Sil finished his whiskey and turned to the waiter. "Hey, I heard you have rheinland Bier here, bring me some!", the waiter noded; he turned to Aleesha and looked into her eyes, "I guess you have some question, right? I assume things like what happened do not happen to people like you every day. I think it can be pretty confusing. Anyway, ... ," he paused for a moment, "How's your 'headache'?"
The waiter arrived at their table and brought a bottle of beer; Sil took a sip. He was trying to be unsuspicious, but he obviously felt a bit nervous at this place. His mien showed that he was kinda concerned, but he did his best to not let his vis-á-vis notice this. He never thought that he would sit at one table with an officer of the Liberty fleet, talking about things that might kill him. Telling the entire truth was not an option, but he never liked to lie. He spinned his bottle around, looking at Aleesha.
"Alright ... you helped me out of this ... akward situation ... ask your question, I hope I can answer at least some of them."
"Looks like you had a hard time out there. Let me rephrase, hangover much?"
This question was obviously rhetoric, Aleesha had plenty of other ones, but wondered if Sil is even going to give her a honest answer on them. Not like she was naive enough to suppose that her curiosity will be satisfied that easy.
"Well, Sil, I wonder what's so overcomplicated in your work in Liberty, so it forces you to maintain your exceptional privacy. And don't tell me that it's just a hobby."
"It's not my hobby, really. But it isn't my job either. Let's say a while I ago I got into something...and now I am pretty curious.", he sips from his beer and takes a deep breath. "I'm not even sure what exactly I am doing here, nor why. But I think this 'thing' is too important to just ignore it. When the captain of the Athena was right, millions of humans died there. And I guess that was not the last genocide. What I am doing here, is gaining knowledge, information, everything that helps me to understand this."
He pauses for a moment, looking around. "Well...the world seems to be at war. Humans killing each other for money and power, or just because the follow blind an ideology. And then we have the nomads, surely very mysterious lifeforms...
What I mean is, if humanity continues like this, we're all going to hell. Not that I believe in a metaphysical place like hell, but our world here will turn into hell. And the problem can't be solved if you do not understand it entirely."
He looks at the other people in the bar, then turns back to Aleesha: "People do not question their intentions enough, history just happens again and again and again."
"If we do not start changing, we're all doomed. People do not want to understand, and that will be our nemesis. If the humans keep fighting each other like they do at the moment, who could stop a possible nomad invasion?
And, also, this is not about good versus evil. We humans are not necessarily good, and I don't think the nomads are just evil creatures who want to destroy everything. This would be too easy. I want to understand what is really happening."
Aleesha spent a while time sipping her drink in microscopical amount in precise periods of time like the water-sources clock turned upside down, listening to Sil. Finally, she answered.
"Sil, the aliens, no matter what they are, aren't the matter of our talk, right? Let me sum it up - we are surrounded by morons.
Yet we are still alive. Should had killed each other, yet hesitate. Is that all a problem? Think of it as of a solution instead. And all that is a nice philosophy and whatever.
...
But you either write for New Yorker or are trying to change the subject, aren't you?"
"I just tried to answer question", he folded his hands and had a look around with unseeing eyes. After a few seconds he turned back to Cooper, siping his drink. "But yes, you're right. Surrounded by morons. Everything seems pretty hopeless, eh?"
He put an empty glass on the table and stood up, "Excuse me a moment, I need some fresh air, and a smoke." Sil grabbed his cigarettes and walked out of the door. Shortly after that a women followed him out of the bar. When he came back some minutes later, he seemed pleased and sat down again.
"So, where were we? ... Ah, yes, braindead morons and aliens. Well, we could sit here for weeks and talk about that stuff. We even won't come to a solution.
I think I will leave now and try to find a way to leave this planet. I am sure we will meet again, Aleesha."
He stood up and took his jacket, halfway to the exit he turned back to her. "And hey, thanks for picking me up and so. I owe you something."
<<A shady man enters the bar. He was wearing a dark brown leather coat and an old worn out black fedora hat. The man went straight to the bartender and asked for two glasses of Liberty Wisky. He drank the first glass at the bar, payed the bartender, took the second glass and took a seat at a table in one corner of the room.
The man looked troubled and he seemed to search for something since he was silently and carefully observing everyone in the room. He stood there, for a while, slowly spinning he's glass on the table. He was waiting for someone or something.>>
The man finished he's second glass of whiskey with small sips. After that he slowly watched the entire room for one more time and headed to the door. He didn't find what he came for. After he exit the bar he carefully watched he's back. He didn't want to be followed by any curious eyes. He left the planet several minutes after in an old civilian Arrow.
Willis often preferred to drink from the comfort of the cockpit of his Deep Space Engineering assigned Anki freighter. Away from supervisors with unrealistic deadlines, away from the "thick as three planks" apprentises he's been forced to educate. Away from people in general. But the emptiness that had become of this field engineer's life was starting to take it's toll. The front door automatically opens in front of him, and Willis walks directly to the bar.
"So what'll it be sir?" asked the barman, in his overused customer service smile.
"Liberty hard whisky will do." Stated Willis, "and hold the rocks, I prefer it straight if it's not too much trouble."
A nod was all he got in return as the barman cracked the lid off the dusty old bottle and poured the glass. Willis took a sip from his glass and took in the scene. He could feel the eyes upon him from the moment he entered the bar, but by this time every patron's attention had returned to their conversations. Alone again, this time in a room full of people.
After a long day of patrols, fights and strange encounters, Ian Johnson finally decided to do something else than going home after duty. When he entered the Bar on Manhattan, he sighed.
"Seems to be okay here..."
He just mumbled, searching a place to sit at. As he then sat down on a stool, he ordered a water, pulling out his PDA after doing so. Reading through his messages, not the first time for today, he picked up the message of Doctor Holliday. He rubbed his forehead and sighed, scrolling up on his PDA. When he then saw, to his surprise, a rather new kind of message, he opened it and then smiled slightly.
"A promotion..huh...nice...even Lieutenant now..."
He said, nodding to himself. The day was acceptable, he thought. Even if he got shot down by a Rheinland fighter, he was lucky not to get hurt in any worse way when the pod got tractored by the Liberty Navy forces. He looked up from his PDA and looked around, maybe seeing someone he could know.
Amanda wandered into the bar, it had been a hard day so she hadn't bothered to get dressed up. Still covered in grease, oil and who knows what else she wiped her hands on her jeans and grinned at the barman. "I'll have something strong, got to forget about this damn stork for a while. I'll tell you what, when you dream about work you got problems.." Amanda's biggest problem was she was too much of a socialite, although a good engineer working for Deep Space Engineering, she needed the night life to keep her going. After all, she was a Manhattan girl through and through.
After getting a drink of some sort of Bretonian Scotch, she glanced quickly around the bar, seeing Willis she shook her head and muttered "Well, fancy seeing him here...." Taking a sip of her drink she carried on looking around the room. To her dismay, there was really nothing interesting. Some guy drinking water with a fancy PDA, people talking, and Willis. She sighed and took a seat near the bar waiting for some kind of excitement.