spoon-business: Just to Show It Can Be Done

["Glotmorf" <glotmorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

{{ _Just to Show It Can Be Done -- a Short Dim Ship Tale_

[[

We had our new gun.  I was not thrilled by the thought that we might use it, but it was there, big and bold and primed to fire.

We did not go back to Hell.  It might have been good to learn from them, find out why there was such a war, and what made them tick...but these were folks that had been at war all their lives, armed of course, who had been taught to kill or be killed.  I did not want aught of those.

So we checked out high ent. and high charm -- think "Care Bears" -- and sat back to be bored and ill while I took notes...and then there it was, right in front of us.

A ship.  Like ours.

Well, not quite like ours.  It was big...quite big.  And a stark deep blue, and had two stripes down its length.  As in, it had style; they had made the choice to pay for a bit of style with speed and range.  And it had a gun, which it worked to train on us.

The Old Man stared at the screen. "Mr. Morf.  Is our gun primed to fire?"

"Yes sir.  I'm on it."

Their ship was slow...its style and its arms slowed it down, so that it turned like a fat pig in mud.  They had moved first, but we did too as I brought our gun to bear.  It was a strange slo-mo race...

They turned.  They aimed.

I fired.

A wave of pink splashed on the front of our foe's craft.  It blocked ports, it jammed their gun.  And it stank.  Our doors had what we thought were air-tight seals, but the smell of old bait still came through.

We saw their hatch pop, and a man start to climb on the hull to try to clear the gunk.  His boss stood in the door, so choked with rage we could see his words made no sense at all to his crew.

The Old Man cleared his throat, his eyes still on the screen. "Mr. Morf."

"You said we could do it my way, sir."

"I know this."

"And it seemed to work."

"Yes, but...What in God's name was in that gun?"

I smiled. "Raw fish."

"Ah."

]]

Add to the end of Rule 213 this text:

"If one owns a dim ship with a gun and gets the raw fish, one can shoot the fish, once per nweek, at a dim ship with no wait time."

At the end of the text "The Cursed Sushi of Babel" in the first par. of Rule 213, add the text ", a.k.a. the Raw Fish,".

[[

We watched the clean-up go on for a while, then set course for home.  I made a note to run a tape from the log of the flight; it should give the lab crew a laugh.

"I can not say it did not work," said the Old Man, "but next time I think we should try it...my way."

"As you say, sir."

]]

}}