The man at the bar had a steady hand. That was more than could be said for most of them. He lifted his glass, took a sip, and set it down again, precisely where it had been before.
“You know,” he said, “they got a new way of fixing people now. They tell you to adjust.”
He smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. It was the kind of smile you get when you’ve seen the inside of something rotten and know there’s no fixing it.
“You feel something’s wrong?” he said. “That’s a problem. Not with the world, of course. With you. You’ve got to learn to cope, buddy.” He swirled the whiskey in his glass and watched the way the light caught it. “Maybe take up meditation. Or get a nice prescription.”
He laughed, and it wasn’t a happy laugh either.
Outside, the city moved the way it always did; too fast, too loud, too full of people who were in a hurry but had nowhere important to go. The neon signs blinked like they had something to say, but if you looked too long, you realized they were just the same words over and over, shouting at no one in particular.
“You know what adjusting means?” he said. “It means you stop asking questions. It means you stop noticing that the people in charge are liars, the food will kill you, the news is just noise, and everybody’s smiling too much for how miserable they are.”
He took another sip. “But hey, you’ll be happy. That’s what they say. You’ll function. You’ll wake up, go to work, come home, watch something meaningless, and call it a day.” He looked at his glass. “Good as new.”
The bartender wiped down the counter, nodding like he’d heard this speech before. Maybe he had. Maybe he agreed but had decided it was easier not to say so.
Outside, a man in a suit hurried past, talking to no one on a phone. Across the street, a billboard showed a woman with perfect teeth selling something nobody needed. The world kept moving, as if it all made sense.
The man at the bar finished his drink. He set down the glass, exactly where it had been before.
“Ah, well,” he said. “What do I know?”
And then he walked out into the night.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers freinds.