoke with a screeching lurch, face drowning in an ooze of cheesy hashbrown. As his lungs pulled for needed oxygen, his mind was still cloudy and forgetful.
“Sleaarrrrprghhh,” was the muffled sound escaping as the server approached.
She eyed the disheveled man in the wrinkled corduroy suit and chuckled loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear. “Splenda, when most people order something splattered, smattered, and scovered, they usually eat it with their mouth hole, not their whole face.”
The unknown man wiped away the potato-like confection with a cloth napkin, feeling the bacon grease seep into every pore. He laughed a forced laugh, the kind you halfheartedly attempt when you fear being the butt of someone else’s joke. His eyes fell to the red and black checkers of the napkin. The pattern looked familiar, but the cursive HW logo didn’t jog his memory.
“You called me Splenda?” He asked cautiously, trying to fill the widening gap in his memory. “Is that my name?”
She put a hand on her hip and belly laughed, like a Santa robot with the batteries half dead. “Darlin’, no. I call EVERYONE Splenda. Artificial sweeteners are 600 times sweeter than sugar. That’s just the kind of Northern hospitality we offer at the House de la Waffles. Want me to refill your unsweetened iced tea?”
He shook his head in dismissal and reached for his wallet to pay the bill. But something felt terribly wrong. Off. Like the feeling of pollen season, the yellow-green devil powder creates a monster booger, and you desperately need to pick it. As your finger breaches the nostril cavity in satisfying relief, you suddenly remember adults don’t pick their nose — in public.
He surreptitiously glanced at the name on the credit card as the server blooped payment on the portable card reader. She caught his suspicious look and added a hasty, “Listen, Sweet N’ Low, I’m gonna need to see some ID.”
Packed in the wallet were a dozen crisp $100 bills and a Georgia Driver’s license with the name Gre Billips. “Gre Billips,” he said softly, testing the sound of his name to his ears. It was his name, he mused, but something was still a fraction off.
Then he saw the black embossed business card tucked behind the cash and shielded his upper body to hide the discovery from the server. It read, “Ggreggg Billips | United States Space Force, Multiverse Division.” Listed on the back was a phone number for emergencies.
“Can I use your phone?”
“It’s down the hall by the restrooms, Sugar-in-the-Raw.” She said with a wink, which seemed to Gre like a twitch and a spasm battling each other in rock-paper-scissors to see who would control the server’s eyes.
Too embarrassed to ask the sugar-obsessed server for a quarter, he slid one of the one-hundred-dollar bills into the pay phone. He dialed the number and retreated into the men’s restroom, careful not to let the door shut completely on the phone cord.
Gre’s heart leaped into his human potato funnel when he heard the voice pick up after only three rings. His excitement at the victory evaporated as the prerecorded message began to play.
“Agent 5G, if you hear this message, then your mission and memory have been compromised. Find the nearest breakfast restaurant and teleport back to Earth One immediately.” After a brief pause, “before you run out of G’s.”
Earth One? Multiverse? What is going on? Gre knew those concepts from sci-fi movies, but when he opened his wallet again, there was a whist of blue-green smoke rising from the emergency card. Four out of the five G’s in Ggreggg had disappeared, and the one remaining was faded like a 1920s newspaper clipping.
“Before you run out of G’s,” he said a third time aloud, suddenly realizing the danger he was in. Would he be trapped on this terrible version of Earth with no sweet tea or Southern hospitality?
“Gre,” he heard the server yell in a wicked, sing-song voice that somehow made the name sound like three syllables. “Or should I call you, Re, as your last G is fading?”
He looked around the restaurant, desperate to escape, and weighed his options.
What should our hero do next?
A) Distract the server with academic journal articles linking artificial sweetener use to cancer, while he is looking for a safer exit?
B) Steal a pen from the cook and write in the missing G’s on his emergency card. Maybe this will reset the teleporter countdown timer somehow?
C) Check the walk-in freezer for evidence of a large electronic machine capable of interdimensional human travel? The freezer is a good place to look, right?
D) Pinch himself and wake up from the dream. Why would the United States government hide a teleportation device inside a waffle-themed chain restaurant?
Find out next month, unless Ian thinks this story is too stupid to continue.
Disclaimer: This story was written by Mark Suroviec, M.Ed. All people and quotations are fictional, invented by the limited imagination of the author, and do not reflect the opinions of the author, editors, Waffle House, The United States Space Force, or V3 Magazine.
