The Bartender

The two girls sat patiently at the end of the bar as I poured drinks for the customers who were there before them.  One girl was eyeing me pretty good, and I was pretending not to notice.  She was cute though.
         
After passing the Jack and Coke to Rich, I walked over to the girls.

"What's your flavor tonight ladies?"

The one eyed the other and nodded her head as if to tell her what it was she wanted, and the other ordered,  "Coors Light pitcher," she responded.

I walked to the tap and filled up their pitcher and took it back to them.  The one girl was still eyeing me, so I smiled at her.

"Six dollars."

"Thanks," they said in unison.

I continued my bartending duties as the place started to get a little busier.  The DJ was to be coming in at ten and the place is usually packed on Saturday nights.  We had three people call off tonight, and had to call in one girl who wasn't on the schedule, but that still left us short-handed, and I knew I was going to be busy all night long.  No time to play favorites with the two girls.

As the night continued, a man sidled up to the corner of the bar.  He plopped down a briefcase and pulled out a laptop computer.

"What can I get you," I asked as he handed me the cord to plug in.

"Coffee with a shot of Baileys," he responded in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

I poured the coffee that had probably been sitting in the pot for hours, gave him a bit more than a shot of Bailey's to cover the burnt taste, and handed the glass to him.  The whole time he was getting things out of his briefcase and situating his computer. 

Why in the world would someone come to a bar on a busy Saturday night to set up shop and conduct business I asked myself as I hurried to grab a food order.

The DJ started spinning tunes about five minutes late, and people continued to pile in the door.  The two girls had moved from the bar to a table, but I noticed the one girl continued to watch me as I walked from the bar to the food counter.  I wondered what her name was.

As I was thinking that, a girl I knew, Courtney, came in the door.  I gave her a quick hug and said hello, and then watched as she walked to the table where the two girls were sitting.  Obviously she knew them, because she sat down and their heads got closer together as they began to talk and laugh.  I noticed the one girl was still peering at me every once in a while.  I wondered if they were talking about me, but that was just my ego getting the best of me.

The night continued and the music was pumping.  The man with the laptop computer had ordered two more coffee with Baileys, but hadn't really talked to anyone, and had pecked away at his computer now for over an hour.  What could he possibly be doing?

His head was bowed low and his fingers were frantically working the keyboard.  Every once in a while he would glance over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching him, or maybe it was to check the sports scores, but he never spoke to anyone.  I had also noticed him peering over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses and watching the girl's at Courtney's table intently, but I figured he just liked a pretty face too. 

I was deeply confused.  Why not go to a book store, or the library?  Maybe the alcohol made him think better.  He had, after all, had four rounds.

The girls were still gathered at the table across the bar.  I walked over to see if they needed anything.

"Hey Court, how you girls holding out?"

"We could use another pitcher."

"OK, be right back."

I came back to the table with the pitcher and the girls stopped talking.  Courtney leaned over and asked, "What's the deal with that creepy little man over there?"

She was motioning in the direction of the guy with the computer.

"Not really sure.  He just came in here and started working.  Maybe alcohol makes him think better.  I know when I used to study for school I would do it in a noisy place and it helped me.  Kinda liked the distractions."

"That's so weird.  I wonder what he's working on," she said.

I walked away and went to clean off a table behind the computer guy.  I peeked over his shoulder and noticed that he was working with some code.  I knew a bit of code myself, as I had been going to school for computer programming.  This code looked a bit strange though.

As I cleaned off the table, I made a point to tap the man on the shoulder and ask if he needed anything.  At first he ignored me, as he tried to hide what he was working on.  Then he replied, "No.  Good right now.  Thanks."

I turned to walk away, but before I did, I noticed some sort of clock in the top right-hand corner of the screen.  It was 11:15 right now, but that's not what this clock said.  It looked like a countdown clock.

Nothing interesting ever happened here, but this seemed a bit out of the ordinary.  I continued to serve drinks, but watched the computer guy a bit closer than I probably would have.  Knowing what I know about computer codes, some of what I had seen looked familiar. I was into computer gaming, so it looked like he could be working on some type of high-tech game, but what about that clock?  Did he have a deadline?  Something wasn't adding up.

Around mid-night the downtowners came in.  This group of people usually hops from bar to bar, but ends the evening in our neck of town.  My guess was,  by that time of night they are running out of money and we run some good specials on the weekends.

"Hey Trent," Courtney came up beside me as I was cleaning off a table.

"How's the night treating you?"

"Pretty good.  Could you get a round of shots for us girls?  Something fruity."

"Sure," I responded as I turned around.

"Wait!  Get that guy one too. Whatever he wants though," she said, as she pointed to the man with the computer.  He was still pecking away, but he seemed to be fidgeting more than he was earlier.  Too much coffee, was my guess.

"Sure, will do."

I got the girls some red-headed sluts and returned to the bar to ask the mystery man if he would like another coffee with Baileys or something different.

"Sir, those ladies over there would like to treat you to a drink.  Would you like another?"

I roused him from some deep concentrating, but he looked up long enough to glance over at the ladies and muster a smile.  "No thanks. Not right now, but tell them thanks."

Everyone seemed to be taken care of for the moment, so I decided to talk to him.

"Hey, do you mind if I ask what you're working on?  I happened to notice earlier that it looked like some type of computer gaming code."

"What? Were you spying on me?"  He suddenly got very defensive.

"Well no.  I just happened to be clearing off a table behind you and noticed.  I do a bit of computer stuff myself."

"It's none of your business.  Can't you see I'm busy."

OK, I got the hint and went back to the other customers.

Shortly after 12:30, Courtney and her friends took to the dance floor.  The cute girl with the nice smile hadn't decided to join them though.  She was sitting at the table still sipping on her beer.  I took this as an opportunity to at least say hello.

"Hey, how are you?"

"Fine, thanks."

"I'm Trent."

"I know.  Courtney told me."

"She did, huh? She said all good things, right?"

"But of course."

I could tell she was a bit shy.  She would look at me when she answered, but then go back to looking at her beer.

"Well, I just wanted to come and say hi.  Any friend of Courtney's is a friend of mine.  What's your name, by the way?"

"Elizabeth."

"Nice to meet you Elizabeth.  Talk to you later, and have a nice evening."  I returned to the bar.

Fifteen minutes later, the computer guy seemed to be more agitated.  He kept running his hands through his beard and then taking his cap off and putting it back on.  I snuck around the back of him as if to clean another table, but I wanted to see if I could figure out what he was doing.

The clock in the corner continued to count down.  If it was a deadline, he didn't have much time left.  Looked like four hours, maybe.

Courtney was getting loud.  She always was a crazy girl.  She was sandwiched in-between two guys near the bar doing a little "dirty" dancing, drink in hand.  The DJ switched songs, and Courtney continued to move down the line of men at the bar.

"Fill'er up Trent," she said, giving me a wink.

It was getting close to the end of the night, and at the bar it was standing room only.  I gave Courtney back her drink, but she couldn't go very far.  She was stuck in the middle of the computer guy and Wes, a big guy who used to play arena football.  The computer guy was trying very hard to ignore everyone around him, keep his screen guarded, and continue to work.  He was getting more frazzled, and I could hear quite a few explicit words under his breath.  I wished I could have taken a closer look at what he was working on.  I love that kind of stuff.

"You idiot!"  The computer guy suddenly yelled as he jumped up in his seat.  "Look what you just did!"

I had been tending the other side of the bar, so I hadn't seen what happened, but heard Courtney respond back to him.

"Excuse me! But what kind of crazy fuck brings a fucking laptop to a bar on a Saturday night?"

"Do you know what you just did?  Now I'm ruined.  We're all ruined!"

I could see that a drink had been spilled near the lap top and the man was frantically trying to clean it up.  I walked over with a bar towel and offered my assistance.  Thankfully, last call had just been announced and we had filled everyone's last round.

"Here, let me help you with that."

"No, you can't help!  We're ruined.  We're all ruined!"

I could see his screen was flickering and it looked like quite a bit of the spilled drink had landed on the keyboard.  From many a late night drinking party while in college, I remembered once having spilled a cocktail on my computer the day before a big paper had been due.  Wasn't a fun night trying to find an open computer lab on campus.

"How are we all ruined?"  I asked.

"You don't understand.  That program was worth millions of dollars and will save us from..." He didn't finish his sentence, just sat down and put his head in his hands.

The music had been turned down and a group of people had formed around the computer guy.  Elizabeth came over and asked what had happened.  I explained that the man had been working on some project that he now felt was ruined because Courtney had spilled her drink.

"Did you have it saved to a disk?" She asked the man.

"You don't understand! It's ruined!"

"But did you save your work to a disk?" She coaxed him.

The man looked at Elizabeth and then looked at his computer.  He slowly pushed the button on the side to open the CD drive.  A disk popped out.

"Most of it is on here, but I got stumped and was working on a new approach," he finally answered.
         
"What program were you using?" She continued to ask him questions.

"Uh, just something you can download off the internet.  Nothing special.  It was what I was doing with the code that mattered, and I don't have much time!"

"I think I can help.  My friend Jennifer and I came here from work, and my lap top is in the car.  I'll run and get it."

Elizabeth left the building and returned a few minutes later with a large black shoulder bag.  She set it down, pulled out her lap top and popped in the guy's CD.  The two of them worked together to get him back on track.

Courtney was sitting on the end of the bar, sipping on what remained of her drink and talking to Wes, oblivious to what was going on, but the remainder of the crowd had thinned out.  I washed down the rest of the tables, and helped clean up and stock the coolers.  Things looked to be under control.  Once we were finished, I let the other bartenders leave, and walked Courtney out to Jennifer's car.

"I'll take Elizabeth home.  It looks like we might be here for a little while," I told Jennifer as we helped Courtney into the car.

I hurried back inside to see if there was anything I could do to help.  Elizabeth was looking over the computer guy's shoulder while he typed away.  They were in an intense conversation when I came over.

"So, is it working," I asked.

"Shh, he's concentrating," Elizabeth replied.  "Come over here, I'll explain."

We walked a few feet away, and Elizabeth started explaining to me what the guy was working on.  She said he worked for a computer gaming company that had a contract with the government.  The government was looking for a way to monopolize the gaming industry so that they could keep tabs on the so called "computer geeks" who might be able to hack into government security.  She said that the computer guy had been working on it for months when someone hacked into his computer and was back tracking everything he had done.  The hacker was trying to find a way to gain access to the governments database on these "computer geeks."  The computer guy, whose name was Jason, had also received a challenge from the hacker.  The hacker had given him a deadline as to when this would all take place. 

"Was that the countdown clock that was running on his screen," I asked.

"Yes!  He has very little time to finish this project."

"I wonder if I could be of any assistance."

The anguish showing on Jason's face told me he could use all the help he could get.  I quickly told him about my background in computer gaming, and asked if I could look at what he was working on.

After an hour, two beers, and a lot of swearing, Jason and I felt we were on to something.  I had reviewed the Java scripts that he had been writing, and noticed that there was something causing one line to error.  I tried some different variables, and finally it seemed to run correctly.

As we were thinking of where to go next, an instant message popped up on the screen from user name IMWATCHINGU.  Jason had logged in as himself, because he was also getting some help from an outside source, but he became really tense when he saw this message. 

"Damn! We don't have much time," he said as he fiercely pecked at the keys and responded to the message.  "We have to hurry."

Elizabeth had been sitting quietly as we worked, but I could see that she was in deep thought.          "Why don't you try a blocking code," she suddenly suggested.  "I don't know much about computer gaming, but I'm pretty sure I read something about blocking codes when I was going through my HTML stage."

"We kind of already did that, but you did give me an idea," I said as I took over the keyboard.  I started typing in some codes that I remembered from one of my classes that taught you how to catch errors.  I thought if I worked backwards, put this in and then corrected it later on in the segment, we might be able to cause the hacker some irritations and maybe it would give Jason more time to come up with a more complex code to keep the hacker from destroying the program altogether.

I still couldn't believe that Jason was using Java.  It's a pretty easy system to manipulate, and it has had a lot of competition recently.  However, because this is what I learned when I was in school, I was excited to be helping.  In the back of my mind though, I was wondering how much credit I would really get for this.  Would the government give me a big fat paycheck?  Humm, I could think of a lot of things I would do with a little extra cash. 

"There.  Run that and see what happens," I said handing the reins back to Jason.

I sat and watched as different things flashed across the screen.  So far, no error messages.  Then it stalled for about five seconds, and continued working.  I couldn't believe it, but it looked like what I just did was working.

"Wow, I think whatever you just did, bought me some time," Jason said spinning around on the barstool to face both of us. 

A message flashed up on the screen from IMWATCHINGU and we all stopped and stood still.  The message said, "You may think you've slowed me down, but I'm still out here."

"At least I know I have some more time to work on this problem," Jason said as he shut down the computer. "I can't thank the two of you enough.  Who would have thought that I would get saved by a bartender and a girl with a laptop?"

"I'm not just a bartender," I said smiling, "Didn't I mention that I'm Superman, Jack of all trades."  That comment earned me a punch in the shoulder from Elizabeth, and an eye roll from Jason, but I thought it was cute.  "But really, that's what I went to school for, and I love computers.  I'm glad we were able to help you out."

Elizabeth packed up her lap top and Jason hurried out the door thanking us profusely on the way out.  I grabbed my coat, shut off the remaining lights and walked Elizabeth to my car.

"Wasn't that an interesting evening," I said as I opened the car door for her.

"Yeah, sure was."

We pulled out of the parking lot and headed to her house.  She didn't live too far away, so it didn't leave us much time for small talk, and she had turned back into the quiet girl who had been sitting with Courtney.  "You don't talk much, do you?"

"It depends," she replied sheepishly.

"On?"

"Whether I like the person or not, and what the topic is."

"Oh, I see."

A couple of silent moments went by and we turned onto her street.

"I haven't decided whether I like you yet or not," she said as we parked.

"What's not to like?"

"I guess we'll have to wait and see."

She handed me a piece of paper, kissed my cheek and got out of the car.  I watched her walk to her door and then opened the piece of paper.  On it were the words call me, and her phone number.

I left her driveway feeling happy.  I had saved the world and met a great girl all in days work.  What more could I ask for.  After all, I am Superman.