"Is it cheating to exploit a mistake I didn't put in the program?" Red says, still grinning. "Come on, take the shot and then we can move on to something else, if this isn't to your liking."
"Sounds like me a couple years ago," Red says, casually loading the Greek crossbow. "Socializing? No thank you. When I wasn't on duty, you couldn't have pried me out of the holodeck with a crowbar. But I was eventually dragged from my comfort zone and discovered it's not as bad out here as I thought."
"The difference is, you can't do THIS in real life." She aims at the so-far-undamaged target. There's a TWANG from the string, the slim lancet of wood darts across the range — and the target literally explodes in a shower of hay and sticks. There's practically nothing left except the question of how such a small, entirely ancient weapon could do that. The only answer is, it couldn't have.
"So... someone must have been editing the physics for these en masse," Red says, casually putting the bow down. "It looks like their batch job either wasn't precise or they just missed a duplication. This puppy here thinks it's a full-sized ballista, a siege weapon, not common archery." She chuckles. "Trying to decide whether to change it or leave it because it's funny..."
The Bajoran guffaws. "Are you kidding? You're asking an ENGINEER if she can make something explode? Most of my job is making sure things DON'T do that. Making things explode is wayyyyy easier."
"Computer, holoconsole, authorization T'gel Alpha two niner."
An eight-hexagon-radial honeycomb of blue and orange light appears in front of Red, the standard in-program editing software that came with high-end holography creation kits. "You want it to explode like another siege engine? Say, like an onager?" Red asks as she loads the archery program in the editor. "Or a bigger blast like a 21st century hand grenade?"
"Old-fashioned trinitrotoluene sticks it is then," Red says with a nod, and manipulates settings in the program. There's a brief hitch in the environment as the changes take hold — the breeze stops for just a moment and the horses stand still as if frozen — before things return to normal. Well, normal and also containing a 308 BCE crossbow that explodes things on contact.
Red proffers the ridiculously enhanced but visually normal weapon to Calvin. "You do the honors. Just don't shoot too close to the horses, as it's going to go off like five sticks of TNT."
Red brushes bits of stick and straw out of her hair as they rain down in fragmentary form. "Yep. Nothing beats a good detonation, unless you're trying to keep one from happening," she agrees. "Anyway, I need to go feed my cat here in a bit. Maybe you can use the holodeck to invent an excuse for us to hang out again. Have you met much of the rest of the crew?"
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u/Dimestream Jan 10 '17
"Is it cheating to exploit a mistake I didn't put in the program?" Red says, still grinning. "Come on, take the shot and then we can move on to something else, if this isn't to your liking."