[TML] Propagation times for news services in Imperium

[Richard Aiken]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:18 AM, Jerry W Barrington
<jerry.barrington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Of course - these being PCs - you'd probably want a different outcome.
> > Unless you've got a player who's hankering to switch characters . . .
>
> That sounds intriguing.  Care to describe it, since I'm not inclined to read
> his anti-environmental screed?

SETUP:

The book starts off very mysteriously.  I'm only into Chapter Two, but
the main plot seems to be someone who's arranging to generate an
artificial tidal wave.  The scene in question involves a geeky
graduate student at a French facility that models such waves in a
large tank.  It's told from the POV of Graduate Geek, but the reader
can easily see where his habits have been watched for some time and
his circumstances (lonely and horny) duly noted.

SUMMARY OF ENCOUNTER:

Graduate Geek is reading an article at his favorite lunch spot when
Loud American and Beautiful Girl get into a loud argument at a
neighboring table.  She pretends interest in his work, in order to
tweak Loud American.  He goes along with it, hoping to get laid.  He
gives them a guided tour of the facility, including an honest
assessment of its pitiful seccurity.  Beautiful Girl promises to meet
him alone later.

She keeps the date, taking him afterwards to her (very nicely
furnished and located) apartment.  The expected happens.  Immediately
thereafter - while she's in the bathroom - three masked men break in,
hold Graduate Geek down and administer a drug (in a particularly odd
way that makes me suspect the delivery involves DMSO).  Beautiful Girl
emerges from the bath firing a pistol, somehow managing to scare the
three men away without actually hitting any of them.

Beautiful Girl persuades Graduate Geek that the three men were friends
of Loud American and just pulling a prank.  He soon complains of
feeling ill and she offers to help walk him to her car and then drive
him home.  Along the way, he slowly becomes totally paralyzed, until
the surprisingly-strong Beautiful Girl is carrying him with one arm
across her shoulders, as if he was dead drunk.  A passerby even offers
to assist her, but Beautiful Girl declines, saying, "I'm used to it.
He does this quite often."

They come to the river bridge.  SPLASH!  Oops!  Graduate Geek's last
sight in this world is Beautiful Girl, standing hip-shot at the
railing, casually smoking as she watches him go under for the final
time . . .

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein