The Extra IPA, my favorite hole in the wall bar, my favorite ever actually. Even thinking back to my days on Earth with my large crazy family, no place has come close to The Extra IPA. The beer is colder than a witch’s heart in the dead of winter and people don’t look at you weird when you get ridiculously drunk and stumble out into the land of the living. It was people not looking at me weird for getting drunk on a daily basis that put The Extra IPA over the top.

The bar being next to the hiwa restaurant I loved was icing on the already sweet cake. I used to frequent Chinese establishments back on Earth and none could hold a candle to hiwa cuisine. The food was to die for when you were drunk and better than average when sober.

Sober I would not be when I visited the restaurant. One of these days I would stop drinking so much, I always tell myself. Today was not that day. Cleo was on my mind. She would be for another ten years if I never saw her again and I would see again tomorrow. So she was on my mind and truth being told it made my skin crawl.

I would never get used to seeing a human with four arms even if I lived to two hundred. I sincerely hoped I didn’t live to two hundred too, my living will said I was to be head crushed if I went under a machine to live. I hope they did it too, screw that pulling of the plug, and just drop a four hundred pound piece of lead on my skull. It’ll be a talking point at my funeral.

"Hi Abe!" I said loudly over the very faint music to the bartender.

He was a sonji but a good guy. Staggeringly large, Abe stood at seven feet tall, slightly smaller than the average height of a sonji, and an easy four hundred pounds. Heavily muscled to the point of giving a thoroughbred draft horse body image issues. The gold skin that shimmered in natural light was the most common of the six skin colors that I had seen of sonji. Like all sonji, on his face, beginning in the center of his forehead and dropping to his eyebrows then surrounding his wide narrow eyes and curving back to flow over his nose was what looked like a lowercase ’t’ marking. His four arms could serve like no one else and he always knew what I wanted to drink, though I never varied it. House IPA cold in a glass, one day I would talk him into letting me put my mouth under the tap.

"Tom! It is great to see you!" Abe replied in the odd hissing sound the forked tongue and tubular mouth produced. Abe put a glass of House IPA on the bar and patted the wood next to it.

I sidled up to no one; aside from the two multi-limbed androids sitting at a table next to the door the place was empty.

"Holy shit Abe." I said as I sat at the bar and took a long drink. "I saw her. The one that will haunt my dreams, I swear to you she would haunt yours as well. Thing is she has four arms."

Abe held up his four.

"She’s human though. You don’t look odd with four arms, you look normal. Humans evolved to have two. The four arm fad is fucking weird. Thing is she is beyond angelic." I finished the glass and held it out.

He nodded and took it from me, filling up another one with two of his arms and placing it in front of me before the original glass touched the sink. I took another long drink from the glass, the IPA is better than freezing cold filtered water.

"She’s Timber’s daughter heir though." There was no point in saying Timber’s last name. I didn’t know what it was but everyone knew the singular name of Timber.

"Holiness Tom! Rubbing noses with high class now? Does that mean you’re going to be done coming here soon?" He gave a sad face which made me laugh. Seeing someone his size try a pouty face on was pure comic.

"Not any time soon, though if she got rid of those extra two arms I would say adios in a heartbeat. No offense intended."

"I would call you an fool if you didn’t. Is she the one that lost a cat?" He asked.

I stopped with the glass at my mouth and then downed it all slamming it on the bar. "You heard of that?"

"Oazan to Tom! It has been the top story for the entire day. Some rich girl lost her cat and is all distraught over it, although that is literally the only thing on the holos. What did you find out?"

Good ol’ Abe. I had been coming here for so long after work, not before it don’t believe those people, that he knew all about me. If I was on a story it had a great angle and he knew it. He also knew how to keep a secret. He wouldn’t have had such a successful bar if he aired his customer’s dirty laundry all over town.

"The android, who is in jail right now of course, said the cat had a hole next to the base of its tail. The cops said it was confused with the butthole."

"Cops are sometimes foolish but not often." Abe said as he set another glass in front of me. I really needed to slow down.

"Well these cops are down right idiots. An android is not going to confuse a butthole with another hole in the body. Who do they expect to believe that?"

"Those wary of Timber’s influence?" Abe asked.

I nodded and looked at my hand for a moment. It seemed to be nodding with me, which I found oddly amusing. After a few seconds I remembered the conversation. "Speaking of influence, a drone stopped me when I was a ten feet into Port Richey, followed me up to Cleo’s home and followed me out of Port Richey." I said. It took me two attempted grabs to finally grasp the glass. I swear it must have had some sort of drug in it.

"Port Richey?" A sonji said sitting on the stool beside me.

I leaned back not noticing him taking the seat. He wore a full Torpedo outfit, the jersey and shorts that ended just below the knee although the shorts on his body would have went to my feet. Damn near eight feet tall he made Abe look more normal-sized in comparison. The thing that caught my eye and made me think caution before the word fell out of my ear was the one eye was fused shut, a telltale sign of a street bawler.  Which made him even harder than the sonji just living every day in a semblance of a normal life.

Sonji are the one race you don’t want to get in a bar fight with. I had seen one take out three androids and two humans then turn back to his lunch as if nothing had ever happened.

"Yes sir. I was there to see a gorgeous woman!" I boasted and drank deeply from the glass. I noticed Abe set another glass in front of me and move down the bar to clean some already clean glasses. It was a bit odd but the buzz was already getting to me.

"You should slow down Tom." Bevisste warned.

"Oh fuck that. Pam sent me on a stupid mission and will send me on one tomorrow as well." I said and turned to the sonji. "Yep, I went to Port Richey."

"Nice neighborhood. What were you there for?" He asked not touching the beer in front of him.

"Met Cleo. She said to call her that. Hold on, I gotta go pee and then I’ll tell you all about it." I said and clapped him on the shoulder.

He nodded. I could feel his eyes on me as I walked to the pisser but could not care less. I was riding high after talking and hugging the four armed oddball woman. If only I could talk her into losing two of those arms. I imagined what it would be like as I stood in front of the urinal, taking a much needed piss.

After a minute I shook off, waved my hands under the sanitizer and walked back into the place. Apparently I was in there for far longer than a minute. The normal clientele of two more humans and several sonji and lopes were in the place. The two androids nursed glasses of wine as they munched on house made chips. I went back to my spot at the bar next to the still waiting sonji.

"Where was I?"

"Met Cleo?" He answered.

"Oh yeah! I met Cleo, the daughter to Timber. You know the founder of TimberAIR. The house is out of this world my man. It’s...It’s out of this world. I don’t know how else to explain it. Well I’m there to investigate the dead cat. Probably just got eaten by a dog but I go where my boss wants me to go. It pays the bills." I downed the half way gone glass and started on my next glass.

"You should probably make this your last Tom." Bevisste said. I waved at the comment like a bothersome fly.

The sonji just nodded and watched me. I nodded and looked at the holoscreen above the bar. It showed Torpedo playing Avalanche and true to the lopes word, Torpedo was winning six to nil. That was enough to celebrate with another, two, beers.

I stood up after the one extra beer and caught myself on the bar like an old pro. Goddamn drinks were stronger than I remembered. Standing for a few minutes to get my bearings I decided to make a go for the door, forgot my bicycle against the bar, ran into two tables and a quite jovial android with what appeared to be spades with thumbs for hands, grabbed the bicycle and somehow managed to hurt only one more table on the way out of the bar.

"I told you, you should slow down." Bevisste scolded me.

I pantomimed a nagging mother as I clambered onto the seat. With both feet on the ground I still felt awfully vulnerable. Riding a bicycle was not going to be in the foreseeable future, at least for the rest of the night. What I needed was one of those things with a large comfy chair, doors and a windshield that drove itself.

"Those are called cars, Tom." Bevisste said. I had no idea I was thinking out loud.

"Sfuckings rollin death trap…traps they be renamed." I slurred and began walking in the direction of my small apartment building.

"Yes, Tom. That is exactly what they should be called." Bevisste replied. She would have been shaking her head at me if she had one.

It was still quite early, the sun had not even began its setting process of painting the sky in pretty colors my ex-girlfriend and I used to watch from the rooftop of my building; which meant I didn’t have to fend off any other inebriated people walking home or worry about getting run over by a wayward car, though the latter part I rarely had to worry about any time of the day or night.

Boro the Hiwa called after me as I crossed to the other side of the intersection. She must have been waiting at the window waiting for me to exit my favorite watering hole. I had a suspicious feeling that she swindled me whenever I went into the restaurant with a little bit of alcohol in me, though I had no hard evidence and the food was damn good with beer.

I stopped at the corner, gauged the distance needed to walk to Boro’s restaurant then shook my head just as the first of the evening trains rumbled by overhead. The entire ordeal with Cleo still weirded me out a bit too much to want to talk to anyone else now that I had left The Extra IPA. The woman was a goddess in her own right though those four arms and something else about the place did not sit right with me. To be honest I knew why the four arms did not sit right with me, it was the other part that bothered me like a tiny pebble stuck in my shoe.

I stopped in front of a short six story building, pulled out my keycard from my pocket then frowned at the door.

"Since when did the stingy Super put a mesh grate door up, Bevisste?" I asked. I couldn’t believe he put a new door up in the short time I was gone. The bastard had charged me for the front door that was up, less than a month ago.

Swindler.

"That is because you stopped one building too soon, oh esteemed investigator." Bevisste replied.

I nodded once, swallowed hard and eyeballed a red van that was idling at the curb directly in front of the door to my apartment building. I looked at the door a second time, yes directly in front of my apartment building.

"You have been standing looking at that van going on eleven minutes now. Are you going to make an offer on it or are we going to go inside?" Bevisste asked.

I blinked twice. I was way more lit than I should have been. I had spent an entire night at The Extra IPA before and had not been as drunk as I was at that moment. I wonder if I had said something Abe did not like so he drugged my drink.

"I doubt it." Bevisste replied. I really needed to stop thinking out loud.

Stumbling to the door I slapped the keycard on the building and shouldered the door open, turned around and walked down the four steps to grab my bicycle then shouldered the door open a second time. I burped and tasted bile as I used the wall as a crutch to keep me standing while I walked to my door.

"Hey reporter." A sonji said from behind me.

I turned around and took a step backwards. "Hey I you know bar." The words sounded intelligent to my confused state of mind.

The sonji from the bar, fused eye and all loomed in front of me.

"Can." I burped and held my hand out for him to wait. "What do you want?"

One time I had seen one sonji kick the shit out of three androids and two humans and not even breathe hard after it. The sonji was just a normal business man.

This sonji was most likely a professional black market street fighter and I was incredibly inebriated, possibly drugged. The fight lasted a bit longer than either one of us was expecting, primarily due to ol’ one-eye getting tangled up with my bicycle; however once he escaped the trap he proceeded to beat me like I had propositioned his mother and sister at the same time.

"You journalists disgust me. Always telling your side of the story and never telling the truth." One-eye said and spit on me.

"The truth is what you want it to be right? Damn facts always muck up the story." I said and tried smiling. It hurt so I stopped.

"The cat died of natural causes Mr. Moore." One-eye said lifting all four arms up to rain more punches down upon me.

I spit blood and a tooth out of my mouth and smiled at him. "And Hamlet merely thought his mother was pretty cool."

Sonji never appreciate literary humor. I laughed. One-eye glared at me and lifted one foot.

"Put your foot down and back away from the man!" A woman yelled, her voice echoing in the tight confines of the small lobby.

I lifted my head a bit to look at the person who yelled and smiled big. My very own angelic savior, in pants that seemed to be painted on and a low cut white shirt showing the tops of breasts I wanted to use as a pillow. She had the most wicked looking pistol I had ever seen in her hands; black as my ex’s heart, three barrels and crackling with red lightning.

One-eye put his hands up and moved away from me.

"Get away from the man and get the fuck out of my building!" She yelled.

"Natural causes Mr. Moore." One-eye said as he moved carefully around Miss Gorgeous and into the waiting red van at the curb.

"Yeah, yeah." I mumbled and tried to sit up.

Miss Gorgeous did something with the gun making it fold in on itself until it was a neat little square in the palm of her hand. She dropped it in a purse I had not noticed and walked up to me. I panicked for a moment when I realized she was going to try to help me to my feet, tried pushing myself up to show her how tough I was then promptly fell on my ass. At least I didn’t face plant on the ground.

"Come on big guy." She lifted me under my armpits with muscles gained from daily trips to the gym. "That sonji certainly does not like you very much. What was it talking about natural causes?"

She grabbed my hand directing my thumb to the doorknob and then pushed the door open.

"I got blood on your shirt." I said as I poked my finger onto her right boob. It seemed liked a sweet and innocent gesture at the time, just pointing out the stain I had just gotten on her shirt.

She looked down at my finger now an inch away from where it should not have been within three feet. "I have more if it doesn’t wash out."

"I’m drunk. I want to see more." I barely managed to get out sounding legible as she practically carried me to the couch in the center of the room.

"No way, you’re drunk? You don’t normally slur your words and smell like a brewery?" She set me down on the couch, pushing me in the center of the chest so I would lie down.

"Have you been talking to Bevisste?"

"Who’s Bevisste?"

I pointed at my eyes.

"I haven’t been talking to your eyeballs." She said over her shoulder as she hunted through a laundry basket of clothes, I assumed looking for something to wash the blood off my face though if she was going for my underwear it may have been quite a turn on.

"Enhanced Eyes. EEs." I said feeling positively joyous as she continued to bend at the waist to look through the clothes.

"No way? To think before I met you today I had been calling EEs and keycards by the wrong names my entire life."

"That’s weird."

She laughed like a choir of angels and held up a stained towel in front of her, scrunched her face then shrugged. She began talking about something else to which I actually gave answers though from how she constantly giggled I assume my answers had nothing to do with what she talked about. As she came back from the kitchen and knelt down in front of me with the wet washcloth, I reached out and cupped her chin.

"You’re so gorgeous." I said. My energy had finally run out and I could feel the rumble of the blackout train coming in my direction.

Her eyes sparkled with amusement as she looked at me. I felt her lay the washcloth on my face as blackness came to wrap me in its cold embrace.

Next Chapter: Regrets but not really