Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

NOT a bad location, this starship, for a quality licensed establishment.
Stellar cruise lines draw a decent clientele, generally. Credit to spend and
plenty of time to spend it. And where’s the competition, eh? Fifty light years
back that way, that’s where.

Basically, what you want for your quality licensed establishment is
atmosphere. Not too much, though. Atmospheric pressure down, oxygen down,
gravity down, too. Makes your clientele very appreciative, very receptive to the
merchandise. The humans anyway, I’m talking about now. The things some of the
aliens go for, Aldebaranian insect juice, sniffing stuff out of a bowl with a
towel over your heads, I can’t be doing with that, not my market, thanks very
much.

Good old-fashioned alcoholic refreshment, that’s what we offer. Everything
from your GM Martian Montrachet over there to all the biogen keg lagers, very
popular, and on the pumps your Terran heritage cask-conditioned Old Paralysis. A
bit more upmarket, that. More the officers than the crew, if you know what I
mean.

Over here, we’ve got the bottle-conditioned stuff: beer, wine, spirits. See
that? That might look like an ordinary crown cap but underneath it there’s a
biosensor and chip monitoring the entire maturation process—modulating the
oxygen and the nitrogen, cultivating all the little amino acids. Keep an eye on
it, and when the cap turns gold, that’s when you know it’s ready. The trick is
to stack the crates so they come online batch by batch as the trip progresses.
That’s the Plutonian Reserve, we sold a lot of that the first night out of the
Solar System.

Taste, mind you…well, if we’re talking about taste, now, this is off
the scale. Your Vin Extraordinaire, if you follow me. The chip in this is
modulating all your volatile esters, so it really does taste of persimmons and
nasturtiums and marshmallows. And this one: open this now, it’s an Oloroso.
Nutty nose, amber body, dry caramel finish, the lot. Self-chilling, obviously.
Twenty minutes’ time, it’ll be a good Muscadet, cold and flinty. Then it
changes, this one, into a very acceptable Cabernet clone, and finishes up as
pseudo-Sauterne. They drink a lot of that, at the captain’s table.

Now, you see these pewter flasks with the names engraved on them? Specifica.
Smart beer, that is. Nanobeer. Adjusts its interface to your individual taste
and smell receptors. Ambushes your olfactories, massages all your taste buds,
and gives your liver and kidneys a quick wash and brush-up on the way out. Not
cheap, no. Still, that’s the stuff, if you ask me. You know that saying, about
the four stages of inebriation? Jocose, Morose, Bellicose and Comatose? Well,
Specifica gets you to stage one and keeps you there. Now, I know that some
psychologists say they’re all learnt behaviours and have nothing to do with
brain chemistry. But at the end of the shift when the smart stuff is off, who is
it mopping up the vomit and taking the boxer shorts off the security
cameras?

Disinhibition, that’s what it’s all about. Disinhibition, but selectively, if
you get my drift. Ten pints of Specifica and you actually are ten times as
intelligent and amusing and sexually attractive. Rather than just thinking you
are.

I can’t say I’ve tried it myself, I’ve never really seen the need.