In her cheek, distemper flushing glowed.

On a scrabbly patch of land outside the shack, oil drums stand on open fires.

We see that the timer/controller contains a 10 Hz laser Q-switch signal repeated each 100 ms (the Q-switch pulse width is 100 μs, and the lasar pulse with is 10 ns).

According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.