A Future For A Drink
By: Joe Weinberg
Joe is a writer, a teacher of writing, and a fan of human made art. He has published several books with several publisher, and is always on the look out for a big break.
Embedded Files
BECOME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR
The liquor burned as it went down. In a good way. Richter took a look at the glass and then at the bartender. “What did you say this stuff is called again?”
The bartender gave him a vapid smile as she tried to figure out if he was kidding. Then she took a deep breath, one that made her breasts heave in a way that was not lost on Richter. “Whiskey,” she said. “We call it Whiskey. Jamesons, to be precise.”
Richter nodded. “It’s good,” he said. The bartender rolled her eyes. He didn’t realize he was being made fun of. “I’ll have some more.”
“You want to open a tab?” She asked.
“Sure.” Richter reached into his pocket and pulled out a stick, maybe four inches long. There was a slot on one end that looked like it was supposed to plug into something. He slid it across the bar. “Just put it on this.”
Shirley, the bartender, looked down at the stick. It looked like something you stir a drink with, not something you use to pay for one. Then she leaned back and looked sideways at Richter. Was he messing with her? “What the hell is that?” She asked.
“It’s a credit stick,” he said. “Don’t you take credit?” Richter looked over his shoulder. “The sign on the door said you accepted all major credit cards.”
“Yeah,” Shirley said. “Credit cards. Cards. Little rectangular plastic things. None of this stick crap. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry.” Richter blushed a bit, pulling the stick off the bar and sliding it back into a little pocket against his ribs. “I’m not from around here.” He laughed. “Not exactly, anyway.” “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Look, do you have a credit card or not? If you don’t, you owe me six fifty.” The drink she’d served him was only five fifty, but he’d already pissed her off a dollar’s worth. She started getting a sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to pay. Chad had yelled at her twice already
this month alone. Always make them show you the money first. Pay, then drink. He was going to make her pay for this prick’s drink.
Richter pushed his hand into a seam on the side of his pants. The pocket was very cleverly designed; Shirley didn’t even see it before he put his hand inside. He reached in and pulled something out, then tossed them onto the bar.
At first glance, they looked like dice. The kinds of things nerds use to slay dragons. From the looks of it, they were twelve siders. Shirley would deride anyone else who knew that as a nerd, but wouldn’t mention those years playing the half-orc barbarian in Jeff’s basement.
Then she looked a bit closer. There was a weird red discoloration inside them, but those were not dice. Aside from there being no numbers, they were definitely not plastic. They looked--. No. They couldn’t be.
“Are those,” she swallowed hard, then leaned forward. Normally she did that to show off some cleavage and get better tips. This time she did it so that no one would hear her question. “Are those diamonds?”
Richter shook his head. “No, not exactly. They’re structured carbon, and very similar, but there’s that little wetware on the inside. The thing that denotes their value?” She was looking at him with wide eyed confusion. He took a deep breath and tried to dumb it down as best he could. “Computer chips,” he said. “You know, things with electronic signatures.”
“There’s a computer chip inside the diamond? Why?”
“I told you. It denotes value. And it’s more than just a chip. It’s a whole computer.” “Bullspit.”
Richter laughed. “I’m serious,” he said. “It’s not very sophisticated, but it’s there.” He must be messing with her. “Jesus Christ, don’t you have any real money?”
He shook his head, clearly embarrassed. “I thought I did,” he said. “But apparently I packed the wrong stuff.”
She should’ve thrown him out. Should’ve maybe called Jesse over. Jesse would’ve thrown him out on his rear. But for some reason, he was intriguing to her. Besides, it was just five fifty. Hell, if those were really diamonds, and she could really keep them, she’d give him as much booze as he wanted. “I can have these?” She asked.
He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Far as I can tell, they’re worthless here.”
She tried not to laugh. “You want something else?”
His eyes lit up. “You’re accepting the payment?”
“No.” He deflated a bit. “But I’ll cover you, if you’re willing to talk to me a bit.” He looked suspicious. Shirley tried to play it cool. She didn’t want him to know what a crappy deal he was getting. “Look,” she said, “It’s a Tuesday night. Not many people are going to come in tonight, and I’m bored. So you keep talking, and I’ll keep buying you drinks.” He thought for a few seconds. She could almost see the thoughts race across his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Can I try something else?”
“What do you like?”
“Do you have any Shunzar?”
Shirley bit her lower lip. “Um.”
He blushed again. “Right,” he said. “Sorry. Like I said. I’m not from around here. Why don’t you pick? Surprise me.”
Okay. He liked whiskey. Maybe something else with a kick. Shirley thought about going through the effort of making a cocktail, but wasn’t sure he’d notice. Maybe a shot. She grabbed a glass and frosted the rim with sugar and lemon. Vanilla vodka, hazelnut liqueur. She pulled out a lemon slice.
“Drink this,” she said. “Don’t swallow right away. Once it’s in your mouth, bite the lemon.” He threw the shot into his mouth. It burned. Not bad. But nothing special. Not unlike the other drink. Then he bit the lemon.
It was heavenly. Like a chocolate cake. “That tastes like chocolate cake,” he said. She nodded. “Amazing.”
“So you do know what chocolate cake is?”
Richter smiled and tried not to be condescending. “Every civilization in the history of the universe knows chocolate cake,” he said. “I’d argue a species can’t be considered intelligent unless it can make one.”
She laughed. “Okay, your turn. Pony up.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know that expression.”
“Tell me where you come from. You keep saying you’re not from around here. Where are you from?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I was an alien?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“You don’t look like one.”
“Do you know what an alien would look like?”
Shirley shrugged. “No. But I know it wouldn’t look like a normal person.”
He nodded, impressed. “Fair reasoning,” he said. “How about if I told you that I am human, but I’m from a different time period?”
“Time travel? Are you kidding me? That’s the oldest and lamest idea science fiction writers ever had. Too many paradoxes.”
He smiled. “Only if you go backwards through the same continuum,” he said. “If you go forwards, and slide into another world, then there are no paradoxes.”
“What do you mean? You’re saying you’re from the past? Bullspit.”
“You keep saying that. I’m not sure I understand what it means.”
“It means I don’t believe you.”
Richter smiled. It felt good to be able to do that without looking over his shoulder. “That makes sense. I show you a computer smaller than any you’ve seen before, so of course I can’t be from the past. And I’m not. I’m from the future.”
“But you came forward?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
She cocked her head to the side and looked at him. In her years as a bartender, Shirley had developed a kind of sense for people. She could tell if an ID was fake without even looking at it. She knew the people who were lying, just trying to get into her pants. It didn’t look like he’d be opposed to that; she wasn’t getting a gay vibe. But she also wasn’t getting a liar vibe.
“Explain.”
Richter bit his lip. She had done it when she was thinking, so he figured maybe it was a nonverbal cue of this time period. “I probably shouldn’t,” he said. “Chances are, you don’t know this stuff yet. But then again...” he took a deep breath through his nose, tasting old cigarettes on the back of his tongue. It wasn’t a familiar taste, so he didn’t mind it. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the scientist type.”
She laughed. “I’m not,” she said. “I used to be a chemist, but that didn’t work out. So I turned to bar tending.”
“A chemist?”
She shook her head. “Don’t try and turn things around. That really is from the past. And you’re not. So how did you get to the past without going backwards?”
He sighed. “Okay. How much do you know about relativistic speeds?”
“You mean Einstein?”
He shrugged; the name wasn’t familiar. “Whatever you want to call it. You know how the faster you go, the slower time passes for you, relative to the rest of the universe?”
“Yes.”
“So you know that at light speed, time ceases to pass?”
“Elementary school stuff. Get to the point.”
Richter held his breath, trying to think of the best way to explain this. It wouldn’t be easy; he hadn’t convinced people entirely before he left. Why should she believe him? Then again, she didn’t have the same prejudices, and she knew nothing of his earlier career. But how to explain it? “Pour me another drink, something softer, and I’ll explain.”
Shirley started putting together a Melon Ball. As she poured in the Midori, he started talking again. “Okay. You know how people used to think the Earth was flat? They don’t still think that, do they?”
“No.” She poured in orange juice instead of pineapple. Gave it a softer taste. “They don’t. Everyone knows the world is round. It just looks flat. Especially out here.”
“Right,” He nodded, getting excited. She slid him the drink and slipped the crystals into a pocket. “When you see a small portion, it seems to be a straight line, but in reality, it’s a circle. That’s what time is like. We see things linearly. But it isn’t a line. It’s a big circle. Really, really big. The universe expands and contracts, and time repeats itself endlessly, but with endless variability.” “So you came backwards by going forwards around the circle?”
He nodded. “And I stopped before I got back to where I started. I went far away, farther than I think any human has ever been. Then I turned around and came back. Took all of three months for me, including speeding up, slowing down, turning, and speeding up again. But it took me trillions of years, all the way around the circle. Almost.”
Shirley stared at him for a few seconds. It sounded like such a crackpot idea. But he didn’t look like he was crazy. He didn’t look like he was making it up. “Doesn’t that mean that everything I do is predetermined?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you can go around the loop of time, doesn’t that mean that everything that has happened happens again, exactly the same? That’s what it means to be a circle, right?”
Richter took a deep drink and sighed softly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. I hope not.” “Well, what other option is there?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible that there are an infinite number of time lines,” he said. “Or, rather, time circles. They cross over each other at virtually every point. Any time a decision can be made, a new time circle breaks away. Neither one is really the original. They’re all original. But they’re all different. That would give you free will.”
Shirley bit her lip. “No it wouldn’t,” she said. “It would just create the illusion. If each circle taken by itself repeats infinitely, then it doesn’t matter that there is a circle with a different history. Each one has one and only one path of time.”
Richter sniffed back tears. “I really hope you’re wrong,” he said.
This confused her a bit. “What? Are you crying?”
He sighed and finished his drink. “Give me something strong,” he said. “Something to take the edge off.”
She poured him some vodka on the rocks. “Tell me why you hope I’m wrong.” She slid the drink across the bar.
He took it and took a swig, grimacing at the pain as it burned its way down his throat. “Because if it’s true, then I can’t get out of my circle,” he said. “I know exactly what’s going to happen for the next, however many years.”
“That’s good,” she said. “You can make a lot of money with that knowledge.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I know exactly what’s going to happen. I know all the major historical events.”
“So?” Her face darkened. “Is something bad going to happen? Is there going to be a war?”
He laughed. “Yes. Lots of them. But that’s not what bothers me. I’m bothered by something much, much smaller.”
“What?”
Richter finished his drink. The world was shifting a little bit. Not unpleasant. He gestured for another drink. She poured something that had carbonation in it. He liked that. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “Once upon a time, there was a scientist. He had a radical view of time. He tried publishing papers about it; all the math worked out, but no one was willing to give it any credence. He got laughed out of academia because he wouldn’t change his tune; there was no historical backing for his idea. If it were possible to travel backwards in time, there’d be a record of it. Someone would’ve done it already. Still he persisted. Finally, he took what little money he could scrape together and put his theory to the test, using himself as a guinea pig. He figured out how big the loop of time was, and he traveled at light speed all the way around, trying to arrive just a few weeks before he left, so he could prove that he was right.”
Shirley smiled. “Only he went back too far, or didn’t go far forward enough.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t go far forward enough, and so ended up in the wrong time period. Briefly.” He downed his drink and asked for another. She gave him a few shots to try. He let them burn his throat as he went. The world was definitely moving now. Shifting around.
“What do you mean, briefly?”
Richter stood up and smiled as the world righted itself. “Don’t you see?” He asked. He fought down a wave of nausea. “There was no record of it. No proof. No one had done it before.” “But you have.”
He nodded. “But there’s no record.” His words were slurred. Maybe this alcohol was having the wrong effect. “And there won’t be.” He started drifting towards the door.
Shirley bit her lip. There had to be proof. Some kind of record. She reached into her pocket. The computer chips. “What about your crystals?”
He stopped in his tracks. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Shirley,” she said. “Shirley Keats.”
“Happy inventing,” he said. He let out a sob and staggered outside.
Shirley slipped around the bar and started running for the door. Before she got there, she heard the crash. She didn’t need to open the door to see what had happened.
The police questioned her. She said he was just a drunk with a crazy story. He drank too much, staggered out into the street, and got hit by a car. She didn’t know he had thrown himself in front of it. She didn’t know it had swerved to hit him. She didn’t see the driver, didn’t know they had been wearing the same kind of clothing.
When she went home, she pulled the crystals out of her pocket and put them on her mantle. She stared at them as she was drifting off. Her last conscious thought was to notice the brand name on the crystals.
Keats Computing.
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