Alexander's Accounts - Part 18
Follow the gang as we begin making drugs full time, handling money-obsessed police and doctors, and get some money selling. See a character go high!
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Part 18 of Alexander’s Accounts, continuing from very funny drug-making
“Artemis, there’s laughing gas here.”
He glanced at me with an unfixed gaze. “And it’s not to kill you this time…”
And i thought this flat was only to kill humans. “what?!”
“I think i’ve got it; it’s an anti-burglary measure… just go to th… the valve and… the realtor warned me… press switch Y7-9-” Artemis slumped over, and fell onto the ground. Unmoving.
Laughing gas is no joke. Hilarious!
Cubit, in a fit of giggles, was first to act. “There’s Y7-9 I and Y7-9 II! Which one do i !!press!!?!”
Biblia panicked - “I’ll read the instruction manual! Fuck! It’s long! Ha ha!”
The door. The kitchen. They were in proximity. I grabbed Artemis by the shoulders - “Quick! Grab him and take him to fresh air!”
Cubit booked it, pulling with me, inching him towards the door Biblia had just opened. We were giggling our heads off in every spare breath we had and i almost laughed at how inappropriate it was that we were laughing so much. Everything’s funny!
Artemis’s head was laying outside the door as cubit ran inside to turn off the gas. A loud hum as the fans turned on and a hissing i forgot i just about noticed turned off.
Biblia was on the phone. “A werewolf exposed to Nitrous Oxide - what do i do?”
The speakerphone was silent for a good second, within which a fly found its way through the door, buzzed around, and got stuck ramming itself into the window. “It’s deadly.” A bad second. “There is one thing you can do if they’re ventilated…” A tense second. “Give them time for now…” A relieved second. “And splash some water on them if their breathing becomes erratic.” A second’s tone of a hang-up and that was that.
Wait, no, this all feels wrong. Where did this medical advice come from - some old wife and her tale?
No, actually, fuck that. “Call an actual doctor”, i commanded.
“But i did!”, laughed Biblia.
“Just tell them to come, don’t even say why!”
Yet again the phone was on. Biblia called for support, i sitting next to my Artemis keeping him monitored. I know not why the burglary system uses deadly gas nor why it wasn’t removed.
Minutes slipped, monitoring his breathing; what is erratic? Is it the stepping movements of his belly as it swells and shrinks? Are they the little sighs he does? Is that the noise of mucus or an engine outside? Is that door opening for us? Is that clattering and stepping up for us?
A doctor was here, not the same as the one who abandoned me after the acid. He had a look at him, almost asked a question- “Nitrous oxide”, said Biblia. “Anti-burglary kind.”
He shook his head. “No, no, no.”
He shook Artemis’s head and let out a sigh of relief. “Seems to be just the knocking out kind.”
“Just give him fresh air, and he’ll wake up.” The doctor stood up and almost turned on his heel, but glanced into the house towards the kitchen - the tartfruit were arranged in the way we set for the drugs.
He stared at me darkly. “Are you making drugs?”
Fuck, what do i answer? Answering yes would open us up to liability. No is the safest bet.
“No.”, said Cubit, for me. “We’re making pies.”
“And the seeds?”, pried the doctor.
“None of your business.”
With that, i pulled Artemis back into the now-turbulent air and closed the doctor out. “Call me, Dr Lann, if you make drug money! I can consult! I won’t repor-” he shouted through the doorcrack before the locks latched on with their characteristic click.
A short moment’s consideration before i ignored him. No, he’s no risk at all. at least following earth doctor rules.
Surely they must have imported earth doctor rules!
I’m not too confident - no matter, drug money is good bribe money.
So, with the air being overturned and tossed, Artemis slowly came back to life. He opened his eyes and let out a funny little groan. “Prss swtch Y7-9-II, not Y7-9-I, i repit, Y7-9-I.”
Cubit, bashfully, turned off Y7-9-I.
“If in the cse you have trned on Y7-9-I, do not trn it bck off.”
Cubit turned it back on.
Artemis shook his head and sat up. “If you do trn it off, do nt trn it bck o- Wait, yu did it…? So qickly?”
I nodded a tart of course. “You were out for like 10 minutes plus!”
His eyes opened. “Wait, really? Flt like 1… and thn there was this guy nd he hit me nd then i was plled across ths bar?”
“You’re fine now”, i said. “Anyways, as for the flesh…”
“Gve me a trtfrut”, he said, nodding towards the bag.
Biblia tossed the ragged werewolf one, who ate it in record time. The eyes narrowed and he got up, licking his lips with a wicked smile. “It’s like cffine!”
He tore into the kitchen and got back to work. “Veri simple! Give me an oven tray!”
Biblia pulled one out from a lower cupboard and eager fluffy hands grabbed it. Artemis worked with profound efficency spreading the flesh and shoving it inside the oven, turning on the heat. He snatched the seedtray we’d just prepared and put it in. “And nw wi wait!”
“The doctor knows we’re making drugs”, i said, to sart a converstion.
“And they’re going to tell everione…”, said Artemis with a sigh. “Did he give you his details so you could at least bribe?”
“… i think it was Doctor Lamb…?”
“Lamm”, corrected Biblia. “Doctor Lamm.”
That felt wrong but O.K., i guess. O.K.
Out of the oven came seeds bleached from a hazy yellow to white and dry, crispy tartfruit flesh, spread out in some mush like hills and valleys. Artemis smiled.
Now it was only to grind it and turboextract it. He invited us to take the pestle and pulverise the products. It was hard work, the seeds almost like pebbles, the flesh mushy and not quite dessicated. Can’t risk it. Burnt herricane is nothing more valuable than sand.
The turboextractor was loaded; water in the bottom, flesh mush in the extraction funnel, and vacancy in the top compartment. As the heat of the stove warms up the turboextractor, the water vapours push on the water and push them into the extraction chamber to form a solution.
Tartfruit solution is not safe. Despite the low concentration, a single fruit, packaged into such a liquid, makes the herricane far too potent. Snorting-powder’s where it’s at. Slower.
The seed powder was ready. We split grams of it into separate bags, carefully weighed. The most powerful and dangerous kind of herricane - we mix it with one part corn flour. Don’t ask me why we had it.
Time passed, and the turboextractor was spurting, finishing its first cycle. The solution was poured into a saucepan and left to distil and evaporate.
I held my face over the steam. I’d read once it gave good health benefits. The hot gas curled around my pores, digging in, exfoliating in a soft way. The heat was high enough to break a small sweat but low enough not to hurt, sitting on a certain boundary just before pain. The clouds wrapped around the sides of my face, curling, then promptly sucked into vents by a fan above me.
Every water molecule freed is a step closer to that good ¤. Every bubble of steam is a liberation of gazillions of molecules. Every second here, exfoliating, is a second spent well.
Origins remain. The flat was always a centre for criminal and repulsive activity. I’m honoured continuing it, a smile spreading across my face as i consider what it means.
Herricane is no more dangerous to humans than werewolves, i decided. It’s a problem of quantity, really. You see, i don’t mind microplastics, as long as they’re below zero parts per million. Same here.
The white potion boils, turning blacker. Distillate II is not as white as distillate I, containing impurities from the flesh. I’ve heard people swear it makes the high higher and longer, but it’s just a problem of quantity. A problem of quantity and cutting.
Some shops now are opening up to selling the solution, albeit distilled - it’s a good flavourant for ethanol-based cocktails and almost used like sugar would be in tea. The police always avert their gaze at the sight of a good peccune.
“Artemis, why don’t we sell the flesh to some café?”
He glanced at me and shrugged. “Powder pays more per gram.”
“But there’s less grams of powder… come on - it’s more legit selling to whitehanded businesses!”
He glanced upwards, frowned a little. “Ok, i guess, we can try both and see which gets the most peccune per apple.”
I smiled at that.
Boiling is a beautiful process. Bubbles rise to the surface with utmost urgency, then drift away, liberated. I think i can see powder falling through the murky water, but it may be a trick of the eye.
Not long now, not long at all.
I remember now - i wanted to steal the housing, to cause a housing crisis, to exert control. Northern money can help. Drug money will help more immediately though. I want to force a monopoly on transport, force a monopoly on whatever vehicle is best suited here. Is it the e-bike? Is it the golf cart? The e-scooter?
So many toys from earth. Capital is a big need here, and we’ll have it soon. “Fancy creating a bikeshare monopoly?”
“Better idea: we make separate ones and pretend to compete”, said Biblia. “All the money can then be spent on our goals.”
“Import IT shit”, said Cubit. “An IT revolution is just what this place needs.”
I stepped back from the pot, the cold kissing me in a weird way. “Yeah, maybe we do that.”
I could probably get a good wholesale for some tech and redistribute it, begin opening up network infrastructure. We could poach some it guy from the streets and join him into our team, and we could stand to create an internet monopoly.
We took the pan, liberated of water, and extracted the horrible brown stuff on the bottom to put in the fridge, a surprisingly humid environment, leaving it there for the night. Artemis would go out tonight with it and sell on street corners. He has an old coat and its zipper to hide the face, standard drugselling fare.
He went to the street corner with a broken lamp. I could imagine him synergising with a prostitute in the dark. Some laces on top of herricane can make quite the fun aphrodisiac, enough energy to bounce away the night.
It’s comfy here, at the top of our game, guaranteed money.
That made it all too sad that the knocking at the door was that of the police, those who fucked up our little code system. That made it all too sad that they saw what we were doing and past our “it’s just some candy” excuse. Well, all too sad we directed them to the true vigilante headquarters, where there were certainly criminals.
They’re a little more honest here. They say you can remain silent under the Y-120 AG law. Honesty isn’t black and white, though. That’s why we also promised the officer a little cut of our drug money next time he visited.
Redundancy.
The minutes were slow and tense, babble from a new permutation of the news cycle filling the air. Nothing much went on in the time that passed, so i drifted into thought.
It’d be fairly trivial to begin an IT revolution here. I’d just need to import some computers, set up wireless, and make some kind of connection through the portals.
I just need to get the orders down. I just need to get myself a batch and hold off the invoice. I just need to poach an IT guy.
It’s complex.
Artemis came back, let in by Biblia. “I fucking won that!”, he announced. “Managed to get ¤500 from just these small bags! Ok, granted, i need to pay the prostitute the 10% commission and then the 50% that belongs to her, but that’s still… ¤250 without 50… ¤200!!!”
“Ok, sure, i had to snort a little to prove this bloke correct but then he gave me like ¤50 for a good amount too!”
“Nice…”, i said. “Why don’t we count the money tomorrow?”
“Yeah!”, he said, dropping into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. “Fuck this, ¡¡herricane is the !!worst!!!!”
“I should go get a ticket to earth and buy tech”, i started, to redirect the conversation
Biblia shot a glance at me. “That’s too dangerous… the information barrier could kill you, and then there’s the duties and interviews and forms and… you don’t want the bureaucracy…”
“Barrier…”, mused Artemis. I shot a glance - STFU.
“I do.”, i said. “For you. Y’all.”
“Don’t”, Biblia said.
Artemis was watching. He glanced between us, possibly considering the points he could make, or just high.
Cubit shrugged. “I say let him go and start the first monopoly, no harm done. Best if he goes, then the sexual energy here will finally go.”
“Cubit!”, shouted Biblia.
Artemis shook his head - in the nodding way. “Let him go, for like a few daaaays!! and all will be fine. He’s probably homeeeesick!”
His eyes narrowed - “No, no, scratch that, keep him here…!!! unless Cubit wants to be spooned?”
“I’ll pass.”, said Cubit.
“You’r !!loss!!”, exlaimed Artemis. “Spooning is fun!”
“I’ll be fine, i was alone for like most of my life anyways, no big deal touring the big world”, i reassured. “Artemis, go to bed.”
“I !!can’t!!! It’s caffiene!”
Bibilia tutted. “Yes you can. It’s called Andrecetemolafitophen and it’s in our medicine cabinet. It’s for overdoses but just take half a pill.”
A blister packet was removed and a pill split, given into Artemis’s hairy hands. “!!Thanks!! Tonight i’ll !!spoon!! Alexander! Ever felt how a high person can spoon?”
“Swallow the pill.”, i said.
“It’s sharp but !!ok!!”
Choking noises, a gulping of a glass of water, a proper show and dance, and some while later Artemis came back, blinking. “I don’t feel !!different!!…?”
“Delay is 10 minutes”, said Biblia. “Go to bed and spoon your little human, we’ll talk about this in the morning.”
She turned off the light, a push to us to enter the room. I’d happily do so just to get Artemis out of public nuisance.
Bed is such a place to be. Warm covers embracing you, and your crazy werewolf boyfriend pulling you, deep into his hair. Why do i want to go back to earth when i have all i want here? A community, people i camaraderie with, and even a werewolf boyfriend?
But why shouldn’t i want more? There’s so much left for me and us to take - we have the world ahead of us, a clear path into power.
We need the power to give humans a say in this government. We need the power, which corrupts. Power corrupts. I don’t want absolute power because i don’t want to be absolutely corrupt.
I let in, relax my muscles, sink into Artemis. An erection, on both sides, as he runs hands over me. I love this guy. He’s better than any guided meditation i’ve tried.
His hand finds my dick and holds it, teasing it. “Not now”, i mumble.
“But i’m !!high!!” he whispers back, sharply.
Still he respected and moved his hands back up, instead playing with my nipples. I don’t mind them there so much. It’s nicer.
I love you, Artemis.
Stay tuned for part 19, in which we take a journey
Some notes:
My only experience with drugs is coffee, moka pots, and the intoxicating hugging feeling from suspending your head over a warm cup of tea. Any innacuracies here are due to inexperience. Be glad.
Turns out a lot of dystopian fiction uses themes that come from the red scare. 1984 is very overt in this, calling the government, IIRC, “the socialist party”. I wonder where mine fits - Lens is about capitalism and the undue power of corporations, and this world seems to use socialism to build a half-utopia whilst eroding market feedom and rights for certain groups of residents. Meh, this isn’t so much dystopia as an urban fantasy. Boring beurocracy, often ignored, and corruption, often a tool, are their own dystopia, i guess?
Oh and also hi from France - it’s nice up here tbh, but don’t expect its mocking in LT to stop, though. I’m too British to not have that happen.
And, lucky for y’all, i’ve found a friend during my writers block and not only do they help me with my Chinese (????? means “i am a spirit free from social norms”) but now also my writing. Can’t wait to get that rythym and word choice sorted out!
If this was Worm i’d probably have the previous chapter have been the last one in, say, “Arc 1 - Gang” and then move onto “Arc 2 - Monopoly”, but this isn’t Worm. I’m trying to package this in a format at least superfically similar to novels so it’s easier to pass it through agents. Anyways, the final few chapters leading up to 25 and maybe further will concern how Alexander and his gang get to work on these monopolies and what challenges they face.
I’ve heard it’s cliché to end chapters on sleping but IDGAF. It feels very natural and makes sense to me. A day gone is a chapter gone.