Jack woke up to find tomorrow's coffee already cold on his nightstand.
"Note to self," he muttered, "Tuesday physics are garbage."
His shadow was already up, munching on the redundant seconds between his alarm beeps. It pointed to a package on his desk—addressed from himself, postmarked next Thursday, containing socks he hadn't lost yet.
"Morning, Jack!" Pi's voice vibrated through the wall. "Fair warning—Tuesday's temporal coefficient is extra wonky. The mail's arriving three hours before anyone sends it, and the breakfast you're about to not eat was delicious!"
Jack stumbled to his quarters' bathroom, which had optimized itself overnight into a perfect circle. Efficient? Yes. Possible to find anything? No.
"ARIA, you there?"
"Unfortunately," her voice crackled from his communicator. "The station's temporal field is making me experience conversations backwards. Which means I already know how this talk ends, and you're not going to like it."
"What do you—"
"See? Told you."
Jack gave up and headed for the briefing room. In the corridor, he passed Rangers reading mission reports that unprinted themselves, janitors cleaning messes that would happen tomorrow, and one very confused ensign trying to file a complaint about an incident during next week's Shore Leave.
The turbolift operated on Tuesday Logic. "Floor please?" it asked.
"Briefing Room Six."
"You already arrived five minutes ago. Would you like to go somewhere else you've already been?"
His shadow ate the paradox. The lift shuddered and delivered him to approximately the right place, though he entered through what should have been a supply closet.
Commander Reeves stood at the holo-display, which was helpfully playing Jack's mission briefing in reverse. "—and that's why you already failed. Questions?"
"Could we maybe run that forward?" Jack suggested.
"Forward is relative on Tuesdays. But sure." Reeves hit replay. The briefing reversed its reversal, showing Pattern Eaters un-stealing something from a bank that wouldn't exist until next month. "Makes perfect sense now, right?"
"Absolutely not."
"Good! That means you understand Tuesday physics. Your ship leaves in negative twenty minutes."
Jack checked his chronometer. He'd already left. But he was still here. His shadow patted his shoulder sympathetically.
After the briefing-that-already-happened, Jack searched for the rec room. According to station legend, it only existed when unobserved—a Schrödinger's relaxation space that definitely had pool tables until you looked directly at them.
He found it by not looking for it. The trick was peripheral vision and lowered expectations. Inside, Rangers were playing cards that shuffled themselves, darts that decided their own scores, and one intense game of chess where the pieces moved based on future regret.
"Castellan!" Echo waved from a poker table. "Heard you solved the Wednesday Planet. Nice work. Want to play a hand? Fair warning—on Tuesdays, we bet with time we haven't wasted yet."
"I'll watch," Jack decided. His shadow, however, bellied up to the table and started eating everyone's bluffing tells before they could telegraph them.
"Your shadow's cheating," Echo noted.
"It's eating the redundant parts of poker faces," Jack defended. "That's just efficiency."
The game devolved when someone's royal flush retroactively became a ham sandwich. Tuesday poker had that problem.
Jack retreated to the laundry facilities, hoping simple chores might follow linear time. He was wrong. The washing machines operated on pure temporal spite. His future self had apparently already done laundry, but forgotten to add soap. His clean clothes from next week sat in a basket, somehow still dirty despite being washed tomorrow.
"This makes no sense," he told the laundry attendant, a gelatinous being who existed in all time zones simultaneously.
"Tuesday laundry is a philosophical exercise," they burbled. "Your clothes are clean in the future, dirty in the past, and confused in the present. I recommend waiting for Wednesday."
"But I need clean clothes now. Or yesterday. Or—" Jack's head hurt.
His shadow offered a solution: eat the temporal confusion. One snack later, Jack's laundry existed in a sensible state—dirty now, clean later, linear causality restored.
"Your shadow's handy," the attendant observed. "Most Rangers just learn to live with temporal laundry confusion."
Jack returned to his quarters to find Pi's numbers leaking under the door, calculating the probability of Wednesday arriving on time. "How was your first Tuesday?"
"Confusing. My briefing happened backwards, I lost at poker to my own future, and my laundry exists in a quantum superposition."
"Sounds about right!" Pi cheerfully calculated. "Wait until you see what happens to the cafeteria gravity on Thursdays. Soup becomes very philosophical about which way is down."
Jack looked at tomorrow's mission report, already completed on his desk. According to future-him, the Pattern Eater situation was "resolved with moderate paradox, minimal property damage, and one very upset bank manager who insisted his vault should exist."
Good to know he'd survive. Probably.
His shadow burped, having eaten too much temporal redundancy. Time hiccupped around them—just another Tuesday at Station Zeta-9.
"Tomorrow's laundry arrived yesterday," Jack sighed, looking at the basket of eternally dirty-clean clothes. "Still dirty."
At least Wednesday would be normal.
Well, station-normal.
Which wasn't very normal at all.