Time Burrito

If he could make the perfect burrito, he could charge more. If he could charge more, maybe he could buy a storefront and get out of the university area. Pete envisioned himself making breakfast burritos for the Albuquerque mayor, shaking his hand, taking a picture, and framing it on the wall with all the other celebrities. Instead, he was listening to some ungrateful dweeb complain about a buck burrito, “There’s bone in my meat.”

“It’s cartilage, not bone,” Pete said, as he changed out some wilted lettuce for slightly less-wilted lettuce.

“I could have choked!” The student slammed the floppy burrito onto the counter. The other students behind him in line rolled their eyes. The piece of “bone” was no bigger than a pencil tip. It wasn’t Pete’s fault they tossed the entire damn cow into the grinder, and a piece of cartilage had gotten through.

“Even a baby couldn’t choke on that.”

“I’m going to report you. This is unsanitary. What’s your permit number?”

“Sorry,” Pete addressed the line of students. “We’re closed!”

He slammed down the shutter to the food truck, and the angry student was drowned out by the thick metal crash. Pete slumped to the ground and pulled a hat off his head. The front pictured a burrito. Embroidered on the back were the words: “The perfect burrito.”

_______

Later that evening, Pete locked up his food trailer. It was November, and the days were getting shorter. It was dark by the time the dinner rush was over. He cleaned the small kitchen and prepped for the next day. He would have had to wake at three in the morning in order to prepare for the breakfast burrito rush right beforehand, so he preferred to do it at night. By the time he was walking towards his truck, most of the students had gone home. Even the ducks at the duck pond were sleeping.

He hefted his way across campus, sucking in breath while he walked. His doctor had said he was pre-diabetic a couple of years ago. He hadn’t done anything about his health and had even gained fifty pounds since the diagnosis, so he was sure he was full-blown diabetic by now. Not that he cared—Pete was always walking one step closer to death.

After making his way through the campus, he crossed Lomas towards the squat, brown, adobe-style Physics building. There was a lot behind the labs where he parked his truck. It was one of the most expensive lots, but he didn’t see any other way he’d have time in the morning to park the trailer, the truck, and open at 7 am. At least, not if he wanted to sleep.

He’d circled the building as far as the other side when he saw a blue flash of light come from one of the windows. A loud explosion quickly followed. Pete ducked and stumbled backward. He toppled over and cracked his tailbone on the pavement.

“What the—” he yelped, and pushed himself up. Before he could figure out what had happened, a man in a button-up shirt and slacks stumbled out from one of the doors of the Physics building. The man’s hair was burnt, and his hands were bloody and charred. He looked at Pete and collapsed.

“Hey,” Pete yelled and ran to the man. “Hey, mister. You okay?”

It was a stupid question. The man was clearly not okay. In fact, he might even have been dead. When Pete got close enough, he poked the dude with his foot. The guy looked up and said, “It worked!”

“What? What worked?” Pete asked.

“The perfect...The perfect...” the man coughed and hacked.

“Burrito? The Perfect Burrito?” Pete bent down to help and held the guy.

“The perfect quantum tunneling—.” The man gagged and continued, “Tell my lab assistant...that I love her.”

The man died in Pete’s arms. Pete stumbled backward. He was in serious trouble now. This guy was a professor, from the looks of his graying hair and crow’s feet around the outer corners of his eyes. He didn’t look like any customer of Pete’s. The only people who would eat his swill were college students. He’d tried to cook at the State fair once, and they’d put his truck right next to the Garduno’s tent. He couldn’t compete with Garduno’s.

To make matters worse, there were already rumors about his burritos. Students would say they were chupacabra ground up with rat. Seniors dared freshman to eat his burritos. Frats used them for pledges and pranks. He didn’t care because, for the most part, it was good for business. The only reason he survived was that they were cheap. Students shoved anything in their mouth that cost a dollar. He’d tried raising the price to a buck fifty once and had lost half his business in one day.

If Pete were found by the campus police next to a dead professor, the rumors would end him. He was having enough trouble as it was. The one-bedroom roach motel he called home was already one month late on rent and perpetually three months late on power. Each bill came with a friendly threatening notice that they would shut off his lights. He was seriously considering sleeping in the food truck.

He was about to run when he looked at the open door to the physics lab. He thought about what the man had said about his assistant. Maybe she was still in there. Maybe she was unconscious, or something. Maybe the lab was on fire. He imagined heroically carrying her out of the building. The Albuquerque Journal would say the next day, “Pete ‘The Burrito Man’ Jaramillo Saves Local Woman.”

Pete sucked in his breath and went inside. Smoke filled the hallway. There was a lab down the way with a door hanging off its hinges. Pete gagged and coughed. Holding his breath was much harder than it looked in the movies.

He bumbled through the hall to the lab doorway. A mess of wires and circuit boards was on fire. In the center of the room was a long, black platform that reminded Pete of this busted air hockey table, with all the white paint stripped off, that his uncle Ricardo had in the basement. Except that this wasn’t air hockey equipment. There was some weird blue and white, glowing, crackling portal on top.

It looked like the special effects he saw in the Wayne’s World movies, or was that Bill and Ted? He couldn’t remember. He knew it was the one with that guy from The Matrix.

Behind the platform, he saw the lab assistant. She had a cute, round face, brown hair, and thick black glasses. She was the most beautiful chick he’d ever seen—and he was around college students all day.

He circled the table and poked her with his feet. There would be no use saving her if she were dead. However, she stirred and mumbled something. He attempted to bend down to pick her up, but he wasn’t so good at bending anymore. The extra pounds and the relatively sedentary lifestyle had taken a toll on him.

He finally maneuvered himself in a way that he could grab her by the arms. He hoisted her up and dragged her toward the doorway. Her white lab coat got stuck on the edge of the black table. He huffed and grunted but couldn’t free her by force alone.

He plopped her on the ground and waddled towards the snag. He leaned on the edge of the platform with one hand and went to fiddle with the lab coat with the other. His weight was too much for the table to bear. The leg cracked and shattered, sending both Pete and the science experiment to the ground.

The strange, glowing portal crackled and flashed. The whirlwind of activity increased. It began to suck everything in the room towards it. Lab equipment and office supplies flew into the vortex. Lightning flashed with each hungry gulp. The unconscious lab assistant started sliding towards the ravenous hole.

Pete grabbed onto her leg with one hand and onto the base of a server rack with the other. The phenomenon intensified. It swirled and engulfed everything that wasn’t nailed down. Pete and the assistant rose off the ground as it ate. At the peak, Pete knew what it must feel like to be hanging on for dear life while being sucked from an airlock.

His hand was numb, and it slipped. Pete and the lab assistant flew into the portal, and they disappeared from the room.

_______

Pete woke up in the blazing hot desert sun. He spat dirt and grit from his mouth. He looked towards the Sandia mountain range that was pressed up against the side of Albuquerque, and it was right where it always had been. However, Albuquerque wasn’t where it was supposed to be. There was no city whatsoever. The desert surrounded him. There were no buildings. No university and no physics lab.

The lab assistant groaned from beyond a bush a couple of feet away. Pete ran towards her and kicked a notebook in the sand. It looked like some crazy math stuff. There were also some office supplies and lab equipment littering the desert. He picked up the notes and was going for a pen when he felt a sharp point poke into his back, followed by a loud grunt.

Pete put up his hands and turned around, dropping the item he had recovered back into the sand. When he finally saw a person holding a spear, he thought that he was back at a Metallica concert after he had taken something his friend Tito called an “herbal supplement”. It was way back when the band all had long hair. He remembered hearing the primal music and watching James Hetfield scream into the mic.

He had realized, at that moment that humans really did evolve from apes. His whole life, his father had never believed it because he thought the planet was six thousand years old. But Pete saw it for himself. James Hetfield melted into some sort of ape-man. Kirk, the lead guitarist, followed suit. Thousands of years of evolution right before his eyes, but the vision all went away when some crazy, screaming skinhead guy head-butted Pete and jumped back into the mosh pit.

Unlike the vision at the concert, the man now in front of him was a real-life caveman. He had a large forehead, a mop of hair, and was wearing pelts. The man eyed Pete cautiously and picked up the journal. He sniffed it and took a tentative bite. It didn’t taste good, so he tossed it.

Pete went to pick up the notebook; the caveman squealed and shook his spear. Before the Missing Link was able to impale Pete, the lab assistant crawled out of a bush. She cursed and swore, “That stupid git. He thinks that he can take advantage of me. Just because I’m a woman in physics doesn’t mean I’ll sleep with him for a Ph.D.  I’m going to report him to the provost.”

Her accent made her even hotter. Pete knew it was Downton Abbey that she was speaking, or was it Downtown? He wasn’t quite sure where it was from. He was pretty sure Downtown Abbey was in Australia. That hot actress from Once Upon a Time was also from Australia, so he was pretty sure Downtown Abbey happened there, too. One time his friend Tito had caught him watching Downtown Abbey, and he’d had to punch his buddy so he would shut up about it.

The caveman’s eyes lit up when he saw her. He let out a soft grunt, and his hold on his spear went limp. Pete used the moment to snatch up the notebook. The assistant felt around on the dirt for her glasses. They were thick hipster glasses that were almost too big for her face.

“What’s this, then?” she said when she saw the two shapes of people staring at her. She was used to people staring, mostly men. It was no wonder why she wanted to lock herself up in a lab the rest of her life. She hated dealing with people. Once she found her glasses, she put them on and said, “Are you kidding me?”

She walked up to the caveman and examined him. She poked and prodded, even sniffed his hide. While she worked, she just talked to no one in particular, “The old goat knew what he was talking about. I thought he was just a pervert trying to impress his grad student. But this—a real life Homo Neanderthalensis—this is amazing, and would you look at the jawline? Completely different from the speculat....”

She noticed Pete for the first time. “Who the bloody hell are you?” 

He shrugged and said, “I’m nobody—I guess—but Pete’s my name.” He stuck out his hand.

“Clara, and if you make a Doctor Who reference, I’ll kill you.” She extended her hand. However, before they were able to shake, the caveman screamed. He roared and pushed Pete to the ground. He grabbed Clara and slung her over his shoulders. Before Pete could get back to his feet, the caveman was halfway up the rise heading towards the mountains.