"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" by M. Peshota
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Welcome to "The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific"
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Copyright 1991 M. Peshota
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In a perfect world they would be mission commanders on
the space shuttle. But due to the ineptitude of Fate, the
rambunctious computer hardware engineer and the
gentlehearted programmer are working for a government
defense contractor instead. When they lose their jobs,
following a series of embarrassing exploits, they decide to
form a high-tech company together.
"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" is a chronicle
of a computer startup where innovation never comes without
chaos. In the coming months, you'll meet S-max, Lone Wolf
Scientific's Macchiavellian "Head of Hardware" who plots to
change the world with his antenna-festooned inventions; his
softspoken programmer sidekick, Andrew.BAS, who names all
his programs after successful Apollo flights; and a bevy of
hangers on, including computer magazine pundit Ordin
Babblebin who finds in Lone Wolf Scientific fodder for
endless puerile columns, and Congressman Boris Q. Popinrath,
a technology gunho politician who discovers in the startup
the only reason he can give consituents to re-elect him.
"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" is an
electronically syndicated series. New installments appear
every two weeks (except in summer, when they run every three
weeks). The series is a regular feature on dozens of
bulletin boards across the country. The central
distribution center for the series is the Exec-PC BBS in Elm
Grove, Wisconsin (414/789-4210). All installments can be
found there in the "Free to Unregistered Callers" file
collection. You don't have to be a registered user of the
system in order to download installments from the board.
Lone Wolf Scientific also appears in GEnie in the Telejoke
Roundtable BBS, Category 6, Topic 16.
Other multi-line systems where you can obtain up-to-
date Lone Wolf installments include the Sound of Music BBS
in Oceanside, New York (516/536-8723) and Exactus
Information Service in Santo Rosa, California (707/524-
2548). (If your BBS carries the series and you'd like its
name and number included in future releases of this file,
drop me a note.)
If you would like to carry "The Adventures of Lone Wolf
Scientific" regularly on your BBS/online service free of
charge, just drop a note to one of the mailboxes listed
below. Due to the popularity of the series, we are no
longer able to upload it to each BBS individually, but there
are several ways you can receive it via e-mail, including
through the Boardwatch Magazine BBS (303/973-4222) where
it's distributed with USA Today and Byte's Newsbytes, and
via the Smartnet mail echo (contact Paul Waldinger at the
Sound of Music BBS).
At present, we are still working on satellite,
microwave, and ham radio transmission. ;->
You may upload episodes of "The Adventures of Lone Wolf
Scientific" to any bulletin board or online service that you
wish. You may also print them out and distribute them--in
hardcopy or electronically--to friends, colleagues, loved
ones, whomever you wish. You may not charge them anything
for your reproducing efforts, though, except maybe for an
occasional cup of coffee or a doughnut--you may demand a fee
of one of those.
The only responsibility that will be placed on your
weary shoulders is the request that whenever you
distribute episodes of "The Adventures of Lone Wolf
Scientific," you distribute them with this file,
WELCOME.LWS, and the accompanying file EPISOD.LWS which
lists all previous episodes and the order in which they
first appeared.
"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" is copyrighted
by the author, of course, but may be reproduced for free, in
whole or in part, in any not-for-profit publication,
including computer user's group newsletters. The author
requests only that a copy of the publication be mailed to
the street address listed below.
Additionally, if you publish a user's group newsletter,
you may obtain from M. Peshota, free of charge, a disk
containing whimsical "shorts" designed specifically to fill
small empty spaces in newsletters. Simply mail a blank
floppy disk to one of the addresses listed below, along with
the name of your user's group.
I hope that you enjoy "The Adventures of Lone Wolf
Scientific". Writing them has been one of the great joys of
my life. Hopefully, reading them will be one of the joys of
yours.
Peace,
M. Peshota
Internet: 3127737@mcimail.com
Exec-PC: MICHY PESHOTA
GEnie: M.PESHOTA, user i.d., XTY31866
---------------------------------------------
"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific"
------------------------------------------
"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" is
an electronically syndicated series that
follows the exploits of two madcap
men of high-technology. Copyright
1991 Michy Peshota. May not be
distributed without accompanying
WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files.
----------------------
EPISODE #1
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The Computer Genius Goes to Work
>>The worst thing that can happen to a globe-trotting
computer genius is gainful employment. From a curb outside
an artificial intelligence company, computer genius S-max
contemplates the wreckage of his employment history. He
desperately hopes the rescue mission is properly wired for
his needs.<<
By M. Peshota
The computer genius took a seat on the curb outside the
artificial intelligence company from which he had just been
ejected. The reason for his firing this time was that he
had refused to speak to anyone in the company. He felt that
this was unfair. He didn't speak to imbeciles. That was
just the way it was.
He unfastened the big plastic walkie-talkie that was
clipped to his belt and started fiddling with it. It was
his form of whittling. Whenever he had things to think
about, he took apart his walkie-talkie. If anyone had
passed by and spotted the bear-sized computer dweeb with the
ripped sneakers, Moammar Ghaddaffi pout and dark brooding
eyes, perched on a curb, disembowling a walkie-talkie, they
would have run for the police. The Chia Pet-like helmet
that was his hair and that was the shape and color of
violent explosions on TV from which there are seldom
survivors would have prompted them to run faster.
Job loss ordinarily had little effect upon S-max. This
was because he had more important things to think about than
how to earn a living. There was neural processing, for
instance. There was gallium arsenide. There were thrilling
new video games coming into the stores almost each and
everyday. (Curiously, none of the computer genius's former
employers seemed to appreciate one of the most astounding
traits of his remarkable mind and that was that he
did his best work after playing seventeen straight hours of
video games. Equally amazing, most of them insisted that he
show up for work everyday--as if a computer genius of his
stunning intellect should have to work everyday!)
Through the past year, ever since S-max's parents had
booted him and his myriad of feckless inventions out of the
house, the computer genius had found it increasingly
difficult to hold a job. There was the Swedish
telecommunications firm, for instance, from which he was
fired for taking indecent liberties with other people's
geostationary satellites. There was the Nevada chip-maker
from which he was suspended without pay after parking his
Chevy with the satellite dish on top in the reserved parking
spaces of company executives.
There was the Montana aerospace firm from which he was
booted after the FBI brought in a computer expert to dump
over his wastebasket and sort through its contents after he
had discovered, quite by accident one day, that all it took
was one directory sort and a liberally applied case of flux
remover to bring every Defense Department computer network
crashing to its knees. O, what a tragedy that had been!
Then there was the Brazilian mini-computer maker. Just
because the computer genius had disappeared for three months
with a company inflatable dingy and, upon reappearance, had
explained that he had been to a DIP switch convention in the
South Seas, was no reason to leave him out in the jungle for
six weeks with nothing but a can of pinto beans and a ribbon
cable.
Normally, the computer genius couldn't care less when
he got the pink slip. He took his walkie-talkie and his
shopping bag full of screwdrivers and shuffled out the door
with a sniff of indignation. He never looked back. He
never apologized. If anything, he pitied his former
employer for its shortsightedness in firing a computer
genius of his magnificent intellect. This time, however, his
brusque escort to the artificial intelligence company
parking lot left him feeling a mite bitter. Maybe it had
something to do with the fact that it had been less than
forty-eight hours since he had lost his job at a
semiconductor manufacturer, he reflected.
Again, the whole affair had been shockingly unjust.
Just because the company's Cray-Y-MP-Z80 supercomputer had
inexplicably vanished one night and its kitschy Naugahyde
designer seat cushions had been discovered the next day
stacked atop a file cabinet in the computer genius's office
(except for one which was found epoxied to his computer
"prayer stool") was no reason for security guards to hussle
him to the door and take away his cafeteria pass. It had
been an enormous blow to his frail ego, especially in light
of the fact that it had been only three days since he had
lost his job at a robotics firm for driving a forklift
through the false floor in the computer room in the
middle of the night.
O, why couldn't these people appreciate true genius for
what it was? Afterall, he was nothing but a man who
fervently believed that one's creativity should never be
needlessly hampered by the constraints of responsible
engineering, moreless responsibility in general.
S-max grunted indignantly, poking a gnarled transistor
with a brutish, solder-caked thumb. It would all be
different, he reflected, jerking a tangle of wires from the
back of his walkie-talkie with a grunt, if his career as a
travelling Rubik's Cube pro had turned out differently.
At first it was heady, travelling from agricultural
fest to custom car rally, demonstrating to gaping crowds the
wrist twists and thumb flips that had earned him the
honorific of "The Rubick's Cube Kid." Despite appearances,
solving the magic cube was not a talent the computer genius
had been born with. Indeed not. It was a skill in which he
had invested hundreds, possibly thousands of hours
perfecting while in the employ of one dreary high-tech firm
or another, until finally, he knew that it was a talent he
could no longer keep to himself and whatever officemates he
may have at the time, but had a responsibility to share with
the rest of the world.
The pinnacle of S-max's Rubik's Cube pro career came
when he solved the magic cube in a record six seconds while
parachuting out of an airplane over a meeting of the
Association of Accumulating Computing Machinery. In his
"Dinky the Transistor" clown costume, the tatters of his
parachute streaming behind him like zinnia petals ripped in
the wind, he crashed through the trees, landed on top a
picnic table, bounced off a styrofoam model of an old
Univac, and landed on top a guy in a wizard's cape and hat,
his "Dinky" costume badly ripped, but his spirits soaring as
he was lifted into the air by a mob of mothy old computer
engineers who cheered "Dinky! Dinky!"
Little did he suspect that just two weeks later, during
a cuthroat "cube-down" at a zucchini roast in Omaha, he'd be
badly beaten by a fourteen year old with incredible manual
dexterity, and would later find himself stranded in an Omaha
bus station, penniless, despirited, a washed up intellectual
Olympian with nothing to his name but a dumb plastic cube
and a suitcase full of Mattel lifetime achievement plaques.
But the computer genius was not a man to know hard
times for long. When he saw opportunity, he seized it, and
that's just what he did when he began selling the four
million-watt power supplies for personal computers. Now,
most personal computers have power supplies of only 100 to
200 watts, most personal computer never need anymore watts
than that, but the computer genius, inspired by his lifelong
credo that one's creativity should never be needlessly
hampered by the restraints of responsible engineering,
moreless responsibility in general, and realizing how much
personal computer owners, like fast car afficianadoes, are
always craving faster speed, more zoom to the metal,
proceeded to unload truckload after truckload of four
million-watt computer power supplies upon unsuspecting
personal computer owners.
When purchasers wrote to the computer genius asking him
what they could do with four million watts on their
motherboards, he responded gleefully: "There are many things
that you can do with four million watts! You can power
small industrial plants. You can make inquiries into
whether any rural communities in your area would like extra
electricity. You can recharge golf cart batteries for
yourself and friends. You can start your own radio station.
Or, you can just add on lots and lots of expansion boards.
Think of the fun!"
As with many of S-max's other similar high-tech
entreprenuerial ventures, it didn't take long for the
appropriate consumer protection agencies to track down the
name and face behind the anonymous post office box number.
Before he knew it, angry-looking men who looked alarmingly
like Ralph Nader were pounding on his door, demanding
details of his product's Underwriters Laboratories tests.
The computer genius barely escaped with his life. He fled
to Cincinnati where he laid low for a while, selling
integrated circuit test clips under a variety of aliases and
living in a secret, concealed room above a Snookey's Parts
Shack store.
S-max clipped his now reassembled walkie-talkie back
onto his belt and contemplated the decline of western
technology as evidenced by the horrible fact that no one
cared to keep him in their employ for very long. You can
be sure this would not be the state of affairs in Japan,
he grunted to himself. In Japan, computer companies would
doubtless be falling all over themselves trying to hire and
retain an employee with the unvarnished Yankee ingenuity of
S-max. Why, they would probably even offer to keep him in
miniature digital clocks for the rest of his natural days,
that's how grateful they would be for his novel approaches
to computer engineering.
S-max got up from the curb and dusted himself off. It
had occurred to him that the withered and decomposing form
of a computer genius lying in the gutter would not look
pretty and might even deter impressionable youth from
entering the exciting world of high-technology should they
happen to pass by. And he certainly didn't want that to
happen.
As the computer genius shuffled down the street, he
fervently hoped that the rescue mission to which he was
headed was properly wired for his needs.
>>>In the next episode, "The Second Renaissance of Space
Exploration Technology and What Happened to It," S-max has a
soulmate in the making. Tune in then.<<<
---------------------------------------------
"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific"
------------------------------------------
An electronically syndicated series that
follows the exploits of two madcap
afficianadoes of high-technology.
Copyright 1991 Michy Peshota.
May not be distributed without
accompanying WELCOME.LWS and
EPISOD.LWS files.
----------------------
EPISODE #3
----------------------
When Men of Destiny Meet
>>Robbed of the last vestiges of his engineering school
idealism, the dimpled young software engineer's spirits
improve when he befriends another man who also failed to get
a job on the space shuttle.<<
By M. Peshota
During the seventeenth month of Andrew.BAS's wait for
his government security clearance, he was joined by another
new employee who also appeared to be waiting for a security
clearance. The man was so big that he made the security
guards at the door nervous whenever he walked in. As
he moved, he jingled as though his pockets were filled with
thirty pounds of broken screwdrivers. He had a perpetual
brooding scowl and his nose leafed out in various
anatomically non-standard directions, prompting Andrew.BAS
to speculate that he had probably been in a lot of fights in
dark, seedy computer rooms. A pair of smashed safety
goggles poked ominously from his army jacket pocket.
Each day, the man would slump in a chair in a
corner of the aerospace company's lobby opposite the corner
where Andrew.BAS sat, either fiddling with a walkie-talkie
or snorting and grunting loudly as he read the engineering
magazines on the coffee table. After cautiously observing
him for several days, Andrew.BAS summoned the nerve to walk
over and introduce himself. To his surprise, he found the
man not only affable, but once introductions were made, he
never stopped talking.
His name was S-max, a name he had chosen, he explained,
to replace the poetastic affliction of Sherwood Franklin
Maxwell that he had suffered from birth.
When Andrew.BAS volunteered that his name--Andrew.BAS--
was actually a derivative of "Andrew Sebastian" and a
nickname given him by engineering school pals because he
used to write all his programs in compiled BASIC, S-max
gasped. "You're a programmer!"
"Yes, that's right." Andrew.BAS said this proudly for
he felt that being a computer programmer was something to be
truly proud of.
"I don't like programmers," S-max scowled.
"No? Why not?"
"They're bothersome. They use up all the computer
paper. They're always doing something irresponsible with an
EEPROM. You have to watch them every minute because they
get underfoot and they leave their program editors where
you're bound to step on them. Well, you should know, you're
a programmer."
Andrew.BAS raised his brows. This was the most bizarre
thing he had ever heard. "You don't program?"
"No, I don't program! I would never debase myself in
such a vile and horrible fashion. I have more respect for
myself than that!"
"Then what do you do?"
"I build things--amazing things, marvelous things,
things that pop and spark and fizzle, and have lots and lots
of cables and connectors hanging off the back, and bright
buttons that you can push, and levers that you can turn, and
that use up incredible amounts of electricity--"
"You build computers?"
"Yes, that's right." S-max smirked pompously.
Andrew.BAS decided to change the subject. He asked the
computer builder how he had ended up at Dingready &
Derringdo Aerospace.
"I was traded," came the bitter reply.
"Traded?"
"Yes, traded."
"You mean, like, what happens to quarterbacks and
baseball players?"
"Yes, that is correct."
"But, umm, I thought that only happened to,
like...quarterbacks and baseball players."
"Well, it happens to computer geniuses, too." The man
grunted. "I was traded by SRI International for two COBOL
programmers, a keypunch machine, and a $3,000 wastebasket."
"I'm sorry." Beyond that, Andrew.BAS truly did not
know what to say.
When the traded computer builder asked Andrew.BAS how
he had ended up at the defense contractor, the programmer
woefully explained that he didn't get the job he wanted
most--the one he had studied for all his life, the one he
had worked for, dreamed of, and suffered for all through
engineering school, the only job that would ever make him
happy--that of mission commander on the space shuttle.
S-max gasped. "You applied for that job too?! I
thought fer sure that I was going to get it. I am in top
physical condition, you know. I'd be very good in non-
gravity environments. I have experience with exercycles.
And I don't know anyone who'd be better at taking care of
payload than me. Do <> know of anyone who'd be better
at taking care of payload?"
"Umm, no."
"See? It just goes to show how far the job
qualifications of our nation's space program have slipped!"
S-max scowled darkly. "I was absolutely shocked when I
didn't get that job. Truly shocked. I was going to write
an expose on it for national distribution in newspapers,
because it is shocking you know, and someone should write an
expose on it."
"I guess so."
"No wonder the space program has been experiencing such
dire calamities." S-max grunted indignantly. "It is a dark
day indeed when sensible people refuse to hire capable
computer geniuses like me."
S-max went on to explain how, following his
disappointing visit to the employment office at NASA (a very
hasty visit, as it turned out, for he was led to the door
shortly after being asked how, as an engineering genius, he
would fasten inside the shuttle's cargo bay a twenty ton
satellite, and he had replied "Duct tape--lots of it!"), he
was fired from his job at another government defense
contractor for living over the false ceiling in the computer
room.
"Where else is a computer builder like me supposed to
live!?" he howled. "It's not like I can just go rent a $25-
a-night room in a downtown men's hotel and move in a couple
of Cray Y-MP-Z80s, is it?"
"Umm, no, I suppose not."
Shortly after that, he explained, he was suspended
without pay from his next job, at a Dutch electronics firm,
for blowing up the company's research and development labs.
"Now, you would think," he began indignantly, wagging a
finger, "that an employer, especially one in the high-tech
industry, would be more sensitive to their employee's grief
at having blown up all forty-two research labs. But no!
They had to completely exacerbate the situation by
threatening to cut off my dental insurance and have the
government stamp funny things on my passport!" The computer
builder again scowled fiercely.
Upon his return to the United States, a very hasty
return, he explained, for his plane ticket was paid for in
full by the State Department as part of an emergency high-
tech trade diplomacy measure, he procurred a job at a
California mainframe computer manufacturer. Unfortunately,
that job ended in tragedy too, for the company insisted that
he remove the satellite dish from the top of his car before
driving it into the company parking garage, an experience,
he claimed, that had caused him to grow increasingly bitter
and withdrawn over the years.
When they finally received their government security
clearances several days later and were told that they could
start work, Andrew.BAS was quite relieved, for he feared
these tales of woe would never end.
Their new boss was a frenetically indecisive man with
his hair cropped in a military buzzcut. His name was Gus
Farwick. As he presented them with employee i.d. badges, he
congratulated S-max on the fact that the FBI's background
check had revealed him to be trustworthy enough to be given
total, unlimited access to every top secret government
computer network in the world. "You must be a great asset to
our country's high-tech research efforts, Citizen S-max," he
cooed with an oozy admiration.
The computer builder merely grunted as he clipped the
badge to his dirty t-shirt.
He then turned to the Cub Scoutish Andrew.BAS. He
frowned. He explained that because of the programmer's
kooky "nom de guerre"--Andrew.BAS--and because of a certain
program editor he owned that had been written by an
immigrant from an Eastern bloc country that appeared, to the
FBI, to be overly friendly to certain cable TV comics,
he would be permitted only limited access to a payphone
outside the employee washroom and a weekly trip to the
cellophane tape dispenser on Farwick's desk.
"You're telling me that I've just wasted the past
seventeen months of my life waiting to get access to a tape
dispenser?!" Andrew.BAS cried.
Farwick twittered in a blithely ineffectual way.
"Funny how that works."
As the engineer-manager led the two new "recruits," as
he called them, down a crooked, spooky hallway, S-max
whispered to the bereaved Andrew.BAS, "Don't worry about it,
kid. I'll get you all the long-range intercontinental
missiles that you need. Did you know that I once had access
to a nuclear submarine?"
When they rounded a corner, Andrew.BAS thought he saw,
in the darkness, a ghostly apparition pantomining the demise
of his once lofty software engineering ambitions, but it
turned out to be only the shadow of the humungous computer
builder swatting at a bat with a rolled up engineering
magazine.
<<<
Here," Gus Farwick shows Andrew.BAS and S-max their new
office. They are sobered to discover that they must share
it, not only with each other, but with a mentally frayed
assembly language programming prodigy who's advanced psychic
burn out at times makes him dangerous.<<<<
---------------------------------------------
"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. May not be distributed
without accompanying WELCOME.LWS and
EPISOD.LWS files.
----------------------
Welcome to The People's Republic of
Electrical Engineering
"Abandon Hope Ye Who Enter Here"
>>Andrew.BAS, the dimpled young computer programmer who
looks like the kind of programmer Norman Rockwell would have
drawn, is horrified to learn that he will be writing batch
files to aim nuclear missiles. Meanwhile, his new
officemate gets into a snit with their boss over anti-static
boot mats.<<
By M. Peshota
The engineer-manager, striding ahead of them into the
darkness, droned on like a cardboard sergeant. "Should you
find yourself lost in the research and development sub-sub-
sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-basement, just follow the jet engine
pieces on the floor. They'll lead you straight into heart
of The People's Republic of Engineering."
S-max grunted in appreciation for this travelling tip.
A stricken Andrew.BAS whispered to him, "I still can't get
over the fact that we're going to be building nuclear bombs.
The employee recruitment brochures that they passed out at
my college never said anything about writing batch files to
aim missiles at major population centers."
"Will you just mellow out!" the computer builder huffed
in impatience. "I don't see why you can't make the best of
this. Just because you'd rather be a space cadet than work
for a military contractor is no reason to incessantly whine
in my ear. I, personally, am looking forward to the
opportunity to work with state-of-the-art peace-keeping
materials." He grunted. "Just think of all the wonderful
things you'll be able to do with a surface-to-air missile."
Rounding a hall corner, the trio heard a maniacal
shriek, then spotted the shadow of a hunchback in a space
suit scurrying across the path in front of them.
Farwick noticed Andrew.BAS gaping at a printout banner
that clung to a cinderblock wall like refuse from a failed
liberty uprising. It read: "Welcome to the Gus Farwick's
People's Republic of Engineering, Abandon All Hope Ye Who
Enter Here." The engineer-manager smiled. "The research
engineers and I share a remarkable relationship. Some of
them think of me as their father. That's probably because I
enjoy hearing about the things they do, even though the
technicalities involved make no sense to me."
S-max shot Andrew.BAS a look of intense and profound
relief. The programmer wondered what that meant.
Their new boss continued, "We do a lot of special
things together here in The People's Republic of EE. Last
month, for instance, I treated everyone to new alligator
clips. Sometimes we sit around during lunch and talk about
electricity. That's how close we are."
The trio reached a drain-opener green door. A yellowed
window mounted in the center and reinforced with chicken
wire suggested a cross between a door from a seedy public
washroom and a San Quentin cell. Farwick jiggled the knob
and swung the door open with a clatter. "Mr. Jellowack!" he
chimed. "I have officemates for you!"
They spotted, hunched in a far corner of the office,
what looked like a gargoyle with humungous black-rimmed
glasses bobbing askewedly from his nose. Perched on a tall
stool in front of a computer terminal, his hair and fingers
flying, he looked like a dungeon apprentice to lunacy. He
peered at them with dark feral child eyes for a second, then
his gaze darted back to the terminal screen as if he
preferred to think they didn't exist.
"This is Mr. Jellowack," Farwick motioned to him. "He
programs exclusively in assembly language, sometimes for
days without sleep, fresh air, nourishment, or healthy human
contact. This, I am told, is something at which to both
marvel and consider highly dangerous."
S-max squinted suspiciously at the assembler savant as
if he could see already how dangerous he was.
Andrew.BAS waved at him in a bright-eyed, friendly
programmerly fashion. "Hello, Mr. Jellowack!" he hailed.
"My name is Andrew.BAS. My favorite programming language is
C, although I do occasionally enjoy adding assembly language
subroutines to my code."
S-max rolled his eyes in disgust at such a mawkish
display of the over-friendliness programmers like to lavish
upon each other at any meeting.
Mr. Jellowack ignored them and continued prancing his
scarred knuckles over the keys.
Farwick swept around the office, arms extended, like a
real estate agent. "One of the many amenities of this
particular office," he began, "is the plastic boot mat in
the corner." He pointed at it with pride.
S-max scrutinized it. "Is it anti-static?"
"Umm..."
"THEN WHAT GOOD IS IT?!" the indignant computer builder
howled.
Farwick paused in distress, then ignored him and
continued on in an animated, Cavalcade of Homes fashion.
"But wait!" he said. "There are other hidden graces to this
particular earthen sanctum---"
S-max glared at the battered metal desk in the center
of the office. "Why is there only one empty desk?" he
demanded. He unfastened the big, plastic walkie-talkie that
was clipped to his belt. He slammed it onto the desk with a
territorial fury. "And why isn't Andrew.BAS getting a
desk?"
Farwick paused and gazed at the desk. Yes, the wierd
man with the walkie-talkie was correct. There was only one
empty desk, and he had two new employees to accomodate.
What to do? He bit his lip in indecision. He hated
requisitioning office furniture. There were so many forms
to fill out, so many questions to answer, so many big green
boxes to check. He finally mumbled, "I suppose you two can
share the desk."