Let's Make a Deal (Bob and Nikki Book 11), стр. 79
“Better, thanks. Yourself?”
“Got a little time for my mind to catch up with everything that’s going on. Seems to have helped.”
“You’re not going to ask?”
“If you wanted me to know, I would know already. If you decide there’s something I can do for you, just ask.”
“Thanks, Dad. That couldn’t be easy for you.”
“Nope, but it feels like the right thing to do. You still sure you don’t want to meet the Emperor today?”
“Thanks, but no, thanks. Sounds like a bunch of fuss for not much.”
“I’d have to say I agree, but maybe we can quit having to fight off a Squirrel expedition every few days. That’s worth all the fuss, to me.”
“Why? We haven’t had any trouble defeating them yet, have we?”
“No, but sooner or later, we’re going to screw up, and do them more damage than the Emperor can ignore. Then the war starts. None of us want that.”
“You mean what you’re worried about isn’t what’s happening now, but the chance of a war, in the future?”
“It’s a little unhandy, having to stay around this system to keep the Squirrels from bothering Morning Flower and the Starfeet, but mostly, yeah, I’m worried about a war starting. Your Mother’s people aren’t ready for that, at all, and they would get drawn in, almost certainly.”
“You don’t think that the fleet we have can handle the Squirrels?”
“It sure seems like we could, but even if we did, what then? That leaves us trying to run the Empire of Oak as a puppet state. That just isn’t going to go well, no matter how careful we are. All around, it’s just easier to make peace with the Empire as it exists, rather than trying to change things.”
“How do you know so much about this stuff, Dad? I thought you used to just fix things.”
“I read a lot. Just because I had a simple job, doesn’t mean I didn’t think about complicated things. Thinking is a cheap way to relax. You don’t have to buy any special equipment, or go to a special place. Just sip a beer, and sit back.”
“How does that help you relax?”
“You can think about something besides the things you’ve been fighting in the real world. Gives you a break from your everyday problems. It works for me, your mileage may vary.”
“Wait, I’ve heard people say that, since I came aboard, but I still don’t quite understand what it means.”
“I could be a butt, and make you look it up in the culture pack.”
“I already looked, and it didn’t help.”
“Okay, I’ll see if I can explain it to you. Do you understand what a car is?”
“Not really. Some kind of machine your people use to move around, I think.”
“That’s right, as far as it goes. The country I come from is spread out. That makes it necessary to have a car to get around. Some people get very attached to their cars, because they spend so much time in them. We’re kind of backward, and don’t have power cores yet. The fuel we use to power cars is called gasoline. It’s made from crude oil, that we pump out of the ground. Back when I was a kid, there were a bunch of countries who didn’t have a lot going for them, other than pumping a lot of oil. They decided they wanted to raise the price, and so the price of gasoline went up. The government wanted to look like they were doing something about it, without actually having to go to a lot of trouble, so they decided to put stickers on all the new cars, telling how far each car could be expected to go, on a gallon of gasoline. Of course, their testing procedure wasn’t all that realistic, and they came up with numbers that were higher than you could expect to get in the real world. Rather than admit their mistake, they just started putting a disclaimer on the sticker that said, ‘Your mileage may vary’. Nobody was fooled, and it got to be a joke, so that whenever someone said something they weren’t sure of, they would add ‘your mileage may vary’ to the end of it. That catch you up?”
“That’s way clearer than the culture pack. You should write them a new article, instead of that mess they have now.”
“I was there when it happened, it makes it easier for me to know what the important parts are.”
“I guess so. Can I come to you, if I have more questions?”
“Of course you can. You do understand there may be times I need to put you off, until I finish something for the ship, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah. That kinda comes with you being the Commodore.”
“Funny, I don’t feel like a pet.”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry. I just fixed one deep dive into the culture pack, and here we go again. Commodore used to be a computer company. One of their early models was called the Pet.”
“Okay, but why would they call it that?”
“People having computers in their homes was a new thing, and they wanted to make it seem like a friendly thing, that people could get used to, and learn to like, instead of something new, and scary.”
“Did it work?”
“Not so much with the Pet, but a few years later they brought out one of the most popular computers of the time, the Commodore 64.”
“Why was it popular?”
“It was good for playing games, as well as serious work, and it was easy to program. For the time, it was fairly cheap, too.”
“Thanks