‘Bar Hopping for Astronauts’ by Leo X Robertson

Dodgy bars, like this one, sport fake women and real bartenders. The opposite of what a mostly male clientele wants. But the astronaut isn’t picky anymore. Besides, he doesn’t much mind the prospect of spending an evening in the company of robostrippers, their skins torn and peeling, the ragged mechanics of their limbs peering through. Decay into obsolescence merely adds to their humanity.

He finds a stool at the bar’s far end and sits, leaning his rubber-sheathed elbows on the counter’s stinking wood. Govcams on the walls turn to him, but amber rings of light around their lenses signify inactivity. ‘Manually disabled’, no doubt, by local glowlife gangs.

Flies buzz lazily between beer puddles. A blonde woman shoots him a sneering glance as she walks back to her posse of friends, all of them with glossy hair and clear heels. They gossip in tight circles, their thin voices needling in his ears. Through the chip in his head, he mentally pings a noise reduction to his helmet, reducing their sound by fifty percent.

The middle-aged bartender approaches, his metallic pupils glowing, bloodshot streaks firing out across his corneas. Black market implants — for what purpose, the astronaut doesn’t know.

The bartender doesn’t react to the astronaut’s suit or to the darkened smartglass visor covering his face. If people asked about that stuff here, the clientele would vanish. He says something, muffled words with a rising inflection.

The astronaut de-mutes.

“Drink,” the bartender says, miming a glass.

“Do you do Lunar Juleps?” he asks.

“We might’ve lost it a few barware updates ago, but I’ll check.” He eventually returns with a dirty highball of slime-green fluid.

The astronaut dips his finger into the glass and his glove sucks it all up. Nanites metabolize the alcohol for him before the drink even reaches his bloodstream. Nanites are many things, but fun isn’t one of them.

As the astronaut tries to place the highball back on the bar without causing a fuss, he feels people looking at him funny. The gecko pad of his palm sticks to the glass like Velcro. He carefully unpeels it.

The bartender sighs. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Huh?”

“By the looks of your suit, you must be, what, late sixties? Try the Caloris District. You know Tycho Singles? That’s more your speed.”

The astronaut shakes his head. “They don’t let me in with the helmet on.”

“Then take it off.”

“I can’t!”