The stars had arranged themselves into a Venn diagram in the night sky above the train riding to Elsewhere.
Bob was on the train, nestled in a cabin labeled Cabin Somnus del Chamán, located just beside the one belonging to the enigmatic Dr. Churchicon, a man rumored to sleep sitting up, clutching a book on theological sleep cycles, and murmuring “Amen,” but horizontally.
Tail twitching with anticipation for the upcoming stop at Agnostic Spoon Station, Bob curled up inside the cabin, a spot just warm enough from the radiator and just mysterious enough from Churchicon’s occasional Latin whispers.
From his satchel, Bob pulled out the latest issue of Spoon Digest. It was time to update his brain.
Before reading, he reached toward his suitcase, retrieved his Wobbleday Hat – Striped Circus Cap and placed it firmly on his head. Tilted just so. Then he muttered: “Just in case.”
The magazine cover read: Is This Spoon Real or Just Projecting Your Uncertainty?, with a spoon photo that appeared slightly blurred no matter how hard you tried to focus.
At the center spread was a painting, mysterious, strangely familiar: Bob himself, staring intently at a bluish golden spoon mid-bend. In-front stood a peculiar man dressed like a magician: long fingers, dark blue tuxedo, and a piercing gaze, and yes, that unmistakable aura of televised mystery.
Uri Geller, the caption read.
The spoon in the painting was bending sideways, as if embarrassed by too much attention.
Bob tilted his head. Something about it tickled the underside of memory. He turned the page. There it was: Uri Geller: The Master Spoon Bender.
He paused to sip a peculiar tea.
Wait. No. This time it was coffee.
The coffee beside him seemed to hum in agreement, swirling like a galaxy in his cup. The Andromeda Galaxy, to be precise.
Then he saw it: an interview with a familiar name, Bob the Cat: On Art, Memory, and the Hat Magic.
“Some say it’s the brush. Some say it’s the muse. I say it’s the hat; it’s the tea and a spoon that remembers the curve of your first lie.”
Bob’s tail twitched.
He didn’t remember giving that interview.
But then again, it felt like something he would say or had already said.
He stared again at the painting. The man in a tuxedo. The bending spoon. The way the table’s shadow curved in the exact shape of a question mark.
“Déjà vu!” he proclaimed aloud.
And just like that. Mid-sip, mid-thought, mid-riddle, Bob fell asleep again.
Which was hardly a crime …
But perhaps a little irresponsible, given the state of the world.
One moment he was reading the article titled “How I Met Uri Geller and Learned How to Bend a Spoon,” the next, he was in the desert.
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