26 )
.
Sandleson was pretty much a loner. He did do business with others so he was not a real loner. Many people were inside his place of business and saw walls and floors covered in weapons of all kinds. He had a licence for all those weapons up on the wall. No one looked at it closely. He never handled his weapons and no one ever got to touch them as they were all in a room they could see into but not have access to.
There were many who were bothered that there were all those weapons in the city, let alone in his building. They worked publically and privately to eliminate the weapons. It was not easy as he was not breaking the law.
One day, Sandleson was involved in an accident. The person he was hit by lost his temper and attacked him. Sandleson easily subdued the man. The officer that showed up was one who did not like the weapons and took advantage of the situation and arrested Sandleson for assault.
It took Sandleson a little bit to realize it was all a setup, planned to get him arrested. The judge, the lawyers, even his, worked in a way to get him convicted for a serious crime.
While he was in Jail, the police raided his building. They had a number of trucks to pick up the weapons. Criminals were not allowed to have access to weapons.
They go into the room and are stunned. It is all painted on the floor and walls, painted on the ceiling to look real when one was looking into the room. They looked at his gun licence and it was also painted on the wall. They searched all over for any weapons at all. Any weapons were actually painted. From outside the room, or from the angle they were to be viewed, they looked real.
While in jail, in front of several guards, a criminal tried to rough Sandleson up. Sandleson handled the criminal easily, just as he handled the guy who hit his car.
Sandleson fired his lawyer and got a friend who loved guns and was a lawyer. Sandleson was able to get himself out of jail and cleared of charges, especially when they showed that Sandleson could handle himself.
While in jail, a group of concerned citizens painted the gun room white, covering every box of ammo, every gun, every hook and shadow with paint so it would never look like there were weapons.
Sandleson returned to his shop and looked at the damage. He drove up in a truck. People saw him moving stuff into the truck.
A few days later, people got in and looked around. To their shock, there was holes in the white paint the exact shape of a real weapon if it were where they were placed. Not the painted shape they saw, but real shapes of the weapons and boxes.
There was a lot of discussion about what could have happened. Those who disliked guns were a bit worried about the possibility of someone with real weapons was loose. The pattern in the white paint bothered them greatly
Sandleson found a small town warehouse where he unloaded the truck and cleaned the white paint off the boxes and weapons. He then set up a business in front and laid out his cleaned weapons in the back room. Because of the magic he used, anybody who went into the room would find the weapons and ammo boxes painted on everything, but they were there and he could grab them and use them if needed.

27 )
.
I once used a fogger that required you to set the cannister in some water to activate it. that seeded this concept.
The research station was established to study the energy entities that abounded on the planet. The normal shields protected the people from the vast majority of the entities.
There had been many failures of the research stations over the past few centuries. A strange entity had gotten inside the buildings and were tough to remove. No one knew what they were or how they got in.
Anbalstan studied the records carefully, and found a pattern. He came up with a chemical that would exterminate all the entities, no matter what they were. He arrived to clear the research station so a new set of researchers could take over. He set off a chemical fog all through the research station and the energy entities were removed completely. Checking the place over, he verified many of his theories.
One of the entities is cute and funny, and the people end up bringing them inside as pets. At some time, he could not tell why, they go bad and they attack the researchers.
By the time they had the place cleaned up and storage stocked up, the researchers had found the cute entity and fell in love with them.
When Anbalstan talked about setting up a system to automatically remove the entities, the people were revolted. the idea of killing such cute creatures due to a mistake was unthought of.
Anbalstan noticed in the records that in every case, the water was turned on and left on. He reformulated his fogger so that it would require water to be released. He then placed the canisters all over, beneath the main basement floor at places where accidental floods would not get to them. He did choose heights that would stop the problem early in the problem. The place buttoned up, he left. He did not report what he did.
The people are playing with their pets and studying the life around them. They are looking at the records of previous groups and matching the observations. After they got used to observing the entities, they started searching for things the others did not notice. One thing they did not notice was that the pet entities were slowly changing. First it was how they looked. Then their actions. They started playing with the faucets.
Slowly there was little nips and scratches. The entities finally got to places where the researchers were not going and got water running and plugged drains. Air handling systems were damaged. The humidity rose and that accelerated their changes. They approached mating stages. they would need to feed when it was mating time.
The whole team was in the building when the change suddenly happened and the entities started attacking the team members.
The people tried to fight them off but they had no weapons against them. They were inside so the outside shields were useless against them.
The entities killed several people and were chasing people around. Because they were energy entities, they could pass through most walls. The knot of people were in the engine room where the previous people were found. they were trapped.
The water level reached the cannister. They started fogging. Within an hour, the entire place was filled with fog. The dangerous entities died, like when Anbalstan had arrived the first time. The fog made the researchers very sick, but they were still alive.
Anbalstan was asked to return with the next supply ship. He arrived and was given hugs and kisses. He was begged to set up his foggers again.
This time, because the people had survived the entities, were not interested in having pets. They got from Anbalstan all sorts of weapons against the entities, including injectors.
Later, when new people would bring a cute entity into the building, The old timers made sure the entity did not survive for long, dying of some unknown cause.
The research station remained pest free and Anbalstan's system was never needed again.

28 )
.
They spent a lot time creating their characters and training their characters to be really skilled. Once their characters were created, they would put them into various games of skill and chance, and go on adventures.
They were not allowed to have more than one character operating at a time. They could create spare characters, but they would have to gain experience just like their first ones.
It was necessary to get their characters out of one game before they could go to the next game or set them to the side. Some games required a win in the game to continue on. Few of these games put the character into danger so people did not matter if they were in the game for a while.
Now because of the gaming nature community, there are styles, tactics, and unwritten rules one tends to follow because they work for most games. There are games that are not designed for such styles, rules and tactics, but people generally know that long before they enter a game.
A new game came out and it was really fun to play. After a while, though, people found they could not win the game, and no one could get out. It was becoming a real problem.
A championship was coming up and several players were stuck in the game, unable to get out. One of those players was Everett's friend. Everett did not play the games and concentrated on student activities. He was the proverbial egghead.
Everett had few friends, but this gaming champion was one of them. The friend was telling about the problem with the game. Everett was curious. He watched on screen when his friend played the game. he saw that his friend moved according to an intelligent pattern, but it was all wrong.
Everett asked if his friend could help him create a character. It was a simple character with almost no skills. his friend was shocked to see it inside the game almost immediately.
"so a win is needed to get out?" Everett asked.
"Yes."
Everett played the game, the other characters gathered around. Everett won the game quickly. Nothing happened. "How many times do I need to win. One character said "a win for each of us."
Everett started playing and he won. He became extremely efficient, winning with very few moves.
After a couple dozen wins, suddenly they were out of the game, looking at their controls. "You did it! you got us out!"
"it was easy." Everett said.
"Your character was just raised five levels! it is a master!"
Everett would run his character in some games. Because he was not trained in games, but instead of math and knowledge, his character does well.

29 )
.
The planet was essentially a garbage dump. The dump surface over the planet was nearly a thousand feet deep in most places. nearly a billion kinds of pests were also dumped there and abounded everywhere in high populations.
People now lived there and worked. They developed ways of dealing with and living with the pests.
Jammer came to the planet to visit. It was a bit strange. There was no high society, the people lived sort of like farmers but were working more like in a factory.
Jammer and his host was out in the "wilderness." They were operating machinery leveling out freshly dumped piles.
It was lunch time and Jammer was given some blocks of what was supposed to be food. He tasted each one and nearly gagged. "You call this food?"
His host, laughing, said "No, that is not food, that is bait. Start the fire. By the time you get it going good, we will have our meal."
His host put the chunks into a pot, and a cup of water. He then shoved the pan deep into the dirt so the rim was just above the ground. Jammer gathered material together and prepared the fire. He watched as a bug fell inside the pot, then another, then another.
He got the material smouldering but the fire had a ways to go. The ground around the pan started to boil as bugs crawled up and into the pan. he looked close and saw some bugs were attacking others while some was after the water and others after the different chunks.
He tended the fire and finally got it going good. The bugs now railed in a pile above the rim of the pan.
"It is time." his host said. He dumped another cup of water into the pan, causing the pile of bugs to slump. He then clapped the lid on the pan and set it onto the fire.
They sat and talked, listening to the lid's rattle long before the water inside started to develop steam. Jammer was not sure of what his host was going to do with the bugs, but was not going to say no.
Soon steam was coming out around the edges of the pan. the host finally said it was done. He took the pan off the fire, added a packet of flavoring and then served up bowls of the soup.
Jammer was hesitant, but he tasted some of it. it was pretty good. It had a mixed meaty flavor. the texture was a bit gritty and there were a few legs and wings but the soup was good.
Jammer was told about how the pests makes up most meals. some companies harvest the pests and process them into something else, but most people use the bait and pans when they are away from home.

30 )
.
The zoo was built over a sewage treatment plant. It was a cheap location and some of the animals were not bothered by the environment.
There was another advantage of the location. The processing used different kinds of microbes and "bugs" to convert the wastes to something useable, usually as fertilizer.
There is a series of patties where the burrowing insects do their work. The zoo makes use of the patties for some of their animals. Some animals love to dig into muck and mud while others prefer moist soils which these patties are.
There is another advantage of the patties. The patties that are near the end of their time of removal and refill, have bugs populations out of balance. Selected bugs are taken out for repopulation of other patties and then the rest are processed out of existence.
The zoo places selected animals in the old patties. The animals then search for and eat the bugs, which makes the care of the animals less expensive.
The zoo keeper has the duty of feeding some lizards that are in one of the paddocks. There are dozens of different kinds of lizards. some are separated by small walls to keep them from eating each others, while some are grouped together since they leave each other alone.
The zoo keeper walks on a walkway well above the observation deck. He strolls along and tosses little food blocks over the surface of the ground as he strolls along. He continues until he empties the last of the bucket and then goes down to the observation level. The people are there watching. "The lizards were not going for their food. Now the bugs are eating the food."
"Just wait a moment." he said.
The food got covered with bugs, then the lizards moved. They started gobbling up the bugs.
"The food is for the bugs, the bugs are food for the lizards."

31 )
.
"It is said that everybody is possessed by their own inner demons."
Obadia was not a good child even as a baby. He would fight his mom on most things, Slipping clothing on him he would struggle, he constantly hit the adults that held him. He would struggle in their arms like he did not like being held. It got worse as he got older. he was the ultimate definition of the "terrible twos."
He seemed to revel in punishments. there was little that his parents could to keep him under control. Psychiatrists, master teachers, obedience programs and even programming failed to keep him under control. What little that did work, tended not to work for very long.
They even brought someone in to see if he was possessed. They got nowhere and fast, but came to the conclusion he was not under the influence of any evil entities.
No one ever figured out how he avoided being arrested and jailed. Everybody felt he was due.
As a teenager, he got involved in some occult games and ended up possessed. He actually started acting a bit normal. He was fighting the demons and that concentration caused him to calm down, be controllable.
It took him a year to reach a stable point in his battle with the demons. He had held them off, keeping control over himself.
Obadia's started communicating with them. The demons were not used to being so strongly resisted by their victims. They were also not used to being conversed with.
Obadia was not a talker but he now developed his communication skills. He became a salesman. He was selling the demons on a different type of evil.
The people around him thought he had finally changed, grown up. While he was a problem for everybody around him, he was no longer a big problem. He seemed to be learning social skills and following a lot of the rules.
He got a job with a big company and to everybody's surprise he rose through the ranks fast. It was not that he was a harder worker or more skilled, he could talk his way into and out of any situation. This was totally not him as he was not much of talker before he left school. It was hard to get more than a few words out of him. Now he was very slick with his words.
Several companies offered him positions if he went to work for them. Instead, he pushed his company into markets they had not been involved in. When there were a quick succession of retirements, he found himself the youngest president of the company it had ever had. The company then really started raking in money. He authorised products and services they had not been involved in before, close, but not quite their core business.
Those who knew him as he was growing up, could not believe how much he changed. At least they thought that until a Congressman wanted to investigate something the company did. Obadia said in a press conference that such investigations should not happen. The congressman went to what was supposed to be a fund raiser and was arrested in a room with drugs, guns and piles of money with several scantily clad women and men. The congressman was ruined, even though he was able to get the conviction thrown out because the money and drugs and people disappeared so there was no evidence.
Obadia became extremely powerful. Nothing could be directly pointed to him but no one questioned that he was exercising influence.
Once in an unguarded moment, he was asked how he became so powerful. He said "Everybody is possessed by their inner demons. I just brought mine over to my side."
The people who knew him blanched when they heard that quote.