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[A Note on My.Netscape.Com

The contents of his bag, luckily for all involved (or luckily for most involved, at any rate), hadn't changed during the course of the flight.
Which was a good thing, seeing as how he'd acquired a Panama hat, the irritating man not talking into his 'phone spontaneously combusted, and Munich had turned into Not Munich during the course of the self same flight.
The television was on with the volume turned down, and the beaming visage of the man still remained, staring out across the room, moving his mouth, presumably with words accompanying those who were watching the show with the volume turned up. It had clicked on when he entered the room, and at first he assumed it was like the normal televison greetings in certain hotels with your name, in case you'd forgotten, room number (also in case you'd forgotten, and considerably more helpful, he'd found over the years), the local time, all presented to the strains of instrumental Abba. Well, this one had the instrumental Abba (a prime factor in the decision to turn the volume down a bit), but in place of his name and the local time and any number of things he might have preferred to see a man with an eery grin stared out across the room.
Come to think of it, the man had only started moving his mouth recently, and was lip-syncing impressively to "Waterloo", if he hadn't intended to be doing so. If he was intending to lip-sync, he was slightly off and it wasn't quite as impressive.
The whole think, frankly, was not doing anything in the least to settle him.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a cigarette. Wait, that was different.
And he didn't smoke.
And his gun wasn't in his bag any longer.

Now that he sat back on the bed and thought about it, it seemed quite a bit had changed. Two seconds later, he changed the window by shooting a hole through it.
All right, so what he had assumed was one of those gimmicky lighters that look like a gun turned out to be a real gun. His gun, if he overlooked the fact that he wouldn't ever confuse his gun with a cigarette lighter. However, he was considerably less metaphysically concerned with the properties of his gun v. another so long as they both shot bullets, which he needed, often, in his line of work, and he didn't mind terribly what it looked like. He was also quite happy that he wasn't attempting to light his first cigarette in front of other people, as shooting holes in anything while attempting to light a cigarette was probably a faux pas and they'd probably spot him as a first time smoker straight away.
The fact that he hadn't noticed any of this previously, when digging through his bag, looking explicitly for signs of anything different was troublesome, but not overly so. He assumed he was looking for things to be different in a different kind of way, and not in the way in which it turned out they were, in fact, different. He thought. He was going downstairs and across the road to get a drink. Or eighteen. Whatever it took.
Tucking his gun (his gun, right, that sounded all right, even if it looked a bit lame, and if he, personally, were being threatened with it he might find it difficult to take the person threatening him all that seriously, though he felt they'd change their mind quite quickly when he just pulled off and shot them, being in that sort of mood) into his jacket pocket, he grabbed his room key, attempted to turn off the television, gave up after pressing every conceivable button on the remote did nothing to get rid of the guy lip-syncing to instrumental Abba, and headed out of the room and towards the lift.
He just wanted to do his job and get the hell out of town again.

disclaimer:
This is, still, a part of the serial started two weeks ago, continued last week, and probably to be continued again next week.

And, for the next few weeks we'll be without our beloved Head Editor, who's getting locked in a room for a little while.
Apparently, his publisher showed his previous novel and the drafts of what he's sent in so far to someone else. They then proceeded to get very excited and rang the office a few times in the course of that day, with enquiries after the latest drafts, if not a finished copy. Such was the response, and so heavily peppered with words like 'instant classic', 'breach of contract', and 'you bastard' and other phrases solicitors tend to use that the Head Editor felt almost morally bound to go off and finish the whole thing off.

So he's spending the next few weeks banging away at the long-awaited God Coffee, I Miss You at an undisclosed location, probably with not much in the way of distractions and diversions.
Will Murphy, who knows what it's like to be locked in a room by his publisher, will be in London handling most of the editorial duties for the duration, holding spurious meetings, ordering entirely too much Indian takeaway, and generally terrorising the staff.