Hammond%YALE@sri-unix.UUCP (02/14/84)
From: Kris Hammond <Hammond@YALE>
[Forwarded from a Yale bboard by Shrager@CMU-PSY-A.]
THE ADVENTURES OF JOE LISP, T MAN
Brought to you by: *AI-LUNCH*, its hot, its cold, its more than
a lunch...
This week's episode:
The Case of the Bogus Expert
Part I
It was late on a Tuesday and I was dead in my seat from nearly an
hour of grueling mail reading and idle chit-chat with random passers
by. The only light in my office was the soft glow from my CRT,
the only sound was the pain wracked rattle of an over-heated disk.
It was raining out, but the steady staccato rhythm that beat its
way into the skulls of others was held back by the cold concrete
slabs of my windowless walls. I like not having windows, but that's
another story.
I didn't hear her come in, but when the scent of her perfume hit
me, my head swung faster than a Winchester. She was wearing My-Sin,
a perfume with the smell of an expert, but that wasn't what impressed
me. What hit me was her contours. She had a body with all the
right variables. She wore a dress with a single closure that barely
hid the dynamic scoping of what was underneath. Sure I saw her
as an object, but I guess I'm just object oriented. It's the kind
of operator I am.
After she sat down and began to tell her story I realized that her
sophisticated look was just cover. She was a green kid, still wet
behind the ears. In fact she was wet all over. As I said, it was
raining outside. It's an easy inference.
It seems the kid's step-father had disappeared. He had been a
medical specialist, diagnosis and prescription, but one day he
started making wild claims about knowledge and planning and then
he vanished. I had heard of this kind before. Some were
specialists. Some in medicine, some in geology, but all were the
same kind of guy. I looked the girl in the eye and asked the one
question she didn't want to hear, "He's rule-based, isn't he?".
She turned her head away and that was all the answer I needed. His
kind were cold, unfeeling, unchanging, but she still loved him and
wanted him back again.
Once I got a full picture of the guy I was sure that I knew where
to find him, California. It was the haven for his way of thinking
and acting. I was sure that he had been swept up by the EXPERTS.
They were a cult that had grown up in the past few years, promising
fast and easy enlightenment. What they didn't tell you was that
the price was your ability to understand itself. He was there,
as sure as I was a T Man.
I knew of at least one operative in California who could be trusted,
and I knew that I had to talk to him before I could do any further
planning. I reached for the phone and gave him a call.
The conversation was short and sweet. He had resource conflicts
and couldn't give me a hand right now. I assumed that it had to
be more complex than that and almost said that resource conflicts
aren't that easy to identify, but I had no time to waste on in
fighting while the real enemy was still at large. Before he hung
up, he suggested that I pick up a radar detector if I was planning
on driving out and asked if I could grab a half-gallon of milk for
him on the way. I agreed to the favor, thanked him for his advice
and wished him luck on his tan...
That's all for now kids. Tune in next week for the part two of:
The Case of the Bogus Expert
Starring
JOE LISP, T MAN
And remember kids, Wednesdays are *AI-LUNCH* days and 11:45 is the
*AI-LUNCH* time. And kids, if you send in 3 box tops from *AI-LUNCH*
you can get a JOE LISP magic decoder ring. This is the same ring
that saved JOE LISP only two episodes ago and is capable of parsing
from surface to deep structure in less than 15 transformations.
Its part plastic, part metal and all bogus, so order now.Anonymous@inmet.UUCP (03/04/84)
#R:sri-arpa:-1683600:inmet:11000009:000:41 inmet!Anonymous Feb 29 12:39:00 1984 Maybe she was wearing My-Syn.