Potion of +1 1990's

Magdalene wakes at noon. She ignores detritus on floor and bench tops on her way from couch to sink. She slugs two glasses of water and takes a third with her to bed, where she collapses.

Magdalene wakes again at sunset. 'Fuuuck.' She takes a piss. She finds her camcorder on the coffee table and plays the last recording.

A previous Magdalene speaks to the camera: 'Hello darlings, long time no speak, I must apologise. "Australia's leading trans YouTube alchemist" is not a great occupation title to put on a home loan application, so I've gotten myself a nine-to-five. That's why I haven't been uploading lately. But I will make it up to you because my state's government has announced a covid lockdown and my job is non-essential.'

Previous Magdalene drinks five seconds of oatmeal stout.

'Which means a seven-day impromptu holiday. So I've grabbed some double-pressed slutroot oil on my way home, I've got a Petit Verdot decanting and I am going to show you some shit more advanced than marital aid potion or make-you-talk-Russian cocaine - a smudge against bad wifi, once the moon sugar defrosts, which gives us time to lament the state of tits in hentai games.'

Which is past Magdalene's edit this out cue to present Magdalene, who fast-forwards half an hour to when she opens a mason jar of grey-purple cloud and recoils with fist to lips: 'Oh, fuck, this Dementor's anal gland's gone off.'

Another thirty minutes fast-forward and past-Magdalene finishes glass of red before inflating condom with three large breaths: 'New plan. I will show how to make a capital-P balloon, that rarest of pickups in Super Mario Bros. World. First, we sauté purple gummi berries and moon sugar in triffid oil or, in this case, slutroot oil. Well, actually, the plus-three lives moon is probably - '

Another thirty minutes and Magdalene whack-a-moles animate troll dolls occasionally leaping from the frypan's shimmering yellow base, baseball bat in one hand and wine the other: 'Soooo, that burnt my frypan and the fabric between dimensions. But when one door opens, a portal to the realm beyond the elevator game opens. I can't go out to get more ingredients, but sometimes ingredients come to you, and I am inspired.'

Uh oh. Another fifteen minutes and Magdalene still whack-a-moles but the wine in hand is white: 'This chenin blanc izzzippy.'

At ten minute intervals, previous Magdalene stands over pot of black liquid simmering on stove top:

'This needs some chenin blanc for flavour.'

'This needs some Talisker for flavour.'

'Now I have an open Talisker.

'Yes, yes, yes, yes. I can win. I can dream. I. Can Do. This.'

End of recording. No, no, you didn't, you crazy bitch, did you really? Magdalene wracks her unit for her go-pro, plugs it into the television and starts the lat recording in nervous trepidation. Her drunken past is in a garden shed, knocking over spades and hoes between herself and the woodsplitter:

'Issnot cannibalism. Cordyceps eats people, I eat cordyceps, don't eat people. Yeah, checksout.'

Another fifteen, walking predawn streets: 'Wheromai? Wheromai whiskey?'

Another twenty: 'Eeerin. Erin, you bitch, yooou ooooowe me narnroot. Cramson. Whore.'

Magdalene fast-forward's to the recording's end, finds her previous self back at home, monologing to a two-metre tall man with grey skin bloodied and clutching a pectoral wound: '- and the portion wouldn't be complete wivout the etherwaves of Ool, Huliwooil, Oolipoo, This Guy, Dark Lord of Consentual Martial Combat and, uh, Impatience?'

The grey man concedes: 'The balls on you.'

'What cunt?'

The dark lord's personal assistant: 'Bad choice of words.'

Realisation swells up from her booze-scolded bowels as present Magdalene turns gaze to kitchen table, to the repurposed Oscar de la Renta bottle now full of pale aqua-blue liquid. Oh shit. Magdalene. You actually did it. The Potion of Plus-One Nineteen-Nineties. It gives the consumer a particular chronological buffer, or post-hoctor-chrono-mortalis, which means they gain an extra year nuzzled into the 1990's years lives (199+1 on calenders) which, simply put: a permanent 10% bonus to getting 90's references. A potion utterly not worth the risk but still worth it.

A knock at the door. Magdalene answers, finds a man in dressing gown who recognises that she does not recognise him and thereby curtsies: 'Magdalene. It's Judea.'

'Did we...?'

'Come to an agreement last night? Yes.'

She suspects he is into scat: 'Particulars.'

'The Plus-One-Nineteen-Nineties for a hangover cure. You were quite prescient in your state. Your profit, I believe you said, lay in your recordings.'

Oh, you crazy bitch, you outdo yourself. Judea holds a tall glass of thick red fluid with six floating ice cubes and a leafless celery stick poking one-third out. A Bloody Mary, but one from the other realm, which actually kinda' works - sure, they only go for five CatScript (₵$) at the moment, but Magdalene would certainly appreciate a hangover cure at the moment. A contract signed during blackout is accepted the morning after and, besides, Judea has added value by transporting goods during lockdown, so Magdalene steps back to become perpendicular to her doorway with a half-arsed wave:

'Come on in. By the way, how did you get here without the ice cubes melting even just a little bit?'

A machete coated in drying green blood is stuck tip-first in the centre of the lounge room.

Judea: 'I shouldn't. Lockdowns and all. But to answer your question, I got here by Doris.'

Meaning the dromedary camel munching on the strata's lawn. Once transaction is made and both parties say thank you, which is beautiful, Judea takes Doris to the road. He sticks to side streets because Doris prefers 40 km/hr. His pretence for being out during lockdown is exercising his camel, also that he needs essentials i.e. booze - he will ride through a Thirsty Camel, declaring 'if this don't get me freebies, nothing will' but he already has a detour in mind. He will arrive at the front door of Jessica Fordham with a well rehearsed I have something you want and you have something to buy it with smile.

And Jessica will say: 'How, how do you, emote so much? So precisely?'

Dear Jessica, ambiguously discharged from Australia's defence forces, got so good at computer shit because her parents had a computer but no tv. Now working in horticultural retail, she does not get the references to the shared childhood of her peers, the many 'like that time Tuxedo Mask totally killed that dude'.  This is problematic because Jessica has developed social connections that she likes and wants to be liked by. So yeah, she will totally buy the Potion of Plus-One Nineteen-Nineties.

Jessica will pay for the potion with a Gratuitous Agricultural Ride-on Yieke (GARY), an artificial intelligence designed to operate combine harvesters but which can only be put in ride-on mowers, which deems said mower as a Class I Heavy Agricultural Vehicle because that is how bureaucracy works. There is a market for GARY because it ticks the masculine trope of driving heavy machinery without the need to actually own heavy machinery. 

Jessica acquired GARY through her side hustle - people pay to leave artificial intelligence's in her training, much like the day care centre of Pokémon's first generation. Jessica's business model, however, is more akin to the day care of Pokémon's second generation, if said day care was operated by shady individuals less likely to blast off again. She introduces the A.I. in her care to her own A.I., SEXGLOB, which is not an acronym but the Ditto in this analogy. SEXGLOB bumps digital uglies with the A.I. in day care, evading anti-piracy measures to birth a duplicate of said A.I. which is different (better) enough to not count as copyright. Fortunately, these A.I. have not been trained in matters of self-awareness, because that would mean that Jessica is a slave trader.