Chapter 2: The Blue Light Special
The morning rush hit at 8:15 AM sharp.
I'd been behind the counter for an hour and a half, serving anonymous faces who ordered without making eye contact. My hands moved through the motions—grind, tamp, steam, pour—while my brain kept circling back to the blue glow.
It had lasted maybe three seconds. Could've been a trick of the light. Could've been my new transmigrated brain misfiring, trying to reconcile two lifetimes of memories.
Could've been real.
A businessman ordered a double espresso. I made it without the light showing up. He paid, left, didn't explode into sparkles. Normal transaction.
Okay, I thought. So it's not constant. Either I imagined it or there's a trigger.
The door chimed again. I looked up and recognized her immediately—not from the show, but from muscle memory. Tuesday regular. Always ordered a latte with an extra shot. Always left exactly fifteen percent tip. Always wore business casual and looked like she'd rather be anywhere else.
"Morning, Mrs. Henderson," I said, and the name came out automatically.
She blinked. "Oh. You remembered."
"You're a regular." I grabbed a mug before she could order. "Latte, extra shot?"
"Yes. Thank you." She sounded surprised. Probably because canon-Gunther barely spoke to anyone who wasn't Rachel.
I started the espresso pull and my mind wandered back to the glow. What had I been thinking about when it happened? I'd been holding my own coffee, looking down at it, and I'd thought—
Make it perfect.
That was it. The thought had been weirdly specific. Not "make coffee" but "make it perfect." And the light had appeared.
Mrs. Henderson was checking her watch, clearly in a hurry. I had maybe ninety seconds before she'd get impatient.
I looked down at the espresso machine and thought, very deliberately: Make this perfect.
Nothing.
I tried again, concentrating harder. Imagining the perfect latte. The ideal foam consistency. The exact temperature. The kind of coffee that would make someone's day better instead of just caffeinated.
My palms tingled.
The blue light returned, seeping from my skin like morning fog. It wasn't bright enough to cast shadows—more like my hands were wrapped in colored cellophane. The glow flowed down into the espresso cup, swirling through the liquid like food coloring in water.
I kept my hands steady through pure force of will. The milk steamed. I poured, creating a basic rosetta pattern because Gunther's muscle memory knew how. The blue light faded as soon as I stopped concentrating, disappearing like it had never existed.
The latte sat on the counter looking completely normal.
Mrs. Henderson picked it up without noticing anything strange. She paid, left her fifteen percent, and headed toward a table by the window.
I watched her sit down. Open her briefcase. Pull out files that looked important.
She took a sip.
Her expression changed. The tired resignation melted into something close to surprise. She took another sip, slower this time, actually tasting it instead of just consuming caffeine.
Then the steam rising from her cup did something impossible.
It thickened. Coalesced. Formed shapes that lasted maybe three seconds before dissipating.
I saw Mrs. Henderson in a glass office, shaking hands with a man in a expensive suit. She was smiling—genuinely smiling—and the man was nodding. Papers on the desk between them. A contract, maybe. Something important.
The vision dissolved. The steam became just steam again.
My head felt fine. No pain. Just a slight tingle at the base of my skull, like the beginning of brain freeze without the discomfort.
Mrs. Henderson was staring at her latte like it had just told her the secrets of the universe.
Mrs. Henderson - 8:47 AM
Eleanor Henderson had been drinking coffee for thirty-two years and thought she knew what good coffee tasted like.
She was wrong.
This was something else entirely. Not just good—perfect. The exact temperature she preferred but could never articulate. The foam had weight and substance without being heavy. The espresso had depth without bitterness.
She took another sip and felt something in her chest unclench.
The Hoffman account meeting was in three hours. She'd been dreading it all week. Richard Hoffman was notoriously difficult, and her pitch was good but not great. She'd probably lose the account to Morrison & Lee, go back to her office, and update her resume for the fifth time this year.
But drinking this coffee, she felt... different. Steadier. Like maybe the pitch was better than she thought. Like maybe she could walk into that meeting and actually close the deal instead of apologizing for taking up Hoffman's time.
That's insane, she thought. It's just coffee.
She took another sip anyway.
I served six more customers in the next hour. Normal coffee. No blue light. No visions. My hands stayed flesh-colored and boring.
By 10 AM, the morning rush had tapered off. Terry showed up for his shift—tall Black guy in his forties, manager-owner-boss, depending on which day you asked him. He nodded at me, checked the pastry case, and disappeared into the back office without conversation.
I had the counter to myself and a problem I couldn't explain.
The blue light was real. The vision was real. Mrs. Henderson had drunk that coffee and her entire demeanor had shifted from defeated to determined.
I'd given her confidence in a cup.
Okay, I thought, wiping down the espresso machine for something to do with my hands. Let's assume I'm not crazy. Let's assume this is real. What does that mean?
I died and woke up as a sitcom character. Already impossible. Adding superpowers to that equation didn't make it more impossible—just more complicated.
The question was: what were the rules?
I pulled out the small notepad we used for special orders and flipped to a blank page. Wrote in shorthand:
Blue light = appears when concentrating on making "perfect" drink Effect = customer confidence? Vision = showed future event (Mrs. H's meeting) Duration = ~3 seconds Side effects = slight tingle, no pain
I stared at what I'd written. It looked insane. It was insane.
I checked the door—empty coffeehouse, no customers, Terry still in the back.
I made myself another cup of coffee. Concentrated. Make it perfect.
The blue light appeared on cue, flowing into the mug like I was pouring liquid moonlight.
I drank it.
Nothing happened. No surge of confidence. No visions in the steam. Just normal, admittedly excellent coffee.
So it doesn't work on myself, I thought. Only on other people.
That made a weird kind of sense. You couldn't give yourself a pep talk the same way someone else could. The power needed a recipient.
The door chimed. College student, early twenties, looking like she'd slept in her clothes. Dark circles under her eyes worse than mine had been.
"Large coffee," she mumbled. "Black. As strong as you can make it."
"Rough night?" I asked, because apparently I was developing a personality.
"Rough semester." She rubbed her face. "I have a presentation in two hours and I've had three hours of sleep in the last forty-eight."
I made the coffee. Regular method, no concentration, no blue light. She paid and hunched over the cup at a corner table, flash cards spread around her like a paper fortress.
I watched her for a minute. Thought about the blue light. About Mrs. Henderson's sudden confidence. About having power and choosing when to use it.
Not yet, I decided. Not until I understand the rules.
I had questions. Big ones. Like: was there only blue? I'd seen the light as blue both times, but maybe there were other colors. Other effects.
And the vision—it had shown me something that hadn't happened yet. Mrs. Henderson in that office, shaking hands. Was that guaranteed? Or just a possibility? Would my coffee actually help her close the deal, or had I just given her a placebo effect disguised as magic?
By noon, I'd served maybe thirty customers. None of them got the special treatment. The blue light stayed dormant in my palms, waiting.
Terry emerged from the office, looked at the mostly-empty coffeehouse, and raised an eyebrow.
"Slow day?" he asked.
"People are at work," I said. "Like normal."
He grunted. Terry wasn't much for conversation—one of the reasons I liked him. He poured himself a cup from the regular pot, added sugar, and leaned against the counter.
"You seem different today," he said after a minute.
My hands tensed on the rag I was using. "Different how?"
"I don't know. Awake, maybe." He sipped his coffee. "You usually shuffle around like a zombie until noon. Today you're almost alert."
Because I'm not actually Gunther, I thought. Because I'm a forty-three-year-old man's consciousness wearing his body like a borrowed suit.
Out loud, I said, "Slept better, I guess."
Terry studied me for another few seconds, then shrugged. "Keep it up. You're more useful when you're conscious."
He went back to the office. I exhaled slowly.
The afternoon shift dragged. More customers, more normal coffee, more time to think.
I needed to test this systematically. Figure out the parameters. One vision had shown me something roughly 24-48 hours in the future—Mrs. Henderson's meeting was probably Monday. Could I see further? Could I control what the vision showed?
And what about other colors? Yellow, red, green? Did each one do something different?
By 4 PM, my shift was ending. I'd used the blue light exactly once, on one customer, and learned barely anything.
Not good enough.
I needed more data. More tests. More understanding.
But I also needed to be smart about it. Using weird glowing superpowers in the middle of Manhattan in 1994 seemed like a great way to end up in a government lab or a psych ward.
I clocked out, hung up my apron, and stepped into the September afternoon.
The street was crowded with people heading home from work. I walked against the flow, heading back to my studio apartment, my head full of questions.
Tomorrow was Saturday. Weekend rush at Central Perk meant lots of customers. Lots of opportunities to experiment.
I thought about Mrs. Henderson's face when she'd tasted that coffee. The way her shoulders had straightened. The vision of her success.
I can give people hope, I realized. Or confidence. Or whatever they need in that moment.
The weight of that settled over me like a coat. Power wasn't just about having abilities. It was about choosing when and how to use them.
I climbed the stairs to my apartment, unlocked the door, and sat on the bed that wasn't really mine.
The notebook I'd started came out of my pocket. I added more notes:
Powers don't work on self Blue = confidence boost? Vision = future event, 24-48 hours out Need to test: other colors, multiple uses per day, vision accuracy
I stared at what I'd written until the light faded outside and my stomach reminded me I'd forgotten to eat lunch.
Tomorrow, I'd learn more. Tomorrow, I'd push the boundaries.
Tonight, I just needed to accept that my second life came with magic coffee powers and a front-row seat to a TV show I'd memorized.
Could be worse.
I made myself a sandwich with bread that was going stale and deli meat I found in the tiny fridge. Ate it standing at the window, watching Manhattan move beneath me.
Somewhere out there, Rachel Green was still getting ready for a wedding she wouldn't finish. Ross Geller was still pining for a woman he'd loved since high school. Monica, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe—all of them were living their lives, completely unaware that in about a week, everything would change.
And I'd be there. Not in the background this time.
Right in the middle of it.
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