--------------------------------------------- "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. <<<