Hand Shandy

Beefheart sat in stunned silence for a moment, jaw gaping, searching for a suitable opener. "- ", he began, then stopped. "Uh...", he ventured. "OK", shrugged the doppelganger. "We'll start. We have assumed this form partly to conceal our true nature from you, but also partly to get your attention. We brought you here for a reason and we went to great lengths to make sure no one else would know where you were so we'd have enough time to tell you what you need to know before we send you back." He smirked at Beefheart and took a long drag from his cocktail. "Back? ...from the dead...?" slurped Beefheart through his own drink. His gaze drifted toward the ocean and the two naked giggling figures splashing in the surf. "But maybe I like being dead...." His train of thought was rudely disrupted by being slapped hard across the face. Head swimming, he dragged his attention back to the sight of his own face glaring angri...

In these enlightened times, most right thinking persons (as opposed to " Right" thinking") were against the killing of sentient or even semi-sentient beings for pleasure. There were, of course, a few exceptions and the hunters were quite vociferous in their opposition to laws banning the killing of other life forms solely for personal gratification. Politicians, lawyers and activists wrangled for centuries until at last a solution was arrived at which all concerned finally - however grudgingingly - agreed to. The rationale was this: If the hunters want to hunt, let them - but let them hunt each other. There were a few token voices of dissent but secretly even the hunters were overjoyed. At last, they would get to waste someone with a gun and no one would call a bad on them. And so it began, the great Hunting Forest Reserve planets of Ursa Major. The rules were simple: 1. To avoid anyone gaining a tactical advantage, all hunters were to carry biometrically tagged weapons ...