Low level lab techs Maximus Mautte and Erlene Beyea were celebrating finishing their most recent project, slightly increasing the efficiency of one of the Skylance components, chugging absinthe and playing party games that were probably designed for more than two people.
"Well, obviously you chose 'idiots' for 'things that make me want to vomit' and I chose ipecac syrup," Max says, "I really don't think Things is a good party game for a party consisting of just us."
"I knooow," Erlene replies, "and I'm barely even drunk right now thanks to these dumb super soldier enhancements that make me hard to kill and work in synergy with further gene treatments to almost double my lifespan. Ruining my buzz with their damn toxin resistance!"
"Well," says Maximus, in the tone of someone just drunk enough to start having bad ideas but still lucid enough to efficiently pursue them, "We've got a ton of equipment and some samples of that barley we got from Remnant last week. We could probably make some rectified ale with that."
"Max, my most esteemed college" Erlene responds, a grin spreading across her face, "That might be the most brilliant idea formed in this lab. Let's do this."
And so they did, Max started attaching some extra parts and controls to the old, mostly broken ether condenser they hadn't gotten around to recycling for it's thin, adamantium coating, reprogramming some of its behaviors and rearranging some of the wires, not yet noticing that in his fogged state of mind, he accidentally switched where two of said wires should go.
Meanwhile, Erlene gathered up the barley that plant controller from Remnant accidentally aura awakened and reached into the top shelf for the yeast, failing to inspect the somewhat greener fungus she pulled down instead.
They dumped the ingredients in, set the condenser to maintain the process for the next six months and went home to pass out in their own beds.
Were they to turn around as they walked out the door, they might have seen a spark shoot out of the condenser which then began to ripple for almost a minute before settling down and looking normal again.
~~~Six Months Later~~~
Max and Erlene were once again on the job, working on hardening the power conduits to void projectors so they could produce stronger fields when they heard an echoing ding come from the corner of the lab.
"That was a ding," said Max in a mildly panicked voice, "That was an unexpected ding in our lab. I don't like unexpected dings!"
"Oh shut up you big baby," Erlene said, walking towards the source of the ding "I'll go check it out."
"Hey," she calls after a minute, "It's the still we set up, our ale's done."
"What?" he replies, confused, "OH! Oh yeah. We did set that up. Well, let's pour some out and see how we did."
Grabbing the nearest test tube and walking over to the repurposed condenser he opens the spout above the test tube. Some kind of glowing green liquid comes out that immediately sets the tube on fire upon contact.
"Shit!" Max said, dropping the test tube and causing the "ale" to melt through the floor a bit. As it does, the fumes are inhaled by the two startled scientists and they start to feel a little bit foggy, as though having drunk two or three normal ales.
"I think we're gonna need a stronger test tube," Erlene said.
After going through steel, quartz and tungsten test tubes they finally settled on an adamantine-ceramite alloy can they fabbed up in the replicator. After that they went through progressively more durable test equipment before finally just sticking it in a replicator to be deconstructed and analyzed.
The replicator shook for a few seconds, letting out some mildly disquieting noises until it finally displayed "CHEMICAL MAKEUP: 16.5% UNKNOWN SUBSTANCES, 15% PSYCHICALLY ACTIVE ORGANIC COMPONENTS, 15% ORCISH MATTER 153.5% ALCOHOL" before the screen went dark.
"Woah," said Max, "That's 307 proof ale. I'ma drink it."
Now, for context, you must understand that the fumes passively given off by the bubbling hyperliquid had gotten them progressively drunker throughout the tests they'd done and they were already too drunk to think of putting on facemasks pretty early on. It is because of this drunkenness that Max thought of this terrible terrible idea, and it is because he was so convinced that it was a great idea that he survived.
Immediately upon knocking back the test tube, Max was thrown backwards as he belched green fire and purple smoke shot out of his ears.
"Awesome," Maximus says with a dopy grin on his face.
*thud*
