n2020  Check-in [142e4f3303]

Modified n2020.txt from [80f7724dbc] to [06a276b20b].

  1053   1053   
  1054   1054   "Good.  Let's finish the deal.  Then, get in touch some time if you think you might want to do this kind of work, too.  We're getting a lot of business, and could use the help.  You're pretty enough to get the upsells, easy."
  1055   1055   
  1056   1056   "I'll keep that in mind."
  1057   1057   
  1058   1058   Carmen grabbed the drawstring bag.  "Here's what you're buying."
  1059   1059   
         1060  +---
         1061  +
         1062  +At home, Alley found a box of disposable nitrile gloves, and wore a pair when she looked more closely at the handgun frames she bought.  After going over them for a few minutes, she put them back in the drawstring bag.  She pulled out the extending baton next, and stood in the middle of her kitchen so she would not accidentally break anything.
         1063  +
         1064  +She looked it over and decided she would exercise extra caution.  She thought she was sure which end was where the extending happened, but never having handled one before she carefully held it so that neither end pointed at something she thought of as particularly vulnerable to much harm.  She pointed the business end diagonally toward the floor to her left, using both hands to hold it in front of her, and the other end pointed toward the ceiling to her right.
         1065  +
         1066  +Alley pressed on both contact points, as Carmen had instructed her.  A dull snap sounded, and the device nearly jumped out of her hand.  It had definitely gone in an instant from something the size of a whiteboard marker to a stiff metal baton about two thirds of a meter long.  She held it up and looked at the seams between telescoping sections, then lightly whacked the end on the carpet just past the edge of the kitchen floor.  It felt solid.
         1067  +
         1068  +She held down what Carmen called the second button, and she set hte head of the baton against the carpeted floor.  She pressed down on the handle of the baton, and found that if she pressed hard -- but not so hard that she had to throw her weight behind it -- the baton would smoothly collapse into the handle again.  Each telescopic section clicked into place, one after another.
         1069  +
         1070  +The next time she tried it, she held the baton down at her side, the business end pointed at a relaxed angle at the floor.  Holding it comfortably, she found it easier to press the two switches simultaneously, and her grip felt more secure so that the baton didn't feel like it would jump out of her hand.
         1071  +
         1072  +With no practice involving a weapon like this in her martial arts classes years ago, she was not sure she could use it effectively.  She hoped she could, if the need ever arose.  /* Maybe this could be replaced at some point by dialog, in a conversation between her and someone else. */
         1073  +
         1074  +She closed it up after extending it a few times, and swinging it back and forth a bit to get a feel for the weight.  She tucked the collapse cylinder into her back pocket, similarly to how Carmen had carried it.  She remembered what Carmen said about a hole in a pants pocket, but decided to worry about that idea later.
         1075  +
         1076  +She had no ideas about anyone else she could get to be backup for her next transaction, so that got sent to the back burner as well.  /* maybe, instead, say: put off for later */
         1077  +
         1078  +Alley dug through boxes in her closet and found her old lightweight pair of motorcycle gloves with reinforcements on their backs, then cheked to make sure she could still operate her baton and pepper spray.
         1079  +
         1080  +The prioritizer told her "It is getting close to time for you to leave for your next meeting."
         1081  +
         1082  +She checked the time and realized she was hungry.  She grabbed everything she needed, and grabbed a hat to help obscure her appearance a bit for surveillance cameras.  She bought fries and a shake at a drive through on the way, and when she finished the fries she donned her gloves at a stoplight, remembering Carmen once more and how the redhead wore gloves during the entire meeting.
         1083  +
  1060   1084   /*
  1061   1085   
  1062   1086   At some point, she should set up a meeting for an exchange in a private conference room at a co-working space.  Someone should recognize her and ask whether she's meeting a client, to which she replies vaguely in a positively interpretable fashion without literally confirming that assumption with her words.
  1063   1087   
  1064   1088   I wanted the person who greets her to say something that raises some factoid of her life, but I'm not sure any longer what I had in mind.  Did it have anything to do with getting out of Dalton's shadow?
  1065   1089   
  1066   1090   Does the person she's meeting recognize her connection to Dalton?