Jeff, thirteen and already burdened with the weariness of a seasoned philosopher, wiped down the counter with a cloth that felt less clean than the grime it was meant to displace. The scent of bleach mixed with stale frying oil was the signature perfume of her summer. Her elbows stuck to the laminate, even through the thin fabric of her uniform polo, and a bead of sweat, stubbornly refusing to join its brethren on her forehead, traced a path down her temple, past her ear, and vanished into the collar. She watched, with an almost religious devotion to ennui, a lone fly attempting to navigate the sticky labyrinth of a half-empty sugar dispenser. It was a metaphor, she decided, for everything.
"Still pondering the grand cosmic ballet, Junes?" Barnaby's voice, a reedy counterpoint to the drone of the air conditioner that might as well have been blowing warm exhaust, drifted from behind the coffee urns. He was seventeen, all gangly limbs and earnest aspirations, currently attempting to capture the 'existential dread of a roadside diner at noon' on his battered smartphone. His lens, smeared with fingerprint oil, likely rendered everything in a soft, dreamy haze, regardless of intention.
Jeff just grunted, pushing a stray strand of dark hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. "Just admiring the fortitude of this particular dipteran. He's got more grit than half our clientele, Barnaby."
Barnaby emerged, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses, a smudge of whipped cream on his cheek. "Ah, the struggle of the common housefly. A compelling narrative, indeed. Perhaps a metaphor for the human condition, trapped in the inescapable amber of our own self-imposed limitations?"
"Or," Martin interjected, sliding a tray of tepid hotdogs into the warmer with a practiced sigh, "he's just stupid and wants sugar. Not everything needs a treatise, Barn. Some things just are." Martin, fifteen, was the pragmatic anchor of their trio, his outlook as unvarnished as the truck stop's chipped paint.
Barnaby pouted, his phone still aimed vaguely at the peeling vinyl booths. "You lack poetic sensibility, Martin. Every moment here is ripe with… potential. The sheer, overwhelming nothingness of it all. The endless road. The transient souls."
"The endless grease," Jeff muttered, scrubbing a particularly stubborn stain near the cash register. "The transient stains. Mostly on my apron."
Maria, the proprietor, a woman whose face was a roadmap of sun exposure and exasperation, poked her head out from the back office. "Less philosophising, more scrubbing! That counter better gleam, Jeff. And Barnaby, put that contraption away. You’re paid to serve coffee, not film a documentary on despair. We have a delivery coming in ten minutes. And Martin, is the ice machine still making that… gargling noise?"
"Just a low growl now, Maria," Martin called back, tapping the machine with a hopeful, but ultimately futile, gesture. "I think it’s sentient, and it’s judging my life choices."
Maria just shook her head, a cascade of silver hair pinned tightly back. "It's judging your ability to fix things, more like. And speaking of judgment, the fellow in the corner, the one with the binoculars and the very large thermos, he’s been here since seven. Only bought a black coffee. Is he planning to spontaneously combust, or is he waiting for the mothership?"
The Man Who Saw Too Much Sky
The man Maria referred to was a local legend, albeit a quiet, mostly harmless one. He went by no name they knew, only 'The Atmospheric Cartographer,' a title he'd bestowed upon himself years ago. He was a tall, reedy individual with eyes that seemed perpetually squinted from staring at the vast, indifferent prairie sky. His worn tweed jacket, utterly incongruous in the August heat, was festooned with an assortment of badges depicting various cloud formations and meteorological symbols. His binoculars, formidable and brass-bound, rested beside a much-loved, dented silver thermos. He consumed the truck stop's cheapest coffee with a solemnity usually reserved for religious rites.
Today, however, The Cartographer seemed agitated. His head, usually a static observatory, swiveled wildly, his binoculars scanning the relentless blue. Jeff watched him as she refilled the napkin dispensers. He seemed to be muttering to himself, his voice a low, gravelly hum, punctuated by sharp gasps. This was more animated than usual. Usually, he was a silent fixture, a human sundial, marking the slow, inexorable march of time by his unchanging posture.
"He's really bugging out today," Barnaby whispered, sidling up to Jeff, his phone now ostensibly put away, but his eyes gleaming with cinematic curiosity. "Look at him. The tension. The anticipation. Perhaps he's discovered a new form of atmospheric anomaly. A precursor to a supercell? Or a peculiar atmospheric refraction, a 'Fata Morgana' of the mundane?"
"He probably just forgot his lunch," Martin scoffed, wiping down a sticky table near the window. "Or maybe he's just really, really thirsty, and that thermos is empty. Not everything is a harbinger of the apocalypse, Barnaby."
Just then, The Cartographer slammed his palm on the table, a sound like a muffled drum. "There! The anomaly! The thermal upwelling! Do you see it?" His voice was thin, reedy, filled with a frantic, unhinged glee. He pointed a trembling finger towards the western sky, where only an endless, pale blue stretched towards the horizon, broken by a few wisps of mare's tail clouds.
A family of tourists, mid-bite into their cheese curds, paused, eyes wide. A trucker, deep in a conversation on his Bluetooth, swiveled in his booth, a frown creasing his weathered face. Maria, ever vigilant, stepped out again, arms crossed, her expression a mix of weary tolerance and mounting impatience.
"Mr. Henderson," Maria began, using the only name she'd ever heard anyone call him, "is there a problem? Because if you're scaring off my customers with talk of 'anomalies', we're going to have a problem."
The Cartographer, entirely ignoring her, fumbled with his binoculars, almost dropping them. "No! No, not a problem! A revelation! The sky, Maria! The sky is… alive! With subtle, almost imperceptible currents! A micro-climatic vortex, I believe! A perfect opportunity to calibrate the flux capacitor!"
He suddenly stood, sweeping his arm dramatically across the air, accidentally knocking over his now-empty coffee cup and, more critically, the extra-large strawberry milkshake Barnaby had just prepared for a particularly boisterous trucker. The milkshake, a towering confection of pink froth and crimson syrup, cascaded down the counter in a slow-motion avalanche, pooling at the feet of an unsuspecting elderly woman who shrieked, clutching her purse.
"Mister! My new shoes!" she cried, her voice rising above the sudden hush of the diner.
Maria's face, already taut, tightened into a mask of grim determination. "That's quite enough, Mr. Henderson. Out. Now. And you'll pay for that milkshake and Mrs. Peterson's dry cleaning."
The Cartographer looked genuinely bewildered, his gaze still fixed on the ceiling, as if the answers to his earthly predicament lay hidden in the dusty vents. "But the currents! The atmospheric integrity of the Manitoba basin is at stake!"
Jeff, with a superhuman effort, managed not to roll her eyes, but she did allow herself a small, almost imperceptible smirk. This, she thought, was the real Manitoba. Not the picturesque lakes or the endless fields, but the sheer, unwavering dedication to the absurd.
Interlude of the Mundane and the Miraculous
It took twenty minutes to clean up the milkshake, placate Mrs. Peterson with a free coffee and a stack of napkins, and escort The Cartographer, still muttering about thermal inversions, out the door. The incident, though minor, had broken the monotonous rhythm of the afternoon. A trucker even left a generous tip for Martin for his 'heroic efforts' in containing the milkshake tsunami, which mostly involved standing wide-eyed as it flowed past him.
"Honestly," Maria sighed, collapsing onto a stool behind the counter, rubbing her temples. "Some days, I swear this place is a magnet for the… colourful characters. I'm just trying to run an honest business."
"It builds character, Maria," Barnaby offered, ever the optimist, now discreetly filming the sticky floor. "The human drama unfolds. The resilience of the spirit. The sheer, unadulterated chaos."
"It builds my blood pressure," Maria countered, eyeing the residue of strawberry on the floor with distaste. "Go mop up the last of that, Barnaby, before it attracts more of the local wildlife. And Jeff, check the coffee levels again. Martin, you're on fry duty. And try not to burn the perogies this time."
The sun began its slow, deliberate descent, painting the boundless sky in hues of burnt orange and fiery crimson. The air, though still thick with heat, held a faint promise of cooler temperatures. The dinner rush, a slightly less frenetic affair than lunch, began to trickle in. More truckers, families returning from lake country, solitary travelers with hollow eyes and stories untold. The Junction Stop & Go, a beacon in the vast, empty expanse, offered its greasy comforts to all.
Jeff, taking a rare moment to stare out the window, watched the last sliver of sun dip below the horizon. The sky, a canvas of deep violet now, began to prickle with the first hesitant stars. The quiet hum of the truck stop settled back into its familiar rhythm. The rhythmic clatter of cutlery, the low murmur of conversations, the hiss of the fryers.
Suddenly, the door burst open, letting in a gush of warm evening air. A trucker, a burly man named Gus who was a regular on the Winnipeg-Regina run, stumbled in, his face pale beneath his tan, his eyes wide and wild. He gripped the doorframe, breathing heavily, as if he'd just run a marathon.
"Maria!" he gasped, his voice a hoarse croak. "Maria, you're not going to believe this. Out there. On the highway. Near the old abandoned grain elevator, about ten klicks east… something… something just landed."
Jeff felt a peculiar jolt, a cold shiver down her spine despite the oppressive heat. Barnaby dropped his phone, the sound echoing unnaturally in the sudden silence. Martin, mid-flip of a perogy, froze, his spatula suspended in the air. Even Maria, usually unflappable, looked up, a flicker of genuine alarm in her tired eyes.
"Landed?" Maria asked, her voice quiet, almost a whisper. "What in the good Lord's name are you talking about, Gus?"
Gus pushed himself off the doorframe, taking a shaky step forward. "I don't know! It was… glowing. Like nothing I've ever seen. And it was there. Just sitting in the field. Big as a house. And… and it wasn't there before."
A collective gasp rippled through the few patrons left in the diner. The usual banter, the mundane complaints, the simmering boredom—all of it evaporated, replaced by a sudden, chilling sense of the unknown. The familiar, predictable world of The Junction Stop & Go had, for the first time, been truly breached. And out there, under the darkening prairie sky, something absolutely un-Manitoban was waiting.