The Legend of Ivan

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Many of my meetings occur in bars.

This is not an unusual principle. When seeking information, my everlasting quarry, it is best to find subjects in the most amiable mood. A bar represents a location where leisure attitudes spring forth. It is a comfort zone for many.

There is also alcohol.

Alcohol.

For ages, eons, long before the muddy dregs of Old Earth cast humanity in search of a less toxic habitability. Long before colonization reached the far edges of the galaxy. Millennia prior to centralized government crumbling before the wealth and might of corporate interest. Indeed, centuries before the thought of entering that infinite void crossed the pitiful minds of the earliest civilized inhabitants of that ill-fated planet…

Alcohol has been a most effective facilitator.

Pair a comfort zone with a decrease in motor functions, not to mention a quelling of inhibitions. Suddenly, the most bizarre stranger becomes a brother, nemesis, lover, or some combination of all three within a few moments of indelicate, slurred speech. For certain, the risk becomes that their ramblings will often tend towards the unintelligible, but this is of little concern. Memory in the inferior structure of a standard human brain vanishes, represses, and erodes regardless of how much blunt force trauma or poison is applied. Simply: the squishy tissue doesn’t retain information so well to begin with.

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