Edith and the Focaccia of Time

Today, I was near 9th and Irving when I realized it was time for lunch. Ahead were five Italian bakeries for me to choose from, lined up in a row.

The first bakery sold artisan pizzas by the slice and had a nuclear fusion reactor in the back. Taped to the front window was the letter A, its Building Energy Efficiency Rating. The rating A stood for "Admire the near-zero energy usage, all ye who enter this building." This right here was true fusion cuisine. Unfortunately I wasn't impressed. There weren't enough hydrogen atoms on my pizza and there was too much helium in my crust. Once I munched through the main cheese and toppings, the rest of it floated away.

The second bakery served garlic knots and had a solar panel in the back, along with a series of mirrors strung through the neighboring alleyway. You see, the nuclear fusion reactor within the first bakery was actually a star, much like our sun but smaller. The second bakery had been sneaking in the star's light through the mirror system, thereby directing it to the solar panel that powered an electric convection oven. This bakery received a B as its Building Energy Efficiency Rating, which stood for "Better than most, I suppose." Unfortunately I wasn't impressed. The garlic knots tasted too much like electrons and not enough like garlic or knots.

The third bakery offered bread sticks. It received an energy efficiency rating of C, which stood for "Can't see how it can get much worse." To heat its ovens, the bakery burned vats of oil. Olive oil, to be precise. During the building's construction, when workers first broke ground, they struck a rich vein in the earth. Amidst sand and clay, glass bottles lay packed together, all labeled extra virgin. This bakery's good fortune did not, however, extend to the quality of their wares. I wasn't impressed. Their bread sticks couldn't defeat an army of US Marines.

The fourth bakery peddled god knows what. Their rating was a D. "Do not think for a second that this falls anywhere close to the meaning of the word efficient." Back when this bakery was still a blueprint, the local brickworks underwent severe supply chain issues. So did the lumberers and stonemasons and anyone else who produced common building materials. The chief architect had no choice but to substitute bricks with the next best available resource. As a result, the bakery walls comprised of mortar and stacks of air conditioning units. The bricklayers, having never worked with this material before, lay the AC units facing the interior, and a communication error led the electricians to wire them such that they were in permanent operation. Even a tub of water froze within minutes upon entering this fourth bakery. The bakers heated the oven by sending employees out to collect fuel. The employees rode into Golden Gate Park on sheep, who sometimes drifted off the road to graze or nap or baa at tufts of tourists. When the employees returned, they brought twigs and dry leaves and burned them in a hearth. The employees warmed themselves by the fire, namely their hands. Then they went to work. They slapped mounds of dough, a ceaseless staccato, releasing kinetic energy through percussive force. That kinetic energy turned thermal, imbuing the dough with a rise in temperature that amounted to a fraction of a fraction of a degree. I don't know what they hoped to bake. I didn't stick around to find out.

According to official statements, Building Energy Efficiency Ratings are supposed to range from A through D. The fifth and final bakery, as it turned out, did not have anything to rate. It didn't use fusion or fire or fists. Rather, focaccia simply flickered into form. The bakery did receiving a rating though: "F**** the laws of physics."

With the laws of physics thoroughly forgone, the bakery had so much leftover space that it set up a full dining set in the corner, a round table nestled between heavy wooden chairs with a candelabra aglow in the center. That was the first time I met Edith. It wouldn't be the first. I approached with a bag of focaccia in my hands, already halfway through my haul.

After some light small talk, I dove right into it. "How is it working for your boss?" I asked before biting into another piece of my bread. I was here for the latest scoop. Too many businesses view their employees as objects. For those like Edith, it can be worse. She told me how previous employers didn't value her at all and treated her like part of the furniture.

"But my current boss is different," she exclaimed. "She knows what it's like to be overlooked and promised to never make me feel that way."

Edith's boss. A focaccia fairy. Distant cousins to the sugar plum line.

"On my first day, she gave me a piece of focaccia that she made by hand." Edith brandished the bread. Under candlelight, the roasted garlic shimmered from its many coats of olive oil. "You wouldn't believe what it can do!"

I didn't. Not at first. Edith had to demonstrate. She tossed the focaccia into the air, slicing space itself. From the tear, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil slipped out. I caught it just in time. Edith smiled sheepishly. "I'm glad there's someone around with hands. The floors were such a mess last time I tried this." With a wave of her focaccia, she moved the wormhole underground where it would impose fewer inconveniences.

Convinced, I asked Edith what else this bread could do.

"That's it," she replied a bit too quickly. "Transporting olive oil from afar is all this thing can manage."

That's when I noticed that the rosemary sprigs atop the focaccia were arranged like the face of a clock. "Poking holes in the fabric of space seems easy enough," I said. "What if you tried to do so with time?"

"Time?" she squeaked like a chair scraping the floor. "I would never attempt something so reckless as tampering with the fundamentals of time!"

I realized then that Edith must have attempted something so reckless as tampering with the fundamentals of time. "The extra virgin olive oil." I clutched my bag of focaccia tighter. It finally dawned on me. "The other bakery found it years ago, but you started working here just last week. That olive oil deposit couldn't have appeared underground through natural geological means."

Edith began to loudly weep, her silk tablecloth growing wet with tears. "You were supposed to thank me for the demonstration and then leave," she cried. "And when you got home, you'd write a food review on your blog that would go viral and quadruple our customer base. My boss would open a second location and promote me to become a manager there as well." Her legs trembled, all twelve of them, four from the table and four each from the two heavy chairs. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. You were never meant to ask about time."

A numbness crept up my body, a dread that was swallowing me whole. "Edith," I said, "how many times have I met you for the first time?"

She muttered a number. I lost my breath. My bag of focaccia hit the floor.

A few months ago, I took an all-day sewing boot camp where I made one rookie mistake after another. Among them, I'd forgotten to lower the presser foot, resulting in an irreversible ball of thread. I tried to pull it apart with the naive hope that I could still salvage the stitches I'd made so far. After watching me struggle, the instructor came by, took a pair of shears, and snipped the whole thing off. Start over, was what she told me. Otherwise there's no escape.

I wished this was an ordinary time loop. A smooth and circular thing. Instead, Edith had knotted the threads of time until there was no untangling this cosmic mess. Neither of us dared to admit it, but everything we know and love had to be snipped away. The kicker? Even if we wanted to, no focaccia was sharp enough to cut through the history of All Sorts Of Creatures Congregate Here City.