No Business Like...
By PKNight

Note from Gaer: This was a birthday present to me from Bonnie. Thank you!

It was a fairly typical day at Photon's—as typical as Photon's gets, in any case—when I noticed the man for the first time. As he was a rather ordinary-looking human, what really called attention to him was the contraption he had with him. I'd seen computers before—well, Elizabeth's "laptop"—so I knew what it was. But as it was only the second one I'd seen, the sight stayed with me.

The man caused no trouble, but he wasn't a non-participant like the man my parents sent to spy on me once. He would talk to anyone who approached him. Most regulars here are a friendly sort, so a few tried to draw him into a dance. But he wouldn't budge from his seat until closing time.

And he came back the next day.

And the next. He was still friendly, and he drank his fair share but never got drunk.

From my corner, I saw Elizabeth approach him and sit at the table. The man smiled and they talked for a bit. After a while she stood and walked over to the bar, motioning for Samm's attention.

Uh-oh, I thought, nearly flubbing a chord. But it didn't turn out to be a bad situation. Samm merely sat at the man's table and talked with him (after the man was through blushing and staring at the sight of the scantily clad Amazon). Samm listened intently to what the man was saying, then went back towards the bar.

She and Elizabeth struck up a quiet conversation behind the bar. I found out later that the conversation went something like this:

Samm: He's from your time. What do you think about this whole thing?

Elizabeth: He seems okay to me. Besides, who'll believe it?

Samm: That's true. All right. Let me go tell him.

So now the man—whose name is David Weisman, by the way—is now a regular at Photon's Crossing. For the past few weeks he's come in every night, grabbed a table, set up his computer and either clicked the keys (Elizabeth calls it "typing") or asked everyone questions.

He spoke to me for the first time one night when he asked about a piece of music I was playing. I told him I'd learned it from a creature from another dimension. I couldn't recall its name, and I wouldn't have been able to pronounce it if I had. The Bashiloks are a reptilian species with a long, tri-forked tongue, and speak in sibilant sounds. Unfortunately, the universal translater spell doesn't translate proper names (after an unfortunate incident where a Hiuqu name was translated into "licker of toes," which is a terrible insult to the Hiuqu, and resulted in a brawl that broke three tables, six fingers and four noses).

"Have you written out any of the tunes you've learned from these…"

"Bashiloks," I supplied.

"Bashiloks?" he finished.

"A few," I said. "Mostly I memorize the songs. They're kind of hard to translate into a human musical scale any way."

"Yes, but they sound absolutely wonderful and otherworldly." I bit my tongue in an effort not to point out the tunes sounded otherworldly because they were otherworldly. "Do you think maybe I could have the ones you have written out?"

"They tend to be the more difficult ones," I attempted to caution him. "But, I don't see why not. I'll have them for you tomorrow night."

"Thank you!" David said, grabbing my hand and pumping it exuberantly. "You're so kind!"

David continued to act like an overeager and annoying puppy; following on everyone's heels, asking insatiable questions (Louis told me David once asked him the best way to hold up a fat lord), and generally grating on people's nerves. But then he would back off, sit in a corner quietly for several days just typing, and everyone would forget to be annoyed.

It was all very strange. What's stranger still is that every time this cycle repeated itself, Samm looked amused, as if it were all one big joke!

Then, one night, David didn't show up.

Two, three, seven, ten days went by, and he still didn't come into the tavern.

Then that incident with the hamsters happened, and then some more misadventures, and no one had time to contemplate the old regular David.

Then, several months later, Elizabeth's mother Pam came in. She was visiting for a while and staying at an Inn near the entrance to Photon's. She took one look around the room and began laughing uproariously. She had a tube or something under one arm, and it got rather bent as she apparently tried to keep her ribs from exploding.

After several minutes of mirth, Elizabeth managed to get her mother to a stool at the bar, and poured her a glass of Ambrosia. Pam set the tube down on the counter, gulped down the drink, and slammed the glass back down on the bar, grinning the whole time. Then she grabbed the tube, removed a tie around it, and unfurled it to reveal…a portrait of us?

And by us, I mean everyone who lived and worked at Photon's, and several regulars as well. Everyone present gathered around to poke and prod. It wasn't actually a portrait, but something Elizabeth called a "poster." But as I crowded closer, I realized it wasn't us at all! It was other people dressed as us! Some of the costumes were a bit off, and I'm sorry, but Taliniums are not that uniform in color, but…all in all it bore a striking resemblance to all of us.

At the top of the letter there were large words. They said, "A Metting of Worlds." Beneath that, in smaller letters, "Welcome to Electron's Passageway, the wackiest bar in the universe!"

"What is it?" I demanded, slightly aghast.

Elizabeth laughed, though not as long or loudly as her mother. "It's a movie poster. Photon's has made it to the big screen!"

--fin--