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And so Sara moved back to Dave’s Hole. Thus began one of the happiest periods of Rae’s life (second only to his reign of terror at Welles’ penal colony, or perhaps when he was dancing Thriller in front of vast crowds of Aliens on the Alien homeworld—but I will have more to say on those events at the proper time). The only cloud on the otherwise blue sky of Rae’s life was the difficulty in acquiring alcohol. As teeping became more and more popular, the Martian tradition of using mind-altering substances began quickly to wane. Obviously, the use of such substances in tandem with teeping had disastrous results. Indeed, so horrible were the fates of those unhappy teepers who consumed alcohol or other such substances that many governments began to ban them. As I have said, the Martians had only met with failure when they pursued such policies in the past. This time, however, they had teeping, which offered far greater pleasures than any of the chemicals the Martians had been able to synthesize thus far. The result was that those dedicated alcoholics who chose not to teep, like Rae, suddenly discovered their addiction was far more difficult to support.

Rae was too practical to let this state of affairs depress him. He was a vigorous sort of person. Even when he was confronted with insurmountable odds, it simply didn’t occur to him to despair. He was a fixer. And so, as the world around him quickly, and with near-magical unanimity, began to withdraw the only source of his happiness, Rae got to work. If he couldn’t buy alcohol, he decided that he should make his own. When he was growing up in Alaska there had always been rumors about people who made their own alcohol. Most often they were discussed with humor, but there was a sense of respect beneath the jokes. Perhaps this is what recommended the idea to Rae.

After scanty research, Rae assembled a list of things he would need to build his still. Now, one of the many things at which Rae excelled was what he called scrounging. Scrounging consisted of picking up whatever caught his eye as he was walking and manipulating it until it found a useful role in whatever he was trying to do. Rae was not particular about ownership, nor was he particular about suitability; he could always make do. Commendable as this attitude may have been, it was clearly less useful in the construction of pressurized vessels.

Such was Rae’s enthusiasm that Corker and even Albert One-Eye helped out. Often other drifters who were staying in Dave’s Hole added a bit of copper tubing or a rubber gasket. The only one who didn’t join in the efforts was Sara. She sat in Dave’s Hole and drank, and when she couldn’t get anything, she was sick or tried to sleep.

In the end, it proved fairly easy to build the still. And cooking up the recipe was no harder. Rae had heard that you always had to pour off the first cupful of alcohol because it could make you go blind. He didn’t really think it was true, but the custom had the threatening feel of propitiatory offerings to the gods, so he ducked his head, and turned so that Sara couldn’t see him dump the jug.

The beautiful apparatus continued to produce alcohol, and the jug was quickly on its way to being full again. Rae replaced it with an empty tin can, and held the jug up.

‘Who wants to try some moonshine?’ he yelled.

‘It was your idea kid, you have to take the first sip,’ said Albert One-Eye.

Corker agreed, and so Rae raised the jug to his lips and took a mouthful. It is true that it burned, that it made him cough like he’d be kicked in the throat, and that it lacked sophistication, but it didn’t kill him, and it sure buzzed like the real thing. He passed the jug around, and soon everyone was feeling very jolly.

The still kept on producing, and there was no shortage of willing hands to keep the fire burning strong. Rae was standing with his back to the still, watching Sara drink, when it exploded. The force knocked him down onto the gravel. A corona of fire appeared in all the edges of Dave’s Hole and everything was covered in fire. It felt cold as ice to Rae. A handful of superheated metal fragments hit Albert One-Eye in the face. Sara fared the best, huddled as she was beneath her blankets. The plume of black smoke that was released from the camp and all their detritus burning attracted a large emergency response. When they pulled Rae out of the hole, he was severely burned across his back and legs. Albert One-Eye was dead.

Rae was taken to a hospital, and even though the slightest movement was excruciating, they chained him to his bed. Rae stayed in the hospital for two months before he was transferred to [federal custody]. He did get a trial, but it was mostly a show. He was not charged with murder, nor negligence and harming the others, nor even the destruction of public property (the explosion had so weakened the road above Dave’s Hole that it had to be rebuilt)--Rae was charged with the illegal operation of a still. It seems that the Martians held this to be such a great crime that Rae was sent directly to one of the prisons operated by the federal government. And this is how he ended up being held in the same facility where Welles was keeping Franklin.

This is the end of Book 3: The Final Product. Find out what becomes of Franklin and the rest of humanity in Book 4: The Penal Preserve, only on Stacker News on July 4th