Subject: This looks like a nice place for a friendly beer...
From: Celtic Love God <p_gill@alcor.concordia.ca>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 00:47:57 -0400


   He stepped through the door, absorbing the veritable wall of smoke, 
lights, music, and general noise.  Like most Chiba bars, this one had its 
own atmosphere.  Unlike most Chiba bars, this one looked halfway decent.
   He found a stool at the bar and laid a single, crumpled bill on the 
scarred surface.  A wiry Brazilian kid showed up out of nowhere and 
nodded at him, scooping the bill off the table.  He sighed, trying hard 
to ignore the machismo oozing out of the kid.
   "D'ye hae any Guiness?" he asked, trying unsuccessfully to force the 
accent down.  The kid nodded again and reached under the bar.  He was 
instantly tense, wishing he'd worn a shoulder rig instead of the pancake 
holster at the small of his back.  But the kid came up with the trademark 
tall black can with gold and red lettering.  He frowned, noticing it was 
cold.  The kid poured it expertly into a tall glass and tossed the can 
into a hole in the floor.
   He turned and looked over the crowd, remembering the last time he had 
been here, years ago on biz.  He'd been hired meat then, a joeboy for 
some corporate type too impressed with his own importance.  The last time 
they'd been here, to meet with some bio-ware dealer, there had been a 
spectacularly ugly bartender...there he was, sitting at the other end of 
the bar.  The bartender looked up and smiled, a mess of decay and East 
German steel.  Yeah, that was him.
   Continuing his survey, he took note of the other customers.  A group 
of obvious locals at a corner table, guzzling cheap Japanese draft and 
singing lewd songs, a couple of working girls being watched by a stoned 
pimp leaning against the bar, and a few solitary loners, working their 
way through their drinks, alone and silent.
   That's what made this bar different from the others in Chiba.  Most of 
the others, they were corporate spots, and more often than not you spent 
your time listening to liquored-up salarymen chanting the company hymns 
and talking shop.  They also tended towards trendy umbrella-and-fruit 
drinks, something he never understood.
   This bar, it had no central theme, no unifier, and that's what drew 
him in.  After two or three months of wandering in and out of bars in 
Chiba, he'd heard that the Chat was still in business, a rarity in the 
fast-paced fly-by-night operations that littered every city the world over.
   So, he'd decided to show up, and see if it was still the same.  The 
faces had changed some, but the essentials were the same.  Dark corners, 
the almost subliminal hum of constant conversation and music, and the 
ugly bartender, that's what made the Chat what it was.  Probably why it 
was still in business.
   The last time he'd been in, it had been biz.  Some bio-dealer named 
Wage had access to something his employer had wanted.  He'd accompanied 
the corporate yes-man to the Chat, and glared at everyone until they'd 
left, like a good meatball should.  But that hadn't mattered.  The Yak 
had nailed the man three weeks later, after a discreet warning to him to 
clear out.  When he'd heard the warning, he'd given the corporate guy a 
chance to run, then had taken the next plane out of the country, ending 
up in Northern Ireland.
  He'd been in Belfast for just two days when and IRA recruiter had shown 
up and made him an offer.  The man had reminded him of his heritage, 
commenting on how it was hard for good Irish lads to earn an honest 
living with the Brits always gunning them down in the streets.  A day 
later, he'd been put on the payroll as an IRA gunner.
   He'd spent seven wonderfully chaotic, fun-filled months in Belfast, 
spending his nights in pubs there, dodging British SAS covert action 
squads, shooting it out with paras along the Line, and taking part in 
four very well executed raids that killed a total of eight British Army 
commanders, three of them by his gun.
   But he'd left the Cause, disillusioned by what he'd seen the IRA 
become.  Once an army dedicated to the liberation of the North, now it 
was a terror group, split by factions and unorganized.  It had lost its 
charm entirely when he'd been asked to participate in a raid on a high 
school that had British exchange students in it.  He'd refused.
   When they came to kill him that night, he'd put two down and tracked 
down the Belfast Brigade Commander, the man who led the IRA in the city 
of Belfast.  In no uncertain terms, he had explained to the man that any 
further attempts on his life would make him angry enough to come back and 
do the SAS's work for them.  He emphasized the point by shattering both 
of the man's knees, ironically enough a punishment invented by the IRA 
for informants.  He'd left Ireland on the next British Airways flight, 
ending up in Singapore.
  After Singapore, he'd wandered around Asia, visiting various cities and 
places that called themselves cities.  His money was secured, as the IRA 
paid him very well for his service.  But he'd been bored travelling and 
was looking for a place to settle in.  He had decided he'd retired.
  Now he was in the Chat, after a couple of months of looking for a place 
where he could sit and have a drink, and maybe share a tale or two about 
the old country and whatever else came along.  And this didn't look bad 
at all.
  Draining a quarter of the pint, he turned and looked over the crowd 
again...



_____________________________________________________________________________
Celtic Love God
"Drinking to make the world an alcohol-free environment.  It's my cause, 
and I'm sticking to it"

It's only wrong if you get caught
		- Micheal Moore

What is moral is what you feel good after.  What is immoral is what you 
feel bad after.
		- Ernest Hemmingway

It is not those who can inflict the most, but who can endure the most who 
will conquer.
		- Terrance MacSweeny
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