…rather tries to speak, but no words are formed, no ideas presented, just the same unfocusing gaze, accompanied by a facial expression of angst when no talk spills forth.

The barista smiles.

Welcome to Montana 2015.

Marijuana is legal in coffee shops and, well, things have changed at the Bud and Bean. Selective breeding of marijuana plants has produced some fantastical strains.

Baristas, many of them longtime Mary-Jane patients themselves, have taken to altering the mood of their customers to manage the coffee-house atmosphere.

Some people are served beverages that allow them to hear what they want to hear, and others are given infusions to take away vocal expression. Guest musicians are easily persuaded, as they will drink anything Mary-Jane gives them.

In the underground press it is being reported that some of the local farmers have taken to using a special blood imported from Slovakia to fertilize some of the trendier sativa strains, and with Twilight affects.

Listen, dear readers and writers, listen outside.

With the right ears you can hear that Bozeman’s widely acclaimed endurance barking has been replaced by endurance howling, and it isn’t the hounds howling, it is the humans. Oh, MaryJane, what have you done to our town?

“What can I get for you, comrade?” MaryJane asks. It’s my turn, I guess, soon to be yours.

“Hi, MaryJane, could you please get me a de-canib with organic milk, please. Remember to hold the funny stuff. I need to write a story tonight.”

“Good luck with that, cowboy. Gonzo is rolling in his grave.”

I toss a dollar in the tip jar, but still, she serves me up some lucidity.

It is at this point that Jerry turns inward. He has no other option. Like a mother cooing to her newborn, he is nudged by his high blood concentration of THC and slips into an introverted interlude of ego-shattering proportions.

His small leather journal lays in a heap on the floor. Jerry realizes the big dufer is staring at it with an expression so heavy it could sink the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Jerry gives a roll of his slight shoulders (he really needs to make good on his gym membership), and flips the journal open to his last entry. This insignificant movement glows with its’ own dimension of time.

“March 30th — Attempted small talk with the sexy barista, (oops, we mentioned her again!) she cringed when I complimented her nose ring this morning. Sigh. I will ask her to go to the Bozeman Film Festival show next week even if I have to choke out the words…….. Representative John Murtha’s (to Jerry’s horror, this is his handwriting, yet he didn’t write these words…) death flies in the face of anti-war advocates. His powerful conviction that Iraq needs to be vacated immediately is once again a dominant headline on Democracy Now…..”

The words continue on. Jerry nervously glances around the coffee shop. Who the hell is John Murtha? What the heck is Democracy Now? That sounds really demanding.

Beads of sweat break out across Jerry’s brow, the heat in the Bud and Bean suddenly unbearable. Jerry’s cloak of paranoia only lightly dims his ego death, he wrings his hands, journal still open on the table.

Despite being daunted by the entourage swarming the stage, Jerry moves his leaden limbs toward the alley doorway but is pushed into a quick embrace with one of the Franki Valley groupies, whose sultry gaze is arresting.

Indeed, the ego shattering is arrested. Chalk it up to partial ego shattering.

“You move fast man!” Her enigmatic smile distracts Jerry from the waxiness of her pale skin, the dark hollows around her cat-like eyes.

The fogginess of his head and the creepy writing in his journal, combine in him to blurt, “Excuse me, I’ve got to get outside for some air.”

Eyebrows lift, cat-eye lady responds, “Are you here for the demonstration, too? Representative Murtha was a true American hero!”

“What demonstra…..” Jerry is cut off by a terrible screech. All heads in the Bud and Bean swivel toward the kitchen.

“BAD BATCH!” hollered a wild-eyed woman in a trendy green chef hat. “There’s PCP in the Hash, man! This hasn’t happened since the bootlegged days! Get this freakin’ ostrich off of my head, somebody!” The milk adorning the upper-lips of most patrons became a certain badge of mental instability. No wonder such tuneful chaos had erupted! What had been pleasantly surreal turned immediately and quite dismally macabre. Mewling and clawing at one another, coffee lovers and stoners alike fell into a fray so frenetic that a bird’s eye view of the situation would have resembled something like hipster popcorn, hot on the stove. Jerry detached himself from the now desperate grip of the feline like Frankie Valley femme-fatale and looked for the the frothy barista queen of his now balls-tripping heart. She was nowhere. If she had been snatched away, taken hostage in some horrifically cliche Princess Peach sort of scenario, or if she had loaded up her RPG and gone out in search of those responsible for besmirching the good name of The Leaf’s legendary greenery; he had no way of knowing. All he knew is that it was time to go. Shit was just a little too crazy. This place was giving him the fear. More than the fear, it was giving him the buzzing.

An intense buzzing that made him feel as though he was trapped in the lungs of a giant on the verge of a hearty sneeze. Things were slowing down. Around him, the panic had quieted into an unnatural stillness. He cowered in the corner and watched as the frantic eyes of the afflicted came to gaze, unfocused in different directions. He sobbed into the crook of his elbow feeling hopeless as an otherworldly light settled over the grisly scene.

“This one isn’t freezing, boss,” said a squeaky, disembodied voice. “What do I do with it?”

“Kill it!” grunted a gruffer baritone.

“Knock it out,” came a cool, calculated response.

Of course, Jerry could not understand any of that foreign communication. In fact, research results were inconclusive as to whether or not this peculiar species could even register the vocal resonance of the people of The Filgram Star Base Amulgam, previously known as the warring sectors of Silge-Grabuuk. But no one ever mentions that. Certainly not Jerry, whose last conscious thoughts were ones of useless disbelief at the sight of human bodies, frozen in time, being loaded onto shimmering blue floating gurneys by what appeared to be tiny men in black hats and black trench coats. He could not be sure of what that implied. He could not even be sure what was real and what was drug-induced coffee fantasy. One thing was sure for those of us in the comfy purchase of dramatic irony, two previously distant chunks of the universes’ spatter of random nothingness had just encountered one another for the first time.

Jerry’s eyes fluttered open. The first thing he saw was the mirror ball. The second thing he saw was a thing with three heads doing something he could only define as 1970s disco. If it wasn’t for the skin tight open to the navel black silk shirt and a myriad of heavy gold chains he might not have realized he was in a time vortex. Not only was he in a vortex but the warring sectors of Silge-Grabuuk had somehow gotten caught in the space-time continuum with him.

This was not a good thing.

Not at all.

At least Jerry, aka Professor Boofenhauf aka Dean of the College of Intergalactic Relations, knew a thing or two about the Silge and the Grabuuk. For one thing they loved the Bee Gees.

So, Jerry thought to himself, it must have been the Frankie Valli crap that sent out a signal throughout the galaxies, like a siren call. Quickly, Jerry checked his pocket for the dark space dust he always kept with him, in a small vial. Good, it was still safe. Jerry nonchalantly tucked it deeper into his pocket. There was a very good chance he might need it later.

He let the music wash over him (even though the Bee Gees were worse than nails scraping down on a freshly painted wall) and got into the groove. One hand up to the ceiling, the other pointing down to the ground. He managed a twirl and a split, landing himself near the exit door. If he was lucky the three-headed being wouldn’t notice him as he made his way out of where ever it was he’d landed.

But luck was not on his side tonight (made obvious by his failed attempt to pick up the barista).

“Boogullinee!” screamed one of the heads.

Jerry put one ear bud from his multi-world iPod in and immediately understood the native Silge language.

“Hey, we’re cool, dude. I’m just going to get refill.” Jerry pointed to an empty latte cup that had miraculously come with him from the Bud and Bean.

“You must stay in your chair, dude person. Until the Captain illuminates the fasten seat sign. Good tunes, eh?”

“Where are we headed?” Jerry asked, taking the closest thing to chair he could find in the place and buckling a contraption that seemed to pass for a seat belt.

“The Black Hole of Borneo. To seek the Sacred Pinky Ring.”

Then as all three heads bobbed to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive,” the ship warped into overdrive and they vanished into a wormhole.

“This is your captain speaking….”

“Maybe you should use a napkin.”

It seemed an odd thing for the captain to say.

Jerry managed to get one eyelid to furl. His right.

Oh.

It was the barista.

Her name was Michelle. She was pointing.

To Jerry.

To his mouth. Which was resting crookedly on the table.

Actually, the barista was pointing to a small puddle just a little bit away from his mouth.

Drool.

“Here,” said the barista. She handed him a napkin. The look on her face could be expressed by the formula one over the square root of love. “You must’ve dozed off.”

“Thank you, Michelle,” said Jerry.

“My name isn’t Michelle,” she said. “And I’m not the barista that doesn’t appear again until the end of this narrative.”

“It isn’t?” asked Jerry, confused. “You’re not?”

“Okay,” said the barista. Whose name was Calla Lily. “You got me. I am.”

“You’re joking,” said Jerry.

“Yes,” said the barista.

“Yes, you’re the barista who isn’t going to be mentioned? Or yes, you’re joking.”

“Precisely,” said the barista. Whose name was Frida. And had never made a latte in her life.