Anyway, I was in Sainsburys, with Moyers, Moyers is my buddy, he used to be a Phobius cartel hitman until I managed to deprogram him using some unorthodox techniques I learnt from a decommissioned AI in Calcutta. We were at the pharmacy counter, I needed more Dramamine. The girl behind the counter was regarding me with suspicion. I was saying:

"No, look, I need sleeping pills, but not herbal sleeping pills."

She was saying:

"We can't sell sleeping pills to anyone under sixteen."

"I'm like, twenty one man, I showed you my ID, I'm twenty one and I can't sleep unless I have non herbal sleeping pills."

"I can't sell sleeping pills if I think they're going to be used recreationally."

"Well I'm telling you they're not going to be used recreationally."

She stared at me, intelligence indicated that pharmacists had become a neutral party as of two weeks ago, only a few isolated cells were continuing operations. So why wouldn't this woman sell me any Dramamine?

"Look, alright, forget it, never mind. Which of your products has the largest amount of Dextromethorphan, cost wise?"

"What?"

"Like what product is the most Dextromethorphan dense? Like what's the best value for money?"

"I'm not going to answer that."

"But you're a pharmacist, this is your area, this is what you know."

"I'll call security."

"Intelligence indicates that security-pharma negotiations broke down four weeks ago when ambassadors from both sides went missing along with the city of Copenhagen. You wouldn't call one over here."

"I will."

She reached for the phone.

"He won't come, you're bluffing, this is a bluff, what about Diphenhydramine? Do any of your sleeping pills contain Diphenhydramine? I can't sleep and I need these chemicals."

Moyers started pulling me away by the collar but I shrugged out of his grip and lunged back towards the counter. The girl began to dial.

"No, listen, come on, I can't sleep and I have a cough, you're holding out on me, you fucking pharmacists, do you know what you're doing? You want to stay neutral? You won't be able to stay neutral with an attitude like this."

"Pharmacists have been hostile since this morning." Moyers said as he pushed me away from the snarling girl behind the counter. I tried to turn to face him but he had me in an arm lock.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"They've been hostile towards our faction since this morning, they were neutral long enough to finish work on their Japanese ad campaign."

"What? What the fuck?" I allowed myself to be pushed away from the counter, Moyers is a pretty big guy. "Why did no-one tell me? What ad campaign?"

"The Japanese had no word for depression, pharma had to create one to market their anti depressives."

We walked past an array of hi-tech toothbrushes. They looked like caterpillars from Mars.

"Man, that's horrible."-

"Apparently they're still struggling, there's a pretty big social stigma around mental illness over there."

"Man yeah, I heard that. It must be hard. Oh wait, wait dude," I broke out of Moyers' arm lock and walked over to one of the shelves. "I need toothpaste."

Moyers shrugged. "Alright, but we're in pharma territory, this entire aisle is dangerous."

I held up two boxes.

"Which toothpaste should I be buying? This one says tartar control, but this one says it has cavity protection."

"Dunno mate."

Moyers and I say "mate" ironically because we think it's hilarious.

"Serious dude, this cavity protection one is slightly more expensive, but only like twenty pence. I mean how much is that per tooth brushing session?"

"Uh."

I check the box.

"It doesn't say. Doesn't tartar cause cavities? Maybe I should get tartar control, then it's cavity control as well."

"I thought plaque caused cavities."

"Doesn't plaque make tartar which makes cavities? So I should get plaque control?"

"There isn't any plaque control."

The girl at the pharmacy counter was scowling at me as she spoke on the phone. I ignored her.

"Oh, hey, this one says it's twenty four hour protection."

As I went to grab the twenty four hour protection box I dropped the tartar control box, and as I went to pick it up I accidentally stood on it. The cap exploded off the tube of toothpaste with a sharp bang. The pharmacist pulled an uzi out of her jacket and sprayed it vaguely at me and Moyers. We ducked behind some floss.

"Look what you did." Moyers said as he looked through his backpack. There was a security guard writhing on the floor in front of me. He was clutching a dark blue patch on the stomach of his security guard jumper. I realised the toothpaste lid had gone straight through his gut.

"Fuck, fuck! We gotta get out of here, we gotta get our shit to the fucking checkout." I gestured to our trolley as Moyers pulled a Glock out of his bag. He tucked an oversized clip into it and turned on its ultrasonic aiming module.

"Alright," he said, waving the Glock over the top of the floss display, the aiming module made a radar like clicking which increased and decreased in frequency with the distance of objects. He fired absent mindedly a couple of times.

I ran for the trolley as the pharmacist unloaded another couple of rounds at me. They hit some novelty bubblebaths which began to foam. I grabbed the trolley, shoved it around the corner and followed it in a low crouch. Moyers followed, barking another couple of bullets at the pharmacist.

"PRICKS." She screamed.

"We better get to the checkout before security gets here." Moyers said, ramming a new clip into the Glock. We began to run, me pushing the trolley.

"Hey Moyers, what's the range on your ultrasonics?"

"About six meters, I think. I think reliably six meters."

"That's really good,"

"Yeah, heavy power requirements though, pulls two amps during transmit."

"At what voltage?"

"Six."

"Shit, seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Shit."

I could see the checkout now and man, the checkout girl was hot. I'm not kidding. I mean, this chick had pale green eyes that basically picked me up and thew me into the frozen produce. No joke, I had to pop my shoulder back into the socket and pull an ice cold baby carrot out of my hair after she looked at me.

"Hey," I said. "We'd like to checkout these items?" I gestured at the trolley in a way I hoped was expansive. She didn't say anything. I started talking loudly to Moyers.

"So anyway, I've been having some problems writing my books in Emacs."

"Probably aren't meant to write books in Emacs."

Emacs is a text editor that is over twenty years old. It is not designed for writing books.

"It's this word wrap wrap thing," I looked over, the girl was running my tomato juice through the barcode scanner, she didn't look up. "The word wrap, it's just not that suited to writing a book," still not looking at me, "It either hard wraps, which adds line breaks so the file is awkward to read on a display with a different width, or it does nothing, there's no option to soft wrap."

Soft wrap has been an option available in every text editor released within the past ten years.

"Maybe don't write it in Emacs then?"

"I mean I got this patch that was meant to fix it, but there's some problem somewhere now, it just hard wraps everything to eighty columns wide, regardless of window size."

"Sounds tough."

"It really is."

The girl finally looked at me.

"Do you want a receipt?"

"Yeah, yeah sure, hit me up."

She handed me the receipt and went on scanning the next guy's stuff. We went to leave the store as the chirps of the scanning machines were drowned out by the heavy footfalls of the armed response team that was locking the place down. I slapped my forehead, I mean I literally slapped my forehead and said:

"Dude, I forgot the toothpaste."  ¶ 2:14 AM 0 Comments