After Hours

My gaze drifts around the packed bar, sucking in the riot of sensory experiences like a newly processed youngling at the nutritional dispenser. Three nights running I’ve been drawn to this place. The first night had been pure chaos. For someone used to silence and order, assimilating all that went on within the confines of these four paneled walls had been a challenge. The overpowering din of a dozen or more conversations coupled with a television program about a bar with some sort of happy name—Cheery or something—had immediately set my ears to ringing. Conversely, each clatter of glass and clinking of ice cubes had made me all but jump out of my skin.

I’d almost bolted, would have if I hadn’t become so mesmerized by the competent way the man behind the bar was shaking the frothy drink—amaretto sour, he’d said, then asked if I’d wanted one. Um, no. Better not. Soda for me.

So much to take in. So much to experience. This time is full of firsts for me. Three nights ago it was my first soda. Yesterday my first hair-raising cab ride—delivered by a Ukrainian immigrant who’d driven me to the Bronx Zoo. And earlier this evening I’d attended my first concert.

I shouldn’t have gone. I am a geneticist, sent back to collect and analyze the genomes of a variety of species that are extinct from when I come from. Things like the Polar Bears, Gray Bats, and Muscle Men. Turns out the world needs them after all.

An elbow bumps me. I instinctively glance up to see who has entered my personal space at the same time that I get another one of those giddy thrills. My personal space has been compromised. Another first.

“Sorry,” the man says, flashing me a blinding white smile. It is 1987 my research says that in-store remedies aren’t available yet so he’s either genetically lucky or has paid a lot of credits for that smile. Probably the latter. I’m finding that this decade is full of pomp and flash.

“That’s all right I....” I drift off. My gaze has moved beyond the bleached teeth and given me a real eyeful of the invader. There it is: temptation personified. At least six-two, blond-haired and blue-eyed, he wears a suit like the cover model of that magazine I picked up from the street vendor. All charming smiles and persuasive reasoning; another part of the great American popularity contest.

It’s men like this who brought our civilization low. Them and the media, that is. The hand feeding the mouth. The slick men in their slick suits slid their way onto the big screen, dictating policy through looks and popularity. We call it the media wars. Their height marked by a stagnated government and polarized parties that spent more time landing prime-time commercial spots than on policy making. With the gridlock on Capitol Hill, nobody could get anything done. Media stopped being a source of news but a propaganda machine for lobbyists-R-us. It didn’t matter how smart you were, or how experienced, it was who you were, how you looked. A politician could spout out garbage and if their face was pretty enough, their name popular enough, it was taken as gospel.

My gaze drifts upward, settling over his shoulder on the television with its muted blond-haired, big-breasted anchor woman and the ticker drifting across the bottom of the screen.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Mr. Popularity asks, leaning against the bar beside me. I drag my eyes back to his face and that killer smile that seems even more potent now that he is close and I can smell his cologne. He’s also close enough that I can tell there is substance under that suit. Probably pumps iron during lunch so he can show off his physique later. I decide his tactics are effective—in a visceral kind of way—yet I find it decidedly unnerving, too. Men don’t look like him where I come from. Not that they are ugly; far from it. It’s just that in my time everyone is perfectly normal, perfectly average. All perfectly the same.

“I’m all set, thanks.” I lift my soda, hands clammy on the cold glass. Appreciating his smile is one thing, but the thought of actually engaging in a conversation leaves my heart skittering somewhere north of nervous.

He sighs. “Too bad. But if you change your mind. ...” He taps the bar in front of me, then moves back across the room to where his buddies are waiting.

I stare down at the little rectangular piece of paper he’s left. Gerard and Bon Associates. Below the elegant script is another name, then a series of numbers. A business card: my brain downloads this information from my implant. That’s all it supplies, not what the numbers mean or who Gerard and Bon might be. If I were back home in my time, all that would have been available with a quick uplink. But they don’t have personal implants in this era. They have to rely on clunky desk-top computers, faxes, and paper for the exchange of information.

I lift the card up from the bar, reverently running my finger over the raised script. Fascinating. It is as I am studying the numbers, trying to figure out whether I like or dislike this sense of being . . . disconnected, that my scalp begins to tingle, as if I’m being watched—or someone is trying to tap into my implant. Alarmed, I raise my head. Meet up with the gaze of the barkeeper. He is meticulously drying a glass with his calloused hands as he stares at me.

“He’s a player.” The barkeeper nods over to the table where the suit has hooked up with his jeans and hightops friends. “Picks up a different woman practically every night.”

I glance at the man who’d left the card. He, too, is watching me, and when our gazes meet, he winks. Heat rises in my cheeks and I look away, imagining just what he might do with these women he “picks up” almost every night. I could be one of them. I could experience something that no one of my generation has ever experienced. And—as long as I get my sample—I could justify it all in the name of science, too.

I sigh. Mr. Tall and Handsome is exactly what I’ve pegged him as: a conscienceless disease in the fabric of the 20th century. Everyman doesn’t need DNA like that. I’ll keep the card though, as a souvenir of what could have been.

I look back at the barkeeper. He is even taller than Mr. Popularity and just as muscular, though his are from hard work rather than the local gym. He is definitely prime. Too bad about the eye color. Linked with the dominant dark hair, those vibrant blue-greens might be hard to splice out. Besides, I get no tingly sensations from him. Just a comfortable settledness. I have a feeling he can don and slough off roles at his whim and wear each shoe well. I don’t know why, but I have this uncontrollable urge to keep conversing with him. Which is weird. Where I came from, we don’t talk just to talk.

“Sure. Why not?” If I’m not going to experience what real copulation is like tonight, I can at least go out on a limb and experience an alcohol high.

“Something clear.” I don’t feel so much the criminal with a “clear” drink. Those frothy pink, smooth oranges, icy yellows, and crystalline greens he’s been passing out all evening are just plain sinful. At least to look at. Color. Another thing this generation seems obsessed with.

“All right. Clear it is.” He looks back at the rows of bottles behind him, a hand absently stroking the scruffy looking stubble on his chin as he studies the choices. “Sweet, sour, or dry?”

Both sweet and sour sound too much like a sensory cocktail. I don’t understand how a liquid drink can be dry, but.... “Um, not sweet. Dry sounds good.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He reaches up for a blueglass bottle on the top shelf. I glance at the label as he sets it down to fill a tall tumbler with ice cubes and am still at a loss as to what it is, other than it comes from Bombay and was named after a gemstone. Deftly he twists off the top then pours the clear liquid into the glass, concurrently punching a button on his “soda machine” so that some more clear liquid tumbles and mixes in with the alcohol.

I frown, thinking of the 7-Up I’ve been sipping. That had been sweet, and bubbly. I really liked the bubbles, not so much the sweet. Seems there is nothing in this time frame that doesn’t involve an overload of sensory input.

He gives the lime a quick squeeze, impaling a second slice on the rim of the glass, then slides the drink in front of me with a smile. “There you go.”

I tentatively take a sip—bubbly for sure—then another. Not sweet. Dry seems an apt description. I like the lime and the hint of, well, I don’t know what.

I don’t say anything. I’m trying to figure out what I’ve said that is funny. Maybe they call the drink after the place, Bombay and the addition of the soda.... Bombay Bubbly, perhaps? My confusion must have shown on my face because the barkeeper’s smile fades, the twinkle in his blue-green eyes switching to studious interest.

“What?” I ask, resisting the urge to squirm on my seat. This century must be really getting to me. How to be still and composed are things Everyman children are taught at a young age.

He flips the cloth over his shoulder, folding his body down so he is low enough to lean on the bar with his elbows. His head is still taller than mine. “So, Rebecca,” he draws out the name, as if it is foreign . . . or he knows it’s not mine, “you got a story?”

That at least is the truth. Where I come from, there are no individual stories. We all work together as part of the system. Our singularity but a small gear in the working matrix of Everyman. It’s not fancy or exciting, but it’s a life. One that I never questioned past the age of five—or until three days ago.

I clear my throat, pushing away the drink. Selfindulgent addict. This is why Everyman came about in the first place, to eradicate such dangerous egocentricity. “Why do you ask?”

I don’t like how he’s watching me, as if he can see right through me and read my mind. Which is a fallacy, of course. He’d need an implant, and then my individual access codes to link up.

He shrugs, massive shoulders lifting and falling. He really is a big man—like a Roman gladiator or a Greek Hercules. Even this century doesn’t make many like him. “Everyone has a story. It’s in the eyes. And yours are saying that you’d like to leave it behind.”

I jerk back on my stool, almost toppling off. Leave it behind? Why in the world would he suggest that? I am G5S36. Geneticist number five in sector thirty-six. I have a purpose. A reason for existing. Here I would be ... I’d be....

I give a quick shake of my head. I’m going to have to have my implant checked when I get back. It seems to have picked up a virus. The barkeeper is still watching me so I volley back his own question, “Everyone has a story? So what’s yours?”

His scruffy cheeks twitch, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Mine? It’s too long for one sitting. And you wouldn’t believe it even if I told you.”

I purse my lips. If a person’s story can be read in their eyes, then I believed that his is a long one, but given my own strange tale—that I’m a geneticist sent back in time to collect a random sampling of genes in order to rejuvenate our gene pool before we all become extinct—yes, well, there isn’t much I wouldn’t believe.

“Want to talk about it?” he asks. I realize he’s still on the story thing. He’s asking if I want to share, take a load off my chest, as they say in this century.

Laughter spikes through the general roar of conversation. I twist my head around to see a woman leaning forward, her hand linked with her date’s over the polished table and her teased mane of hair obscuring their faces. Kissing. In public, too.

Two booths over the pack of men, including Mr. Popularity, are in a heated discussion over the sports scores being flashed on the television. I tilt my head to the side, gnawing on my lip as I watch them throw mock growls and verbal abuses at each other before the “fight” breaks up with a couple of razzed insults and a shake of the head.

And that’s why I don’t want to go back. Sometimes I don’t share in Everyman’s view. Like the concert. I just don’t understand how something so beautiful and moving can be bad. Perhaps it’s because it is moving, pulling from the self an emotional response. Emotions, and their baggage, good or bad, are a complication to things running smoothly.

Yet everyone here seems so happy. Even the two old men sitting at the end of the bar, quietly drinking their beers, hold a companionable sort of silence between them. The only one who seems as alone as I am is the bartender himself.

“Gilgamesh isn’t exactly a common name in the here and now. Most people want to know how I came by it. And the nickname, Gil. Well, there still are Gilligan’s Island reruns on TV, so. ...”

I must have a blank expression on my face because he frowns, narrowing his eyes. With a quick scan to first one side, then the other, he leans in close. “You don’t have someone after you, do you?”

I swallow hard, wiping the clammy sweat on my torn denim. No, not yet. But if I don’t make it to the extraction coordinates by midnight I probably will. “No, not exactly.”

He stands up, holding up his hands. “You’re right. None of my business. But....” He glances around, then moves over to the end of the bar. Folding his body like an accordion, he bends down, pulling a key from his back pocket which he stuffs into a keyhole in the cabinet. I try to glimpse inside but see only what looks like a large slab of a reddish looking stone and the ever popular rolodex that seems to be the “thing” to replace personal identity codes in my century. After a moment he sits back on his heels, closes the cabinet, and pulls the key out. Then he’s walking back toward me, another one of those business cards in hand.

With a last measuring look he turns away, going down to the end of the bar to chat with the two elderly men. Their faces liven when he comes near and the balder of the two launches into what is obviously a humorous story. I watch them for a while, my hands twisting the cup around and around as I pointedly avoid looking at the card.

I start to shift off the stool, but as I do, my gaze passes over the card. It’s laying there, white, innocuous even, against the dark stained wood. I sit back down. Pick up the drink. Set it down and pick up the card instead. There isn’t much there, just an address under a name: John Doe. That one pings in my implant as a placeholder name for a male party whose true identity is unknown.

My finger flicks the thin cardboard, nerves and possibilities bubbling up in my stomach. If I don’t show up they will send someone after me. But in this time, this place . . . if I can buy myself another identity....

I gnaw on my lip. I still have to deal with the implant. I know enough that I can probably change my access codes so they can’t track me. Better yet would be to find a hacker and get him to whip me up a virus I can upload to deactivate the chip. My gaze falls back to the card, the name. Maybe this John Doe will know of one.

Someone yells out a departure. The bartender, Gil, raises his hand and calls out a “Later, Norman,” which receives a bunch of laughs. A couple minutes later the two men at the end of the bar stand up and shuffle out. They, too, are waved off with a personal farewell.

People are leaving. It must be getting late. 11:42 to be exact. Unless I manage to land the cabby from hell the moment I hit the curb, I’ll never get to the extraction point in time.

Sweat glazes my skin, my breath coming in short, shallow gasps. I feel like a fish out of water. Reverse drowning. I grab up the cup in front of me, gulping the cool liquid. It burns going down my throat and I choke, sputtering.

Gil finishes his complex addition and moves over to a bell behind the bar, giving the rope a good yank. The resounding bong echoes through the room, patrons quiet. “Last call.”

I stay where I am, watching as Gil makes brisk work of the last few orders. I’m not sure he loves what he does, but he seems settled. Like he fits. I want that. A job I pick. A place that is mine. A chance at....

“No. I’m good. I’m just headed to the hotel on the corner.” I slide off the stool, my high-heel boots hitting the scuffed floor as I simultaneously shrug on my leather coat. When I came in it was chilly, by now it will be cold. I suppose I can try and find John Doe, but somehow I think it’s better to wait until after sunrise.

“For the drink,” I explain, gesturing toward the empty cup. I can’t remember finishing it, but I guess I must have at some point, probably during those last fifteen minutes I’d been daydreaming.

I smile in thanks and start toward door, hesitant but with mounting determination. This is not just an adventure, it’s my life now. My hand closes over the handle and freezes. Ice running through my veins, anchoring me to the floor. I don’t know how long I stand there, every synonym for foolish running through my mind, just that I can’t do this.

Gil’s rumbling voice shakes me free. I do a half-turn, one hand still on the door as I look over my shoulder at him. He’s drying another cup, but his attention is focused completely on me.