"Make it stop!" whined Net Sabre as the Legendary Lounge echoed with a sound like a waterfall. "It's just not RIGHT!" She pouted at the progress bar on the laptop in front of her and in her own internal HUD and turned a baleful eye at the mountainous form of Wide Receiver.
The veteran hero was figuring sports statistics with an abacus and pencil and paper! He'd given her the same raw data and challenged her to see who would be finished first. By the smoke rising from Wide's left hand and the racket produced by beads being shuttled around at super speed, Wide was almost done, and her own heavily modified systems were chugging along on a particularly meaty segment of rushing yards per game.
With a thunderous crack of massive joints, Wide stretched and set his pencil down. He stood up and came to loom over her shoulder.
"Hmm," he rumbled. "Seventy-nine percent done. These systems ARE getting faster. How are you on your internals?"
Nene blushed behind her helmet. "Eighty-two percent."
The football player gave a low whistle. "And you still ain't got all your Crey bloatware excised yet, either. That's pretty good, Kiddo. Anyway, I'll take your forfeit next Friday. There's a new opera being put on in Talos, and I need someone to watch the twins while I take Min to go see it. And... just to show I'm a good sport..." A rush of air filled the room as he dashed off and returned seconds later. "Here's a dinner from City of Gyros, with extra 'Chili Fries Crisps.'"
She smiled weakly as she took the proffered meal and began planning her next set of self-upgrades. That Crey Media Player was just devilishly hard to uninstall without wrecking her file associations....
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
The veteran hero was figuring sports statistics with an abacus and pencil and paper! He'd given her the same raw data and challenged her to see who would be finished first. By the smoke rising from Wide's left hand and the racket produced by beads being shuttled around at super speed, Wide was almost done, and her own heavily modified systems were chugging along on a particularly meaty segment of rushing yards per game.
With a thunderous crack of massive joints, Wide stretched and set his pencil down. He stood up and came to loom over her shoulder.
"Hmm," he rumbled. "Seventy-nine percent done. These systems ARE getting faster. How are you on your internals?"
Nene blushed behind her helmet. "Eighty-two percent."
The football player gave a low whistle. "And you still ain't got all your Crey bloatware excised yet, either. That's pretty good, Kiddo. Anyway, I'll take your forfeit next Friday. There's a new opera being put on in Talos, and I need someone to watch the twins while I take Min to go see it. And... just to show I'm a good sport..." A rush of air filled the room as he dashed off and returned seconds later. "Here's a dinner from City of Gyros, with extra 'Chili Fries Crisps.'"
She smiled weakly as she took the proffered meal and began planning her next set of self-upgrades. That Crey Media Player was just devilishly hard to uninstall without wrecking her file associations....
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll