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Church of Alcoholics

Tom Ball

    I said to the woman, “This world is fucked up.”
    “Everyone is drunk all day and all night.” And “They get replacement organs which allow them to keep on drinking.”
    She said, “Most people can’t handle this reality. It’s too boring and too stressful at the same time.”
    And I said, “Survivors in this day and age, can all hold their booze and figure life is just a drunken dream. A fog if you will. And they mostly can’t remember their drunken conversations.”
    And they worshipped at the Church of Alcoholics. Their motto was “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.” The Churches were the finest buildings in the various towns and were designed for drinking and parties. You could go to confession to the local Priests/Priestesses, hidden behind a curtain. Typically one would confess how they broke someone’s heart or how they didn’t help a friend in need and so on.
    But few died. And they all took anti-fat medication.
    However, there were no jobs and the only thing to do was to get drunk all the time.
    And everyone was a writer who wrote down their experiences for drunken people to read and gain inspiration. Most tried to be wild and crazy to impress others. And everyone was glad to be living in the modern era in which complete drunkenness was possible.
    In modern bars, they often required a breathalyzer to prove you were drunk, and worthy of more drinks. Some bars set the bar high.
    And androids would take android drugs which made them flirtatious and aggressive. Every person liked them. And they were our slaves and did all the work. Ranging from food production to medicine to genetic research, to sex, it was all done by androids.
    And the sex dolls would do stripteases in the bar and take clients upstairs for sex. Usually the love was free.
    Babies were produced by the state and everyone was sterile in terms of fertility.
    But no one seemed to know anything about these Space babies, it was all hush hush. But there didn’t seem to be any young people around us. We wondered if the babies were all grown up when released into the World. Or if they were all sent to Space. But the total population of this planet was officially 1.4 million humans. There always seemed to be new people to meet and the women kept getting facial plastic surgery and changed their voices, so you often wouldn’t recognize them.
    Rumor had it that our people were originally from a World called “Drak” and then the original settlers were all alcoholics. But no one seemed to know much about it.
    Almost everyone seemed to enjoy drinking here anyway. The few that didn’t just smoked weed. Most of the drunks took weed too.
    Alcohol lit us up and gave us good feelings which were something to live for.
    If someone committed a crime, they would be cut off from alcohol which to us was a fate worse than death itself. Most criminals committed suicide in jail. We even provided them with ropes to hang themselves.
    The worst crime of all was poisoning another’s booze. Another heinous crime was abusing androids. But crimes of violence were very rare.
    And it was desirable to go to the Alcoholic Church, and thank the leaders for the booze. One had to be grateful. And the new savior told us all to get drunk and turn water into wine. It was a good place to meet people, this Church.
    And there were many martyrs who left our Planet and sacrificed their lives for freedom to drink on other Worlds.
    Critics told us they’d bring Prohibition to us and “save our souls.”
    We told them, there was no such thing as the soul and alcohol saved our lives, literally.
    And we said, they were unfeeling losers and busybodies. And to fuck off.
    Many prohibitionist leaders were assassinated, and most people here were glad to get rid of them.
    And we wondered why such people as the Prohibitionists were allowed into this World. We all figured our corrupt government had been bribed to let them in as missionaries.
     And many people started to say, we needed to get rid of our corrupt government and the judges ruled death by intoxication was the fate of these people. The masses would kill them.
    Death was too good for these corrupt people, we all agreed. Actually we were a righteous people, who demanded ethical drunkenness.
    Some said, it was a drunken World of people who were out of their minds.
    But we killed them off and paid no attention to them. Almost all of us were dedicated to drinking and good times.

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