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    The Martini of Destiny: A Rucksack Universe Novella: Rucksack Universe
    The Martini of Destiny: A Rucksack Universe Novella: Rucksack Universe
    The Martini of Destiny: A Rucksack Universe Novella: Rucksack Universe
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    The Martini of Destiny: A Rucksack Universe Novella: Rucksack Universe

    By Anthony St. Clair

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    About this ebook

    One drink changed everything.

    Influencing a man's fate should have been another day behind the bar. Bartender Jake Hongkong has served The Management longer than any other Jake or Jade, but now he doubts his role influencing people's destinies and decisions. Declan is directionless and scared when he comes to the pub, yet one drink is all it takes to give him the courage to make a life-altering decision. Deeply shaken by something he wasn't meant to see, Jake doubts more than ever, and consequences ripple through destiny and the world. Soon one martini will forever alter lives and fates... especially Jake's and Declan's.

    THE MARTINI OF DESTINY is a captivating page-turner in Anthony St. Clair's Rucksack Universe. If you like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, or Octavia Butler, you'll love this ongoing fantasy series of globetrotting intrigue.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRucksack Press
    Release dateJun 20, 2013
    ISBN9781940119014
    The Martini of Destiny: A Rucksack Universe Novella: Rucksack Universe
    Author

    Anthony St. Clair

    Anthony St. Clair creates compelling fiction and non-fiction for a curious world full of everyday discoveries, endeavors, and surprises. He is the author of the ongoing Rucksack Universe series; covers craft beer, food, business, and more for various publications; and is a copywriter and content manager for select clients. When not at his desk or in his kitchen in Oregon, Anthony is on an adventure with his wife, son, and daughter.

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      Book preview

      The Martini of Destiny - Anthony St. Clair

      The Martini of Destiny

      The Martini of Destiny

      A Rucksack Universe Novella

      Anthony St. Clair

      Rucksack Press

      Contents

      1. The Coffee of Perception

      2. The Stout of Reality

      3. The Absinthe of Dreams

      4. The Water of All and Nothing

      5. The Martini of Destiny

      6. Closing Time

      Thank You for Reading

      Become a Wanderer

      Also by Anthony St. Clair

      Acknowledgments

      Special Features

      BONUS Free Short Story

      About the Author

      Just as all blood passes through the heart, all life, business and culture pass through Hong Kong. Since becoming an independent nation after The Blast, the city-state on China's southeastern seaboard has become renown as The World's Greatest City. It’s easy to see why. From the inspiring drinks in the pubs, to the otherworldly weirdness of the concrete mythological figures in the Aw Boon Haw Gardens, the wonders are endless. All travelers will find new delights to marvel them, and new stories to bring home as souvenirs. After all, as the old saying goes, ‘to tire of Hong Kong is to forget how to live the world.’

      – Guru Deep, Hong Kong Through the Third Eye

      1

      The Coffee of Perception

      The glass looked like a mountain inverted, a peak held in the hand. Jake Hongkong mixed the martini with the mastery of years, the gin, vermouth and glass all coming to the perfect cold temperature at his touch. In a blur he topped it off with the final ingredient, a few drops from the special black bottle in the unseeable cabinet behind a panel of the woodwork below the back liquor shelves. The drink looked and smelled the same, but for the man about to drink it, he did not know how different his life was going to become.

      I always heard you make the best drinks in Hong Kong, said the man sitting at the bar. He hadn’t noticed the special bottle. No one ever did.

      Only because I could never make it as a go-go dancer, Jake said as he finished preparing the martini. My legs didn’t look good in the tights. The man laughed, but in the back of Jake’s mind he saw the black drops fall invisible into the glass, and the old tension rose again. It’s a shame you’ve never been in before, he said, straining the elixir into the inverted-mountain glass. He set the martini, the best he had ever made, on a cocktail napkin. I’m just doing my job, he thought.

      Figured it was time, said the man. Today is going to be either the best or worst day of my life. I figured I might as well have the best drink of my life. The man raised the glass and sipped his martini. As the drink flowed through him, a smile brightened his face. He tipped the glass toward Jake. That’s the best damn martini I’ve ever had. There’s hope for the world, so long as there are drinks as good as this.

      Anything to bolster a man about to face a difficult day. What’s going to make it so hard on you?

      As the man’s hand went to his jacket pocket, Jake could just make out a small rectangular outline. When the man opened the box, light glinted off a gold band, centered by a cloudy piece of green oval stone. She hates diamonds, but she’s a diamond of a lady.

      All the right muscles tightened in Jake’s face. I bet she is.

      But jade, she loves that. So when it seemed like I needed to pop the question, this made more sense than the usual diamond nonsense.

      It’s a nice ring, mate. Good on you.

      The man sipped his martini. And she’s a nice girl. When the season’s right.

      Nerves are understandable.

      It’s not the nerves. She’s like no other woman I’ve ever known. That woman burns with a fire that could keep all the world warm or burn it to a cinder. She’s got a mind as brilliant as her body is beautiful. She’s shown me kindnesses beyond my understanding, and anger I couldn’t describe even if I wanted to.

      Sounds like one hell of a woman, Jake said.

      Thing of it is, I don’t know if she wants to marry or not. Not just me, but anyone. Three years we’ve been going out, and sometimes when I look at her, I don’t know if she’s even really here. You ever know a woman like that? You look at her, and all you see is that she’d rather be somewhere else.

      I’m sure that’s not a patch on you, Jake said. He looked around the bar, glad it was still empty. But he knew the quiet wouldn’t last long. As the day wound down, he had little time before others would come in, seeking drink and needing something more. Hongkongers and expats alike soon would pack the pub—Chinese, Americans, the Brits descended from those who had stayed after The Blast destroyed what many had called a fledgling British Empire. Everything that had to happen, had to happen while it was just the two of them; he knew that as clearly as he remembered his real name. This man with the ring and the nerves needed not just the liquid courage in his glass, but some real courage that Jake would have to help him find in himself.

      Some women are so much their own person, they’re so real, that it can just about hurt to look at them, Jake said. "They’re more real, more here, than the rest of us. You meet a woman like that, you’ve met the most real person in all the world. There’s no one like them, and it takes a

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