July 31 - Night 0011
Aug. 1st, 2011 12:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolHe had said he'd think about it. Rutt hadn't liked that. He pressed Flynn over beers, over fried chicken, while watching bowling on the giant TV in his man-cave. Rutt desperately wanted Flynn to be part of his fleet of drone pilots. Flynn felt that having an ex-military man be part of his air circus would somehow lend it legitimacy in Rutt's eyes; it would make it easier to rationalize away that he wasn't just a bigot killing helpless people in the dust.
But Flynn wasn't ready to commit. He agreed that people crossing the border illegally were criminals; he knew that nothing legitimately done by the government was doing anything to stem the tide. But the idea of going into the wilderness with guns and shooting at criminals, even faceless criminals, made Flynn queasy. Part of him wanted to say yes; the other part said no. So Flynn said nothing and drove home. The sun had gone down, and the long dark drive back to his trailer seemed extra lonely.
It was late when he got back, so Flynn decided to just turn in for the night. He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Very shortly he found himself dreaming.
Flynn was flying. He was soaring over the grass-studded wasteland, just like a drone. The wind in his face felt good. He banked left and then right, following a dry wash, and found himself over a piece of high prairie. A half dozen jackrabbits scattered as Flynn's shadow passed over them.
Flynn pointed a thumb-and-forefinger gun and said 'bang'. A puff of dust kicked up behind one of the rabbits, and it leaped in a panic into cover under some brush. Flynn laughed, hovering several hundred feet above where the rabbit had gone to ground, the grass below him blowing in the breeze.
Then he felt himself falling. Flynn realized he had no rotors; nothing was holding him up. Flynn's stomach rose into his mouth as the ground rose up to smack him down hard. He closed his eyes. It was finally time to die.
Then something caught the back of Flynn's belt. His ass rose in the air and jackknifed his body with a snap; his knee caught his own lower lip, and Flynn tasted blood, but he wasn't falling anymore; he was hovering a few feet above the ground. Flynn craned his neck about to see what was holding him up.
It was the girl. The dark-eyed serious girl, the sun framing her mane of black hair, was hanging above him. The girl Flynn loved had caught his belt with both hands and was keeping him from falling, while her glorious white-feathered wings, each one longer than she was tall, beat furiously to keep them both aloft.
She wouldn't let him die. She never let him die.
Flynn awoke in a cold sweat. The clock said it was two in the morning. Flynn's lower lip was wet. He dabbed at it with a finger. It was blood, his blood. He had bit his own lip in his sleep.
Flynn didn't believe in signs, but there was no denying the girl of his dreams.
Flynn found the phone and dialed. A sleepy, irritable Rutt answered.
"I'll do it," said Flynn.
At seven o'clock Flynn returned to Rutt's house. The others were already there. Rutt had all the remote control stations set up in the man-cave, each arranged with side tables with mixed nuts and beers in koozies. Flynn felt like he had come to a fantasy baseball draft instead of what amounted to a war council.
"All right, first order of business," said Rutt briskly. "We all need call signs."
"Why on earth do we need call signs?" asked Ernest in disgust. "Why don't we call each other by our names, like white folks?"
"First," replied Rutt, "Ernest, shut the fuck up. Second, this is a proper military operation and we are going to do things the way military folks do it. Third, these here terminals are portable, and someday we might all be in different rooms and still fly missions with each other. And finally, I am recording this for posterity, and I don't want anybody's real names being used for reasons that should be obvious to anybody who is not a complete dumbshit. Is all that clear?" Rutt scanned the room and saw no dissent.
"All right then, call signs." Rutt was as giddy as a boy with a new toy, which in a sense he was. "Ernest, we'll start with you. For all the beer you put inside you, you're still skinny as a rat in a rainstorm. Your call sign is 'Chunky'."
"Fuck you," said Ernest, and then belched loudly, but he got another beer instead of rejecting his call sign, so Rutt moved on.
"Gus," said Rutt to the next man, "I'm calling you 'Pocho'."
"Oh Jesus," sighed Gus. "How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not Mexican?"
Gus was small and brown-skinned, and he had thick black hair. He looked Mexican to Flynn. But he wore Wranglers and fancy Luchese boots, and a big UT belt buckle. Gus dressed like somebody who desperately wanted to prove he was an Anglo.
"Three generations we been in the valley, Rutt," said Gus. "To be Pocho, you have to be a Mexican who denies his roots. My roots are USA, buddy! I'm a goddamn American!"
"Bullshit, with a last name like 'Blanco', you're a damned Mexican!" crowed Rutt. But he slapped Gus on the shoulder; Rutt was the kind to dub people with cruel nicknames without realizing how cruel he was being. "You're Pocho and that's final. Who's next?"
"Me, I guess," said the heavyset guy.
"Martin Tubbs," said Rutt, sizing the man up. "The man from Arizona. God, I hate Arizonans. You bitches think you know everything there is to know about the Mexican Problem." Flynn could hear the capital letters.
"Don't get all pissy because you Texans don't know how to pass laws that make sense," said Tubbs cockily. This was the wrong tack to take with Rutt, Flynn knew. Rutt would get his back up for any slight to his beloved Texas.
"Your dumbass illegal alien laws haven't done a whole hell of a lot to fix anything, you smart-mouth motherfucker," said Rutt, staring hard at Tubbs. "And don't think for one damned second that I would have invited you here, except you used to fly for the Forest Service."
"Well, don't think for one damned second that I would have come, except for that I get a chance to shoot at some Mexicans," replied Tubbs, adjusting his hat and sipping his beer.
"Goddamn Arizonans," muttered Rutt darkly. "I guess I better call you 'Phoenix', on account of that big town you got. Also, it's supposed to be some kind of bird, so it fits."
"A bird that goes down in flames," said the guy wearing the aviator sunglasses.
"Ooh, we got a reader," hooted Rutt. "Shit, Slate, none of these damned birds better go down in flames. I don't know how I'd go about fixing 'em. Besides, the fellow who sold 'em to me told me it would take some serious sustained fire from small arms to even put a dent in these babies, so there shouldn't ought to be anything that goes wrong. When the Border Patrol finds them bodies in the desert, shot up with ammunition that anybody could have, they'll figure it was just another drug gang shootout; there won't be anything to point to us."
"There's cameras all over the border," argued Slate.
"They don't have thermal," Flynn said. "But they might see the angle of muzzle flashes."
"See, that's why we want a military man in the crew," said Rutt. "All right, no problem; we'll just have to shoot from high up. If we're high enough the cameras shouldn't pick us up, right?"
"Sure," said Flynn.
"All right. Slate, we got to get you a good call sign." Rutt stroked his mustache. "I think I'll call you 'High Dollar'. It cost almost as much to bring you in from Miami as it cost to get Flynn."
"I want to know what I'm getting paid," Ernest inserted.
"A whole bunch of beer," said Rutt. Everybody except Slate laughed. Flynn looked at the man, and Slate looked back. Slate was dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, and he looked very relaxed – much more relaxed than everybody else. Flynn judged that this wasn't the first shady operation Slate had been involved in. Smuggling in the Keys? Flying drug pickups? Flynn didn't know, but he figured that Slate would probably be a pretty good pilot in a fix.
"And that brings us to my boy Flynn," said Rutt. "Hey, how's the leg?"
Flynn shrugged. "It's good today." He had a pin in his right ankle from the crash in Iraq. It hurt sometimes, but mostly during rainstorms, which were rare. Flynn would never again run the hurdles, or even run at all, save for a hobble, but he could walk around just fine. But the injury qualified him for military disability, and for that he was grateful. Strangely, his messed-up head got him nothing.
"All right, I'm calling you 'Hopscotch'," grinned Rutt. Flynn was relieved. It could have been worse.
"So what's your call sign?" asked Flynn. "Do we get to pick your tag?"
"Hell, no," replied Rutt. "It's my party, and anyway I got the perfect name picked out already. I'm the Chickenhawk, 'cause I swoop in out of the clear blue yonder."
Rutt messed with some of his remotes and brought up a digital map of the area on the largest TV. It clearly showed the river, the White House and the Interstate on it. "Okay, everybody," he said, "find the display on your console that reads 'TRACK 1' and toggle it to 'Enable'."
Everybody did as they were told. A red blip appeared on the map next to the White House. Rutt stood up and pointed to it with the putter he was using as a swagger stick.
"That's us," he said. "We can track everybody with this thing. And that's good, because we're going to start with a little recon. That means we're all going to pick different areas of the desert and see what we can find. If we find something interesting, we'll all converge. And that's when the fun begins." There was a general chuckle from the room.
"It's go time!" exclaimed Rutt. "Press 'START SEQUENCE' and let's get aloft!"
Flynn started his Vigilant. His cameras lit up, fore and aft. While his rotors were coming to speed, Flynn practiced orienting the cameras, toggling between visual and nightscope and thermal modes, and learning the other features of the drone. Its controls were simple and intuitive, and the console's displays let him grasp the status of the drone instantly. Flynn had to admit it was a slick toy he had been given.
The joysticks were a little unfamiliar in place of a helm. Flynn ramped up his speed and the drone shot upwards too fast; it almost went into stall. He eased it back down to the ground where it teetered on its spindly legs.
"Easy there, Hopscotch," purred Slate. Flynn looked over at Slate's display and saw he was already a hundred feet in the air, his forward camera looking at Flynn's Vigilant on the ground.
"One second," said Flynn. He gave the drone a little more gas – gently this time – and his Vigilant dusted off neatly. He retracted the landing gear and climbed at an angle to try and get some height on High Dollar. High Dollar danced away, and soon the two drones were swooping around the White House on a merry chase.
"You hear that?" said Rutt happily. Flynn listened; he couldn't hear anything.
"That's the sound of stealthed rotors," said Rutt. "Hopscotch and High Dollar just flew right over our heads. Those Coyotes aren't going to know what hit them."
The rest of the fleet got the hang of their controls, more or less, and then Rutt assigned them all coordinates for a recon sweep. Flynn's path took him almost directly across the Rio Grande and deep into Mexican airspace. The sun had already set by the time Hopscotch crossed the border going one hundred and twenty miles an hour on a south by south-east heading. The sound it made was nothing more than a soft buzz. The matte-black dragonfly shape darted over the Mexican countryside, and with only a thin sliver of a moon, the shadow that trailed it was almost nothing at all.
The vigilantes spent several hours on patrol. It was getting close to midnight when Flynn saw something. He had the camera on thermal, and he saw a hot line drawn across the earth. He zoomed in closer, and the line broke up into a dozen splotches of color.
"I got something," he called out. "Twelve people moving in single file down a ravine."
"Let's have a look," said Rutt, coming to stand behind Flynn's shoulder. Flynn showed him what he had, and Rutt nodded.
"Bring it in a little closer," he said. "Let's find out how quiet these bad boys are. Hopscotch, get within, say, two hundred yards."
Flynn nodded and eased the drone towards the line of people. The leader came up out of the ditch they had been moving down and stopped; the next two people gathered with him. They didn't seem to be acting like they knew the drone was there.
"What are they doing?" asked Rutt. Flynn looked at the way the two followers clustered around the leader – to the sides, but also behind.
"They're reading a map," he said. "I'm going to visual."
Indeed, the leader was studying an unfolded chart, and one of the people behind him was shining a flashlight on it. The light reflected back, and with the camera on maximum zoom, Flynn could see all their faces clearly.
Flynn's heart skipped a beat. The leader and one of his followers looked like perfectly ordinary Hispanic men. But the third person was a woman. A beautiful woman.
It was her. The woman from Flynn's dreams. Flynn's mouth went completely dry.
IT WAS HER.
**
"Explain," demanded Ometron.
"Explain what?" asked Cantor.
"Are you attempting to invoke prescience or some form of extra-sensory perception to explain how Flynn could dream of a person he would later encounter? The existence of these phenomena has been adequately disproved."
"I'm not attempting to explain anything," said Cantor.
"Empty narratives provide no reason to extend your life," said Ometron. "Prepare for your execution."
"It's not an empty narrative just because everything isn't explained all at once," said Cantor hastily. "Remember, my humanity somewhat hampers my ability to explain anything on a level that you would find useful."
"I suspect your modesty to be another ploy, but you are nevertheless correct," said Ometron. "Provide the best explanation you can and that will have to suffice."
"You're missing the point," objected Cantor. "How he has dreamed her is not of central importance to this narrative. Far more important is that her sudden appearance changes Flynn's purpose."
"I should think that would be obvious," said Ometron scornfully. "Very well, describe what happens next, although I reserve the right to revisit the credulity question at a later date."
"At a later date?" asked Cantor. "Does that mean tomorrow?"
"These extensions grow tiresome," said Ometron. "However, I find I wish to know more. You will have one more day, Cantor. But by the end of the day, a greater understanding of this situation, and how it pertains to your continued existence, must be provided."
"To the degree it is possible, I shall oblige," said Cantor, and continued onwards.
But Flynn wasn't ready to commit. He agreed that people crossing the border illegally were criminals; he knew that nothing legitimately done by the government was doing anything to stem the tide. But the idea of going into the wilderness with guns and shooting at criminals, even faceless criminals, made Flynn queasy. Part of him wanted to say yes; the other part said no. So Flynn said nothing and drove home. The sun had gone down, and the long dark drive back to his trailer seemed extra lonely.
It was late when he got back, so Flynn decided to just turn in for the night. He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Very shortly he found himself dreaming.
Flynn was flying. He was soaring over the grass-studded wasteland, just like a drone. The wind in his face felt good. He banked left and then right, following a dry wash, and found himself over a piece of high prairie. A half dozen jackrabbits scattered as Flynn's shadow passed over them.
Flynn pointed a thumb-and-forefinger gun and said 'bang'. A puff of dust kicked up behind one of the rabbits, and it leaped in a panic into cover under some brush. Flynn laughed, hovering several hundred feet above where the rabbit had gone to ground, the grass below him blowing in the breeze.
Then he felt himself falling. Flynn realized he had no rotors; nothing was holding him up. Flynn's stomach rose into his mouth as the ground rose up to smack him down hard. He closed his eyes. It was finally time to die.
Then something caught the back of Flynn's belt. His ass rose in the air and jackknifed his body with a snap; his knee caught his own lower lip, and Flynn tasted blood, but he wasn't falling anymore; he was hovering a few feet above the ground. Flynn craned his neck about to see what was holding him up.
It was the girl. The dark-eyed serious girl, the sun framing her mane of black hair, was hanging above him. The girl Flynn loved had caught his belt with both hands and was keeping him from falling, while her glorious white-feathered wings, each one longer than she was tall, beat furiously to keep them both aloft.
She wouldn't let him die. She never let him die.
Flynn awoke in a cold sweat. The clock said it was two in the morning. Flynn's lower lip was wet. He dabbed at it with a finger. It was blood, his blood. He had bit his own lip in his sleep.
Flynn didn't believe in signs, but there was no denying the girl of his dreams.
Flynn found the phone and dialed. A sleepy, irritable Rutt answered.
"I'll do it," said Flynn.
At seven o'clock Flynn returned to Rutt's house. The others were already there. Rutt had all the remote control stations set up in the man-cave, each arranged with side tables with mixed nuts and beers in koozies. Flynn felt like he had come to a fantasy baseball draft instead of what amounted to a war council.
"All right, first order of business," said Rutt briskly. "We all need call signs."
"Why on earth do we need call signs?" asked Ernest in disgust. "Why don't we call each other by our names, like white folks?"
"First," replied Rutt, "Ernest, shut the fuck up. Second, this is a proper military operation and we are going to do things the way military folks do it. Third, these here terminals are portable, and someday we might all be in different rooms and still fly missions with each other. And finally, I am recording this for posterity, and I don't want anybody's real names being used for reasons that should be obvious to anybody who is not a complete dumbshit. Is all that clear?" Rutt scanned the room and saw no dissent.
"All right then, call signs." Rutt was as giddy as a boy with a new toy, which in a sense he was. "Ernest, we'll start with you. For all the beer you put inside you, you're still skinny as a rat in a rainstorm. Your call sign is 'Chunky'."
"Fuck you," said Ernest, and then belched loudly, but he got another beer instead of rejecting his call sign, so Rutt moved on.
"Gus," said Rutt to the next man, "I'm calling you 'Pocho'."
"Oh Jesus," sighed Gus. "How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not Mexican?"
Gus was small and brown-skinned, and he had thick black hair. He looked Mexican to Flynn. But he wore Wranglers and fancy Luchese boots, and a big UT belt buckle. Gus dressed like somebody who desperately wanted to prove he was an Anglo.
"Three generations we been in the valley, Rutt," said Gus. "To be Pocho, you have to be a Mexican who denies his roots. My roots are USA, buddy! I'm a goddamn American!"
"Bullshit, with a last name like 'Blanco', you're a damned Mexican!" crowed Rutt. But he slapped Gus on the shoulder; Rutt was the kind to dub people with cruel nicknames without realizing how cruel he was being. "You're Pocho and that's final. Who's next?"
"Me, I guess," said the heavyset guy.
"Martin Tubbs," said Rutt, sizing the man up. "The man from Arizona. God, I hate Arizonans. You bitches think you know everything there is to know about the Mexican Problem." Flynn could hear the capital letters.
"Don't get all pissy because you Texans don't know how to pass laws that make sense," said Tubbs cockily. This was the wrong tack to take with Rutt, Flynn knew. Rutt would get his back up for any slight to his beloved Texas.
"Your dumbass illegal alien laws haven't done a whole hell of a lot to fix anything, you smart-mouth motherfucker," said Rutt, staring hard at Tubbs. "And don't think for one damned second that I would have invited you here, except you used to fly for the Forest Service."
"Well, don't think for one damned second that I would have come, except for that I get a chance to shoot at some Mexicans," replied Tubbs, adjusting his hat and sipping his beer.
"Goddamn Arizonans," muttered Rutt darkly. "I guess I better call you 'Phoenix', on account of that big town you got. Also, it's supposed to be some kind of bird, so it fits."
"A bird that goes down in flames," said the guy wearing the aviator sunglasses.
"Ooh, we got a reader," hooted Rutt. "Shit, Slate, none of these damned birds better go down in flames. I don't know how I'd go about fixing 'em. Besides, the fellow who sold 'em to me told me it would take some serious sustained fire from small arms to even put a dent in these babies, so there shouldn't ought to be anything that goes wrong. When the Border Patrol finds them bodies in the desert, shot up with ammunition that anybody could have, they'll figure it was just another drug gang shootout; there won't be anything to point to us."
"There's cameras all over the border," argued Slate.
"They don't have thermal," Flynn said. "But they might see the angle of muzzle flashes."
"See, that's why we want a military man in the crew," said Rutt. "All right, no problem; we'll just have to shoot from high up. If we're high enough the cameras shouldn't pick us up, right?"
"Sure," said Flynn.
"All right. Slate, we got to get you a good call sign." Rutt stroked his mustache. "I think I'll call you 'High Dollar'. It cost almost as much to bring you in from Miami as it cost to get Flynn."
"I want to know what I'm getting paid," Ernest inserted.
"A whole bunch of beer," said Rutt. Everybody except Slate laughed. Flynn looked at the man, and Slate looked back. Slate was dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, and he looked very relaxed – much more relaxed than everybody else. Flynn judged that this wasn't the first shady operation Slate had been involved in. Smuggling in the Keys? Flying drug pickups? Flynn didn't know, but he figured that Slate would probably be a pretty good pilot in a fix.
"And that brings us to my boy Flynn," said Rutt. "Hey, how's the leg?"
Flynn shrugged. "It's good today." He had a pin in his right ankle from the crash in Iraq. It hurt sometimes, but mostly during rainstorms, which were rare. Flynn would never again run the hurdles, or even run at all, save for a hobble, but he could walk around just fine. But the injury qualified him for military disability, and for that he was grateful. Strangely, his messed-up head got him nothing.
"All right, I'm calling you 'Hopscotch'," grinned Rutt. Flynn was relieved. It could have been worse.
"So what's your call sign?" asked Flynn. "Do we get to pick your tag?"
"Hell, no," replied Rutt. "It's my party, and anyway I got the perfect name picked out already. I'm the Chickenhawk, 'cause I swoop in out of the clear blue yonder."
Rutt messed with some of his remotes and brought up a digital map of the area on the largest TV. It clearly showed the river, the White House and the Interstate on it. "Okay, everybody," he said, "find the display on your console that reads 'TRACK 1' and toggle it to 'Enable'."
Everybody did as they were told. A red blip appeared on the map next to the White House. Rutt stood up and pointed to it with the putter he was using as a swagger stick.
"That's us," he said. "We can track everybody with this thing. And that's good, because we're going to start with a little recon. That means we're all going to pick different areas of the desert and see what we can find. If we find something interesting, we'll all converge. And that's when the fun begins." There was a general chuckle from the room.
"It's go time!" exclaimed Rutt. "Press 'START SEQUENCE' and let's get aloft!"
Flynn started his Vigilant. His cameras lit up, fore and aft. While his rotors were coming to speed, Flynn practiced orienting the cameras, toggling between visual and nightscope and thermal modes, and learning the other features of the drone. Its controls were simple and intuitive, and the console's displays let him grasp the status of the drone instantly. Flynn had to admit it was a slick toy he had been given.
The joysticks were a little unfamiliar in place of a helm. Flynn ramped up his speed and the drone shot upwards too fast; it almost went into stall. He eased it back down to the ground where it teetered on its spindly legs.
"Easy there, Hopscotch," purred Slate. Flynn looked over at Slate's display and saw he was already a hundred feet in the air, his forward camera looking at Flynn's Vigilant on the ground.
"One second," said Flynn. He gave the drone a little more gas – gently this time – and his Vigilant dusted off neatly. He retracted the landing gear and climbed at an angle to try and get some height on High Dollar. High Dollar danced away, and soon the two drones were swooping around the White House on a merry chase.
"You hear that?" said Rutt happily. Flynn listened; he couldn't hear anything.
"That's the sound of stealthed rotors," said Rutt. "Hopscotch and High Dollar just flew right over our heads. Those Coyotes aren't going to know what hit them."
The rest of the fleet got the hang of their controls, more or less, and then Rutt assigned them all coordinates for a recon sweep. Flynn's path took him almost directly across the Rio Grande and deep into Mexican airspace. The sun had already set by the time Hopscotch crossed the border going one hundred and twenty miles an hour on a south by south-east heading. The sound it made was nothing more than a soft buzz. The matte-black dragonfly shape darted over the Mexican countryside, and with only a thin sliver of a moon, the shadow that trailed it was almost nothing at all.
The vigilantes spent several hours on patrol. It was getting close to midnight when Flynn saw something. He had the camera on thermal, and he saw a hot line drawn across the earth. He zoomed in closer, and the line broke up into a dozen splotches of color.
"I got something," he called out. "Twelve people moving in single file down a ravine."
"Let's have a look," said Rutt, coming to stand behind Flynn's shoulder. Flynn showed him what he had, and Rutt nodded.
"Bring it in a little closer," he said. "Let's find out how quiet these bad boys are. Hopscotch, get within, say, two hundred yards."
Flynn nodded and eased the drone towards the line of people. The leader came up out of the ditch they had been moving down and stopped; the next two people gathered with him. They didn't seem to be acting like they knew the drone was there.
"What are they doing?" asked Rutt. Flynn looked at the way the two followers clustered around the leader – to the sides, but also behind.
"They're reading a map," he said. "I'm going to visual."
Indeed, the leader was studying an unfolded chart, and one of the people behind him was shining a flashlight on it. The light reflected back, and with the camera on maximum zoom, Flynn could see all their faces clearly.
Flynn's heart skipped a beat. The leader and one of his followers looked like perfectly ordinary Hispanic men. But the third person was a woman. A beautiful woman.
It was her. The woman from Flynn's dreams. Flynn's mouth went completely dry.
IT WAS HER.
**
"Explain," demanded Ometron.
"Explain what?" asked Cantor.
"Are you attempting to invoke prescience or some form of extra-sensory perception to explain how Flynn could dream of a person he would later encounter? The existence of these phenomena has been adequately disproved."
"I'm not attempting to explain anything," said Cantor.
"Empty narratives provide no reason to extend your life," said Ometron. "Prepare for your execution."
"It's not an empty narrative just because everything isn't explained all at once," said Cantor hastily. "Remember, my humanity somewhat hampers my ability to explain anything on a level that you would find useful."
"I suspect your modesty to be another ploy, but you are nevertheless correct," said Ometron. "Provide the best explanation you can and that will have to suffice."
"You're missing the point," objected Cantor. "How he has dreamed her is not of central importance to this narrative. Far more important is that her sudden appearance changes Flynn's purpose."
"I should think that would be obvious," said Ometron scornfully. "Very well, describe what happens next, although I reserve the right to revisit the credulity question at a later date."
"At a later date?" asked Cantor. "Does that mean tomorrow?"
"These extensions grow tiresome," said Ometron. "However, I find I wish to know more. You will have one more day, Cantor. But by the end of the day, a greater understanding of this situation, and how it pertains to your continued existence, must be provided."
"To the degree it is possible, I shall oblige," said Cantor, and continued onwards.
