There's no threat behind his words. He's simply describing the objective state of things.

Out of the corner of your eye, on one of the little rounded tables, you notice someone's left an old sausage, casing black and blistered, pool of grease congealing around it.

The cost of a new set of tyres.

Or a compact pistol.

Knowledge, exactly what you're lacking just now.

THE PARTY GIVES PRECISELY ACCORDING TO THE PEOPLE'S NEEDS AND NOT ONE IOTA MORE.

A little shiver runs down your spine and gathers in the small of your back.

He needs time. And space.

He pruned the conversation forcefully, artificially. There is more.

Back in Foto 24, your would-be double gurgles his assent.

Making inroads with his persona. Competent in-theatre, at least for this period of play.

He needed you.

Velodisk! A modern laser-hybrid format, played using a heated stylus unit. Astounding sonic fidelity. Cause of thousands of home fires.

A consecrated ground of tiny, crooked monuments.

All across the city of Petre there is silence. People peer out fearfully from the slivers between curtains.

A fresh injection of fear, primal grade.

SUCH INSULT! THE DEPRESSED REACTIONARY IS MISTAKING YOU FOR YOUR DIRECT OPPOSITE, YOUR SWORN ENEMY.

Oddly specific.

Now speaking proudly of the stock he earlier disparaged.

In his baroque hierarchy of shame, 'cool' falls just under 'replayer', the cardinal sin.

In his baroque hierarchy of shame, being 'cool' falls just under being a 'replayer', whatever that is.

The techno-fascist secret police of La Luz -- dark subconscious of the state, specialising in old school, ugly methods.

Your natural enemies. The ones who took you all apart five years ago. Hackles rise.

Overplaying his persona, classic misstep. Baby's first time in-theatre.

You see him now -- eyes wide, reward circuit shorted out by the cut and thrust of commerce.

Sock merchant for the Im-Ex Bureau. One of the Opera's most battle-tested covers.

The Guardia Municipal. Street cops.

OBSESSION WITH FOREIGN IMPORTS. SUFFERERS OF SO-CALLED 'LUZIAN MANIA' WILL CONSULT THE WALL.

ANOTHER VICTORY FOR OUR GREAT AND ANONYMOUS CENSORS.

Natural blink reflexes suppressed, the two children you spoke to earlier stare at the TV in the adjacent stall.

The signal blockers: wiry battlements like the skeletons of titanic insects face out across the strait on Portofiro's most desolate shore, snagging Luzian radiowaves as they enter.

NOTHING THE FIRM, LOVING HAND OF A RE-EDUCATION CENTRE CAN'T FIX.

Natural blink reflexes suppressed, the two children stare at the TV in the adjacent stall.

Incapable of competing with Luzian media on the most basic neurological level.

Fuck this. You want blood. Dopamine. Wolves.

This merchandise isn't 'smuggled' at all -- they're government-sanctioned from the Luzian Cultural Ministry.

INSIDIOUS IMPERIALISM. TODAY, THE SOFT POWER -- TOMORROW, THE HARD.

He says it to everyone.

La Luz. Once a powerful empire, now reconstituted as a modern techno-fascist state, the rising military and cultural power of the day.

The most important history is the one that never makes it into the books, but defines how those books are written -- or aren't.

EXPORT-ONLY PROPAGANDA. IMAGINE WHAT THEY RESERVE FOR DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION.

It's less an opinion, more a criminal sentence.

Which raises an intimidating question...

The vendor sighs and seems to deflate ever so slightly before your eyes.

Tarred, somewhat inevitably you feel, with the replayer brush.

Nostrils flare like hairy little cannons.

Behold! The paladin who stands before Absurdity and declares 'Well, technically...'

Did he say... red?

That's the brand slogan.

A technological muscle flex. Reproduction and erasure just millimetres away in space, milliseconds in time.

Checks