Everyone Died+My iPhone Stopped Working: An Oral History of The Robot Apocalypse

Know Your Drunks

Kenny Lee, Bartender

The secret to being a good bartender?

Know your drinks. And know your drunks.

The first one is easy. Any idiot can make drinks. No fancy college degree required.

Plus, the mixology course I took was a few hundred bucks and I found work right away. My friend Joel spent hundreds of thousands getting a B.A. in Sociology and he wound up bagging groceries at Ralph's.

[Side note: Lucas reports that he is still receiving threatening letters demanding that he pay back his college loans.]

But drunks can be complicated. No two are quite the same. They're like snowflakes. Snowflakes that might puke on your couch or mistake an elevator for a men's room.

You have to know how to handle them. And I do. I distract the guys who want to fight, I smile at the girls who want to flirt. And if she can tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue, I get her phone number.

I laugh at jokes when they aren't funny, compliment outfits when they aren't pretty. I nod in agreement when some crazy hippie rants about the three hundred mile-per-gallon car "they" are keeping from us, or a preppy douche bag babbles about some guy named Ayn Rand.

I never argue. I never take sides.

Mostly, I just let them talk. I have never met a drunk person who didn't love the sound of their own voice.

That's why I was everybody's favorite bartender. It was also why, when the Robot Apocalypse hit, I was tending bar in a billionaire's luxury underground bunker. It belonged to Robert [the mononymous CEO of FutureMind] and let me tell you, when the shit came down, there were definitely worse places to be.

Like literally anywhere else.

It was carved into the Rocky Mountains and was, I was told, guaranteed to survive a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb.

Or your money back, I guess.

The place was unreal! It was like they took a cruise ship and buried it under tons and tons of granite. There were three five-star restaurants, two buffets, a Starbucks, a movie theater, a night club and a bar. A hair salon, a nail salon and a spa. There was a driving range, weight room, running track, lap pool, tennis court and racquetball court.

And I was like, "What, no jai alai court?"

Which is when I learned that they did have a jai alai court. Excuse me, a jai alai fronton. (I got corrected on that by the guy who was probably, literally, the last jai alai player left on earth.)

They brought in all the company's hot-shit executives, along with their families. They brought in Robert's nerdy friends. Which, I guess, was one way to know where your friendship really stood.

"Wait, you're saving fuckin' Greg and not me?"

"Sorry, Tony, but Greg didn't keep forgetting to return my snow shovel. Good luck with the robots!"

And there were a few dozen super-hot women who were brought in because they were the world's most important scientists.

Ha! Right!

No, the executives referred to them as "breeding stock" behind their backs. And then to their faces when they realized they had been shipped in from Belarus and didn't speak English.

The rest of us were "the help." Janitors and bartenders, repairmen and maids, cooks and nurses. The guy whose job it was to fold our towels into adorable animal shapes. They paid us in room, board and not being dead. All in all, a pretty good deal.

I remember when we learned what was going on outside. It was at the Welcome To The Bunker Party. Everyone was having a good time when suddenly the music stopped and a bunch of video screens came on at the same time. Robert's face was now everywhere. I guess it was supposed to be, like, "Ooh! Futuristic!" but to me it felt like the television section of Best Buy was showing off their new HD line with a documentary on acne scars.

Robert told us that the Robot War had begun.

The executives, I have to say, did not look all that surprised. The Belarusians didn't look surprised, either, although I think that was a language barrier thing.

I asked a Frat Boy-looking dude why everyone was so calm.

"Ah, you know, we all knew this might happen."

"All of you?"

"Well, not all of us. Paul didn't believe it. Right, Paul?" Paul looked embarrassed. Then Frat Boy did a brutal imitation of Paul. A lot of whining and farting.

I won't lie. It was pretty funny.

But Robert was still talking on the screen. He said that he was already working to end the war and was sure that it wouldn't be too long before we could go back to the surface. He made some joke about the Morlocks which went - whoosh! - right over my head.

[Note: I didn't get the reference, either, but Lucas laughed his ass off.]

Robert then said that no matter how long it lasted, we would not only be safe here, we would have every conceivable amenity. Including something called a Curated Pillow Experience.

Then the video screens went dark. He was gone.

There was an awkward moment where everyone was standing there on the dance floor, with drinks in their hands, with no idea what they were supposed to do or say. But then the music went back on. It was that song about being knocked down and getting up again by that shitty band with the retarded name. Everybody danced and sang along.

While I uncorked a bottle of Chateau LaTour for the Frat Guy, I asked him: "So... why did you do all this A.I. stuff if you knew this might happen?"

"You can't stop the march of progress, bro! If we hadn't done it first, it would've been those suck-holes at Recursive Loop. And if it wasn't them, it would've been any of a hundred other companies that were working on this."

I nodded in agreement.

And then - man! - it was just a blur! I've been to some wild parties, but Jesus Christ! It was practically non-stop! They partied like they had a death wish. Which maybe, deep down, they did. These were super-smart people who had created the last thing they'd ever create (except for the voice-activated light saber beer bong that a few of them were working on). There was nothing left for their brain cells to do, so they devoted their time to destroying them with alcohol.

And of course, I was more popular than ever. Because, like I said, I know my drunks.

The months went by and we never saw Robert in person. He was holed up in his private wing, trying to somehow stop the war. Every now and then, his bloated face came on the video screens and he would give us news from the outside - "Dow Jones falls 19,000 points!" "Latest Spiderman Reboot Delayed!" "Squirrels Acting Strangely!" - but then he stopped talking to us altogether.

It was weird, but it was also kind of a relief. With no one reminding us about the outside world, we could pretend that what we had was all there was. Or maybe we weren't pretending.

And then one day, Robert showed up at my bar.

To be continued...