That's what had brought Tony Burps to the Route 202 Diner this rainy evening. He'd hired a new dishwasher less than a week before, and his spies were telling him the guy had not left since. He'd been taking every shift for nearly four days, allowing the other kitchen help to burn a rare day off their miserly sick time.
Even though Tony had hired the man he could barely recall what he looked like now. He just remembered this guy was big — real big. As big and tall as Tony was big and fat. His brief work record was something of a quandary for Tony. Working for nearly one hundred hours straight was great for the diner's overall operation, as there had been no backup at the sinks since the man was hired. But Tony was also paying for this spirited enterprise — at nearly five bucks an hour.
He was there today to investigate.
He barged through the front door, grunted in the general direction of some of the stool regulars, then cornered Marshall, his head counterman.
"That guy go home yet?" he asked Marshall.
The diminutive black man in the neatly pressed shirt and tie just shook his head.
"He's still back there, boss," he reported. "He ain't even broken a sweat yet. But I'll tell you, whenever he decides to work his magic, the dishes have never been so clean."
Tony did not like the sound of that.
He pulled out his employee/living book and began flipping through the last few pages.
"What's his name again? Clorox?"
"Zarex," Marshall gently corrected him. "I think he's sitting out back, having a smoke."
Tony brushed by him and pushed his way into the kitchen. The place was a mess. The dishes were piled sky high in the sink, there were dirty pots and pans everywhere. Tony took one look at the night cook. The man stood frozen for a few seconds before going back to his task of making a stack of silver dollar pancakes.
Tony stepped through the filthy cleaning area and kicked the back door open. The junkyard, a putrid canal, and the highway lay beyond. Sitting on a crate next to the trash barrels was his latest dishwasher.
"What's a matta wit' you?" Tony asked him. "You got a headache? Did you break a nail?"
Zarex looked up at him, took a long, sweet puff of his Marlboro, and blew the smoke right into Tony's extra-large face.
"I'm on break," he said, looking back out over the dirty canal. God, how he loved staring at it and the busy roadway beyond.
"It looks like you've been on break all day," Tony said, thumbing back toward the dirty kitchen. "I mean, when I hired you, Mr. Xerox, I wasn't doing it just to provide you with a place to hang out. If that's what you kids still call it. I mean, you're here to work, too."
Zarex sent another plume of smoke Tony's way. There was a screech of brakes on the highway nearby. A fascinating sound.
"I've done nothing but work since coming here," he told Tony. "Why? Have you heard complaints?"
"Yeah," Tony roared back. "A big one. Like the fooking kitchen area looks like a fooking mess. Like it's all dirty dishes and crappy pots. This ain't charm school, bozo. You're supposed to be cleaning all that stuff."
Zarex took one last drag of his cigarette, stubbed the lit end out on the palm of his hand, then stood up. Tony nearly stumbled backward. This guy was much bigger than he remembered him. He stepped aside while Zarex calmly put his apron back on and stepped back inside the kitchen. Tony saw a quick flash of light, followed by a puff of greenish smoke. Not two seconds later, Zarex stepped back outside, sat back down on his crate, and relit his Marlboro.
Tony backed away from him, stepped into the kitchen, and nearly peed himself.
The place was absolutely clean. No, clean was not the right word. Sparkling. That was it. All the dishes were now washed and stacked, all the pans were scrubbed and hanging in the proper stations.
Tony's jaw dropped through his three chins. The cowering night cook walked back to the cleaning area with a dirty pot covered with spaghetti sauce.
"He's been doing this since coming here, boss," the cook said with a quivering voice. "Place gets messy. He waits till no one is looking and — phfft! It's all clean again. I mean, don't get me wrong; every cook loves a clean kitchen. But, if you ask me, I think it's kinda spooky, what he's been doing."
But Tony was barely listening to the man.
"Mind your own business," he finally said to the cook, taking the dirty pot and throwing it into the pristine sink. "Get back to work."
The cook scrambled away; Tony gingerly stepped back outside. He looked down at Zarex, who was drawing on his stubby cigarette like it was his last breath.
There was a long, awkward silence. Tony looked at Zarex; Zarex looked at Tony. He'd been to thousands of planets in his lifetime, but Zarex knew the real root of discovery came not from a world's rocks and clay but from its inhabitants. Everything the explorer had to know about this part of this planet he would learn right here, in this place, at this moment.
"Did you have something else to say?" he finally asked Tony, breaking the spell.
Tony just stared back at him for a few beats, then said, "Yeah, you missed a pot."
Several hundred miles to the southwest, Pater Tomm was standing in the shadows of a huge cathedral, watching a police car roll by.
He was in a city called Washington, D.C. It seemed to be the political center of this little world, but it was virtually empty of people, and anyone he did see walking around was doing so very slowly. He'd caught a ride on an empty railroad car to get here, he and a number of other hobos. When they arrived at the station, more hobos jumped on the train than jumped off. Tomm was convinced this meant something, but he didn't know what.
He'd walked the city and saw little he'd describe as spectacular. Many of the structures were built of the same red brick that was featured on other houses strictly as a heat-release device. There were plenty of cars, too. In fact, they were parked everywhere: along the curbs, in people's yards, even on their front lawns. Yet Tomm could have walked down the middle of any number of main streets without fear of getting clipped by one of the four-wheeled monsters. There were plenty of cars around; there just weren't that many people driving them.
He found the cathedral the afternoon of the second day. His heart leapt when he first spotted it. The cross on its steeple was nearly an exact copy of the one he always wore around his neck, proportionately speaking, of course. To his mind, this could only mean one thing. While for whatever reason this planet had missed out on a lot of the cool stuff available throughout the Galaxy, this one thing, religion, had somehow made it here.
It was for moments like these that Pater Tomm lived. So he sat in the park across the street from the grand church, nursing the free coffee he'd received from the nearby homeless center, intent on studying the people who went in and out of the place.
He'd sat like that for several hours. The strange thing was, no one approached the place; no one came out. As soon as it grew dark, he'd stolen into these shadows where he waited now, as the police car idled past. The two cops had been eating something, and this only reminded Tomm that it had been ages and billions of miles since his last good meal.
But first things first.
Once he was sure that the authorities were gone, he picked the lock on the back door of the church and let himself in.
But any excitement he'd felt in his heart drained right out of him as he took a long look around the inside of the cathedral. The altar was incredibly elaborate with much gold and silver in evidence. Finely carved wooden benches and a magnificent pulpit only added to the aura. Beautiful frescoes on the walls and ceiling. Marble for the altar rails and floor. A beautiful piece of architecture.