This week on True Tales of the Robotic Shaman we have episode I of The Shitty Drug Store Chronicles: The Starbs Paradox. Prepare to be amazed. The Robotic Shaman reveals but does not answer. Enter the world of ephemeral illusion and terrifying truth!

There once was a girl named Floob who woke up one day in a Shitty Drug Store. There were other people in this drug store. They all were convinced that they needed to stay in the Shitty Drug Store to survive. There was an exit door that they could see out of, and it looked pretty nice out there, but when you went to walk through that door, the sensors would go off and a voice would say “Waa Waa Waa! You’ll die if you leave!” so everyone was afraid and turned around to go back into the Shitty Drug Store.

The people in the store believed that the Shitty Drug Store was absolutely necessary for survival, and they made magazines, and books, and TV shows that reinforced this belief. The management would come on over the PA occasionally to say “the world is terrible and you need to stay in the Shitty Drug Store to survive! You depend on the Shitty Drug Store! If you break our rules, we’ll throw you out of the Shitty Drug Store, and you’ll die! There is a sale on peanuts in the food aisle. Be happy, or else…” And occasionally, they did throw some people out with all kinds of ceremony and pomp and seriousness.

The Shitty Drug Store seemed OK to Floob because it’s all she knew, and there was some pleasure in it, although the people were really strange and generally unhappy compared to the people in the magazines. However, there were rumors that you might not actually die if you went outside through the door. Some people said that they saw people who left the store still alive through the window. But when the Shitty Drug Store managers heard about this they got on the PA and say “we have heard that some people have said that they have seen the dead ones still alive outside the window, but these people are sick with a disease called Starbs. They must be reported to the managers so that they can be treated with a medication called Prong. We love you. Thank you for shopping at the Shitty Drug Store.”

So the people found out which people said that they saw people outside the window, and they sent them to the pharmacy to get treated for their Starbs. Now that the people who had seen the dead people were being treated for their Starbs with Prong, things seemed to get better for a while. The people who were sick with Starbs did notice that the Prong made them feel slow and lethargic, but they reminded themselves that Starbs was a terrible disease, and the managers had created a great medicine so that they could still live in the Shitty Drug Store.

Then one day, our heroine Floob was hanging out in the pharmacy section of the Shitty Drug Store, and she saw that there was a cold medicine product called Carmadun with a strange picture on it. It was just some over the counter medicine that everyone took, but she noticed that it had a little picture of a goat on it. When she dreamed at night, she saw this goat, and it told her that life is really just about having a good time, and there is nothing to fear. So she bought the Carmadun and took a few even though she was not really sick with a cold.

When Floob took the Carmadun she began to see and hear things that she could not touch. She began to think that there was a whole world outside of the Shitty Drug Store. She saw a vision of a man that she did not recognize walking through the exit door and turning into a butterfly. The man then flew away outside. This didn’t make any sense to her at first. And she told the managers about it, and they said that she likely had Starbs and needed to be treated. So they sent her to the doctors in the pharmacy who gave her some new medication that they said would treat the Starbs.

Floob began to notice that the medication made her sort of slow. She remembered that other people had felt this way, so she accepted it as normal. But she still had dreams of the goat who told her that life is really about having a good time. She started to become very confused. She desperately wanted to be a good person, so she kept taking her medication even though it made her feel different and a little bit sad.

She then thought that maybe she could just take a little bit of the Carmadun and no one would notice. So she pretended that she had a cold, and bought some Carmadun. She only took one pill per day. She didn’t see the butterfly man when she took only one, but she felt a little bit happier. So she continued taking just one per day for about a month. This made her feel OK with having Starbs. And Floob was doing quite well. She was becoming very popular. Everyone liked Floob, and they told her that she was the best case of cured Starbs they had ever seen! She felt so glad in her heart. She really thought that the Shitty Drug Store was a wonderful place.

At the Shitty Drug Store, there were special days where people celebrated the existence of the Shitty Drug Store. One of those special days was Football Friday. Football Friday was held on the 3rd Friday after a full moon and only when the Shitty Drug Store was making a profit, which was not guaranteed. On Football Friday everyone bought footballs made out of foam rubber and threw them at each other while they drank Shitty Drug Store Beer and watched a TV show of people throwing footballs at each other. When a Football Friday happened, everyone was excited!

So on this particular Football Friday, Floob was enjoying her Shitty Drug Store Beer and throwing the foam as they liked to say. She was talking to a good friend of hers named Brom. Brom did not have Starbs by the way. Floob and Brom had known each other for a long time, and they were good friends. Brom told Floob that she was doing so well. Floob trusted Brom, so she told Brom that she was using Carmadun in a very small amount, and it made her feel so much better. Brom was scared. He didn’t know what to do with this information because it was too strange to him. Brom knew that a side effect of Carmadun was Starbs, and Brom was worried that Floob was now hurting herself. Brom was flummoxed. Brom told Floob that she should stop taking the Carmadun because it could make her Starbs worse. Floob was afraid. She didn’t know what to do.

Tune in next week for the next installment of the scintillating tales of the Robotic Shaman’s Shitty Drug Store Chronicles!