FICTIONARIUM- 'Where ordinary life always seems like somebody else's idea.'
source @therealpaul
Episode 1.
Mel knew how to pour coffee. She was a coffee genius, if there could be such a genius- but, while that was true, Mel actually seemed to be smart about a lot of things. They said that Mel "…has smarts she's never even got out of the package yet."
Mel wasn't too tall or too short, she was neither. Despite her hair's natural tendency to look like a snapshot of someone caught in a whirlwind, she always appeared calm and observant.
She smiled too easily, she thought, but the people around her never thought of it as a problem. Mel had a certain supernatural mystery about her, but nobody could quite put their finger on it. If the topic of her mystery came up, it could easily be smiled away- Mel was well liked.
Author's original photographic depiction of the Bean House
Nested into the stones of a downtown storefront, the Bean House was one of the older coffee shops in Hill Valley, and it was where Mel's coffee skills could be seen firsthand as she deftly managed the place, making sure that the Bean House coffee was the finest brew in town.
The Bean House had two espresso machines: the new one, which allowed the employees to simply push a button to make a good cup- and the old one, that only Mel knew how to use, but when she did use it, it was something to behold for the staff and customers.
Standing in a cloud of steam, the antique machine would roar and groan as Mel commanded it's chrome levers, instructing any passing Bean House employee how to operate the beast if they dared- her melodic voice barely audible over the machine's throaty hiss; "Seventeen to twenty four seconds… you'll hear it, it'll tell you…". No Bean House employee ever dared try. It was Mel's machine.
HIDDEN ROOMS
The old espresso machine would be quiet on this particular day though. Mel was leaving the Bean House in the hands of the cheerful staff- she had plans to make some other noise, somewhere else.
Part of Mel's air of mystery was inherited the day she rented an old house on the eastern edge of Hill Valley. The rent was pretty cheap, since the old place was looking a little rough in it's old age, but it was dry and quiet. This good-sized stone house had originally housed some of the builders and their families during the construction of the Hill Valley/Lakeland duplex, and when Mel was exploring this new rental house, she had discovered two different secret rooms concealed within the historic dwelling. (remember what they said- Mel was sort of a genius.)
Mel didn't think of it as genius though, she was just trying to figure out a short-cut, a way to connect the bedroom closet to the bathroom, and thereby found the first of these hidden rooms by accident. It was as she stood in this bedroom closet that she noticed that there was old faded wallpaper on the walls, featuring cut roses on leafy stems.
"Wallpaper in a closet? Who decorates a closet?" Mel pushed in firmly on the far wall where she planned on creating a new doorway, and it popped open and swung towards her just a little. It was already a hinged door.
Creaking it open, Mel first saw a string dangling from the darkness above. When she pulled the string, she blinked hard at what she saw there in that narrow secret room. The dim light bulb above had revealed a finely scrolled ancient wooden table with a map spread upon it, and patiently holding down the edges of the map were two hunting rifles and an apparent machine-gun, plus a regular old pistol, all covered in a thick layer of dust.
The room was small. Mel looked at the walls, where there was a pair of dusty binoculars hanging by a screw, while the back of the room was taken up by a few stacks of wooden crates, with a small chest of some sort below on the floor.
She felt like picking up one of the guns, and impulsively, she did.
It was heavy. Mel imagined the story- the circumstances- that would have led to what she was looking at in the little hidden room. A new mystery and a secret, which would have to stay secret, at least for now.
Guns weren't necessarily common in a typical Fictionarium complex; most of it's original subjects were transported there under fairly strict "scientific" guidelines, and guns were limited to the idea of small game hunting and such. There were some handguns, but anybody who owned one wasn't exactly bragging about it inside a modern Fictionarium. They were of course sometimes distributed into the populace as a practical science, so that 'guns' could become another four-letter-word through the usual social conditioning.
After studying the old guns, and using some of those smarts that she had laying around, Mel became respectfully curious about the them. She also had a good imagination, and she imagined that the weapons might draw the unwanted attention of the Hill Valley PD.
Mel didn't care for any attention at all from the police, so when she left the Bean House early that day, she had a plan. Was it a genius plan? Possibly, but she mainly just planned to go drive out far away from town and test out these guns because, she imagined, it might be fun.
The plan was working so far- early that morning she had hidden the heavy machine-gun and the pistol in her car, and the next step was to drive out of town far enough to safely do some loud target shooting, without being heard by anyone. Aside from a slight delay on the way out of the Bean House chatting with some customers, everything was still going smoothly, but as she walked around the corner to where her gun-laden car was parked and waiting, the plan fell apart.
Standing next to her car, trying to blend in, was an SB agent.
At least, Mel sensed he was an agent. She could just sort of tell. His 'Joe Citizen' thing wasn't really fooling her. Now, she recognized him instantly- he was one of the customers who showed up at the coffee shop one or two times a week, and again- always trying to blend in. Professionally normal. Mel had talked with him many times in the busy shop, and he had slipped a bit here and there, implicitly giving himself away more than once to Mel's attentive ear.
Not just his exaggerated normalcy, but his language was also peculiar. And his accent- not quite the Hill Valley flavor, even though he tried to fake it. Some of the terms that he used were words that Mel had only seen written in old USB conspiracy stuff. Nobody talks like that!
Mel found him to be interesting in this way, and she often wondered if he knew, that she knew. She could tell he was really a genuine, good guy with a burdensome secret. She connected with him in that way, and she found their relationship fun- never letting on that she knew.
As she approached him, she noticed that it wasn't his usual genuine smile, but a sort of plastic one which had hardened and gripped his face- there was fear in his eyes.
Stumbling over each other's greetings for a second, Mel thought of something real to say next, but he was faster, and his voice was now trembling. "Hey, I know… we don't really know each other…" He inhaled sharply, capturing a critical burst of air. "My name's Arlo, and… I'm in some trouble."
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LINK to previous FICTIONARIUM chapter