by Dan H Kind
Chapter 5
Fired!
Sporting a mind-battening headache, Jack Whiskey ran through the bustling Colonial Eden Farmers' Market, trailing the smell of sour beer as it seeped from his pores in the noontime sun. This caused much scrunching of noses and waving of makeshift fans from the urchins and customers populating the scene. Not noticing the crowd's prudish glares, he plowed through the roiling sea of humanity with ruthless determination. Handicapped seniors, small children, and cute little puppies went flying in every direction in his wake, but he just kept on moving, ignoring the angry shouts, outraged cries, and yips of terror behind him.
He zoomed past Farmer John’s organic fruit and veggie stall, which had the best apples in town. He hotfooted it past the beekeeper’s tent with a quick wave that seemed to go unobserved by Sir Arthur, who was busy with customers. He stumbled past the Olde Eden Brewery tent, which was quite popular today, likely due to the sign hanging out front that read “Today Only—Free Pint of Our Newest Brew, Hoppy Heaven Ale!” He shuffled past the fresh seafood stall, and the stench almost made him vomit right there in the street.
Jack gave it one last push and plummeted like a plane whose pilot had lost all control towards the door of the “Ye Olde Alchemy Laboratory,” open for retail sales during Market hours.
There was no one waiting at the door to get in. This was not surprising, as the Laboratory was far from the most popular Market destination. He unlocked the door and walked into the front room, which doubled as gift shop. Shelves filled with alchemical knickknacks lined the walls. Books on medieval chemistry and the methodology of transmutation adorned olden wooden tables. The Laboratory was visible through an open doorway at the far end of the gift shop.
Jack noticed something strange on the Laboratory floor, so he wandered over. Crucibles and alembics with fluorescent gook congealing on the sides cluttered upon a table in the corner of the Lab. A bookcase filled with ancient tomes with imposing Latin titles lined one wall. Shelves overflowing with earthen jars, contents labeled by scratches upon their exteriors, decorated another.
A six-pack of beer sat on the floor before the massive iron cauldron that dominated the center of the room. It could not have been there long, because Jack could see condensation on the bottles. A note was slipped in between two beers.
Jack walked over and picked up the note, leaving the sixer on the floor. It read:
Jack Whiskey,
You're fired. Stop by the corporate office tomorrow to discuss why. Please accept this six-pack of Olde Eden beer as a retirement gift. Leave the key atop the doorsill on your way out.
Thank you for your many, many years with our company,
Colonial Eden Management
Fired! But why? He was only twenty minutes late! And why had whoever wrote the note written two manys, with the last one emphasized? Sure, he had worked for the company for a decade, but there were veterans far more grizzled than he employed at Colonial Eden. And why in the gods' names had they left him a six-pack as a “retirement gift?”
Jack sighed. Forced into retirement, and not yet forty years old. He had been pretty sure it would happen eventually, but today seemed a little premature. It had to be a mistake.
He looked back down at the note, and the ink seeped and dripped across the page. It pooled and trickled around the paper before reorganizing into some unrecognizable language of blocks, lines, and symbols, like some sort of cuneiform.
“What in—” said Jack, and dropped the note.
The cauldron's interior was coated with gelatinous goop from the sulfurous chemicals used to initiate the “explosion” that “killed” Jack at each performance, and the note fell into the gunk. It was a sopping, illegible mess when he pulled it out, so he tossed it back into the pot.
Jack put the vision down to shock at losing his job. He picked up a beer and peered at the bottle: Hoppy Heaven Ale, the very same concoction being passed out free at the Olde Eden beer tent. Must be a new summer brew they were giving a test run. Depicted on the label was a celestial city resting on a bank of fluffy white clouds, golden skyscrapers jutting into the starry midnight sky.
Figuring he now had nothing else going on, Jack shrugged and popped open a brew. A scent of the sweetest, ripest of fruits and the stickiest, ickiest of ganja all mixed up into one wafted up from the bottle's neck. The aroma was vacuumed into Jack’s nostrils and therein waged a perfumed assault against his sensory perceptions. He took an experimental sip, then sat down on the edge of the cauldron and savored the flavor of the best beer in the known universe, his lost job forgotten.
Olde Eden Hoppy Heaven Ale was the Nectar of the Gods, Ambrosia, the Water of Life, Aqua Vitae, the Philosopher's Stone, the Universal Panacea, the Elixir of Life for which the olden alchemists had toiled over bubbling cauldrons for ages but never managed to concoct.
And now he, Jack Whiskey, had discovered All of the Above transmuted into one magnificent beverage, and the feeling of bliss each sip imbued in his soul was so real, so alive, so intense, so right, that he wanted to share it with the world. As people learned of this wonderful beer and drank it down, an age of peace, goodwill, and Hoppy Heaven Ale would begin.
He sat right there on the cauldron and drank the entire sixer, dropping the empties into the pot one by one. The last thing to go into the stew was the key.
And then Jack Whiskey walked out of the “Ye Olde Alchemy Laboratory” and into the Market, on a sacred quest to acquire one more taste of that wondrous brew called Hoppy Heaven Ale.