"A Man With A Gun"

Here's another little excerpt from B3 (aka The Boomer Sisters In The City) - it's the "man with a gun" that Michelle suggested...

The familiar figure of Mr. Ott now appeared. He was standing at a podium, surrounded by reporters and microphones. In the background was a brick wall, covered with a strikingly beautiful painting of a rural landscape.

"Graffiti is a crime, and it has gone on long enough. I am here today to announce the deployment of the Urban Graffiti Law Enforcement bureau's newest tool in the war on vandalism. This breakthrough technology is 100% guaranteed to wipe out every last piece of graffiti in the entire city. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Wiper 2000."

Mr. Ott held up a disk-shaped object a little larger than a dinner plate, but several inches thicker. It reminded BJ of the automatic vacuum cleaner she saw in a store once. The device was gray, of course, and had strange-looking wheels on the bottom.

"The Wiper 2000 is a self-propelled, autonomous robot, with advanced optics and sensor technology." He set it down on the ground, and it began to move around. "It carries a full gallon of paint, which it applies using several nozzles located on the underside. This device will roam through the city, and when it detects graffiti, like the disgusting image on the wall behind me, it will wipe it out."

The Wiper headed straight towards the painting of the landscape. Without pausing, it rotated onto its side and began to climb the wall. Jekka gasped. As the device moved along the vertical surface, it left behind a trail of white paint.

"Oh, no! It's going to destroy that whole…" BJ couldn't complete the sentence.

Quickly and efficiently, the Wiper 2000 moved from one end of the landscape to the other, covering it with paint one strip at a time. In less than a minute, all that remained was a blank white wall.

"As you can see," Mr. Ott continued, "The Wiper 2000 is an efficient tool for erasing offensive markings and replacing them with clean, respectable white space. The future of graffiti eradication is here, today."

With that, Mr. Ott stepped aside. A door in the building behind him opened up, and a stream of little circular robots came pouring out. The assembled reporters scrambled to get out of the way.

"No!" Jekka shouted at the TV. "They can't! We've got to stop them. They'll… they'll… I don't know, but we've got to do something…" She pounded her fists on the couch.