"Life is but a Dream"

"It spins the imagination round, your poppycock logic of hologram life…We are solid sir not see thru projections…You jackanapes of oddities have put your liquor in my coffee…hoping I will hallucinate in your favor, but I can hold my liquor sir and disregard your scientifically worded chatter...for it is nonsense!"

The bartender looked cautiously at the business suited professor sitting at the end of the bar mumbling in a lecturing way, speaking to no one in particular but speaking as if to another person. He’d been mumbling for half an hour, nursing his old fashioned, taking tiny sips between his one-man argument. The drink was another reason for his curiosity; it was a drink he hadn’t been asked to make in nearly two decades, but it did seem a fitting libation for the man in the buttoned to the top white shirt and uptight posture.

“Barkeep another please,” the man raised his arm and waved the empty glass in the air.

“Coming right up,” the bartender said in a practiced, congenial voice.

The man turned intelligent but slightly, unfocused eyes on the bartender. “I cannot rule out the science on the grounds I do not comprehend it; do not wish to believe it.”

The bartender paused with a bottle of Angostura bitters in hand. “I guess not,” he said before shaking two dashes of bitters into the drink.

“But my good man, I must rely on what is known; though it confounds what is seen; must I not?”

The bartender offered his patented, fake smile and although he hadn't the slightest idea of what the man was going on about, he agreed. “Of course you must,” he said tossing a twist of orange peel into the drink and placing it in front of the strange, contemplative gentleman.

The man looked down into the thing of beauty that was this drink and allowed the wafting scent of aromatic bitters to calm his fractured being. Then he picked up the sturdy glass and took a satisfying sip. He smiled with appreciation and nodded.

“You are well placed in your profession,” the man determined giving the bartender another thankful nod before adding, “As am I; I have been schooled since birth for my position and it is well earned, well deserved. Yet these upstarts of youth with their science altering ideas and experiments, have shifted the foundation under me. All that I know…all that should be…is suspect now,” he shook his head, “But I cannot deny what I see,” he said with a sigh of resignation and finshed his drink.

The bartender, well trained in non-committal responses and at the top of his class in the art of ‘never getting involved’, felt compelled to ask a question.

“Which of the sciences do you teach?”

“Teach?” The man repeated looking confused.

“Sorry, I thought you were a professor from the university down the road.”

“I am a professor, a professor of life sir, in that you are correct. I have written papers on the science of all things as I know it, but now they are naught but a fire’s tinder,” he lamented with a sad shake of his head.

“So…you’re in research?”

“Aren’t we all researching? Searching for the knowledge which frees us from the uncertainties of life, and death? Do we all not seek answers to that which disturbs the mind, that which troubles the conscious thoughts?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” the bartender agreed with an easy smile, if not true commitment to the statement.

“And you guess correctly sir, but the answers I have set in stone, on this day, have been rendered to dust. My life’s work is a sham sir,” he sighed deeply and shot a resigned look at the bartender. “I am but a hologram, as are we all.” He picked up his drink to eye level and looked at the last drop of liquid within the glass as he continued, “This drink is not here. I am not here; you are not here. We are nowhere.”

The bartender decided the man had to be an actor leading him on, playing a character of some kind. He picked up the empty glass from the bar and played along, commiserating with the man, “Yeah, that happens to all of us; we doubt our worth at one time or another but it’ll pass,” he said with his best empathetic but still professional smile in place, "I'll get you another drink."

“Hey Dave!”

The bartender turned around at the sound of a regular customer’s greeting and smiled with genuine acknowledgement as he placed the empty glass in the sink. “What ya’ having Sidney?” He asked as Sidney stepped up to the bar and climbed onto a bar stool.

“I guess I’ll be having one of those three drinks you’ve been placing at the end of the bar since you've been ignoring me calls for my usual. What is that drink anyway, looks a bit frou-frou to me?”

Dave looked down the bar and saw three old fashioneds lined up untouched in front of a now empty barstool at the end of the bar. Where was the business, suited man with the odd way of speaking; when had he left? And how were there three untouched drinks on the bar?

Dave turned to Sidney. “Didn’t you see the man in the dark suit sitting there?”

“I've been waiting here for a while and no one’s been sitting there, not since I came in Dave but you kept putting those drinks at the end of the bar. It seems you were talking to yourself too so I didn’t want to bother you; I thought you were practicing some drink making, but I finally had to speak up because I really wanted my usual.”

“You're sure you didn’t see anyone there?” Dave asked again.

Sidney gave him a sympathetic look and shook his head, “No one but you.”

Dave stared at the empty barstool and the man’s last words came back to him, ‘I am but a hologram'. Dave began to wonder if any of it had been real but he knew something had to have happened because there were three old fashioneds sitting on the bar and he wouldn’t have made them or placed them there for no reason. He knew he'd made those drinks for that man but he’d also taken away the empty glasses, so how was it that the drinks were untouched and still sitting there? Had he been hallucinating? He scratched his head and worried he might need a vacation.

“Well, are you gonna make me my drink or do I have to taste that frou-frou stuff?” Sidney asked.

“Gin and tonic coming up,” Dave said with a brisk nod and he began to make the drink requested but his eyes kept straying to the corner of the bar. Had that man been there or had he been what he’d said he was…a hologram? But a hologram from where, some weird science lab? That was ridiculous Dave thought and shook off the notion.

“You okay Dave?” Sidney asked, seeing the bartender shiver his shoulders.

“Yeah of course; here you go,” Dave said with his best, no worries, bartender smile in place as he set the gin and tonic down on the bar.

“Thanks Dave and can you turn on the TV, I think the game's about to start.”

“Sure thing,” Dave nodded and turned on the set then he stepped down to the end of the bar to clear away the disturbing glasses of old fashioned. When he picked up the first glass there was a hand written note underneath it.

We are all holograms; life is but a dream.

Thanks for the drinks.

A second after he'd read it, the note disappeared.