Page 2 - Unlikely Stories 4
P. 2

Quintessence


          Buy me a beer? Thanks, pal. No, relax: I know this isn’t a gay bar.
        On  the  other  hand,  you’re  not  going  to  find  much  female
        companionship here. But you probably know that. And this is not a
        sports bar with giant-screen TVs dominating everything else. No, it’s
        a  good,  old-fashioned  drown-your-sorrows-somewhere-other-than-
        in-your-lonely-apartment bar.
          Yeah, I’ve polished the vinyl on these stools a lot in the past few
        months. Can’t say  I’ve seen you  before,  but it’s dark in  here for a
        reason, you know? Pardon my habit of observation, but that looks
        like  a  wedding  ring  on  your  right  hand:  either  you’re  using  it  as  a
        second marriage engagement ring or you haven’t pawned it yet from
        your  first  go-round,  and  keep  wearing  it  for  reasons  you  probably
        couldn’t explain to yourself. Am I right?
          Okay,  okay:  didn’t  mean  to  be  nosy.  Listen:  I’ve  been  divorced
        four times after only one marriage. Don’t believe it? Then wait until
        I’ve  told  you  how  it  happened.  Then  I’ll  buy  you  a  beer.  Or
        something stronger: you may need it.
          Three  years  ago  I  was  a  sales  rep  for—well,  let’s  just  say  it’s  a
        cutting-edge technology company with a lot of investment capital and
        a business plan to compete against the best in robotics and artificial
        intelligence. As you can imagine, a lot of this work is very secretive
        and kept away from the eyes of the public—and those competitors.
        The people working there  all had non-compete  and non-disclosure
        clauses in their employment contracts, including me. Anyway, right
        now I don’t give a damn about that: if you’re an industrial spy, you
        can take whatever I tell you right back to your masters, for all I care. I
        just want to get it off my chest.
          No, no! I was half-kidding about that. You say you were a teaching
        assistant at state college before they cut you off at the knees? All the
        better: you might have a keener appreciation of the personal disaster
        I am about to relate. Now, where was I?
          Right: so the company had a new slant on where the industry was
        going. By “industry” they meant a whole complex of research going

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