The Slutz of Urik Petrushkevych – Colin Gee

September 11, 2021

The 12-ounce cans ran along conveyor belts in long lines and were filled from two spouts, the first shooting 11.6 ounces of slightly fermented barley-wheat beverage, nearly filling the cans, and the second topping them off with a 0.4 ounce splash of pure grain alcohol. The cans bumped around an elbow of the track and jerked to a stop beneath a heavy press where the lids were stamped on with a soft whump. They rolled onto their sides past the sorters where they were tipped into workingman 12-can boxes. The box flaps were quickly folded shut by a pair of mechanical arms and the beer-flavored drinks sped towards the waiting trucks. It was an efficient and flawless process, the plant engineer bragged to a group of visiting college girls, although if you had looked closely at the spigots that doled the liquids at that exact moment you would have noticed them stutter and spit, and that for several seconds the ratio was reversed and three extraordinary cans received 0.4 ounces of fermented barley-wheat beverage plus 11.6 blessed ounces of pure grain alcohol. These magic cans bumped down the line, passed under the gloves of the sorters, and were deposited into three separate workingman boxes. That same week all life everywhere ended on that continent and two of the boxes were obliterated in the catastrophe. The third box was purchased, opened, and nearly finished by an unfortunate graduate student by the name of Urik Petrushkevych. Urik had only two beers left to his name when he was buried under the debris of his apartment building plus eighty gazillion tons of dirt and gravel displaced from what we now know as the Petrushkevych Crater. In the moment of his death Urik held in one hand an empty can of Slutz Beer and in the other the Urik Petrushkevych Diamond, the same that currently powers our main generator. In the course of excavating the site in search of the diamond, the lead engineers discovered the two remaining cans of Slutz. Admiring the quaint packaging and dying to taste a drink that had been so popular in that ancient and long-smothered civilization, the engineers each took a can and popped the tab.

So this is alcohol, mused the first engineer, whose can contained 3.3% pure grain alcohol. I have heard about this dangerous drug.

Ha, snorted the second engineer, whose can contained 96.6% pure grain alcohol. Old wives’ tales if you ask me!

They raised their cans and each took a long swig.