“Look at that sign at that restaurant,” said Matt, one of my group of four friends that were wandering around looking for something to do in our boring little city. “It says ‘our everything bagels truly have everything’. No way that that’s true.”
“Let’s go in and confront them on that,” said Lyle who was always the group’s shit disturber.
“I’m in,” said Wayne.
“Me too,” said Matt.
I guess I’m the cautious one because I was last to agree as our group was already headed into the front door.
Lyle headed up to the counter. “Where are your everything bagels? They can’t possible have everything on them. I demand you take your sign down right now!”
“Here are the everything bagels,” said the elderly, refined looking woman who was behind the counter. She took a couple steps further down the counter and waved at some bagels. “Look, they have all the ingredients our other bagels have on the top.”
“Just like everyone else’s everything bagels,” said Wayne. “I think you should take the sign down. You are misrepresenting things and if you don’t I will sue.”
“I think I know what your problem is,” said the woman. “Your problem is you think the bagel ends at the usual spot. No, no. Everything the bagel touches is part of the everything. It touches the cabinet, which touches the floor, which touches everything in the restaurant, which touches the street, which touches the whole Earth. Indeed it is really everything. You just choose to stop eating at the usual boundary of the bagel.”
“Wait a second,” said Wayne. “If everything else is truly attached to this one everything bagel, I should be able to take anything from anywhere in the world and put it on the normal bagel part of the everything bagel and eat that.”
“Alright,” said the woman, “I will allow you to take something from anywhere you like and I will put it on the normal bagel part of the everything bagel.”
“Now we’re talking! I’d like the finest caviar on mine,” said an excited Wayne.
“It will cost you your soul,” stated the woman.
“Something I can’t see, hear or touch. Give it to me.”
The woman put one of the everything bagels on a plate and went to the kitchen. She came back a minute later with what must have been caviar. It looked spreadable and indeed there was a butter knife on the plate which could do just that.
Wayne opened the bagel and spread the caviar on both sides. “Mmmmm. That’s really good.”
“My turn,” claimed an excited Matt. “I want an everything bagel with a dinosaur egg.”
“Oooh you drive a hard bargain but if the price is your soul, I will get it for you.”
“Sure, sure.” Matt nodded.
The woman went into the back with the plate with an everything bagel. She came back with two hands holding the plate that had the everything bagel and a huge egg barely balancing on top of the bagel.
“Wow,” said Matt. “I’ll put it in a hatchery and Jurassic Park, here we come.”
“I thought your plan was to eat it. It’s an unfertilized egg.”
“I want another everything bagel, then,” said Matt.
“Sorry, but you only have one soul to pay with.”
Lyle had a smirk on his face. “I want an everything bagel with a microscopic black hole.”
“You know the price?” asked the woman.
Lyle nodded.
The woman returned from the back with the everything bagel. She could still hold the plate with one hand. “You can tell the microscopic black hole is there because the bagel is at least twice as heavy.”
“Shouldn’t the black hole have sucked you in then fallen through the floor to the centre of the Earth?” asked Lyle.
“You should read up on microscopic black holes,” said the woman who now turned to me.
“We pay you our souls as soon as we’re given our bagels?” I asked.
“Right,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
I sighed. “I want an everything bagel with all our four souls on top.”
“Dammit!” she yelled. “All this work for nothing.” She got the bagel on a plate and passed it to me.
“Grab your souls back,” I ordered my friends. I don’t think they believed but they wanted to humour me so all made the motion of grabbing something from my bagel and putting it in their bodies.
Well we all got a bagel and Wayne even had his with caviar. The egg? We decided to sell it to a museum. Splitting the profits of course.
