It was Friday evening when I suddenly felt a strange urge to leave my dwelling, much like Franz Kafka explains in “The Sudden Walk.” I don’t normally associate with other individuals of society, but on this night I concluded that visiting a bar might be an interesting experience for a Friday night. It was by no means as though I require friendship, as the vast majority of the population does, but it’s as Kafka writes about the sudden powerful urge.

The next thing I know, I’m sitting at the counter with a drink at my fingertips at one of the most highly esteemed bars in the city. It didn’t take long before I was already beginning to feel bored with my surroundings and the people inhabiting them. After studying the humans labor behind the bar for a couple of minutes, I had already devised eight ways in which they could optimize their routines and yield a far higher output throughout their shift. It struck me as strange that they had never come by these same optimizations I had discovered in mere seconds of being here. I told two of the bartenders about my ideas, and they assured me that they’d think about it; but quite honestly, I maintain they had difficulty conceptualizing my improvements to their work. Ignorence is bliss.

I sat there in my seat at the bar, exploring the vast edifices of my mind, pulling me to distant galaxies, among the moons of Jupiter and through the sea of quarks that make up the fabric of my reality. My explorations were abruptly cut short when an unknown female took the seat adjacent to mine. The loud sound of her chair being pulled out caused the walls of space and time to drop like the curtain of a play, and I resumed my interaction with the sensory world. She was quite social and greeted me, asking what was good there. Of course, how could I have forgotten the price I must pay for leaving my apartment: small talk. Fortunately for her, I am adept in the art yet still strongly adverse. As we conversed, I quickly grew tired of her mind. I don’t speak in LOLs and emojis. As an engineer, my job requires fluency in the language of machines. I can already foresee that this probably won’t go far. I need first to know her mind—her level of intelligence—so that I may know whether this interaction should even continue. I cut her off, saving us from the trite discussion of her hometown, and posed a question on my level of cognition to her. I asked if I were to hand her a solid cube whose sides are n units in length but shaved off the entire outer layer of the cube. What would be the new volume of the cube? My mind begins collecting data. She seemed taken aback, but that is meaningful data in and of itself. My mind is already unveiling the inner workings of hers as she fondles the question awkwardly while taking desperate sips of her cocktail. She begins looking around the room; I can see she doesn’t know the answer, so I tell her: $n^3 - 6n^2 + 12n - 8$. She says, “That’s impressive.” I know it is. She left shortly after. It was probably for the best: I don’t do small talk.

After she had left, I could finally resume exploring the inner workings of my mind, which are largely too complex even to begin to describe. The noise level in my surroundings began to rise as more and more people poured into the space. It was now too loud to escape to my hidden worlds, so I performed analyses on the individuals around me. Two individuals, in particular, caught my attention: a man and a woman, probably in their early twenties. I could tell that they had not been seeing each other for very long; this was evident by the man’s dorky haircut but cleanly shaven neckline, his carefully pressed dress shirt tucked into his jeans, and his $20 watch. His body was awkwardly and stiffly angled towards her but not too much to appear needy. To put it simply, the girl was your typical female: blonde hair, white teeth, smiley, a necklace—the kind of girl who would have mocked me in school. She seemed confident in this space, knowing most of the bartenders by name; however not yet comfortable with her date. I asked a passing bartender how long the couple had been together (I had presumed two weeks). The bartender replied, “Why?” I knew she wouldn’t understand my reasons; I told her, “Never mind,” allowing her to leave and bringing my attention back to my drink. After a few moments passed, I proceeded with my deductions, studying them from across the bar as they sporadically engaged and disengaged in banal conversation, often turning to one of the bartenders to break the awkward silence. As I silently watched them interact, I thought about how one’s life would be, possessing such a simple mind. I watched with derision every movement she made while speaking to her date, lifting the glass to her mouth up and down, never once thinking about the science that went into creating the whiskey she was consuming. But I believe even she could sense she was in the presence of one of the elite because she eventually stopped speaking to her date and looked right at me as I was studying her vacuous movements. Her date asked me from across the bar if I was okay. Okay? Define “okay,” I thought to myself. We, humans, are born into this world with no direction, no reason, destined to die on our lonely little planet in a vast, dark universe of which we know practically nothing. Our existence is absurd, and our only guarantee in this life is pain, loneliness, and death! I told him that I was fine. It’s probably better that I do not burden them with the sorrows of the mindful. I think he, too, could tell that I was not one of their own, but oddly enough, he treated me as such. They beckoned for me to sit closer to them, and the man with the cheap watch bought me another drink.

Not too long afterward, the couple left the bar. Soon after, I followed suit. I have no recollection of how long I was at the bar—my mind is busy with other more pressing matters. I returned to my apartment, pleased with the enlightenment I had instilled in those with whom I had come in to contact that evening. However, I’m sorry to say that this endeavor may have been in vain: society is lost on those poor, simple-minded individuals.