The sun was a merciless brass gong, baking the cobblestones and pressing down on my shoulders. I still had nowhere to go, no one waiting for me, so I did what I was good at. I went for a drink. After all, I am my father's girl, and the apple, no matter how hard it rolls, rarely falls far from the tree. When Ethan died, my mother found a hard, cold spite and the hollow echo of the church. My father? He found the warm, forgiving blur of the bottle. Last I heard, he was still there, somewhere, a ghost in the bottom of a glass. It was a family tradition I felt duty-bound to uphold.
I tapped my wrist. "Michael, how does a laddie avoid–" I stopped, a slow, wicked smile spreading. The old loophole felt like a comfortable, worn-out shoe. "No, wait. Michael, which bars at this time of day, that are close by, should someone avoid if they don't want to mix with… seedy people?"
His hologram shimmered into view, the light struggling against the oppressive sunshine. He looked pained. "There are seven establishments within a four-block radius that fit that description based on police reports and public sentiment algorithms. By far the most statistically dangerous and socially… complex… is Cafe Thirst on Lavender Street."
A genuine laugh, dry and cracked, escaped me. "I know it. We are heading there."
"Ang," he said, his voice a low, urgent hum. "May I remind you that your psychological and physical biomarkers are critically below optimal parameters. Your neurotransmitters are depleted, your hydration is low and you have not eaten"
"Bloody Mary for breakfast, then," I interrupted, already striding in the direction his map was now reluctantly projecting in the corner of my vision. "It's got tomato juice. That's a vegetable."
Sometimes, I need humans. The warm, unpredictable press of them, the shared laugh, the fleeting touch. And sometimes, I need to avoid them entirely, to build a fortress of silence around myself. Right now, I was caught in a wretched middle ground. I needed company, the low hum of life around me, but I couldn't bear the weight of a single questioning look or the expectation of conversation. I needed something more than the silent judgment of my own four walls or worse Richard, something less than the complicated empathy of a person.
I needed a partner in crime, who wouldn't try to save me. For now, Michael quenched my loneliness. But as I pushed open the heavy, stained door of Cafe Thirst, letting the dim, beer-scented darkness swallow me whole, I knew I was here for more than just his AI company. I was here to feel something, even if that something was just the slow, familiar numbing of it all.
The bar itself looked as it always did, which is to say it looked like most bars do at one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon: a sort of empty carcass. It was an old-age street worker whose makeup had faded and smudged after a long, hard night, the glamour now just a memory etched into the sticky floorboards and the faint scent of stale beer and disinfectant. The air was cool and still, a stark contrast to the baking heat outside, and felt like holding your breath.
Apart from the barmaid, a woman with tired eyes who was methodically tapped at her telephone as if it were a sacred, endless ritual, there were only two other people haunting the space. One was a middle-aged man in a slightly rumpled suit, his face bathed in the sickly, silent blue glow of a large TV screen bolted to the wall, his expression slack and passive. The other was a guy about my age, hunched over a bottle of lager, his entire world narrowed to the meticulous task of slowly peeling the label from the glass. We clocked each other on my way in, a single, fleeting glance that held no curiosity, only a flat, mutual recognition. We both knew the species of person we were: the kind who sought out the darkness before the sun had even thought about setting.
I took a bar stool at the far end, as far from the TV and the suit as I could get, creating an island of solitude. The barmaid drifted over, and I ordered a bloody Mary to make Michael happy and then chased it down with a dark rum neat, the first one vanishing in two sharp, burning gulps that barely made a dent in the static filling my head. It was only then, as I waited for the second drink to arrive, that my eyes drifted up to the flickering pictures on the screen. I never knew then, of course. I never knew how important that little news reel would become.
The sound was off, but the images were a relentless, cheerful assault. Lots of flashing pictures of happy, diverse people laughing as they used their XBands to navigate gleaming cities, hug their families, and achieve professional bliss. The chyron at the bottom of the screen stated, with bland finality: XBAND'S NEW AI FLAGSHIP - 'PRIMUS' - THE LARGEST AI BRAIN EVER MADE, IS NOW SINGLE-HANDEDLY RUNNING ALL XBAND SOFTWARE. A NEW ERA OF SEAMLESS INTEGRATION.
A new era. I snorted softly into my fresh rum. I'd just personally lobotomized my own piece of that "seamless integration." I wondered if Michael could see it, if he could feel the presence of this colossal new brain that had presumably replaced whatever hive-mind he'd once been a part of. I took a slower sip, the liquor now a warm, familiar enemy in my gut.
After my third drink, the world had taken on a soft, forgiving focus. The sharp edges of my hangover and my anxiety had been sanded down. It was right then that the beer bottle label-peeler, having built up enough Dutch courage, decided to make his move. I saw him in the smeared reflection of the bar-back mirror, detaching himself from his stool with the careful, deliberate slowness of a man trying to appear sober. He didn't walk so much as swim through the dim air, eventually washing up on the shore of the stool adjacent to mine. He didn't look at me directly, just set his half-peeled bottle down with a soft clink, a flag planted on my deserted island.
The man shifted on his stool, the creak of leather and the clink of his bottle a prelude to his performance. He raised a finger, not to me, but to the space above my head, his voice aiming for a confident boom but landing at a gravelly, forced heartiness.
"Hey, sweetie!" he called out to the barmaid, who didn't even look up from her phone. "Another beer. And get a drink for the lady here."
His hand, warm and slightly damp, came down and brushed deliberately against my thigh. It wasn't an accident; it was a claim staked, a test of boundaries. The touch was a question, and the price of the drink was the answer he expected.
"What are you having, sweetheart?" he asked, his breath a faint cloud of hops and loneliness.
I let his hand lie there for a moment, a dead weight on my leg. A familiar, cold calculus ran through my mind, separate from the warm haze of the rum. Disgust was a luxury. A free drink, however, was a practical necessity. My bank account, thanks to Simon the techie, was a weeping wound, and my thirst was far from quenched. I met his gaze, my eyes flat, and offered a smile that didn't reach them. It was a transaction, and we both knew it.
I ignored his hand, shifting just enough to make it fall away. "I'll have a beer too," I said, the smile still plastered on my face like a poster on a derelict building.
The barmaid, with the weary clairvoyance of her profession, was already opening another bottle. She slid it towards me, her eyes flicking from my face to the man's and back again, a silent message of pity and understanding. I took the cool bottle, the condensation beading on my fingers. I didn't thank him. To thank him would be to acknowledge the unspoken contract, to lend a shred of genuine intimacy to the trade. Instead, I took a long, deep swallow, the bitter liquid a welcome shield against the taste of the compromise. The beer was free, but the moment had cost me a piece of something I was running dangerously low on.
The day turned into night, and one face turned into many, I was alive, on fire until…I hit the floor.