I hope I did not alarm you unduly with my little display last night. I get into character sometimes, find it hard to know when I’m causing distress. … - Iain Banks

Very quick deaths, even given that they would have been wired in and speeded up, if I may just leap in front of any nascent and entirely vicarious moral qualms you may be about to suffer from, tiny human. Military personnel, babe; put themselves in harm’s way when they signed up. Just that the poor fuckers didn’t know it was my harm they were putting themselves in the way of. That’s war, doll; fairness comes excluded.

But are we within likelihood? Batra asked. Are we even still within the realm of anything other than paranoid lunacy?

People would swallow anything, just anything at all. Apparently some people found this dismaying. He thought it was a gift, the most wonderful opportunity to take advantage of the weak-minded.