{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/712",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 712,
    "subject": "Ballistic Tables",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-02T02:09:05+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-02T02:09:05+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0012-0052@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-02T02:09:05+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Ballistic Tables",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "My dear mantis, re your NRA-type questions about the ballistics table and\nMarsch not needing it:\n\nYes, he is a good shot. Once he makes adjustments--as Dr. Deadeye notes, in\ntalking about the alien sun, \"the sun-shimmer reinfor[ces] the deceptive\nand fantastic quality extension has in the green landscape under this black\nsky.\" \n\nThis is why, when he shoots at the \"tire-tiger\" (actually VRT's\n'myopi-ized' abo catgirl), his bullet goes high, but then  \"everything\nsnapped back into perspective; my 'scrub trees' were bushes, and the\ndistance at which I had thought at least 250 yards was less than a third of\nthat.\"\n\nVictor, being native, probably wouldn't need to make the same\nadjustments--provided he'd just keep his eyes open.\n\nIn other words the tables are devised to help Marsch draw a bead through\nalien ether on dinner a deux for him and his little would-be exo-catamite.\n\nBUT there is this additional mystery. Marsch/VRT brings the book with the\nflyleaf-scrawled ballistics tables--A FIELD GUIDE TO THE ANIMALS OF SAINTE\nANNE-- with him to Sainte Croix, despite the still prohibitively high cost\nof doing so (the cost is specifically mentioned). Why? If anybody is *not*\ngoing to need a guidebook about Annese fauna, it's Victor--so why does he\nhave it and why does he bring it? To make him appear more genuinely\nnon-familiar with the animals of his world and help him pass as relocated\nTerran Dr. JV Marsch? Dunno.\n\nAlso no closer to solving the bronzed viscera-guts-for-tots puzzle, but\nstill thinking...\n\nRobert Borski  "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}