“Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?”<\/p>\n
“Good afternoon. I’d like a FrintArms HandCannon, please.”<\/p>\n
“A–? Oh, now, that’s an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I
\nmean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I
\nsay they have a right to. But I think… I might… Let’s have a look
\ndown here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are!
\nLook at that, isn’t it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well,
\nbut it’s what’s called a laser — a light-pistol some people call
\nthem. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won’t
\nspoil the line of a jacket; and you won’t feel you’re lugging half a
\ntonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories,
\nincluding — if I may say so — a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I
\ngot to do the fitting for that! Ha — just my little joke. And
\nthere’s *even*… here we are — this special presentation pack: gun,
\ncharged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster
\nwith adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your
\nnext battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free
\nlessons at your local gun club or range. Or there’s the *special*
\npresentation pack; it has all the other one’s got but with *two*
\ncharged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that — don’t
\nworry, it’s a dummy battery — isn’t it neat? Feel how light it is?
\nSmooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and*
\nbeautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there’s
\nno recoil. Because it’s shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun,
\nbeautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That’s not a line, she
\nreally has. Now, I can do you that one — with a battery and a free
\ncharge — for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special
\noffer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for
\none-forty-nine.”<\/p>\n
“I’ll take the special.”<\/p>\n
“Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice. Now, do–?”<\/p>\n
“And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three
\nsix-five AP\/wire-fl’\bechettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a
\nSpecial Projectile Pack if you have one — the one with the embedding
\nrounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is
\ncompatible?”<\/p>\n
“Aah… yes, And how does madam wish to pay?”<\/p>\n
She slapped her credit card on the counter. “Eventually.”<\/p>\n
\t\t— Iain M. Banks, “Against a Dark Background”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mercury, isn’t debugging X a little like finding perfectly bugfree code in windows ?? WildCode: Debugging X is like trying to run a straight line through a maze. You just need to bend space-time so that the corners move around you and you won’t have any problems. (=:]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183,"parent":9,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59\/revisions\/60"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stuff.z3ngin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}