Synthehol was an impressive innovation in food science, to be sure, but Hal was old-fashioned, and drinking felt a little weird without a proper burn on the way down. He was getting used to going without it, given the ubiquity of the synthetic stuff and the apparent unpopularity of the old ways, but a line of text hiding at the bottom of the menu caught his attention, and he tossed the menu down on the bar and looked to the bartender.

"So. What's good out of the retro alcohol?"

Normally Hal wasn't financially stable enough to go for much above the rotgut, but if someone else was picking up the tab...

The bottle of whiskey the bartender produced from beneath the bar had some fairly old dates on the seal and was covered in a thin layer of dust. Clearly, this wasn't a request they got terribly often.

Or maybe they just saved the good stuff for VIPs, but either way, Hal wasn't complaining.