Rewiring
Image by Jo Ramsay
She sipped a tall glass of rye saison and contemplated the sensations.
Ellie had tried this beer two weeks ago, but couldn’t remember what she’d thought of it. It had a strange burst of flavour to it, which was good, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she liked that particular oaky flavour. It did cause her to sip slowly, taking in the delicate traces of rye and wheat, without feeling the need to quaff it back like a cold pilsner.
With her lightness still carrying over from last month's procedure, she’d been drinking a bit less on her Thursday visits.
“Excuse me... can I join you?”
Turning the glass slowly in her hand to evaluate the colour, she dismissed the call to her side as intended for someone else.
“Uhhh...ha ha. Can I join you for a drink?” he repeated again.
“No,” she replied.
This isn’t about him or his cuffed t-shirt. It’s about her and this beer and the way she is taking it into her body.
“Will I experience things differently this time? I want it to be different.” She had asked the doctor during one of their pre-surgery meetings.
“There is no way to tell.”
It was the third time. Three out of around 200 billion. She had felt more hopeful now than she had with the first. Somehow she knew it would take more than one.
Fiction
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November 28,
2019
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7-minute
read
Cuffed shirt moved to the other end of the bar. Looking at his phone. Maybe she should have given him a chance. Maybe he was a neurosurgeon or a computer engineer. That would be interesting. But who really likes starting conversations with strangers? The only people she knew had come to her through other people, so they weren’t really strangers. It was a huge net of connections that stemmed from her mother.
“If you like that, you should try the rye stout.” This time it was the bartender. The man she requested drinks from every Thursday, introduced to her by a co-worker who insisted that they go for drinks one Friday. The co-worker she met through her boss, her boss she met through her physics professor, the professor she met through her brother (who took the course three years prior). Her brother she met, of course, through her mother.
“Oh, yeah? I’m still considering it. I’m not sure that rye is for me.”
“It’s got a bit of a punch to it. This one especially. We just got it in yesterday.”
She gave a silent nod. Yesterday…
“I swear I've tried it before. Two weeks ago?”
“Were you in here two weeks ago? … Sorry, you're just in her pretty often and I noticed you missed a few weeks before today.”
“I was getting some work done. Three of my neurons were replaced by computer chips.”
He gave a hearty laugh, exposing a straight array of teeth. “Is that so? Only three?”
His response was expected. She probably wouldn't have told him if she thought he’d believe her. But now that he knew, she felt better for it. More comfortable in the mellow pool of rye that hugged her.
“Do you remember the first time I came in here?” she asked.
“Yeah, actually, ’cause you made a mess.”
“What?”
“Right, YOU may not remember. But I remember the pitcher of beer you smashed. The PLASTIC pitcher of beer you smashed. Almost didn't want to let you in the second time you came around.”
Before she could reply he nodded to the left and went off to serve someone else.
But that couldn't have been how she met the bartender. She met him through Kalli from work. She would never have been that drunk with Kalli from work.
This was bad. She couldn't connect the web. She looked hard at the bartender as he chatted with cuffed shirt down the way. Considered texting Kalli. Considered asking more questions about the night of the plastic pitcher, which seemed nerve wracking, now, like he was a stranger. And now cuffed shirt was coming back.
“I know you gave your answer. But I just realized that we’ve met before. In this bar. Do you remember? You were with some other people. We talked about computers.”
She didn’t. “...Yes.”
“Ha ha, that’s so weird. It’s funny how you can forget people like that.”
She paused and thought about how to proceed. He was new, but not new. The bartender was familiar, but not familiar. The anxiety fed responses she backlogged for an escape and filtered them through her as options. But she still needed to figure this out, so she stayed.
“If your brain was replaced by a series of microchips, would you think in the same way?”
He clearly relished this entry point. “Well, probably not. I’d guess that a lot of things could be the same—the way you move your body, the way you sense things—but your memories are the tricky part, and what those memories mean for your decisions. I feel like computers operate too strongly on memory. That they don’t know what to do with new information until they’ve seen something similar before.”
She didn’t reply. Not sure what to do with the fullness of his answer. He continued.
“When we first met, I was a stranger to you. Strangers are uncertain. Unfamiliar. But then you realized that we had met before. Does that change how you think about me?”
“Maybe” she hesitated.
“Well it would for a computer. But what the hell do I know.”
He took a sip of his beer and rested his arm on the sticky edge of the counter. She held her eyes on his glass—of what looked like a porter—to avoid looking at him, then turned her gaze to look at their hands, together in the same frame.
“I lied. I don't remember that night.”
“Well, you were pretty sloshed by the end. Not gonna lie.”
“What happened? What was I like?”
“Uhhh...well you were with some friends and your friends invited my friends over. At one point, you were sitting next to me and you asked me if computers miss us as much as we miss them, which is a pretty ridiculous question. Then we started talking about memory. You sure you don't remember? I thought that's why you asked about the microchips.”
He gave her a questioning look. She made a feigned attempt to remember, narrowing her eyes and scrutinizing his face.
“I don't think I was wearing glasses.”
He made a ridiculous smile and flipped between glasses on, glasses off. “You know, I asked for your number that night and you refused. Like, not even avoidance. Straight up REFUSED.”
“It was probably for the best,” she looked back towards the bar and took a sip.
“Looks like you’re out. Want another? We can share a pitcher!”
She evaluated her empty glass, not recalling that it was near empty. How did that happen? It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It wasn't supposed to be about him. Him and his cuffed shirt. She felt a piece of herself missing in those lost two inches of dark liquid.
“I have to go,” she stood up immediately.
“Oh, okay. I was just…”
She didn't wait, just left him at his stool with the bill so he couldn't have a moment more. Exiting quickly out of the bar and into the tepid night air, she walked two blocks to the nearest liquor store and picked up three bottles of obscure finds. All over 8s. All amber to dark. She took her treats to a bench by the water and started to sip, taking a drink before looking at what it is first. Each bottle a fresh experience.
Angela Caravan
lives in Vancouver, BC, and writes both poetry and fiction. She is the author of the poetry micro-chapbook Landing (Post Ghost Press). Her work has also appeared in Broken Pencil, Pulp Literature, Sad Girl Review, Cascadia Rising Review, Sad Mag, Longleaf Review, and more. You can find her on Twitter at @a_caravan.