---------------------------------------------- "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 reserverd. May not be distributed without accompanying WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files. ----------------------- EPISODE #15 The High-Tech Weapons Demonstration >>Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace unveils their newest crop of computer-guided missiles to military dignitaries. Will the proceedings be disrupted by a certain hardware hacker in ratty sneakers?<< by Michy Peshota "Aren't those bull's eyes rather large?" "Not if you're a really large bomb." A missile sailed past General Figgerty and Bing-bing Huntz in the bleachers and disappeared with a tuckered out whistle in a clump of bushes on the other side of the test field. Both gazed in disappointment at the missed twelve- foot-high bull's eye. "That missile has a much higher reliability rating on the battlefield where there are no lilac bushes present," the president of the aerospace company said. He pointed to the next event listed on the program in the general's hands. It read "Demonstration of THERMONUCLEAR GUERNSEY." THERMONUCLEAR GUERNSEY was the bomb's codename. "Our next smart bomb contains so many microchips," he said, "it is capable of honing in on, not just bull's eyes, but giant cardboard cutouts of cows. Even under cover of darkness." Raising his binoculars to his eyes in executive anticipation, he focused on the technicians a hundred yards off who were loading a football-shaped object into what appeared to be a giant slingshot. The general glanced uneasily at the other side of the field where a billboard-high cutout of a milk cow straddled the grass like a Texas barbecue decoration. A bull's eye was lashed to its flanks. "But if they're smart bombs," he persisted, "why do they need bull's eyes?" It was a question that had nagged him all through the high-tech weapons demonstration. "Don't the bombs contain the electronic circuitry and computer software to zero in on the cows themselves?" "General, oh, general," the executive sighed, resting his binoculars in his portly lap. "We at Dingready & Derringdo have found, through years of experience with ballistics--and I mean years, we have more experience than a certain competitor of ours whose smart bombs seem to keep capturing the public's imagination solely on the basis of their accuracy--that software <> works better when there's a bull's eye present." The missile launcher lobbed its football into the air. It arched toward the clouds with a wobbly uncertainty. Reaching the crown of its flight, it cracked in two like a candystick, and its halves fell earthward with a heavy futility. One knocked over the cardboard guernsey. "We may be in the experimental stages for years with some of these highly sophisticated weapons," Bing-bing Huntz said. Peering through his binoculars, he spotted what appeared to be a parasitic spot scurrying up the bleachers toward him. It quickly grew to the size of a three-piece suited monster in his otherwise sunny view. He jerked the lenses from his nose to see, crouching in front of him, the wiggly form of the irritating engineer-manager Gus Farwick. His head was clamped between two over-sized audio earphones, he waved a musical baton like an aspiring instrument of torture. He wheezed, "Is it time yet?" "No, it's not time yet, Mr. Farwick! When it's time, believe me, I will tell you." Huntz lifted his binoculars back to his eyes and tried to ignore the impatient manager. It was the fourth time that afternoon that Farwick had interrupted him to ask if it was time yet for the musical portion of the smart bomb demonstration. Granted, Huntz found the engineer-manager's composition "Onward, Dingready Soldiers, as Sung to Chariots of Fire" as spiritually uplifting as anyone else in the little aerospace company, but there was a time for leading engineers in song and there was a time for firing overpriced munitions, and, in the case of Dingready & Derringdo's weapons demonstration to General Figgerty and his retinue from the Pentagon, Farwick's Greek chorus from R & D was not going to start their antistrophes until so many over-budget munitions had missed their mark that drastic measures were required to lift the audience's flagging spirits. Farwick, faced with the indifferent, binoculared eyes of the company president, sighed and scurried back down the bleachers to the sad-eyed phalanx of engineers clenching music sheets waiting for him below. As he disappeared amid the red choir robes, the general watched him and, as his eyes scanned over the pasty faces and rumpled hair, they came upon a familar lopsided nose and condescending, indignant scowl poking up from above a choir robe. The general could not recall where he had encountered those eyes and that nose before, but he was suddenly overcome with a feeling of primal helplessness and a dark forboding that seemed to bring with it a mental image of copious amounts of duct tape. He instinctively turned his head away so as to avoid any painful recollections of who this engineer was. "The next smart bomb," Huntz continued, pointing to the codename 'THERMONUCLEAR CHECKERS' printed on the general's program, "is designed to completely annihilate any and all billboards painted with giant checkers that the enemy may have to offer." He directed the general's gaze across the field to a checkered billboard. A large bull's eye was strapped to it. "Huntz, I fail to see the strategic significance of having bombs that can seek out and destroy billboards covered with giant checkers--" "General--" "Please, let me continue. I've already paid you $17 million in R-and-D costs. I have a right to be heard." His face flushed red. "I simply fail to see the purpose of having computer-guided warheads that can seek out and destroy cardboard cutouts of cows, piles of watermelons--" "General--" "--or warehouses full of old phone books, OR mattresses spray-painted with the words 'UNDERGROUND SILO,' or--" "General, general," the executive chuckled. "<> are the great military strategist. You are the military mind who has been compared to Patton, to Eisenhower even. You are the one who's job it is to deploy state-of-the-art technology on the battlefield. Our purpose is merely to provide you with the tools you need. <> are the one who must provide the imagination to use them. We can't help you with that." He chuckled again. Another warhead whizzed past them. It missed the honeysuckle bush with the bull's eye lashed to it to which it was headed and disappeared a hundred of yards off in a grove of trees. All necks cranned to see where it went. From the vacinity of the company parking echoed a "boom!" The tinkle of shattered glass and clink of rolling hubcaps followed. Two technicians lugging kitchen fire extinguishers dashed off across the field. "Looks like another honeysuckle bush got away," the general gloomed. The next bomb on the weapons demonstration program was codenamed THERMONUCLEAR FIELDS. It was engineered specifically for blowing up large empty fields. As the general and Bing-bing Huntz watched it arch into the air, then vanish permanently in the clouds like a delinquent kite, the general asked, "What happens when you lose bombs?" "They're usually identified soon after by nearby residents as UFOs." "But you do recover them, don't you?" "Well, yes, sometimes, assuming we can retrieve the pieces fast enough before they're sold to the supermarket tabloids." From two steps below on the bleachers came a familiar whine. "Is it time yet?" Both the general and company president stared down in mutual irritation at the unctuous engineer-manager who had once again struggled up the steps with his assailant's baton and was now standing before them with the peevish foreboding of a psychopathic accapellaist. "No, Mr. Farwick," Huntz moaned, "it is not time yet." The general inspected the waiting chorus on the field and once again sighted the man with the brooding scowl and lopsided nose. Beneath his choir robe, he wore large ragged sneakers, and orange t-shirt printed with what appeared to be a faded infinity sign poked out from beneath the robe's open collar. He seemed to be skulking in the back of the chorus as if he didn't want to be seen. Suddenly, the general knew who the crooked-nosed man reminded him of. "Huntz," he said worriedly, as the latter watched the insect-like form of the engineer manager struggle down the bleachers, "you wouldn't have the bad luck to employ a research engineer by the name of Sherwood Franklin Maxwell, would you?" "Maxwell?" the executive mused. "No idea." Farwick, who was stepping awkwardly between two gun- wearing CIA agents and had just tipped over the popcorn of one, froze upon hearing the dreaded name. <> He shuddered and listened. "Curious fellow," the general continued. "An I.Q. higher than the odometer on my jeep, and with more advanced engineering degrees than can be found in an emerging industrial nation, but let me tell you, he's more trouble than a nuclear submarine lost under the Pacific." The general grew suddenly impassioned. "Do you know that we once had to redesign a two-ton Star Wars satellite because of him?" "You can be certain he's not an employee of <>," Huntz chuckled. Secretly, though, the president of the defense contractor wondered if this Maxwell-character <> a Dingready & Derringdo employee. Afterall, Huntz never bothered to venture into any of the aerospace company's mamy, many research sub-basements, and god only knew what went on down <>. "He mailed the satellite's blueprints to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration," the general continued, "along with diagrams for how to fasten it inside the space shuttle's cargo bay with duct tape. I was told he was trying to get transferred to NASA or something. It almost worked." Farwick congratulated himself for having been wise enough to quarantine Employee S-max in his office during this most important weapons demonstration. At this very moment, the meddling computer builder was sitting behind his desk, far from either phone or electrical outlet, flipping through an employee motivation calendar and memorizing the quotes from employee motivation gurus that were printed therein. As the general and company president's conversation turned to an examination of why a four-million-dollar computer-guided rocket bomb designed to seek out and destroy mounds of tangled up coathangers had just ended up in a patch of mulberry bushes, Farwick continued stepping his way through the CIA panjandrums, confidently, with a renewed sense of managerial omnipotence. Suddenly, he heard a bellow of "Farwick! Start them singing!" and his musical baton knocked the hats off three lieutenants in front of him, and he bolted the rest of the way down the bleachers, tripping over briefcases and knocking over popcorn along the way. Arriving on the field, he hurriedly gathered together his acapellists, lifted his baton with the surety of one about to strike out with a fly-swatter, shaped his mouth into a sordid "o", and brought the baton down with the force of one semaphoring on an aircraft carrier in the fog. His songsters began: <<"Our blow-torches are reeea-dy!...">> "Our next smart bomb," Bing-bing Huntz shouted to the general, his words drowned by the off-key chorus, "is an especially deadly ground-to-air missile...." <<"Our shoestrings are tieeeeed!....">> He pointed out the codename on the program. THE LAST WORDS BOMB. "Our programmers have been working very hard on this one," he shouted. "According to Farwick, some have even pulled an all-nighter or two. I can't imagine what has inspired them." <<"Our desks are in orrrrder! Our courage is too!">> On the test field, the sling-shot-missile launcher lobbed what looked like a giant pineapple into the air. <> It curled across the blue with drawing board-perfect grace, red smoke unfurling behind it. It swept into the letter G. <> It wove a U over the clouds. It scrawled an S. It skipped a cloud, and after it scribbled with hasty determination "FARWICK." The singing stopped for a moment as everyone looked upward and gaped. The engineer-manager cracked his baton on the portable podium with oblivious determination. The choir resumed, "<>" The bomb plundered further into the clouds. It wove a red curlicue, then it spelled, "S...I...N...G...S...T... H...E...B...I...G...K...A...H...U...N...A." The onlookers gasped. Annoyedly, the engineer-manager cracked his baton so hard on the podium it cracked. The choir, still watching the sky, shakily resumed, <<"...is the thing we most like to doooo!...>>" The missile swooped down like a vulture at its prey and everyone in the bleachers and on the field dived to the ground or under the seats, their hands covering their heads. Farwick stubbornly sung the last words of the song himself. "<>" He stretched out his arms out like Pavarotti. The Last Words Bomb curled to the side and flew straight into the heart of a bull's eye propped on hay bales in the center of the field. It exploded in a white burst of flame. Stunned spectators struggled up from the ground or crawled from beneath the bleachers, as a blanket of smoke drifted over the hushed field. Many stood silently looking up at the sky and its curious proclamation "GUS FARWICK SINGS THE BIG KAHUNA." Some wondered if it was a message in code, and others if it was a typo. A few considered it a fitting overhead caption to the warped singing on the ground. A handful even toyed with the possibility that some of its nouns and verbs might be clever dodges of the bomb's rumored language parser, and a more subtle, potent message lurked beneath. <> For whatever reason, the crowd spontaneously erupted in a huzzah of blind and barbaric gusto. General Figgerty slapped Bing-bing Huntz on the back. "Golldamnit, your research people never cease to surprise!" The company president smiled and said, "Now, I never want to hear you or your people complaining again about $17 million being mispent." The only one who was unappreciative of the screwball proclamation now smearing across the sky was the former aspiring symphonic choir conductor. He pulled off his audio earphones and gazed at the clouds with the malevolence of one who's greatest work of art has just been hideously maligned. He clenched his cracked baton and envisioned himself administering deadly karate chops to the perpetrator of this fiendish affront, a man who at this very moment was probably slouching in his zebra skin-covered computer chair, smirking. Gus Farwick Sings the Big Kahuna, indeed! Far down the test field, a man in a faded orange, infinity-sign emblazoned t-shirt, his choir robe trailing in the dirt, shuffled off in raggedy sneakers. He did not know exactly where he was headed, except that he had a suspicion it might be best if he went to clean out his desk. He did not want to forget his ten pound roll of duct tape or his classic SIMMs extractor collection in the top drawer, as he had done at the last place of employment from which he had been fired. Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace's five-foot- thick concrete walls, laser-eye security system, and armed guards might make sneaking back at night with burglary tools to retrieve them rather difficult. He also figured that he had better tell his officemate, the ever-naive Andrew.BAS, about this latest turn of events. He seemed to recall the programmer having said something about planning to pay the rent next week, and since he had liberally commented the The Last Words Bomb's software with "ANDREW.BAS WROTE THIS" he figured he had best tell him before he wrote the check. >>In the next episode of "The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific"....When S-max and Andrew.BAS find themselves without a job and without any viable character references, they decide that the only option left is to start a high- tech company together.<<