7

His name is Hal Winters and he is an endorphin addict. Not that he minds. He discovered as a child that he could release endorphins and get a natural high the same way other people can wiggle their ears.

The problem for Hal is that other people mind. They want him to stop. Badly. This is obvious to anyone who is following the Senate hearings.

For the last few days, live streaming coverage has millions riveted, both supporters and opponents. But the Senate seems to be largely against Hal. The Senators see danger and opportunity. Senator Steven keeps talking about the danger that addicts like Hal pose to society. He brings in “experts” who testify that endorphin addicts are on a high that make them unproductive members of the community, uninterested in the people and world around them.

Hal is fully aware that the “experts” are full of shit. Hal produces computer software. He goes to movies with friends. Okay, sometimes he stares at crystals for hours. But Hal is sociable and productive. And look who’s talking. Who’s less productive than a Senator?

Nonetheless, Hal was worried. He began to retreat into a joyful natural opiate fog, and started to become the person they feared he already was.

Endorphophobes worried that Hal wasn’t the only one. How many Hals are out there? Some people believed there were thousands. For example, Congressman Rodriguez just announced that he has identified 23 endorphin addicts in the State Department. He is also holding hearings.

The NSA is working on an algorithm to identify potential endorphin addicts based on collected meta-data. So far, no luck but they are building a special supercomputer to solve the problem.

Moms For An Endorphin-Free America has been buying up billboards and bus ads. Nobody knows who funds them, but it certainly isn’t a grassroots movement among moms.

For some, endorphins meant money. One pharmaceutical company wanted to produce recreational endorphins, and is lobbying heavily to make them legal. But the same company wants “self-medicating” endorphin users like Hal regulated, or ideally jailed. The GOP hates both endorphins and pretty much anything that makes people happy for free. Democrats want endorphins legalized and taxed.

Everybody has an opinion or worse, a suggestion.

Worst of all was this: Hal Winters has been subpoenaed to testify before both the House and Senate hearings. He hated the idea. How was it their business what he did with his own body?

Hal decided to break a rule. He’d use his other “ear wiggling” power. Because Hal could not only release endorphins in his own body. He could also do it in others.

Hal sat in an armchair, closed his eyes and clenched that odd muscle around belt-high on the left side of his body. He thought about Stevens and Rodriguez. He pictured them. And he released a healthy supply of endorphins inside both of them. There would be no hearings that day. The Senator and Congressman were both hospitalized and deliriously happy.