FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"It's here."

Unseen by his assistant, halfway buried in a wall of twisting and tunneling pipes and wires, Dr. Laboratorius' ears metaphorically perked, followed by an excited upward jerking of the head that promptly collided with the iron framework immediately above it. The resonant clang startled the young intern, whom had been sent to fetch the ranking technician aboard the class IV high-orbit research vessel, and he quickly leaped to the doctor's aid, whom had slumped from within his working area with a hand nursing an emerging lump on the rear of his cranium. Though quite venerable of age, he demonstrated a marked reserve of energy in his lack of patience to wait any longer, to see it.

"Show me, show me!"

The interior of the Council ships were fully walled and lavishly ornate with historic displays and the various crests of the Galactic Alcohol Alliance, a self-serving reminder of its opulence and alpha status through the known universe. It thus pleased the good doctor that he need not gaze upon such pomp and audacity for every arduous day he endured; as a scientist, he would not see himself sat on some impotent throne of presumption. He spent his days and nights aboard a gutted Alliance battle craft, where the hallways were not so much "walled" as they were guided by the ship's operative and life support systems. As the doctor strode ahead of his assistant in a near gallop, the blue halogen glow of the fuel and food lines lit and shadowed him rhythmically. It had been nearly a century since the New Earth scientists had revolutionized a process that gave an amazing morphological quality to certain kinds of alcohols, enabling the development of such things as highly advanced propulsion systems, as well as simplified liquid rations for both the less fortunate and those engaged in deep space exploration. Alcohol was the ether that propelled humankind into its brightest periods of prosperity.

And yet, while history had seen that technology could bring prosperity, it rarely ever contributed to enduring peace. Even the greatest revolutions in mechanical efficiency could not prevent the fragmenting of the human empire, for the human will and ego are stronger than the hardest steels, and burn more fiercely than the most massive stars. The doctor and his pupil watched from a hatch bay window as a small cloaked vessel, perfectly transparent save for a few ripples of bending light as well as the fuming of its exhaust, sat in long-dock with the S.S. Tecate. Next to them, the hissing hydraulic locks pierced into their ears as irritatingly as ever, as the connecting tunnel was vented and adequately pressurized. As the heavy alloy bars receded into the walls and the crew buzzed about, pulling and turning various levers and wheels, the doctor's mind seemed to slip away for a moment; in fact, it had slipped fifty years into the past. Some things in the doctor's memory had fallen into a forgetful haze, but others, they had not...

While Laboratorius had been testing primitive samples of Miller-based high order life in a newly explored sector, blind to anything but his work in his youthful oblivion, the north quadrant had split from the Galactic AA and formed the Budding Light Empire. While their actions were politically motivated, they also drew upon a mystic calling as their rallying cry, some nonsense about "divine inebriation." The GAA and all loyalist factions brushed it aside as insane religious drivel at first, and in retrospect it seemed like the most rational decision. But as open war broke out between the new and old nations, returning soldiers brought with them unsettling stories of crazed BLE warriors who felt no pain, flinched at no injury, and fought in a bloodlusted trance until their bodies were shredded to the point of immobility. The lab analyses of felled enemy combatants - a field the doctor was soon relegated to, as all other research was quickly scrapped in favor of the war effort - seemed to confirm the military's claims, uncovering a frightening secret within the veins of the BLE fighters. Foreign alcohols, forged by some alchemic sorcery unknown to even the Alliance's head chancellors of the Council, powered the berserking fury of the Empire's soldiers - and it did not stop with just flesh and blood. Similar findings were discovered in the tattered remains of the BLE small-arms ships, or at least those that could be recovered before their utter decimation. The Empire ships were faster, stronger, and harder to kill than anything the Alliance could shore up to the front.

A rude snap of metal broke the doctor's umbra of thought. The crew members had to pound away at the last few locking mechanisms of the old bay door with hammers and other tools, until with a final concession the door opened to the breathy sound of a rush of oxygen fresh from the tanks. In strolled a rather haggard-looking group of GAA officials, an officer of some odd rank accompanied by two mechanized marine suiters. The three of them seemed not too far removed from the field of battle, and indeed they presented themselves with the expected Alliance formality that was plagued by a certain exasperation. In the hands of one of the marines was a large metallic canister of some kind, to which Dr. Laboratorius' eyes were quickly drawn. He gestured to his crew, whom quickly retrieved the heavy object that required three pairs of unmodulated arms to cart away out of sight into the guts of the ship. The officer addressed the captain of the Tecate briefly, before meeting the doctor with a vacant stare.

"You have no idea what it cost to get this." He said flatly.

"I have every idea of what it will save, sir." The doctor retorted. The GAA official pursed his lips and sucked a sharp breath in, beholden to a great anger.

"That thing had damn well better be everything you said it was."

With that, the three of them returned through the hatch door, to the cacophonic tune of the reassembling array of locks. The doctor had not waited to see them on their way, for he had hurriedly jogged as fast as his elderly legs would permit into the ship's belly. The square container was laid out onto an expansive stainless steel table. Condensated mists clouded from it and drifted over the table's edge, onto the grated floor below. The doctor approached, and laid his hands upon it, seemingly with a fair amount of caution. But it was not caution that he paid the item now, rather it was respect to the gravity of that moment in time, the moment that every amount of exploration and research over the last half a century had culminated to. It was with a ragged breath that he nervously punched a few numbers into the digitized keypad that locked the container. A few confirmative beeps, and an observant party over the doctor's shoulder, and the container began to hum and whine, unfastening the screws and other sealing mechanisms that kept the device shut. The container split horizontally in the middle, and a strong white light shone forth that threatened to dilate the pupils of those watching to the threshold of pain. A hole atop the container about six inches in width quickly retracted in a hexagonal split. Slowly, drenched in a thick fog that welled up from within, an immaculate crystalline structure ascended into view, and within gently vibrated an equally pristine clear liquid. Inscribed on the front of the bottle, readable beneath a coat of ice, was a single word.

Bakon.

Thirty years ago, Dr. Laboratorius was appointed by the Council as head of military development. All other GAA operations had been indefinitely terminated; grounded laboratories and research vessels the galaxy 'round no longer sought to perfect the distillation process for medical numbing agents, or squeeze a few more nutritious molecular acids into a new form of ration. Instead, they were converted and put to work testing the limits of low-proof concussive brews and chemical weapons with active alcohol-based nerve agents. At least, those were the sorts of ventures that all of his peers had been tasked with. Laboratorius, on the other hand, was given a classified directive. It seemed that the Council, and the GAA at large, had begun to take the "alcoholics," as they were termed, seriously. Secret research had been done into the more occult and esoteric sides of the universal sustenance, and with every step made in acquiring long-forgotten Old Earth relics and deciphering its dead languages, the signs pointed to one reverent augury; Bakon, the modern-day liquid adamantium. When Old Earth was destroyed upon the eve of nuclear technology, its remains were scattered across the galaxy by pirates, who drove a vast "collector" industry in the black market. It was discovered that while many primitive alcohols had positively zero functional worth in this day and age, not all were quite so worthless. In fact, a select few had molecular structures that were nothing short of miraculous - whether this was by design, or purely by dumb luck, was a matter that GAA scholars and historians wasted many an hour raving over. Here and there, certain rare breeds were acquired and replicated, while others were stored away by rich industrialists to stifle any possible competition.

The doctor took the bottle into his hands, brushing away the rest of the cryon particulate, revealing further labeling and information written in unintelligible script. His assistant gazed on with interest.

"I don't see why they feel the need to transport it like this. Vodkas don't freeze, and they have shelf-lives longer than most humans even at room temperature."

The doctor gave his pupil a sideways glance with a displeased roll of the eyes, before retreating further into the ship, bottle clutched protectively in his arms.

When Dr. Laboratorius realized that he would get no help from the corporate ilk that were most directly responsible for the sudden brickwalling of alcohol innovation, he decided to turn to other sources. Not all of the alcoholics were actively engaged in campaigning against the GAA; perhaps they were privy to some divine truth, or perhaps they had fallen into a perpetuated intoxication that rendered them lame. In either case, it was there that he took his research teams, to their secluded planetary retreats on the farthest outskirts of cosmic colonial expansion. It took many years of travel through dead space to find those willing, or able, to grant him audience. Eventually, he consorted with a sagely man known as Samuel, who had bunkered down on an asteroid in the Anheuser belt and more or less detached himself from civilization. There he had learned that the Excalibur of alcohols still remained in extremely limited quantities, amidst the vast storehouses of the less than trustworthy, and that this mystical brew had a name - Bakon. But he also learned that not just any individual could receive it. To that end was a simple solution; the GAA had long endeavored itself into human genetic experimentation, picking from poorer university students across Alliance-controlled space to fund their education by submitting their bodies to science. They aimed to create a soldier that could reap the benefits of heavy alcohol consumption, without enduring the severe side effects. Surprisingly, they were highly successful, but the supply of alcohols that surpassed the industrial marks, much less equaled the Empire's seemingly magical brews, was so limited that the research bore little fruit in combat.

The doctor descended further into the ship. Though the research vessel was not nearly as sizable as an Alliance destroyer or flagship, it nonetheless afforded the team aboard a generous amount of space in which to conduct various tests and analyses. Dr. Laboratorius and his assistant entered into an elevator, and once within the good doctor hurriedly punched the corresponding buttons to bring the two of them to the ships bowels, his impatience escalating repeated pushings of said buttons into piercing jabs of the fingers until the lamentedly slow installation responded to his will. The thunderous whipping of metallic ropes sounded around the two scientists as they were taken into what presented itself as highly restricted areas of the craft, if for nothing else than the dangers of moving parts and energetic discharges of the ship's combusting engines that flared blue geysers of fire to any uncomfortably immediate proximity. As the two ventured forth, the caged catwalk gave way to an open area that quickly established itself as entirely different than the rest of the ship. It was a nest of runic formations, dressed faintly in the style of ancient fantasy flair that the doctor had once seen in works printed on some impossibly dated magnetic media at a galactic technology summit years ago.

"Mr. Adams...it is here."

In the middle of this room knelt a figure clad in robes that hid his entirety, save for two clasped hands that begged before him, seemingly in some sort of prayer. Below him, in a recess into the floor, a human form lay with his greater majority settled in a churning machine bath of white froth, unmoving and apparently unconscious. Unlike any other citizen of the Alliance, he had not been fitted with the various dermal prosthetics mandated by the Galactic Congress. Sensing the doctor's presence, the robed man raised his head and laid his eyes upon the bottle held possessively in the arms of Laboratorius. He motioned quickly for it, frail arms laboring with the effort. The doctor passed the crystal glass into the sage's care, who made quick with the sealing cap. Immediately, and seemingly without care for waste, the priestly figure wet his hand liberally with the nectar, and caressed his fingertips over the brow of the comatose man beneath him, uttering some words in a murmuring, unfamiliar language. Though the doctor tried to make sense of the speech, there were no loan words to aid him in his attempts. As the priest ceased with this initial rite, the bottle began to pulse with light from within his grip. In apparent sympathy, the symbolic liths adorning the surrounding installation began to glow with the same spiritual luster, which momentarily struck the doctor and his cohort with awe and wonderment, pupils at a point.

The robed figure then cupped the chin of the sedated man underneath, allowing his lips to part ever so slightly, and into his mouth he poured the glowing ambrosia. Dr. Laboratorius now caught the aroma of the alcohol, and drew it in with an ecstatic inward breath. Never in his life had he ever smelled something so deliciously tantalizing! Unlike most vodka-type alcohols, which were famous for their sterile, biting scent, this variety had a deep musk to it that was simply incomparable. The mysterious man, having been motionless up to this point, could be seen to work his lips and tongue to the flow of the drink, and his throat quickly opened to allow passage into his body. Within moments, his eyes slid open, and from them shot beams of light powerful enough to refract through even the filtered air of the ship. The ship began to rumble and quake around them, growing unstable beneath their feet, with the groan of stressing metal echoing loudly throughout. The doctor's assistant lost his footing and crumbled to the floor, while Laboratorius stood in a tearing combination of fear and amazement, unsure in that moment of otherworldly violence which of the two kept him welded to the metal grating underfoot. The robed sage had collapsed to the ground, and stirred no longer behind the pure-bodied man who now stood upright. He ascended out of the bath with long, deliberate steps, and came to his full height before the good doctor, who pivoted one foot back, but held his ground and forced his eyes to regard that which he knew to be the GAA's last hope at curbing the Empire's assault.

The man stared on, and was suddenly crossed with a long, crooked smile. As he fitted an L.A. Kings snapback over his head, a raucous belch erupted from within his throat, smelling of fouled chocolate and whey. 

"The galaxy...is my frathouse. You mad, Empire?"