---------------------------------------------- "The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" ------------------------------------------ An electronically syndicated series that follows the exploits of two madcap mavens of high-technology. Copyright 1991 Michy Peshota. All rights reserved. May not be distributed without accompanying WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files. ----------------------- EPISODE #10 Tense Moments In Mission Control >>A tense morning at Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace is made even more so by a visit from boss Gus Farwick. Clipboard and camera in hand, the conniving engineer manager is busy compiling documentation to terminate the employment of his two least favorite research engineers.<< By M. Peshota When S-max and Andrew.BAS finally arrived at work that morning, the two new housemates were grimacing with exasperation at the other. "I don't know why you had to motion to that fool driver to cut in front of us just because a Flight for Life helicopter was landing in his lane," the computer builder huffed, referring to their tumultous drive to work on the freeway. "How was I supposed to know that you'd run him off the road, pull him from his car, and throw him down an embankment?" the programmer protested. "Drivers who cut in front of one should be dealt with firmly," S-max grunted with self-satisfaction. It was 11:45, and already the day seemed long and wearying. As they were preparing for work, the computer builder announced that he had misplaced his favorite T- shirt. "I can't leave the house without my T-shirt!" he had cried, pawing frantically through the piles of computer documentation that fell from the kitchen shelves. "I can't go <> without my T-shirt. I've designed some of my greatest computers while wearing that shirt. I wore it when I wired my first parallel circuit. I wore it when I used up my first roll of duct tape. I wore it through my entire seventeen years at MIT! I can't design state-of-the- art digital electronics without it!" In his composed, rational way, Andrew.BAS asked, "Don't you have another shirt to wear?" "Noooo!" the computer builder moaned. "I've never even owned another shirt!" They searched the house for nearly an hour looking for S-max's shirt, ripped, dirty, pungeant with the smells of sweat and shorted out electronics, so faded its color was now the lost, bland hue of every computer in existence. Across its front was a weathered infinity sign. On the back was a grape stain shaped like the North American continent. "My shirt! My poor lost shirt!" S-max howled all the while, as they kicked their way through piles of electrical schematics, sifted through boxes of tangled electrical instruments, shined flashlights under S-max's tattered R and D couch. "My shirt!" he cried, growing more frantic as the hunt progressed. They eventually found his T-shirt. It was wadded up inside the mouth of his electric tuba. "I must have tossed it in there when I took a shower last night," the computer builder speculated, extracting it from the tarnished, dented instrument. He slipped it over his puffy chest. "I was standing in this very spot last night when I took it off." "And it never occurred to you to check the place where you took it off?" his miffed housemate asked. S-max looked at the programmer bewilderedly. "No, why should it have?" He grunted. "Computer geniuses such as myself have more important things to collect in our massive amounts of intellect than remembrances of the last time we absently tossed something into the mouth of an electric tuba." A few minutes later, S-max announced that he had misplaced his walkie-talkie. "My beloved walkie-talkie!" he wailed, and the hunt began again. Once the computer builder had located his walkie-talkie (it was found stashed beneath a dusty cushion of his research couch), and clipped it to his belt, he tied his tennis shoes in double-knots, then proceeded to the door and announced that he planned on strapping the twenty-gallon drum of liquid marshmallow that Andrew.BAS had bequeathed him the night before, and which was apparently refuse of a college fraternity prank, inside the satellite dish on the roof of his van. He planned to store it in his parking space at work. "I don't know if you've noticed, Andrew.BAS," he said, flinging clothesline over the drum of marshmallow and the satellite dish which held it, "but my designated employee parking space is a very large one. It is much larger than yours. This is no doubt because I am an innovator of tomorrow's computer technology, while you--" He sniffed. "--are a mere computer programmer." "Don't you want to take the Robin Hood hat and tights with you too?" his housemate asked with emotionlessly uninflected sarcasm, referring to the costume portion of the fraternity prank arsenal heap in their livingroom. S-max turned and gazed in indecision at the drooping porch where his electric tuba sat. The green tights dangled from its dented lips like the legs of a half-swallowed leprechaun. "You know, you're absolutely right. I had better bring them to work too. I just may need them in my expanding role as innovator of tomorrow's technology." He hurried back to the house to get the tights, while the programmer gloomed that his mornings would be like this forever on unless he rid himself of this noxious houseguest. When the computer builder returned, he offered Andrew.BAS a ride to work. The latter refused, having already witnessed a horrific display of his officemate's driving skill, but the overbearing inventor insisted. When Andrew.BAS mulishly refused to climb into his shell-torn van, S-max threatened to follow him down the road on his "cute-as-a-programmer's-lunchbox motor-scooter" and run him over. Knowing that the headstrong S-max was fully capable of this, Andrew.BAS sighed and obligingly crawled into the front seat. When he glanced down at the seat to learn more of the nature of the pile of refuse upon which he sat, he was horrified to see that it was a heap of unpaid, overdue traffic tickets. When he searched for the seat belt, he found it knotted around the personal computer that was jammed next to him in the seat. The computer's monitor was smashed as though it had gone careening through the windshield. When the driver ahead of them on the freeway creeped along at a mere fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit, S-max pounded the horn, poked his wild-maned head out the window, and threatened to drown the other driver in twenty gallons of marshmallow. "Don't think I carry this twenty gallon drum of marshmallow and giant wok on top of my van just so I can make idle threats!" he had screamed. By the time they arrived at work, the two officemates where barely speaking to each other--except for sporadic quibbling about how S-max had gotten lost on the freeway and driven to the research complex of the wrong high-tech defense contractor. "I tell you, Andrew.BAS, they most certainly changed the layout of that cloverleaf since the last time I drove around it," the computer builder insisted. "But we ended up in a different state!" Andrew.BAS wailed. "But it did give us the opportunity to view many fascinating historic landmarks on the way," he grunted optimistically. "Two of which you ran over," the programmer reminded him, referring to the wishing well and park bandstand which were now piles of dusty timber and trellis branded with the crooked treadmarks of muddy van wheels. Reaching their office, they found their boss, Gus Farwick, waiting for them. He was pacing the floor with a clipboard, his usually monotonous face pinched in grief. Oddly, he didn't seem particularly concerned that the two research engineers were nearly four hours late for work. Instead, he held up two of the rubber snakes that S-max had glued to the defense contractor's hall floor to make it resemble a space shuttling landing strip. "Who is responsible for these?" he demanded. S-max pushed in front of Andrew.BAS and raised his hand proudly. "I am," he said. "It was my idea from start to finish. So were the two plastic diplodocuses hot-glued to each side of your desk. Andrew.BAS had absolutely nothing to do with it." Farwick recalled the dinosaurs. He had not been amused upon arriving at work that morning, to discover a computer paper banner stretched over his office door proclaiming "Facsimile of the Halls of Congress Frozen in the Technological Stone Age." He glared at the alleged computer genius with malevolence. "I thought it was you," he breathed. S-max whispered to Andrew.BAS, "Gus is no doubt so impressed with my work transforming his office into an authentic miniature replica of the halls of Congress frozen in the technological Stone Age that he is about to put me in charge of yet another multi-billion dollar defense project upon which the fate of western civilization hinges. I advise you to listen closely. You may learn a great deal from this encounter" He turned to the coal-eyed bureacrat. "We started out just building a model of NASA's Mission Control in the coat closet--" He pointed to the closet crowded with green Gumbys clenching paper airplanes. "But as you know, with unvarnished computer geniuses like me, one visionary concept just naturally flows into another." "Yes, I often marvel at the phenomenon." The engineer- manager looked around the office. He glimpsed at the half- finished plastic model of the space shuttle propped unsteadily on ice cream stick scaffolding, the shuttle landing strips chalked on the floor with baroque confusion, and the plaster bust of John F. Kennedy sitting on the computer genius's desk, an outline of a pocket protector cartooned on its chest with a laundry marker. He noted on his clipboard that it looked lonely and afraid. He pulled a miniature camera from his pocket, and, walking around the room, began snapping pictures. S-max whispered to his officemate, who was watching the proceedings fearfully. "Gus is no doubt going to distribute these pictures to other defense contractors to brag about our operations here." The engineer-manager asked the computer builder to pose in front of the Mission Control model, and the army jacketed S-max walked over to the closet and stood in front of it proudly. He raised his chain, tucked his hand in the opening of his faded jacket Napolean-like, and propped a sneakered foot on the space shuttle model like a big game hunter posing with his kill. Farwick snapped an entire roll of pictures. The manager then turned to Andrew.BAS and asked him if he would also like to be in some pictures, but before the terrified programmer could reply, S-max blurted, "No, Andrew.BAS would <> like to be in any pictures. He contributed absolutely nothing of significance to this breathtaking project. He couldn't even glue plastic lizards on the floor correctly." Andrew.BAS felt relieved. Their boss was about to leave when S-max suggested, "Why don't you take some pictures of my desk too? It is quite unique. There are many quaint patterns and rare bibelot that have gone into its decoration." He pointed with pride to the battered gray metal desk pushed into the epicenter of the office. An antedeluvian computer terminal with an askew, blinking copper screen and moose antlers glued to its crown was enthroned upon it. Farwick circled the desk with fascination. From the old terminal's monitor bobbed red fur dice. Its keys were caked with solder and littered with metal shavings. From the back of the machine a long radio antenna protruded tail-like. "The Motorola Z80 Chip Lives!" was spray-painted in black on the side of the terminal. On the other side was sprayed a long black arrow pointing back and around to the power switch on the rear. A big X was painted over the power switch. Stuck to the other side of the terminal was a bumper sticker that read "Honk If You Want Complete Schematics." On the top was one that said "Follow Me to the Gallium Arsenide." A sticker was glued in a corner of the terminal's neon-bright screen. It that read "NO PROGRAMMERS" and showed a red circle around and a line drawn through a stick figure with pimples. Standing beside the terminal was voodoo doll. It was also full of pimples. It had been stuck full of capacitors. The desk's linoleum top was scarred with long, hideous soldering burns. Frayed wires and dogeared electrical schematics fell from all its drawers. The desk chair was covered with fake zebra fur. Farwick a full roll of pictures of S-max's desk, as well as close-ups of the programmer-voodoo doll and the "Motorola Z80 Chip Lives!" bumper sticker. As the smiling engineer-manager prepared to leave, he told the computer builder to inform him <> whenever he embarked on another engineering project like the Mission Control in the coat closet. S-max gladly promised to do so. His boss then asked him for directions to the stall in the parking garage where his battered van was parked. "Just look for the satellite dish filled with liquid marshmallow," S-max bragged. "You can't miss it." Farwick left, clipboard and camera in hand, looking happier than he had since S-max began working for him. The computer builder turned to his visibly worried officemate. "It's too bad <> can't be a genius computer hardware designer too," he gloated, "then people would be wanting you to pose for pictures in front of the many things that had been touched by your engineering creativity." "I don't think my personnel folder is quite ready for something like that," Andrew.BAS sighed. He feared that his and S-max's employment at the defense contract was about to come to a close. >>>>In the next episode of "The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific," trouble starts when computer genius S-max discovers that the cans of twine that his boss has put him in charge of are not "super-string links between key defense systems," but plain old kite-string that the engineeer- manager has given the mischevious computer builder to keep him occupied and out of trouble.<<<<