Challenge #01923-E099: They Call Her Queen Badass
"How in the world could a single bottle of alcohol render nearly a dozen of Her Ancient Majesty's finest - oh, and the Millennial Queen Herself! - to nothing but a scattered roomful of unconscious drunks?!"
The taller woman examined the elaborately-decorated crystalline decanter, and then the glasses around each snoring soldier. "Hmm... yeah... I'd say fourteen-thousand-year-old firewine would probably do the trick better than anything..." She paused, re-counting one pile of glasses and then looked back at her partner with a smirk. "On the upside, kudos to Her Majesty for seemingly downing the most shots of them all - looks like she nailed sixteen; most I've ever managed personally was eight..." -- Anon Guest
Humanity is only two and a half million years old. Agriculture as a concept is far younger than that. Nevertheless, they have devoted an astonishing amount of the technological arc to alcohol. Brewing it, distilling it, making stronger and stronger concoctions. Making it tasty.
Galactic citizens, upon finding this out, often wonder aloud what humanity had to do with primitive rocket fuel before they had invented rockets. And then there is a significant amount of stunned silence when they learn that humans enjoy drinking it. Despite the fact that it is obviously a dangerous toxin that impairs brain function.
To which humanity says that that was the point and they enjoy temporary debilitation and the case for humanity's collective insanity is proven once more. And then there's stuff like fourteen-thousand-year firewine.
First, humans invented things like highly-flammable alcohols -firewater- and wine. Then they found a way to brew them simultaneously. Once that was done, they found out about deep-time one-way wormholes and devised ways to send containers down them so that they would survive for thousands upon thousands of years. And, therefore, age properly in the equivalent of an apocalypse-proof shipping container. It's a feat of technological prowess that the parent company of this innovation is still paying off. But the booze, they swear, is totally worth a Century per bottle.
Not that many would know it. Only corporations have that kind of Time to throw around. Corporations, and the occasional royal family.
Just like Her Millennial Majesty, the Eternal Queen of Thaninau. An accident of yore had wiped out all but her own royal self, and the system refused to let the line end with her. So they created clones, and downloaded the extant Queen's brain waves into her replacement. Experience has taught the Queens Own Mediks that her Eternal and Ageless Majesty is best retired at Ninety Years of physical age, and returned in the body of one recently twenty.
The Septuagennial Coronation is literally a once-in-a-lifetime event, and the newly-crowned Queen sees her old body reverentially buried in the royal ossuary (tours available to the morbid for free), and donates some of her cells for the culture and instigation of a new clone.
Her Eternal Majesty has served in wars, learned to pilot a vast assortment of vehicles, and can use an astonishing array of weapons. Though people hardly ever curse around Her Majesty, she certainly knows all the words. But, contrary to what may be assumed, it is peacetime that has given her, over the centuries, a cast-iron liver.
One must, after all, be able to survive thousands of toasts and still be able to deliver a coherent speech to one's beloved subjects.
In celebration of her one hundredth millennium, the assembled CEO's of the thoroughly villainous Greater Deregulation East attempted to gain her favour by gifting Her Ancient Majesty with a larger-than-usual bottle of fourteen-thousand-year firewine. Her Everlasting Majesty recognised the trap in a less than a cold second and invited Greater Deregulation East's entire coterie to share it with her.
At this point, it must be noted that fourteen-thousand-year firewine is usually served in thimble-sized stemware.
Her Ageless Majesty served it in shot glasses. And the coterie of Greater Deregulation East, not knowing any better, drank it like that.
Cast-iron liver or not, fourteen-thousand-year firewine packs a whallop. Once Her Eternal Majesty was done with the elites, evidence suggests that she then proceeded to drink their security teams under the table. Her own security forces remained sober until the Millennial Queen insisted that they have, and I quote from the security feed, "A little tot as a reward for all their hard work."
Given her lengthy experience with piloting, we have significant evidence that the Ever-Reborn Queen gave the yacht's pilot the night off and took the helm whilst also under the influence of a Class Thirteen Inebriant. The pilot, a loyal Thaninau citizen, could not refuse Her Everlasting Majesty.
And that is how the Royal Yacht of Thaninau was impounded whilst playing 'dodge ems' with the cargo streams of Amalgam Station's Docks and Locks sector.
Thaninau has since been advised to engineer the Queen's Guard with an immunity to alcohol of all kinds. So as to prevent such an event happening again.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Vyusur]
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