---
title: Magic Paint Gun Cartridges
date: 2021-05-31
tags:
 - unstagnation
 - literature
---
*Pew pew!*

Splotches of colour cover the previously white wall until a coherent picture forms.

<!-- excerpt -->

"Success!" Minestro steps back from his magic paint gun to admire his freshly painted Nyan Cat. Illuminated by harsh fluorescent lighting, to either side of the pixel art cat and stretching for many metres are recreations of other memes. To the right of the paint gun lies a stack of papers whose contents have already been scanned and blasted on the walls.

Minestro takes the last picture to the left of the paint gun mounted on his table and feeds it into a scanner sitting beside it. "Last one and that'll be it for the day."

As soon as the scanner spits the picture back out at him, the gun beeps angrily. Reading the text with a frown, Minestro curses the fallacy of printers of any kind still being utterly useless even with modern technology and magic.

OUT OF INK.

The regret of choosing this model of magic paint gun has more than caught up to him already. Supposedly able to infinitely use a single cartridge, it had turned out that the cartridge would empty as soon as the paint gun stopped drawing from it.

Minestro sighs. The paint gun has analysed the picture and provided him with a colour map, but it can't tell him how many cartridges he needs to buy — it just gives an "recommended estimate" of a hundred cartridges of each colour. Since the printer moves from left to right, top to bottom like a book, he'll need to calculate that number himself if he doesn't want to be scammed by Big Printer.

Useless machine.

Since some colours are made from a mix of other colours, Minestro reasons, he can use just one cartridge if a colour before or after also uses the same base colour. Luckily, it's not terribly difficult, and he's able to crunch the numbers in his head. The end result comes out to ten red cartridges, thirteen yellow cartridges, and four blue cartridges.

One trip to the hardware store later, Minestro slots in his third-party ink into the gun, ignoring any warnings about warranty or damage to the gun and lets it rip.

Minestro decides that the resulting image is beautiful and well worth the investment of both the paint gun and the shopping trip.
```
.B................
..YY...........YYY
...YYY.....YYYY...
..YYYYYYYYYYYYY...
.YYBBYYYYYBBYYY...
.RRYYYYBYYYYRRY...
.RRYYYOOOYYYRRY...
..YYYYOOOYYYYYY...
.YYYYYYYYYYYYYY...
```

