To step into The Bean Cycle was to be immediately assailed by sound. There was, as always, the muted howl of steam wands bringing milk up to temperature, and mixed in, as ever, was the clatter and clicking of work being done on bicycles. Wheels were spun, chain was dragged through derailleurs, tires were changed. Milk was steamed, espresso was made, names were hollered out.
It was not the type of din that Slow Hours expected for the one she and If I Dream were looking for. It was too uneven, this wall of sound. Too unpredictable. The steam wands were too piercing and the occasional clang of a wrench or raucous laughter over some story of a crash too jarring.
She looked to If I Dream, who merely shrugged.
Scanning the cafe-*cum*-bike repair shop revealed little. It was certainly well populated enough, with every table in use and few enough empty chairs. In the corner by the window, a crowd of some synthetic creatures of some sort had gathered, looking vaguely feline but with glassy faceplates showing LED-light eyes in sets of fixed expressions. While they were all far shorter than Slow Hours — who one would be hard pressed to describe as tall — the couch that they were sitting on looked to be barely able to hold their weight.
Even if it was not the type of place for the target of their search, it was still incredibly endearing, and she made a note to herself to return some day.
"Afternoon, friends," the barista said, grinning to them. "Two mochas? Extra whipped cream?"
Caught off-guard by having her order guessed for her, Slow Hours froze, brow furrowed.
If I Dream elbowed her in the side, murmuring, "I have canvased this place before. Do not worry about it." More loudly, she said, "Yes, though please make it three. Thank you, Hasher."
Still frowning, Slow Hours allowed herself to be guided down the counter to wait for their drinks to be picked up. She set up a cone of silence over her and her cocladist, more for the relative quiet that it offered than for privacy.
"Are you sure this is the place?" she asked.
If I Dream nodded. "Yes, quite sure. Hasher was the one who tipped me off, and I...have seen her outside."
"You are already watching her, then, yes?"
The panther smiled faintly, gave an even fainter shrug. "I am nothing if not myself."
"Then why did you not just go speak to her yourself?" Slow Hours asked. "Or bring me straight to her?"
If I Dream rolled her eyes. "My dear, I *just* said that I am nothing if not myself. That is not my role in this. That is yours. This is the story we are telling, yes? We are stepping into a cafe and ordering a coffee. We are seeing what this is like, this place where she has been parked the last week. We are speaking with Hasher."
Sighing, she nodded and leaned against the counter, poking at the anodized sheet of aluminum that covered it. Thankfully, it seemed to be coated with some thin sheen of resin to keep the texture reasonable and noise down. "Well, alright. You are the sneaky ones."
"Do you not also live in stories? I thought that was part of your whole shtick."
She snorted. "Well, okay, good point. I suppose I am still a little rattled, is all."
"'Rattled'?" If I Dream laughed. Like everything else that she did, it was nearly silent, more a quiet huffing of breath through her nose than anything. "*The* Slow Hours of the Ode clade is rattled?"
"Yes, yes," she said, waving away the comment with a grin. "I really do see your point about the story, I am just finding it hard to slow down, perhaps. When you said that you had heard something, I was ready to race to find her, to have to jump through all the hoops of a fetch quest, so to hear that you already know precisely where she is, that you are already watching her, makes waiting for a coffee like this feel like a waste of time."
It was only another minute or two of waiting before Hasher waved to get their attention, gesturing to three paper cups sitting on the bar, ready for them. Slow Hours dropped the cone of silence and winced at the sudden barrage of sounds that followed. "Thank you," she said, bowing. "By the way, we were hoping to meet up with a cocladist of ours. She is a skunk, a furry, built rather like myself. Have you seen her around?"
Wiping their hands on a towel hooked into the strings of their apron, Hasher nodded, tilting their head over toward the couch full of robots. "The one who was sleeping there the last few weeks, I'm guessing?"
"Yeah. She would just kind of curl up at one end for a few hours and nap. No biggie, of course, and we all liked her. She only ever slept while things were slow, and she'd always move when asked." They broke out into a grin again, shrugging. "Or when it got too loud. Or when it got too quiet. Or just every now and then for no reason we could figure out, but she was always very polite about it."
"Yes, that would be her," she said, smiling. "Well, thank you very much. Did she leave recently?"
They nodded towards the back door of the shop as they started to make their way back to the line of customers waiting for drinks. "Out back, out to Infinite Café, probably half an hour ago. Just peek in if you need anything!"
The two Odists bowed their thanks and carefully picked their way further over to the cafe side of the building, winding their way between tables until they reached the brick wall. There in the middle was a green, wooden door set into an arch, and above the arch "INFINITE CAFÉ" shone in tooth-aching pink neon.
The sim in which The Bean Cycle existed had a weather pattern tuned after somewhere in the northern hemisphere, so they had entered the shop sometime in late winter, where the air still had a bite to it and salt still stained the sidewalks out front from where the ice had been melted in the days prior. They had arrived late in the afternoon, the sun setting down along the street casting long shadows behind them.
When they stepped out into Infinite Café, though, it was the same bright, midsummer's noon as it always was there. The sun came from everywhere and nowhere, their shadows sat just beneath their feet. It was the perfect temperature — no matter who you were, no matter your preferences, it was always perfect — and it was as packed as ever. If one percent of the population of Infinite Café was missing, Slow Hours could not tell.
The sim was dead simple: it consisted of one, long road set into a torus. A truly enormous torus: when she looked up, she saw a bright thread directly above them where the road had curved up into an arch hanging in the heavens, and yet the road seemed perfectly flat as far as she could see.
Lining either side of the street were entrances to cafes. Cafes, coffee shops, doors leading out into libraries with coffee cards, alleyways leading out into sims where coffee was hawked from handcarts, dusty steps leading up into marketplaces where vendors boiled their coffee in their cezves in great vats of sand set over wood fires. Anywhere that served coffee to cladists that wanted was free to create an exit that lead out into Infinite Café, and over the two centuries of its existence, it had grown from a labyrinthine maze of buildings to the ring-road that it was today.
She had no clue how it worked, if it really was that big, but the sheer size of the System had been driven home quite effectively over the last few weeks, so she was hopeful that there were no tricks involved, no attempts to make it look bigger than it was.
She was hopeful that all of these people here on this relatively crowded street were real. She hoped they found coffee and friends and loved ones and long-lost selves.
A gentle touch to her shoulder brought her back to the present. She looked over to If I Dream, then followed her gaze go the center of the thoroughfare.
There, in the middle of the path, stood a skunk. She looked much like others in her clade, with white-striped black fur, tapered snout, cookie ears poking out from an unruly mane, and where she differed, it mostly came down to clothing. She wore a linen tunic in pale yellow, cinched around the waist with a leather belt, and a pair of loose, woolen trousers in a dusty brown. Her mane was tied back with a kerchief of some sort, a pastel triangle visible to them as she stood stock still and stared straight up to the arch above.
Slow Hours felt concern tugging at her cheeks, while a glance at If I Dream showed only curiosity.
"Shall we?" she asked.
If I Dream nodded.
Letting a crowd of joggers pass, the pair made their way up to the skunk so that Slow Hours could gently touch her elbow.
The reaction was far more extreme than expected as the skunk let out a shriek and skipped three or so meters away from them, nearly colliding with a couple walking hand in hand. She whirled, tail bristled out behind her and ears splayed to the sides. Her eyes were wide and breath coming in quick gasps.
Both Slow Hours and If I Dream took a pace back, startled.
In the span of three seconds, the skunk seemed to get her bearings and comprehend just who was standing in front of her. She visibly worked on mastering her breathing as she stood up straighter, brushing her paws anxiously down over her shirt. "Ah...I, ah...Slow Hours?"
She bowed slowly, deliberately, so as not to startle the skunk any further, and nodded. "Yes, and If I Dream." She held out the extra mocha. "We got you a coffee, What Right Have I. Would you like to join us?"
What Right Have I looked between the two anxiously, clutching at the hem of her tunic. "I...ah, do you...I mean, is there an occasion? Is there a place? I was...I mean, I had been in The Bean Cycle but the couch...oh, I am talking myself in circles..."
With that, she began to pace in an abbreviated line before them, alternating between scrubbing her paws together and straightening her already quite straight shirt.
Slow Hours looked to If I Dream for help, and the panther stepped forward silently and wrapped her arms around the skunk from behind.
At first, she thought this would be a prelude to them stepping from the sim together, or perhaps some affectionate bear hug, though this did not fit what she knew of their casual acquaintanceship.
Instead, though, If I Dream simply squeezed around the skunk and stood still. There was a squeak and a tense-looking squirm from What Right Have I at first, but in surprisingly short order, her breathing fell under her control and she slouched against her cocladist, looking as close to relaxed as Slow Hours had ever seen her.
*"What is this about?"* she asked If I Dream via sensorium message.
*"A hunch,"* the panther sent back. *"Apparently a correct one, for which I am glad. Sometimes compression helps, yes?"*
*"If you say so."*
"Are you alright, my dear?" If I Dream murmured loud enough for Slow Hours to hear as well. "Will you join us for coffee? It is not a demand, just an offer."
