One unordinarily warm weathered, though as per usual quite cloudy, afternoon, Zeith took shelter from the humidity in a small, nameless cafe across the street from the Harrison Building, and found himself sitting at a high table staring at a goateed man who wore large sunglasses in spite of the low lighting and sipped absent-mindedly from a coffee mug in between a river of words.
"Well, you see this book," said the goateed man, suddenly taking a sip before continuing to use his mug for gesticulation, accenting every word with wild, swaying hands and sloshing, hot liquid. "This book was written by someone who calls themselves the Chronicler, but see the Chronicler guy isn't just any ordinary person...it's like he's..." The man stopped for a second and leaned in close to Zeith, looking suspiciously around the mostly empty cafe. "It's like he's an alien or something." He leaned back and stroked his beard, his train of thought speeding past a couple stops before sounding off again. "Though that might not be quite the right term for it..."
"Now see the Guardians are what interest me the most," said the man, pulling a beat up old manuscript from his trench-coat pocket and flipping to a dog-eared page filled with marks, side-notes, underlining, and highlighting, the original text was written in a language Zeith had never seen. The man tapped his finger incessantly on the page, shaking his head excitedly back and forth. "See here, I've read through this part over and over and it always gets me. They had this philosophy about sentient beings, cultures, you know? (Hmm, this mug has a very unique scratch on the handle here, see?) Because they have to always struggle in their own species' way between the natural instinct and the logical, intellectual checks and balances that all affect decision-making, there will, according to the Guardians anyways, always come a point when the species destroys itself, either with some kind of ultimate split between its technological advancement and its natural, well, personality...as a species, I mean...whatever it is that makes them, them, y'know...either that or they take the struggle so far that they just end up destroying themselves and their world entirely, through something like a massive war or not-so-natural natural disaster. Following this philosophy (and a whole lot due to the fact that their own worlds and species had been mostly destroyed anyway) the Guardians set out to confront civilizations and save them or prevent disaster or intervene, whatever you want to call it. The chapter's fairly short; as you'd imagine they were never very successful at getting through to entire species about their imminent doom, and as far as relocation or reeducation goes, my own saying is that once the ball of doom starts rolling, the pins of society are certainly coming down. It may not be a strike, but it'll certainly be a spare, somehow, someway...things fit together like that. 'Course that was the case with the Guardians, too. Sometime, everything has gotta break."
The man took a long swig and threw his mug. It travelled through the air, spinning, hitting the far brick wall and smashing in slow-motion into a thousand porcelain pieces, which fell to the ground as the young lady who had been reading a magazine behind the counter looked up, wide-eyed. The goateed man got up from his seat, threw a gold coin on the counter, and went for the door.
"Um, sir," said Zeith, turning in his seat and standing.
The man stopped and looked over.
"Do you really believe that," asked Zeith, nervously kicking himself mentally for the words even as he spoke them, "about the life and universe and everything, that it's all just inevitable, that it's all gotta break."
The slightly cracked door closed again as the man raised his hand to stroke his goatee. "Well," he said solemnly, "maybe not all of life, the universe, and everything, but, sometimes things, things with people, they break and they change and nothing is what you expected."
"Oh," said Zeith, still unsure and nervous, "oh, okay..."
"But sometimes," the corner of the man's mouth raised just slightly, "when things break, when people are broken..." he raised his hand and straightened his arm, pointing toward the far wall where the mug had shattered. Slowly, the porcelain shards crawled across the floored and then floated up the wall, retracing their steps exactly, only slower. Before the cafe occupants' eyes, the mug came back together piece-by-piece, in perfectly reverse order of how it had broken, and floated whole into the man's extended hand. "It may take a little bit longer in the binding than it did in the breaking," said the man, mug wholly repaired and in hand, "but if there is even one willing to take the time, much that is broken can be mended." The man lowered his shades and, grinning, winked at Zeith, for a split second revealing eyes swirling with a thousand shades and hues of the most brilliant and unusual colors.
In that same instant, the man was gone, the unbroken mug sitting on the counter. Slowly, warily, the young lady set aside her now very wrinkled magazine and got up. Picking up the mug, she noticed a very unique scratch on the handle and cynically, smugly shooed away all the magic and questions of the previous events in her mind, quickly forgotten amongst the worlds of fashion and consumerism that were hers for exploring in the colorful publication.
Zeith simply stood in his spot, lost in thought as the man's words swirled through his mind like the colors of those eyes. All very bizarre, he thought, yet somehow utterly captivating. Zeith soon left out of the same door that countless customers had also gone in and out of, yet he to a very different destination, most likely, than the majority of them.
And the only other occupant of the cafe was a quiet observer whom none of the others had noticed observing as he sat there behind his newspaper under the shade of his round, bowler derby hat and heavy eyebrows. Unsure of whether to cry out in protestation or jubilation, the man had simply sat in silent contemplation, never once previously imagining that anyone would write anything published, much less an entire chapter of a book, about himself and his comrades. The man finally decided on a smile. Why not, he thought, few better things to do before the end of the world but grin and enjoy being the ravings of a lunatic in a nameless cafe.
