Bar Stool Stories - Tales from Beyond (Short Story Collection)

Curious Side Effects

I was sitting at the bar, quietly sipping my drink when I saw them walk in.

Tall, lanky, boisterous, all the usual. They stood a head taller than most of the patrons, and a few eyed them uneasily, but most just went back to whatever they were doing.

Humans were an oddity, especially out here in the rim, but they weren't unheard of.

"The fuck are those things," the young Nit sitting next to me said.

The bartender glanced across the room. "Ah fuck. Humans. They're gonna drink me dry." He started rummaging through various cabinets. "Where's that flammable shit..."

"Humans? Pfft. Thought they would look tougher than that. So they got some reach on 'em, so what." He flexed. "I could take 'em."

"Oh no doubt," I laughed into my drink, swilling the ice around for the last few drops. Something told me it should be my last drink.

"Yeah, you think?" He turned and flexed again. Nits were short, stocky, silicate based, four armed creatures. I wasn't lying, he could more than likely take a human in a fight. For a little while, at least. If the human was very slow and very stupid. Or, in this case, very drunk.

The bartender glared at me. "Don't you dare be saying stupid shit like that." He shook a finger at the Nit. "Don't ever pick a fight with a human. They don't know how to stay down. You wanna beat one, you've gotta kill it. And if you kill it, you kill yourself and everyone around you."

The Nit leered at the bartender. "You calling me a pussy?"

The bartender shook his head and glared at me, running a rag around a glass. "You put the idea in his head. You fix it, Blarsk."

I tsked.

"I'm gonna go see how tough they really are! Brand new to the Federation but swaggering in like they own the place."

I reached out a hand and firmly pressed down on the Nit's shoulder as he attempted to stand. "The bartender is right. Could you take a human? Maybe. But humans don't fight fair. While your flesh might hurt a human to punch, those humans will use everything at their disposal to destroy you. They will use chairs, glasses, bottles, the floor, the ceiling... They might even pick up a few other patrons and hit you with them. "Beat a mother fucker with another mother fucker," I've heard them say."

The Nit turned to look at me. "So? I'm tough. This is our turf."

"And they will turn it into a smoking crater if you happen to win that battle."

"They can't do that! This is a civilian place, they can't just slag it."

"They can and they will," the bartender piped up. "And I will personally send the cartels after your family to pay me back."

The Nit stiffened and picked up his glass. The cartel wasn't invoked lightly. "And who gave them the authority to slag a civilian establishment."

"God," I replied. I waved at the bartender for another glass. Fuck it. He poured me another shot of Sibilliam Syrup. I was going to hate myself in the morning. No serotonin left in my entire body. But if I was gonna die here tonight, might as well go out happy.

The Nit snorted. "The fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Well," I took my shot and gasped at the burn, waving for another. "A few centuries ago, the humans were just at the beginning of playing with their own genome. DNA and RNA splicing, retroviral therapies, mrna vaccines, gene therapy, that sort of thing. Like many other species, humans suffer from cancer. And like many other early species, they set out to find a way to cure it."