shopkeeper

There have been three general theories put forward to explain
the phenomenon of the wandering shops or, as they are
generically known, _tabernae vagantes._
The first postulates that many thousands of years ago there
evolved somewhere in the multiverse a race whose single talent
was to buy cheap and sell dear. Soon they controlled a vast
galactic empire or, as they put it, Emporium, and the more
advanced members of the species found a way to equip their very
shops with unique propulsion units that could break the dark
walls of space itself and open up vast new markets. And long
after the worlds of the Emporium perished in the heat death of
their particular universe, after one last defiant fire sale,
the wandering starshops still ply their trade, eating their way
through the pages of spacetime like a worm through a three-
volume novel.
The second is that they are the creation of a sympathetic Fate,
charged with the role of supplying exactly the right thing
at the right time.
The third is that they are simply a very clever way of getting
around the various Sunday Closing acts.
All these theories, diverse as they are, have two things in
common. They explain the observed facts, and they are
completely and utterly wrong.
[ The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett ]

Generated by nhtohtml 2.0.0 from NetHack-5.0.0_Released 16ff591. Author: Robert Sim