Chapter 1: The Last Cup
The remote slipped from my fingers for the third time that night.
I didn't bother picking it up. The TV was already playing the episode I wanted—the one where Ross and Rachel finally get together. Season two, episode something. I'd seen it forty, maybe fifty times. The laugh track echoed through my studio apartment, bouncing off the walls I'd stopped decorating years ago.
My chest felt wrong. Tight. Like someone had wrapped rubber bands around my ribs and kept twisting.
I reached for the coffee mug on the side table. Cold. Had been cold for an hour. I drank it anyway because getting up to make a fresh cup meant admitting I'd spent another Friday night alone with reruns, and I wasn't quite ready for that level of self-awareness.
The chest thing got worse.
On screen, Rachel smiled at Ross. The audience went wild. I tried to breathe deeper but the air wouldn't go all the way down. My left arm started to tingle, then burn, then just—
The mug hit the floor.
I heard it shatter. Saw the coffee spread across the hardwood like someone had spilled ink. Couldn't feel my legs anymore. Couldn't feel anything except the pressure in my chest that had become the entire world.
This is it, I thought. I'm dying alone watching a show about people who have friends.
The irony was too perfect.
The ceiling light above me looked like a stage spotlight. I could hear Phoebe singing "Smelly Cat" from the TV. My vision narrowed to a pinpoint, then—
Nothing.
—gasped awake and nearly fell out of bed.
Wrong bed. Wrong room. Wrong everything.
I sat up too fast and my head spun. The sheets were scratchy cotton, not the cheap microfiber I'd bought on sale. The walls were yellowed white instead of beige. Sunlight cut through blinds that I didn't own, painting stripes across a hardwood floor that wasn't mine.
My hands were shaking. I held them up and they looked... younger? The skin was tighter. The veins less prominent. I made a fist and the movement felt smooth in a way my forty-three-year-old joints hadn't felt in years.
A newspaper sat on the nightstand. I grabbed it with fingers that definitely weren't mine.
The New York Times - September 15, 1994
I read the date three times. Checked the masthead. Looked at the cover story about some congressional hearing I vaguely remembered from high school history class.
I'd been born in 1979. Done the math in my head and felt something cold settle in my stomach. I was sixteen in 1994. I was supposed to be in my parents' house in Ohio, worrying about geometry homework and whether Jenny Kramer would notice I existed.
I wasn't supposed to be here. Wherever here was.
The apartment was tiny—studio, maybe four hundred square feet. Kitchenette in one corner with a hot plate and a mini fridge. Bathroom door half-open showing cracked tile. A closet with the door slightly ajar revealing clothes I didn't recognize.
I stood up. My legs worked fine. Better than fine, actually. My knee didn't crack when I put weight on it. My back didn't ache. I was wearing boxers and a plain white t-shirt that smelled like detergent, not the takeout-and-depression smell my old apartment had absorbed.
The floor was cold under my bare feet. I walked to the window and looked out.
Manhattan.
I knew it was Manhattan before I even processed what I was seeing. The buildings, the water towers, the specific way the morning light hit the brick. I'd visited twice in my life and watched it on TV a thousand times.
This isn't real, I thought. Heart attack hallucination. Last neurons firing. I'm still on my living room floor bleeding out from a cerebral hemorrhage or something.
I pinched my arm. It hurt. Pinched harder. Hurt more.
Okay.
Not a dream.
I turned from the window and that's when I saw the mirror on the closet door.
The man looking back at me was not me.
Blonde hair, styled in a way I never would have chosen. Younger face—mid-twenties maybe. Tired eyes with dark circles underneath. Slight build, maybe five-ten. A face I'd seen before but couldn't quite place.
I stepped closer. The stranger stepped closer.
I raised my hand. He raised his hand.
"Fuck," I said out loud, just to hear the voice.
It wasn't my voice. Higher. Nasally. An accent I couldn't quite identify—vaguely European but worn down by years in America.
The face stared back at me and something clicked in my brain. Not like remembering a name. More like two puzzle pieces snapping together so hard it hurt.
I knew this face.
I'd seen it in the background of a hundred episodes. Making coffee. Mopping floors. Staring at Rachel with the kind of hopeless longing that was supposed to be funny because he never did anything about it.
"No," I said to the mirror. To the face. To whatever cosmic joke this was. "No, that's not—that's not possible."
But my hands were already moving, pulling open the closet door with fingers that felt like mine but weren't. Inside: three identical white button-down shirts. Two pairs of black slacks. A name tag on the shelf.
GUNTHER Central Perk
I picked it up. The metal was cool and real. The pin on the back sharp enough to prick my thumb when I tested it.
The room tilted. I sat down hard on the bed before my legs gave out.
I was Gunther. From Friends. The coffee guy. The joke. The character who existed entirely to pine after Rachel and occasionally deliver a sarcastic one-liner that made the laugh track roar.
The character who watched life happen to other people and never did anything himself.
My chest felt tight again but for different reasons. I'd died watching that show. Died alone because I'd spent twenty years watching fictional people live while I let my real life atrophy.
And now I was him. The ultimate cosmic fuck-you.
I laughed. It came out bitter and sharp. The sound echoed in the tiny apartment and I realized how quiet it was. No TV. No traffic noise making it through the old windows. Just me and the second-hand furniture and the growing certainty that this was real.
The newspaper said September 15th. I tried to remember the show's timeline. The pilot had aired in... '94? September, definitely. Had it already happened? Was I too late? Would I walk outside and see Ross and Rachel already together, years of storylines already resolved?
My hands were shaking again. I pressed them flat against my thighs and felt the muscle tension, the reality of having a body that wasn't failing.
I'm not staying background this time, I thought. The words crystallized in my head like a mission statement. I died as a spectator. I'm not doing that again.
A schedule sat on the nightstand under the newspaper. I grabbed it with hands that were steadier than they had any right to be.
Central Perk work schedule. My name—Gunther's name—penciled in for the morning shift. Starting at 7 AM.
I checked the digital clock on the microwave: 6:47 AM.
Thirteen minutes.
I moved on autopilot—pulling on the black slacks, buttoning the white shirt, finding shoes that fit perfectly because they were my feet now. The bathroom mirror showed me Gunther's face again and I practiced expressions. Smile. Frown. Neutral customer-service face.
All of them felt foreign and familiar at the same time, like trying on clothes that belonged to someone else but happened to fit.
The walk to Central Perk should have felt strange. It didn't. My feet knew the route. Four blocks west, two blocks south. Past a bodega that would become a Starbucks in ten years. Past a phone booth with an actual rotary phone inside. Past storefronts I recognized from establishing shots.
The air smelled different than 2037 had. Less exhaust. More garbage. A specific New York funk that TV never quite captured.
No one looked at their phones because phones still had cords. People read newspapers on benches. A kid walked past with a Discman, headphones leaking whatever passed for popular music.
I turned the corner and there it was.
Central Perk.
The orange couch visible through the window. The brick walls. The counter where I'd spend the next however-many-years making coffee and pretending to be part of the background.
My keyring had the work key on it. Muscle memory guided it into the lock and the door swung open with a creak that needed WD-40.
Inside, the coffeehouse was empty. Too early for customers. The chairs were still upstacked on the tables from last night's closing. The espresso machine gleamed dull chrome in the morning light. Everything smelled like coffee grounds and cleaning solution.
I stood there for a long moment, just breathing it in.
This was real. This was my life now. The orange couch where they'd sit. The counter where I'd work. The stage where Phoebe would sing terrible songs that somehow became iconic.
I walked behind the counter and started the opening routine—unstacking chairs, turning on the espresso machine, checking the pastry case. My hands knew what to do even though my brain was still catching up.
The espresso machine took three tries to get the steam pressure right. I cursed at it in what I recognized as Dutch—apparently Gunther's first language was still accessible somewhere in this brain.
While waiting for the machine to heat up, I made myself a cup. Simple coffee, nothing fancy. Just needed caffeine and normalcy.
I held the mug in both hands and looked down at the dark surface.
That's when it happened.
My hands glowed blue.
Not bright. Not like a flashlight. More like someone had dipped my fingers in luminescent paint. The light seemed to come from under my skin, gentle and impossible.
I jerked back and nearly dropped the mug. The glow faded instantly.
I stared at my hands. Normal. Flesh-colored. No trace of blue.
"What the hell," I whispered.
I tried to make it happen again. Concentrated on my hands, my palms, willing the light to return. Nothing.
The coffee in my mug was getting cold. I took a sip—just normal coffee, nothing special—and tried to process what I'd just seen.
Transmigration. Powers. A second chance at life in a sitcom universe.
One thing at a time, I thought. First: survive today. Second: figure out what the hell that was. Third: don't waste this.
The front door chimed. First customer of the day shuffled in—middle-aged woman with a briefcase and the resigned expression of someone facing another Thursday.
Except it was Friday. September 15th, 1994. One week before six friends would walk into my life and change everything.
I straightened up, put on what I hoped was a customer-service smile, and said, "Good morning. What can I get you?"
My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. But my hands were steady on the espresso portafilter.
This was real. This was happening.
I was going to figure out the blue light thing. I was going to learn the rules. I was going to build something.
But first, I was going to make a damn good cup of coffee.
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