The kind of woman who could pleasantly instruct you to fuck off, dear, and you immediately would because you’d just hate to disappoint her. - Neal Stephenson

Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bomc,' I said. 'We have a protractor.'
Okay, I'll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.

We did not expect to have a backup system for the rest of the universe. We can rely upon it to be cold most of the time.

Having caught Phil's eye, Sophia panned her gaze across the entire scene, asking him to take it all in. Reminding him that this wasn't Princeton. This was Ameristan. Facebooked to the molecular level.
“Professor Long,” she muttered, “the Red Card.” It was a reference to...a wallet card for people to keep in front of them during conversations like this one. One side of the card was solid red, with no words or images, and was meant to be displayed outward as a nonverbal signal that you disagreed and that you weren't going to be drawn into a fake argument.
The other side, facing the user, was a list of little reminders as to what was really going on:
1. Speech is aggression
2. Every utterance has a winner and a loser
3. Curiosity is feigned
4. Lying is performative
5. Stupidity is power