Paddy's

2am. Starport City, Arcadia-3, The Dionysus System.
(Five minutes down the street from Paddy Fitzgerald’s Irish Pub.)

Two figures stumble down the street beneath the bluish glow of the energy lamps.

“Aww, crap. I think I left my keys on the bar.”

“Seriously? You pick now to remember? We’re like two minutes away from mine, you can crash there tonight. Paddy’ll keep ’em safe for you, I’m sure”

“Nah, my wife’ll kill me if I forget them again. I’m already in enough hot water about tonight-”

“Clearly she doesn’t appreciate the awesomeness which is one of my par-tays de bachelor”

“Yeah, you got that one right. Look, I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”

“Yeah, alright.”

He turns around. Like he said, Paddy’s is still close, and it’s better to remember his keys now than to face another bout of wifely wrath. The air is quiet as he half-jogs back the way he came.

As he approaches the corner, he sees light coming from probably about where Paddy’s is. That’s weird. All the lights had been turned off when they left. That was mostly the reason they’d left, actually- two stragglers left in the bar after everyone else was long-gone were hardly a thriving crowd, so Paddy had turfed them out. Maybe turning the lights off was just for show, or maybe he’d forgotten something too.

He rounds the corner. He was right, the light was coming from Paddy’s. That’s good, it means he’s still up. Less awkward explanations about why he was bashing at the door of a closed pub at two in the morning. There’s something weird about the light, though. Paddy’s has energy lamps, and they don’t flicker like that...

A thought shoots across his sluggish mind. Could it be fire? Someone had been breathing fire at the party (showoff), could it have caught in the ceiling and be burning? He breaks into a run, and stumbles panting to a stop in front of the massive wooden door to the bar. He starts knocking.

“PADDY! PADDY? PATRICK? ARE YOU IN THERE? ARE YOU OKA-”

The door creaks open, just a fraction. An Irish-accented voice replies.

“Yes?”

“Oh, Paddy, sorry. It’s me, I just left my keys, and I-”

“You should probably come back tomorrow.”

“Well, I wanted to get them before tomorrow, it’s my wife see, ‘cause I lose things all the time”

“I think you should come back tomorrow instead.”

“No really, it’ll just take a moment, and I think you might have a fire or something in the roof because there was this weird flickering before but it seems to have stopped-”

As he says this, he pushes through the door. It takes him a few steps to notice that what he has walked into is not Paddy Fitzgerald’s Irish Pub. Paddy’s is all wood paneling and leather sofas and poster prints. This is dark, and cold, and chromed.

“Whoa, Paddy... what’s going on here?”

“You need to leave.”

“Nah, I gotta... gotta get my keys... Paddy, what is this?”

He spots his keys on what half an hour ago was a worn teak bar. Now it’s a benchtop, made from some unidentifiable, apparently frictionless metal. He grabs his keys and turns around. Paddy’s face is right in front of him. He looks odd, kind of stiff, and there’s a terrifying light in his eyes.

“Leave.” It’s almost a gasp, with odd harmonics sliding up and down somewhere deep in his throat.

“I... are you sure... I think I might... just... go...”

He turns and runs out the door, bursting onto the street. He sprints halfway to the corner before he even dares to look over his shoulder. As he does, the flickering light starts to build again, to an incredible intensity.

He runs the rest of the way home, and doesn’t look back again.

--

It’s on the newscast the next morning. Everyone at work is talking about it. His mate swings by his desk, with a look of awe on his face.

“Can ya believe it? Gone! Paddy’s! Like it was never there, the newscast said. And get this- they looked him up in the colony databank. Turns out there never was a Patrick Fitzgerald, never on the whole planet. There weren’t even any Irish settlers on the colony ship! And I reckon, I reckon you must’ve just about been the last one ever to see him, when you went back to get your keys last night.”

He shoots an curious look down his nose.

“Hey, you didn’t happen to see anything didja?”

“Nope. Not a damn thing.”

---

Wait, you mean the massive proliferation of Irish pubs isn't because of a massive alien conspiriacy?

Huh.