Geronimo’s Penultimate Trip
Geronimo Horatio Wilder sat on a wooden bench, fingering a holdout pistol in his pocket. Like the ones gamblers used in the wild west, a century before he was born. Like it, but not quite. Rather than gunpowder to propel its deadly charge, its sterile casing contained a real charge: a bundle of caged electrons straining to deliver a single 50-watt laser blast. It was appropriate for his wild-west birth-name bestowed by his whimsical parents. An outlaw. A geriatric outlaw....