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MillionNovel > Jackverse: Hit the Road Jack! > Chapter 2 - Jacks Truck Service and Eatery

Chapter 2 - Jacks Truck Service and Eatery

    Jack’s Compassion was a sad little rundown town in the middle of the desert. Why was it rundown? A fantasy world could just as easily have all new stuff, Jack the Trucker thought. All its people could be rich and live fancy lives. That wasn’t how it was in this story world, though. That wasn’t how the author made things. Jack’s Compassion indeed.


    Jack the Trucker pulled into Jack’s Truck Service and Eatery and found he was the only trucker there. He found a parking spot far from he entrance and set his air brakes. He took a few minutes to sit back in his seat to relax and reflect on all that had happened in such a short amount of time since the story world began.


    Jack had a broken tooth, he was covered in blood and wounds, and his shirt was ripped. There was a corpse behind him just past the curtains of his sleeper berth. He had just been materialized as a background character in a freshly made fantasy world that he hardly knew anything about it. As a matter of fact, he hardly knew anything about himself or where he was, either.


    Jack reached for the phone in his pocket. It was a smartphone, which was good, but he frowned at the message that came up when he turned the screen on: “We don’t want the main character, whoever they are, just sitting on their phone for hours, all features except for phone, text, camera, and GPS are temporarily disabled.”


    He swiped the message away and confirmed for himself that the phone only had the most basic of necessities available. Phone, text, camera, and GPS. No internet, then? How was he supposed to learn anything about the world without access to the internet? There wasn’t even a phonebook app on the thing, just a keypad to enter numbers manually! How was he supposed to call his company? Now wasn’t the time to think about that, though. It was time to prioritize.


    Jack the Trucker needed a shower, but before he could get one, he needed to do something about all the blood that covered him. He couldn’t waltz into the truck stop covered in blood. He threw off the rags of his torn shirt and then rummaged around in the numerous compartments of his truck, careful to step around the corpse of his dead assailant. He found some Jack Wipes in one of the compartments, so he used that to get off the worst of the blood, including much of the blood on his tan work boots. There were celtic sailor’s knots burnt into them, and on his black jeans were columns of embroidered white skulls that went down the length of his pants legs. A bit flashy, in his opinion, but maybe it was normal here. He went back to his closet and looked for a new shirt to wear.


    Every one of Jack the Trucker’s shirts was orange. Every one of them. In fact, the exterior of his truck was orange, too, he realized upon reflection. Curious, he stepped out of his cab and down onto the pavement still shirtless. He had a newer model Jackliner Jackadia and it was all orange with black pinstripes. He saw the name ‘Jack o’ Lantern Trucking Services’ written on his door. When he went around to the front of the truck, he noticed the initialism J.O.L.T.S. written above his windshield, the ‘O’ a little Jack o’ Lantern. There was a large one made of orange and yellow lights tied to the front grill of his truck, too. He sighed.


    Jack got back in his truck and grabbed a more muted orange shirt to put on, it had a Jack o’ Lantern face on the front and J.O.L.T.S. on the back, and then grabbed his shower bag hanging from the door of his closet. He made his way through the parking lot, through the fuel islands, and into the truck stop. He saw a clerk sitting at the check-out counter reading a magazine called Beanstalk, which Jack the Trucker somehow knew was a periodical that covered all matter of subjects, from looking one’s best to financial advice to survival skills to news from all across the story world. The clerk was in a light green polo that had the name of the truck stop above the left breast pocket. He also had green glowing irises that matched his polo.


    The clerk jumped when he noticed Jack the Trucker. “A customer!” he said. “Uh… can I help you?”


    “I need a shower,” Jack the Trucker said.


    “That’ll be ten Jackbucks.”


    Jack the Trucker pulled out his wallet and opened it. There was a golden coin inside, but he was a little light on paper money. “I’m your first customer, aren’t I? You should give me a discount.”


    “This ain’t no charity shop, pal,” the clerk said, eyes furrowed. “Ten Jackbucks or you can hit the road.”


    Jack the Trucker sighed. Another jackass. How many of them could there be? He pulled out a tenner from his wallet and handed it to the clerk, who grabbed it stingily and set it next to his register. The clerk printed out a receipt and handed it to Jack. It had a code to let him into one of the shower rooms: 10010311.


    When Jack got into his shower room he went to the mirror. He was handsome for right now, save for his missing tooth. Handsome and ripped and with light blue glowing irises. The jackass that attacked him and the store clerk had been handsome and muscular, too, for that matter, so maybe this world only had attractive people in it. That’s a cool perk of living in the Jackverse, he thought. Everyone started equal. Jacks would magically and automatically cycle looks every so often so as to allow the readers freedom in their imaginings of what the characters looked like, and to switch things up a bit. Not that that meant that Jacks couldn’t distinguish between one another through these changes. It was a magical sense. He wondered how much magic was in this world. Any tropes from fantasy to horror to science fiction were fair game in the Jackverse.


    Jack the Trucker’s belly started to gurgle. He sat down on the toilet that was in the room and took him a good long dump. Why would fictional characters need to use the bathroom, Jack wondered. They could have just as easily done without that fact of nature in their fantasy world, but here he was. He used his time to examine the contents of his wallet. He first went to the golden coin.


    On the front of the coin was the face of Jack Himself, the face of the actual author of the world. The front of the coin had the inscription ‘In Jack We Trust’ on it. On the reverse face was a picture of a skull, with the inscription ‘Memento Mori’ on it.


    Death. Jack the Trucker was mortal. He could die. He could have easily died earlier on the interstate. His thoughts turned to the jackass. He was dead. Hopefully there was some kind of afterlife. That’d be nice. And it’s something that could easily exist in the Jackverse, should Jack Himself will it. There was no reason not to have one, Jack thought, but then again, there was no reason to make him have to use the bathroom


    Other than that, in his wallet, he had twenty jackbucks left. He had his commercial driver’s license, which showed his current visage and would magically change along with him. His name was Jack 6A61636B and he was from a place called Spratsberg, Jacksylvania, wherever that was. He had a credit card, a debit card, insurance cards, a med card, a social security card, a joker playing card, a ‘get out of jail free’ card, and a few business cards to various people: a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, his dispatcher, et cetera. He wondered what kind of money he had on his debit card. He’d have to call the bank at some point and see, as he was low on paper money. He’d need to call his company, too.


    Jack finished up on the pot and cleaned himself and then disrobed and got into the walk-in shower along with all his showering accoutrements: his shampoo, conditioner, face wash, and so on. The hot steamy water felt good on his wounded, sticky body, and it was nice to get the rest of the blood out of his crevices. He felt at the tooth that had been knocked out. Screw the jackass that had attacked him. Jack still had to hide his body, too, he reflected as he washed himself. He wondered how long it would be before highway patrol got around to investigating Jackass’s abandoned truck. Would they just have it hauled off or would they investigate it further? Maybe stopping at a truck stop this close to the crime scene was a bad move.


    “Fuck it,” Jack said aloud to nobody. “What comes, comes.” It wouldn’t be too bad anyway, with everyone being ordered to drive wildly. There were bound to be crashes everywhere. The highway patrol would be too busy to deal with some random missing trucker. He was going to finish his shower slowly and go and get himself a nice hot meal, consequences be damned.


    Jack finished his washing routine and stood there in the hot shower water for a while, his mind empty, focusing only on the sensation of the water hitting his body. After that he washed his boots as best he could and then got out, put on some deodorant, brushed his teeth, and dressed himself.


    Jack the trucker found the eatery as empty as the rest of the truck stop. He took a seat at the counter and placed his shower bag in the seat next to him. He took a few minutes to look over the menu and then dinged the bell on the counter. His breath caught in his throat as he saw the waitress come through the kitchen doors.


    “J… Jill?” Jack asked breathlessly, his wind knocked out of him. “Is… is that you?”Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    “No,” the Waitress said with a scowl.


    “What?”


    “No.”


    “…What?”


    “I’m like you, idiot. I’m a Jack.”


    “H… how?”


    “Jack, in His eternal glory, decided to put me in a female body. I don’t know why, but there are others that are the same way. We’re called Jackies, or at least that’s what they said on the news. Jill doesn’t exist in this world.”


    “Oh,” Jack said. That made sense. The woman was far too slender and young looking to be a Jill. She was short, more cute than beautiful, with large round eyes with glowing pink irises. She had short pink hair in a pixie cut and she was wearing a classic diner waitress uniform, light blue with white collar and cuffs. It was printed all over in stylized ‘J’s. She was also wearing an apron with the name of the truck stop on it.


    “Yeah,” Jackie the waitress said. “So what do you want?”


    “What do I want?”


    “To eat, numbskull!” she said, getting out a notebook and pen. “Jack created you kind of dumb, didn’t He?”


    “Oh!” Jack said, fumbling the menu. “Uh… I think I’ll have the flapjacks. And a glass of orange juice. … Or wait, you know what? Do you have any vodka? Make me a screwdriver.”


    The Waitress rolled her eyes at that but finished writing with a flourish and went over and put the ticket on the order wheel at the serving hatch and spun it towards the kitchen and dinged a bell. A cook came up and took the ticket. Then the Waitress went back to the kitchen herself.


    Jack was a cruel God, Jack the Trucker thought to himself. He wasn’t sure what he’d think had he woken up as a woman. Still though, it could be much worse. The imagination could conjure up any number of depravities. Luckily this world, while full of jackasses, was still somewhat benign. He wasn’t currently on fire and he wasn’t being skinned alive, so Jack Himself wasn’t completely evil.


    The Waitress returned after a few minutes with a glass of iced orange juice that even had a sliced orange on the rim. Jack the Trucker took a deep sip from it, almost gagging. Maybe ordering orange juice after brushing his teeth was a bad move. Still, he enjoyed the sensation of the vodka as it ran down his throat. “That’s good,” he said.


    The Waitress looked at him for a few moments critically. Jack stared back briefly but then looked away awkwardly. He had thought the world was just going to be full of Jacks… ‘male’ Jacks. “You’re a trucker, right?” she asked. “Where are you headed?”


    “Jack Sin City. It’s east of here.”


    “I know where it’s at,” the Waitress said. “Jack didn’t load you with any geographic knowledge? And you’re supposed to be a trucker?”


    “Uh… no. I don’t even know where I live. It’s in a place called Spratsberg, Jacksylvania. Where is that?”


    “That’s further west. The world is just a copy of the United States, except flipped. North is south. East is west. The big cities are the same, location-wise, but the in-between is different. Jacksylvania is Pennsylvania, Spratsberg is probably Pittsburgh. There’s no Mexico or Canada, just the Jackadian and Jaxican seas. What happened to your face?”


    “Fight. I don’t want to get into it,” Jack said, taking another bitter sip of his screwdriver.


    “You start it?”


    “No.”


    “Good. I’ve been watching the news,” the Waitress said, nodding to a television that hung on the wall. “It’s a little chaotic out there from what I’ve seen. Lot of jackasses. The president was just assassinated by a secret service member on live tv.”


    “Jesus!” Jack the Trucker exclaimed. “That’s… that’s not good! The president?! Did… did the news say if there’s any afterlife?”


    “There was a report on the news. There’s a small group of Jacks that are Christians. They say they’ll go to heaven when they die.”


    “Christian Jacks, really? I… I never considered that.”


    “It’s jacking stupid! We don’t have souls! We’re not even really alive! How are we supposed to go to the in-real-life heaven when we don’t have in-real-life souls? There’s this other group that says there’s an in-universe heaven for us. They’re called Jackitarian Jackiversalists. They’ve got a bible, too, and they say it says there’s an afterlife.”


    “A book created by Jack Himself? It says there’s an afterlife?”


    “Technically yes, it was created by Jack Himself, but everything’s been created by Jack. All the truth, all the lies. The in-universe religion may just be a critique of the in-real-life religions. That’s what some people are saying, anyway. Let’s get off that, though. I want to talk about Jack Sin City.”


    “I don’t know anything about it.”


    “I know,” the Waitress said. “I’ll tell you about it. It’s Las Vegas, for starters. You know there’s magic and sci-fi stuff in the world, right?”


    “Right.”


    “I want to go to Jack Sin City. I want to find a gender bender machine. Or gender bender wizard. Whatever it is.”


    “You really think that exists in this world? Why would Jack write it so you were all females if you could just change it later? Jack made you how he wanted you.”


    “He made me to want to change,” the Waitress said. “I don’t think Jack would have written me that way if he didn’t want me to make that my personal arc.”


    “You don’t have an arc,” Jack the Trucker said. “You’re not the main character. You and me, we’re not even in the story.”


    “The whole world’s the story,” the Waitress said. “How else would we exist if we weren’t in a story?”


    “The World Maker,” Jack the Trucker said. “Jack makes the story, the World Maker does all the background stuff, the stuff that never makes it in. No one knows who or what the World Maker is, not even Jack Himself.”


    “The World Maker and Jack are the same thing.”


    “Impossible,” Jack said.


    “Maybe there’s a million million Jacks across a million million in-real-life parallel universes,” the Waitress said. “All of them writing each individual Jack in this story world.”


    “The vast majority of people’s lives are boring and uneventful,” Jack said. “Those parallel universe Jacks would, in your theory, be mainly writing uninteresting stories. You really think any Jack wants to write about a waitress working some truck stop in the middle of nowhere? Or some random trucker who just drives all day, every day? The Jackverse is about larger than life characters, interesting people.”


    “I think everyone lives an interesting life in their own way,” the Waitress said. “Jack Himself is making an artistic statement. And besides, look at the state of the world we live in. There’s enough interesting stuff happening to make interesting stories from anyone’s perspective. You yourself got into a fight earlier.”


    “There’s only one main character in this world,” Jack said. “And no one knows who that is. That’s a canon fact. And that character will be the most interesting Jack in the world, not somebody like us.”


    “Even if what you say is true,” Jackie the Waitress said, “which I don’t believe that it is, but for the sake of argument, even then, Jack Himself wouldn’t want the True Main Character to be able to tell he was the main character, would he?” the Waitress said. “As soon as a few interesting things happened to them then they’d know they were the main character. They’d know they were on a hero’s journey. But if everyone in the world is on their own hero’s journey, if everyone has a story, then the True Main Character would never be able to tell that theirs was the One True Character Arc.”


    “That…,” Jack said, trailing off, unable to think of a response.


    “That’s true,” the Waitress said. “That’s canon.”


    “That is not canon,” Jack said.


    “Well, I think it’s canon,” the Waitress said. “Or at least it is in my story. The physics of this universe is such that everyone gets a personal story arc.”


    Jack thought about that for a moment, working it out in his mind.


    “Order up!” the cook yelled from the kitchen.


    The Waitress walked back and got a steaming plate of flapjacks from the serving hatch and brought it back to Jack the Trucker along with a pitcher of syrup. Jack buttered his hotcakes and drizzled syrup over the stack. He took a bite and slowly chewed it for a moment, thoughtful, him and the Waitress looking at one another.


    “Alright,” Jack the Trucker finally said.


    “Alright? Alright what?” the Waitress asked.


    “You win,” Jack said. “The argument, I mean.”


    “Just like that?” the Waitress asked.


    “At least for now. I don’t think it’s right, of course, but you’ve won the debate for the time being. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll give you my thoughts when I come back through these parts, but it might be a while.”


    “Can I come with you?”


    “You want to come with me?” Jack said with a mouth full of flapjack.


    “My character wasn’t given knowledge of how to drive, and I don’t have a car. I could carjack somebody and wing it, but I’d prefer to stay a good guy.”


    “You really believe all that about having your own story, don’t you?”


    “I do,” the Waitress said. “Can we stop by my place so I can pick up a few things? It’s really close by.”


    “I haven’t said yes yet,” Jack said, taking a sip of his screwdriver.


    “Yet,” the Waitress repeated with a grin. “Well, when you do, can we plan to stop by my place first?”


    Jack sighed. Then he remembered about the body in his truck cab. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring you along.”


    “Why not? This is a perfectly reasonable thing to have happen in your story. You really want to spend your time in existence all alone?”


    Jack dawdled. It did sound like a fun thing to do. It sounded like an adventure. He may not be the main character, but he could still do fun things, couldn’t he? What would she say about the body, though? Maybe he could stash it, clean his truck, and then come get her later, making out like he changed his mind. Another trucker could come in at any time, though, and she could hitch a ride with them….


    “I may have killed somebody,” Jack the Trucker finally said, breaking eye contact.


    “Oh?”


    “Yeah… and… and maybe their body is in my truck…”


    “Maybe?” the Waitress asked.


    “Maybe,” Jack replied.


    “Are you a serial killer?”


    “No!”


    “Truckers are known for that sort of thing.”


    “I’m not a serial killer!”


    “Not yet,” the Waitress said. “Serial killers are only serial killers if they kill multiple people. Now that I think about it, you probably only had time to kill the one guy, didn’t you? Tell me he had it coming, though. You’re like… a good serial killer, right?”


    “No, he didn’t have it coming!


    “So you kill randomly?”


    “No! I mean… God… I mean nobody has it coming. It was an accident. We were fighting and I got heated and I accidentally killed him. He attacked me for literally no reason! He came into my truck!”


    “If that’s what happened then why didn’t you just call the cops?”


    “I didn’t want to go to prison.”


    “It would have been self-defense!”


    “I don’t know what the legal system is like here. The... the president was just assassinated. There’s too much chaos to not be overly cautious.”


    “True… true…,” the Waitress said. “So can I come with you?”


    “You still want to come with me? Maybe… maybe I am a serial killer. What then?”


    “Then I guess I’ll see if the Jackiversalists are right. Or maybe I could be your sidekick.”


    “You’re sure you don’t want to wait for somebody else?”


    “You’ll do,” the Waitress said.


    “Okay,” Jack the Trucker said softly.


    “Really?”


    “Yeah. Okay,” Jack finally said.
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