“I like my coffee like I like my women.”
The bartender had always been telling this joke to his customers. Never had one stayed for the punchline. It was worrying; the business’ profits were quickly declining. The bartender would soon be out of a job.
Where had the time gone? How long had he been telling the joke? How did he even get business in the first place? The bartender took a seat at one of the tables, and placed his head in his hands. He tried to remember - anything, anything that could help him understand. But the memories were none.
His mind was blank.
He did not know who he was. All he knew is he was a bartender, and that he liked an old joke. What was the joke? He had told it just a few minutes ago, yet he could not remember. Whoever made him had neglected to give him humanity - neglected to make him human.
He was nothing, and yet everything, and the bar was real, yet it wasn’t, and the horses with the long faces that passed through every day had their meals and passed through him, and he tried to remember, and he tried to forget, and he tried to understand who he was, and it was all for naught. And the days passed, and the months, and the years, and the decades, and through the hundreds of thousands of years he left his head in his hands, time moving faster than he could see or comprehend, his entire life just a dull, amorphous blur.
Did he ever have a life before this? When is this? Was he alive at all?
And finally, the bartender could take no more of this torment, and he walked over to the kitchen, and he pulled a knife from the drawer, and he pressed its blade to his stomach, and the bar was empty aside from the millions of horses passing through with the long faces, and the millions of instances of himself asking them about their faces, and he wondered why all he knew was this joke. And tears fell from his eyes, as he pressed the knife into his stomach, and his mind flashed like a computer crashing, full of iridescent colors and thoughts, and he fell to the floor in agony, yet bliss knowing he would be safe, and—
***
A woman walks into a bar. She sits down on a stool, her hair flowing in the warm breeze of the air-conditioning unit. The bartender says, “What’ll you have?”
The woman replies, “A beer, thanks.”
“You know, I’ve never seen you in here before. You must be new. What do you think?”
“Well, I love the atmosphere of this place. It feels… familiar, somehow. Like I’ve been here a million times before.”
The bartender laughs, and the woman laughs with him, almost in sync. He slides a glass of beer across the table to where she’s sitting. The bartender asks, “So, what do you do?”
She replies, “I’m a quantum physicist. I’m currently working on proving the Many Worlds theory.” The bartender looks puzzled. “You know, the one that says that there are infinite worlds out there, all slightly different,” she explains.
“So, it’s like how there are a ton of different variations on the ‘horse walks into a bar’ joke, and they’re all slightly different?”
“Basically, yeah.”
After her reply, there is a short period of (somewhat awkward) silence. His eyes flicker back and forth.
The woman checks her watch. “Oh, I need to be going. You know, I’m free this Saturday. Here’s my number, give me a call, maybe we could go out for a drink and talk about this a bit more?”
The bartender smiles. “Yeah, that would be great.”
As the woman leaves the store, she turns back to smile at him. For a second, the bartender sees more than just his job in a bar - he sees hope, and the possibility of finally getting out of this endless cycle of serving people, and—
***
A woman walks into a bar. She sits down on a stool, her hair flowing in the warm breeze of the air-conditioning unit.
The bartender says, “What’ll you have?” The woman replies, “I’ll take a beer.”
“Coming right up.”
The room is silent for a few seconds as the bartender serves the woman’s beer.
She takes a sip, and places it on the table.
The silence continues.
Finally, the woman speaks: “Well, uhh, you’re a bartender. Got any good jokes?”
The bartender thinks to himself. What kind of joke would this woman find amusing? And then it hits him. He knows the perfect joke - in fact, he has known from the start.
“You know, I remember this one old joke I heard a long while back. It’s pretty long, but the payoff is great,” says the bartender.
“Ooh, how does it go?” the lady replies, interested.
The bartender smiles and closes his eyes for a second, as if remembering the joke he was about to tell.
“I like my coffee like I like my women…”