“A Guy Walks into a Bar...”

DATELINE: Classic City, Stratum XLIX
  Stoddard strolled into the tiny Brooklyn Café and took the bar’s corner stool.
  “Bitters and soda, please.” The sad silence of an ignored jukebox paired well with the the waft of stale popcorn.
  “This place is dead.” It wasn’t a complaint.

DATELINE: Piazza Mercato, East Cobb, Stratum XXV
  Stoddard and Veronique walked into the windowless neighbourhood tavern and seated themselves at the bar.
  “Pint of draft and whatever she wants.” He casually gazed about the room. “Place used to be a pizza joint back in the day. Pretty crowded for a Thanksgiving.”

  Veronique looked around. “People come here when they’re tired of being around their families. Or don’t have families.”
  “Or,” Stoddard quipped, seeing vaguely familiar faces, “Local nobodies come here to hold court after their high school glory days have faded away.”

DATELINE: Quartier Latin, Montréal, Stratum XX
  At the completion of the balance audio, Stoddard unplugged himself and strode across the dim, cavernous interior of Les Foufounes Électriques. He made his way up a graffiti-lined stairway to a bar tucked into the shadows of a mezzanine.
  “Une bière, erm...please,” Stoddard muttered. The buxom barmaid slid a glass of draft across the bar to him, her eye still on the televised hockey game.

DATELINE: The Bowery, NYC, Stratum XIX
  Stoddard stepped into the bodega, trailed by Lester and that Sky City fellow. “The cheapest bar in New York City... is the streets of New York City,” someone had muttered. “Brown-baggin’ forties beats paying seven bucks a beer at the club. No band discount, plus there’s dog faeces everywhere.” The cashier nodded, probably not understanding them.
  “We can chill in Graudonner II in the car park,” they agreed, not realising Michelle and Condor were already there dabbling in Coat Cheque.

DATELINE: LAX, Stratum XVII
  Stoddard dragged himself and his luggage into the airport’s Mesosphere Club.
  It was late morning but the jet lag from the Asia jaunt left his body thinking it was still in the wee small hours of the night before. He sidled up to the gleaming bar.
  “Michelada, por favor,” Stoddard tepidly said to the bartender, who quietly procured his beverage. The weary traveler eyed the surrounding lucite, chrome and flourescent blue decor as he sipped his drink. The atmosphere was not unlike the Shinjuku nightclubs he was visiting mere evenings ago. “Clean, but this place is contrastingly well-lighted,” he mused.

DATELINE: Victoria, London, Stratum XI
  Stoddard walked through the pale lit taproom up to the barman and said, “Coke, please.” He studied the oaken beams and tarnished brass of The Albert Pub (or was it the Royal Albert? Prince Albert? The Consort’s Clanger? Never mind...) ...And there was his beverage in a small tumbler.
  “Orange slice. Classy garnish.” He stood near the entrance watching traffic as the dopplerised wail of a hi/lo siren rung his ears and the grimy air of diesel lingered about the threshold.

Single chapters in the Akashic Archives may narrate repeated thematic iterations within one lifetime. But the remaining contents (“multiple else-bodies”) of one soul’s anthology are on “restricted shelving" — a “need to know” basis not decided by mortal men.
  Lateral quantum realities indeed have transpired/transpire/will transpire, but on this side of the dimensional vale, all we have is speculation of possible episodes.
  Let us indulge:
• The Roman foot soldier gives the mead-wench several denarii for a beverage in a tavern-hovel in provincial Rhaetia.
• Tribal artisan trades a carved mask for a jug of barley water at market in the Ugandoid Colonial Prefecture in the Middle Ages.
• Earth crew member 227 requests hydration cannister from host Ebens on the arid high plains of Planet Serpo.
• Thirsty baby grasps for mother’s breast, time immemorial.