A dude sits alone in a bar. He is a programmer and has reluctantly accompanied his colleagues out to a nightclub after the web agency’s annual Christmas party. The colleagues have already spread out throughout the nightclub, like short-range robots set for a full-on hit.

The programmer has neither the confidence nor the look with him. He stares at himself in the mirror behind all the colorful bottles in the bar. Eyes, nose, and mouth are placed without the slightest regard for symmetry. He is ugly. At least that’s what he’s been told since middle school when that kind of things started to mean something.

The bartender comes up to him and asks if he wants to try his specialty, a magic drink. The programmer asks what’s so magical about it. The bartender laughs and tells him that he inherited the recipe from his great grandmother in Haiti, and that the drink is not only magically good, but magic for real. It makes people see your inner beauty instead of staring blindly at the exterior. “I promise, you will get laid as much as you want” says the bartender, and smiles like an alligator on speed.

The programmer’s logical and rational part of the brain had switched to standby already after the first strong Christmas drink, hours ago, and he now thinks that magic is something that feels just right. He accepts the bartender’s offer but doesn’t expect much more than getting even more drunk.

The music rises and the heavy bass-lines make the bottles in the bar shake and clink. The bartender wanders around the shelves, snapping at one bottle here, and one there. He pours, crushes, bumps, stirs and mashes various ingredients into a stainless steel shaker while his hips swing to the beat of the suggestive Dub music. He ends the whole ritual by dropping a pinch of glowing powder and shakes the steel cylinder above his head, so violent that he seems to vibrate and dissolve in the contours. “Here you go my friend” he says, pouring the drink into a glass.

The programmer thinks it tastes like a regular Pina colada, but since he doesn’t want to disappoint the bartender, he says that it tasted magic. The bartender laughs, so loud that he almost drowns out the thunderous music. Some girls at the far end of the bar react and turn towards them. “This one is on the house” he says.

The programmer is left alone with the emptied glass in front of him, thinking about what the bartender said about the magic stuff. He looks at himself in the mirror again and sighs. He’s just about to get up from the barstool and leave the bar for the Blackjack table one floor down, when a girl shows up next to him. He thinks she looks like the primordial type for all those cool-looking and cocky babes who revolved around downtown, constantly searching for confirmation from the corresponding type of guys. The girl smiles at him and straightens the already perfect hairstyle.

Emboldened by the “magic” drink, he smiles back and asks her if she wants something to drink. “Cosmopolitan.” She says, still smiling at him. He waves to the bartender and orders the drink. The girl turns out to be a professional blogger, and since the programmer works at a well-known web agency, they have a lot to talk about. Several drinks and many laughs later, they leave the nightclub together and take a taxi to the girl’s fancy apartment.

The programmer and blogger log into each other. With demolished firewalls, ones and zeros unite, and turn into a guttural scream of voluptuousness that propagates through the ventilation system and leaves the apartment, bouncing around among the rooftops, and hitchhiking on the night breeze, until it is caught by the bartender’s receptive ears. “Magic!”