From: "nikolai kingsley" <nikolai@warehouse.net> Newsgroups: talk.bizarre Subject: it all looks so different from up here Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 02:40:49 +1100 Organization: that one, over there. Lines: 36 Message-ID: <384543aa@news.aus.warehouse.net> X-Trace: news1.mpx.com.au 944063600 26199 203.15.225.150 (1 Dec 1999 15:53:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@mpx.com.au NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 Dec 1999 15:53:20 GMT X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: daemongate2-2.warehouse.net i would have expected a more involved targeting system. i sat up the back of the ship, wondering where the gravity was coming from, while she wrestled the charges into an old shopping trolley. it had a long piece of rope tied to the handles. she shoved the trolley down the gentle ramp that led into the bomb bay, letting the rope trail out. the trolley with its beanbag-sized burden slid through the field that kept our atmosphere in, sort of like a Dark Mistress walking through a door blueprint in Dungeonkeeper 2. the trolley caught at the edge of the bomb bay, tilted and spilled the charge out into space. then she'd reel the trolley in by the rope and do it again. after the first half a dozen or so had been launched i'd gone around to the back of the ship to watch them drift away. there was a cluster of about six of them with insufficient impetus to move away from the ship, but most of them began their stately march down towards the planet. the first few had hit the surface and gone off, fist-sized chunks of antimatter within magnetic fields. they were set to turn themselves off when they hit. they made these lovely flower-shapes when they detonated. after about two hours of this she came back to where i was considering the bowl half-filled with machine-rolled joints. "I don't have a lighter," i said in a leading kind of way. "wouldn't do no good in this atmosphere. they keep going out. they're for when we get invited down to negotiate for peace." "hang on. there's people down there?" "depends what you mean by 'people.'" nikolai --- (angrily) "why don't they just put Marmaduke to sleep?" - Jake Morgendorffer