It was just past five o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday when the first customer at Bean Me Up asked for a cappuccino in ancient Sumerian.

Josephine, also known as ‘Cup of Jo’ but affectionately called Jo to everyone but her deceased mother, the head barista, blinked. “Uh, excuse me?”

“𒀭𒋗𒉡𒌓𒋼𒀀𒀀𒀀,” the man repeated, gesturing with increasing urgency at the espresso machine.

Jo turned to her coworker, Toby, who was busy trying to froth oat milk using interpretive dance. “Is this, like, performance art?”

Shrugging, he continued to dance but answered, “We are near the university.”

By the time the third customer stepped up to the counter and ordered a macchiato in flawless High Valyrian, it was clear to Jo something was deeply wrong with the folks in Cedar Grove.

“Why is everyone speaking like a Rosetta Stone exploded?” she whispered to herself. “And why do I understand most of it?”

The café’s new beans sat behind the counter in a giant and overly aesthetic glass jar with a hand-lettered label that read, DARK ROAST – single origin (maybe hell?).

Becca, the manager couldn’t recall the exact name, but she did remember ordering the beans from an obscure online supplier called Hot Beanz 4 Eternal Soulz because the original packaging looked witchy but minimal. The sales immediately spiked, and every customer was speaking a different language, from Arabic to Klingon to Morse code via blinking. Some seemed surprised by their new-found language, while others didn’t seem aware they had become fluent at all. 

One woman ordered a latte by rearranging the sugar packets into Sanskrit, and another, though not obvious to her, ordered a blueberry muffin and a plain drip coffee in Enochian.

“I think the coffee’s cursed,” Jo offered as she Googled ‘exorcism for espresso machine’.

Toby took a sip of his own coffee and immediately began reciting tax codes in Aramaic. But it wasn’t just the coffee that was causing others to pick up new languages. Out on the patio, a toddler bit into a biscotti and began preaching to his parents and Havanese in tongues. At the opposite end, an old man burst into a song in flawless Finnish.

The local poet laureate wept openly into her double shot flat white, whispering, “I understand the universe now, and it’s lactose-intolerant.”

Back behind the counter, the espresso machine hissed as steam curled upward, and the beans crackled ominously.

Inside the jar, one lone coffee bean turned slightly. Watching. Waiting.