mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) (07/29/89)
["Here, hold this armadillo . . ."]
the following is copyright 1989 by mike smithwick of Starship
Enterprises. . .
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(Fascinating Note : The following was conceived BEFORE I was
even aware of the plot to Star Trek 5)
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AmigaTrek, 4.0!
WARNING : Do not operate any heavy equipment when reading the
following. . .
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teee
teee
teee
teee. . .
Dumb, te dumb, te dumb deedee dumb. . .
These are the continuing voyages of the StarChip EnterBoing : to
explore new algorithms, to seek out new technologies, to meet more
stellar babes, and to go where no puns have gone before. . .
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In an unimportant arm of a pointless galaxy of a remote corner of
a rather dull universe sits a dreary little solar system. On the
fourth planet, a Pysgosian commander is upset when a mere ensign
of the Intersellian Imperial Battalions from the planet
Unlandian-12 insults his mother-in-law, calling her what could
best be described as a wombat in drag who picks her nose using
common garden implements. What the Pysgosian commander didn't
know was that the Unlandian wombat is an object of veneration and
that nose picking is an act of worship. Therefore, what was
thought to be an insult was actually a high compliment.
Unfortunately, before the Ensign could explain, he discovered
that Psygosians have fairly short and rather teutonic tempers.
And his entire planet was instantly vaporized into subatomic
component mesons, destroying his family, Barry Manilow record
collection and the entire wombat population of that galaxy. As a
result, this would eventually set off a cosmic chain of events
which would lead to the destruction of the physical dimensions 1
to 4, 7 to 8, 11, all Barry Manilow master tapes and the sudden
purging of Commodore Toy, head of Mousefleet. But that has
absolutely nothing to do with this story. . .
*************************************************************
Chapter 0
Captains Log - CPU time 172118.7. Dum-de-dum. Well, nothing much
is happening. The boys are down on the Spectrum Holodeck testing
"the limits of the computer's simulation algorithms". Ever since
they received that new "Harems of Orion" database from MegaPrice
Software, I haven't seen much of them.
As for myself, I've been spending some time on the new AmigaWhirl
contest. Now if only I can figure out the DNA sequence of a
Psygosian Wombat. . .
In the meantime, the EnterBoing has been having problems as of
late. Ever since we upgraded to AmigaDross 37.8x10E21, all sorts
of annoying bugs have been popping up. We've been having to
subsist on boxes of old-display cookies and blitter-chips and dip
due to a bug in the Food Synthesizer System that makes everything
look like slightly congealed lime jello and taste like a cross
between gerbil droppings and rancid road kill. Not a pretty sight
when you had your heart set on a sauteed mushrooms, fettucini and
a nice chablis. Captain out.
Bored out of his Mindscape, Dale took the Digi-lift down to the
Menu-Bar for a drink, passing some of those insignificant extras
in red jerseys along the way. "There's nothing like some
BoingBeer to fix things up" he thought.
Suddenly, and without warning, the ship's lights dim.
"Oh FACC!" cursed Dale, "I must've forgotten to pay the power
bill!"
The lights flickered on and off, followed by distant gronking of
the OverDrives. Dale quickly made his way back to the bridgboard,
shoving some extras to the side.
"Fweeep-sheesh" went the Digi-Lift doors.
"Whirr, clickety-click, gronk boozabooza whirr eeeeeech!" went
the Digi-Lift.
"Sheesh-fweep" said the doors, as they opened to release the
captain onto the bridge revealing a scene which would make make
most men tremble. Each and every computer was slowly flashing red
with the.. . .Hello? What? An unknown GURU number!
"Dale to Holodeck! We've had a major systems failure boys, drop
whatever your doing and get up here!"
"Geereech" went the doors as a flustered bridge crew drags-
selected on in.
An exhausted Ensign Jim whined "Aww captain, couldn't it have
waited. I was just getting to Dos-base!"
"Count your blessings" said Bryce, "I couldn't get by that damn
code wheel!"
Dale slowly waved his hand across the room. "Well gentlemen,
first the food-generator goes, then the main computers, what do
you make of it?"
Jim was swept up into a trace like state, performing a heavy-duty
analysis of the situation. "Well sir" he breathed, "I think
the main computers have gone."
"Do you want me to fill out a bug-report?" ensign Bryce injected
with his boundless enthusiasm.
"Ensign Bryce, why don't you use you boundless enthusiasm to
check the manuals first to see if they can help."
"NO! NOT THE MANUALS!!"
Dale tossed him a slender volume. "Here son, you can do it".
"This is it?"
"Hey, this is the most user-friendly StarChip ever made. What do
you expect?"
Bryce's hand trembled as he slowly turned to the first page.
"Introduction to the EnterBoing Class StarChip".
"Congratulations on purchasing your EnterBoing StarChip. The
StarChip will provide you with years of effortless galactic
hyperspace exploration, and a great chance to meet girls.
("Excuse me, how 'bout you and me blow this planet and go to the
hotbaths on Foobar-12").
Remember to send in your registration card so we can inform you
of upgrades, bugs and possible problems with the matter-anti-
matter maglev containment chamber. . .
(The ensign read further. . .)
"The bridge is where you control your starchip. The captain's
chair may be raised or lowered depending on what feels
comfortable. . ."
(Skips to chapter 8)
". . .To reset the StarChip's clocks, press buttons 1,3,7,10 and
12 at the same time on the preferences panel. Of course, if you
are humanoid, you may have problems with that, simply call up one
of your mutant pals or someone from the planet Flophouse-7. . ."
After a few more minutes, Bryce closed the book with contempt and
tossed it back to Dale.
"Nothing here of any significance, except I found out how
to finally set the clocks."
Meanwhile, in an insignificant register on the Michelle chip of
the Mark IV gravity generator from the Graviton Corporation ("our
generators suck better than anyone elses!") a pointer decided he
had enough mucking around according to someone elses offsets. In
the process of exploring his own individualality as a pointer
and re-examining his goals in his life, he changed the sign on a
constant. . .
The crew abruptly found themselves plastered against the ceiling
like spitwads in a 3rd grade classroom. The ship's message ports
were bursting with activity about the toilets on decks 5 and 7 exploding
not to mention all of the dust from the floors getting into the
supra-drives.
"Hey! This is really neat! Look guys, I'm walking on the
ceiling!" whooped Jim.
Dale grimaced, "Uh, why don't we call the tech-support line?"
Thinking that was a nobel idea, Lt. Dave pulled himself towards
the communications console and dialed the line.
"(Ring-ring) You have reached the MegaCorps tech support line.
All of our operators are busy now so please hold on. Unless of
course you're calling about the bug in the Matter-Antimatter
Maglev Containment Chamber, in which case it's probably too late!
(click, Barry Manilow music starts to play)(click. buzzzzzzz. . .)"
"Dammit. The phone just hung".
Unawares of the havoc he was causing the diminutive pointer was
having the time of his life. Turning the corner in the gravity
generator he swept by another constant hurling the crew about the
cabin, their Forms-in-Flight resembling so much popcorn in the
popper.
As quickly as it began, the ship settled down. Muted emergency
communications could be heard in the background. "Misaligned
words on Deck 6", "Stay away from the toilets on Deck 12",
"Escaped harem girls outside the Holodeck. . ."
"Hey guys, there's an intruder on board!" chirped Bob, the new
user-cheerful computer.
The digilift opened, ("dweedlexweep-weeesh"), and out stepped the
bearded rogue, the flamboyant and mysterious
Galactic-Baron Piechart von Windsheild.
"Piechart you old scoundrel! It's been years since I last saw you
at the Mousefleet Academy".
The smartly attired Baron grasped the Captain on both shoulders
as an old friend. "Dale, it's good to see you, but that's not why
I'm here. Sorry fellows," he said, glancing around at the others,
"but I'm pre-empting your mission. It seems like I am in great
need of a StarChip."
The crafty Baron strolled across the bridge with grace and
aplomb.
"You see gentlemen, we're on our way to the lair of the GURU, to
see who this character really is and why we must meditate on his
blasted numbers. And with this wisdom, we can rule the Galaxy! Or
at least, a couple of acres in Wyoming. Anyway, I've taken the
liberty of inserting a little patch in your OS, changed the
global vector to take us to the GURU's star system. And should
any of you try to change the program and regain control of the
ship, I'll a, I'll a . . .", a smile crept across his interface,
"I'll have you guys shrink-wrapped and put on the PageStream
debugging team! Ha ha ha ha ha. . ."
Bryce interrupted him asking, "How do you know GURU exists,
aren't the stories about him just myth and legends?"
"Certainly not!" spouted the brazen figure, "You see, I've had visions,
Software Visions to be precise. Late one nite I had put myself
into the State of Boing after meditating on one particularly
crufty number. And the message came to me that not only did he
exist, but he was living in Computer Nirvana."
[Computer Nirvana is the legendary land where software is bug
free, it rains RAM chips, and the CPU speeds double each week. In
Computer Nirvana, BCPL is illegal, and the Macintosh is used to
prop open doors or for target practice on the skeet range. It is
here where Hackers are revered and showered with praise, and
their project managers address them as "sir". Tech support lines
are answered before the first ring, announced products are always
released, and released early]
"So fellows, I hope you haven't made any Maxiplans for this
evening as we're going on a little Trip Hawkins."
(pause for readers to gag)
**************************************************************
Chapter 1
Captain's Log Boing Date 3.14159 : Things aren't nearly so dull
anymore. With the Galactic Baron stealing the EnterBoing on his
psychopathic mission, I have little to do but catch up on some
old copies of OverByte Magazine. The bugs are still infecting us,
and by now all of the toilets are inoperative forcing the crew to
go where no man has gone before.
The captain paced back and Forth, his crew both assembled and
linked before him. "What we need are some Creative Solutions!"
Kodiak's hand shot up, waving frantically. "I know, I know sir!
Why don't we just sit him down and talk. We can reason with him,
appeal to his humanness, his innate sense of nobility. And if
that doesn't work we could offer him some cash. I could kick in a
couple of bucks. . ."
"That's pretty Soft Logik if you ask me. . ." snapped Jim.
The captain raised his hand to quiet the clamour. "We must first
check the Mousefleet Regulations Manual under 'Captured by
Roguish Character'. . . .Ah, here it is, Section 2, subsection
4.1 paragraph 6. 'Give in, it makes for a good show'."
*****************************************
Meanwhile, the EnterBoing sailed off towards the unknown reaches
of Normalized Vector Space in search of the elusive GURU. All
seemed quiet. . .
"Bweedweep! Bweedweep! Bweedweep!" erupted the warning siren.
"Captain! Unknown solar system up ahead."
"Put in on the Digiviewer."
Kodiak pointed towards the screen. "Look, there are alot of those
planet thingies. . .Shouldn't we get out and look around?"
"Let's see what the Manual says under 'Coming Up to an Unknown
Solar System while in the Evil Grip of a Roguish Character'. 'If
the solar system has alot of those planet thingies, get out and
look around why don't cha'. And it sez further 'When forming a
landing party to an unknown and potentially hostile planet,
always take the most valuable crewmembers, leaving the ship in
the hands of inexperienced trainees. Also bring along a handful
of those red jerseyied guys to take the heat. They're a dime-a-
dozen, and no one will miss them.'"
"Captain," remarked Kodiak with a concerned voice, "in a
situation such as this don't you think you should stay here with
the ship?"
"Nonsense ensign. As the captain, it is my heroic duty to
accompany the landing party on these missions. Plus the StarChip
Captain's Union Local 6502 gets us hazard pay for things like
this."
With permission bits from the Baron, the ship entered into a low
orbit around the fourth planet. The globe beneath exhibited an
odd fuzzy appearance not to mention the limited colormap of only
16 colors.
Accompanied by the Baron, the crew put on their bootblocks and
headed towards the transporter room. . .
Upon entering, the transporter guy greeted them with distressing
news, "I want to warn you Captain, the latest release of the
PriceWare transporter control software, 'TelePort!' has a few,
er, bugs in it."
"Don't worry, well send down the red shirted extras first and see
how they fare."
The figures of the extras began to dissolve from the chamber.
Suddenly their FORMs changed to random patterns and blazing
colors all blending into a sea of confused and tangled
configurations. Finally they flickered once or twice and blinked
out.
The Transporter Guy banged his fist against the console, "Dammit!
Crashed again. Lookeethere! There's a GURU number I haven't seen
before . ."
"What happened to the extras?"
"Looks like they got their coppers trashed. Tough way to go."
Dale patted him on the back, "That's ok, we could use their rooms
for extra storage space for my beer can collection. Let's take
the shuttle, Galileo, ok?"
Armed with fresh red shirted guys the crew touched down onto the
arid foreboding planet.
"Kodiak, get a reading of the atmosphere and see if it's ok for
us to breathe."
Moments later, a couple of the extras were shoved out the door to
take some deep breaths. After 5 minutes, seeing that they hadn't
keeled over, the rest of the crew step gingerly out onto the
twisted Videoscape. Tangled Btrees were scattered randomly
around. The ground had an indistinct feel to it, quantized in
steps or layers.
"No babes here, let's go" said Jim.
"Not so fast ensign."
A shrill scream came from behind one of the rocks, and out shot a
curious fuzzy creature.
"ohmygawd!" shouted Dale, "IT'S THE JAGGIES!!" (actually, the
jaggies were just a nickname, since their real name was too hard
to pronounce).
Immediately the crew was stricken with severe headaches and their
eyes began to water. One of the jaggies jumped onto an extra
and pummeled him into a low-resolution version of his former
self.
"Look! They're aliasing the red shirted things!" wailed Kodiak.
"Quick! The Interlace guns!" yelled Dale, reaching for his
holster.
On cue they fired, hitting one between the lines, forcing the
others to dart behind the rocks.
Jim began to cry. "I really didn't want to come here captain. In
fact, I really didn't want to join up on your stupid StarChip. My
mom forced me to. Actually, it was my brothers fault. He got all
the good grades in school and my mom said 'Jim why can't you be
like your brother!'. The best I could do was 'Ensign'. And now
it's 'Ensign do this, ensign do that!' That's all I hear.
'Ensign, blast the PageFault monster!'. I really wanted to be a
lumberjack. Striding through the peaceful forests of Eastern
Washington state, the maple, the pine. . . That nice fresh woody
scent that you can only get from household cleansers."
Dale lunged towards the crazed crewman. "He's got Marble Madness!
Stop him, use the MouseFleet nerve pinch!"
". . .Ohh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK. . ."
Kodiak approached Jim who by know had broken into a silly little
jig.
". . .oh, I'm just a NO-OP in the instruction set of Life. . ."
Kodiak nimbly placed 3 fingers on his face and pressed at the
same time resetting the confused ensign. Jim immediately fell to
the ground, his eyes blinking slowly as he whistled a faint tune
which vaguely resembled something from a Wagnerian opera.
Meanwhile one of the Jaggies was sneaking up behind the Captain. . .
"Look Captain, a jaggy is sneaking up behind you!"
"I am perfectly capable of reading the narration myself."
Dale coolly clubbed him over the head with a flicker-fixer, then
rolled out of the way.
By now Bryce was becoming feverish, "Ohhhh, If only we had the
HedlyBlaster!"
Dale kicked at yet another Jaggy. "Uh, well, ours has been on
order for 42 years, but they still haven't shipped. Ooomph!"
The alien had grabbed the captain by the leg, causing it to
stairstep.
"What we really need, ouch!, is a, arrrgh!, convincing turn of
events to get us out of this, grunch!, mess."
"Someone call?" came a familiar voice. A shadowy figure stepped
out of rising cloud of vapor, trailed by a tasteful and yet
understated cape.
"I said 'convincing'."
The Caped Wonder had appeared out of nowhere, upraised staff in
one hand and an curious looking device in the other. Lord Leo of
Schwab aimed the box towards the Jaggies, and in one graceful
sweeping motion, launched hardware anti-aliasing algorithms in
their directions throwing them into 24-bit deep pixels. Unable to
tolerate true RGB representation they were first Z-buffered then
mapped in real-time up against a sphere.
Leo giggled at his own cleverness. "Gee, isn't this Toaster
thingie neat!"
"The TOASTER?" exclaimed Bryce, "You mean it's actually been
released??"
The "Toaster" was one of those items of children's fables,
roughly in the same category as Computer Nirvana and laptop Macs.
Some claimed that they did see it demonstrated, but upon doing
so, they were immediately put under psychiatric observation only
to be found years later cleaning sticky bits off of directory
listings in some remote galactic bus-depot.
"No it hasn't. But I just got back from NewTekia where I had,
ahem, borrowed one of these puppies. But don't tell them that.
Boy those people talk weird, repeating everything 3 or 4 times,
times, 3 or 4 times. . ."
"Hey, where's the Baron?" asked Dave.
Piechart stuck his head out of the shuttle's hatch. "Oh, hi
guys. The shuttle needed some tidying up, so humble servant that
I am, I thought I'd stay back and clean the powerwindows, wax the
floor and picked up all of the beer cans and twinkie wrappers.
Geeze, what a pig sty. When you guys say you're going on a
landing party, you really mean PARTY." At that moment, the Baron
caught sight of the Master of Software Mirth. "Leo old pal! Nice
to see ya. Put 'em there guy. Nice Cape, new? Say, when's 'Onion'
gonna be done?"
Embarrassed, Leo turned and began to trot away. "Uh, I think
I'll be on my way. . ."
Grabbing hold of the cape, Dale yanked him back a few steps. "Not
so fast buster. We may be needing your help. It seems like your
friend here has hijacked the EnterBoing, intending to take us to
find the GURU."
"You're looking for the GURU. Wow, have I got a few things I'd
like to say to him. Sign me up!"
Realizing that they've now gathered an official 'group' required
by law for any "Great Quest", everyone linked arms, skipped off
into the setting suns and launched themselves into a chorus of
song. . .
"Ohhhhhhhh, we're off to meet the GURU, the wonderful GURU of
all. Because because because because because. software tricks,
BCPL, drives that click, structures from hell, . . . ."
*****************************************************
Chapter 3
Captains Log, access time 33 ms : After that harrowing battle
with the jaggies, I felt I deserved a nice hot bath. Fortunately,
the ships stores still had some Mr. Bubble on hand. Afterwards I
got a bowl of BoingFlakes from the Cereal Port, clipped out the
10 cents off coupon from the back, and read over their "Header
File of the month".
The peace was rudely broken by the sirens going off. "Whoop!
Whoop! Whoop!" they went. The angered captain quickly shot up to
the bridge to investigate.
"Would you turn off that damn 'whoooping' sound it's giving me a
headache. And cut the flashing Red We-Might-Be-In-Danger-but-
Probably-Aren't lights as well!"
"I'm sorry sir," replied Bryce, "but I think that we are really
in danger. Look!"
The captain directed his gaze towards the Digiviewer, and saw a
solid black cube streaking towards them.
"Wait, I need to check the Official Mouse Fleet Procedures Manual
on this. Under the section, 'how to deal with strange solid black
cubes coming towards you'. Ah, here it is. 'Try to establish
communications and tell them that you are merely harmless
shepards looking for grazing land. If that doesn't work, try to
sell them some old copies of Textcraft as a sign of peace then
get the hell out of there before they get a chance try them out.
If that doesn't work, try to do something really clever that will
satisfy the viewing audience and solve the problem in 48
minutes.'"
"fOpen hailing frequencies Mr. Kodiak, by the way, is that your
real name?."
"Frequencies fOpened sir."
Dale stood up, feet apart and hands placed on his hips. He
learned this stance from the MouseFleet academy acting classes on how to
create the most menacing image which could conceivably scare away
the aliens with bad eyesight, or at least have them laughing so hard as to
permit a quick exit. "Aethstetcially pleasing black cube.
This is the commander of the StarChip EnterBoing. We mean you no
harm." (In fact, Captain Dale received an "A" in his "We-Mean-You
No-Harm" class).
A flood of strange commands burst forth over the comm line, the
crew looked at each other unable to make it out.
Leo's face brightened up with recognition. "Postscript! That's
postscript!"
"Cut in the Postscript interpreter."
(buzz, snap, crackle, pop) ". . .higher education zone. We
repeat. This is the higher education zone. Color is not
permitted, nor are mere game computers or any machines with less
than 400 terabytes of internal storage. Floppy drives? Forget it
jack, that's old technology. Same for keyboards and mice. You
must have direct neural input from now on just as soon as we can
make it work.. . ."
Awed, Kodiak leaned towards Leo and whispered, "wow, the nExt
sTarcHiP, I never would've believed. . ."
"I hear it's fast! So fast in fact that it can do an infinite
loop in 2 1/2 seconds!" added Bryce.
"IMHO Captain, I think that should Get Outta HERE!!"
every said in unison.
"No, we have a mission, we must study the enemy, to learn from
their mistakes."
The Enterboing drifted slowly in front of the unblinking
GigaPixel monitor and prepared for yet another tiresome
technological showdown. This time however, they were none too
sure of the outcome as the newer starchips were gradually
catching up with the EnterBoing.
More messages came from the cube. "Unknown primitive Starchip,
leave this area at once or we shall be forced to take action!"
Jim glanced down at his console. "Sir! They've activated their
optical drives!"
"Activate Phasars! I've had enough of their Antics!"
At that point the DigiViewer's screen blacked out, to be replaced
by a cheerful repeating color pattern.
"Damn that screenblanker! Oh well, fire 1!"
Immediately a condensed beam of home budget expense reports leapt
out towards the alien's screen, only to bounce harmlessly off.
"Oh oh, they've armed the Dock."
"Hold steady, brace yourselves!" warned the captain.
Uncertain what to expect the crew contemplated their fates. Jim
could be heard mumbling 10 "Hail Gails" to the Holy Mother
Software under his breath. Kodiak regretted about never having
the chance to meet the Pixmate of the Month in the latest issue
of PlayGeek magazine. Dale was still fuming about not being able
to remember the DNA sequence for Unlandian Wombats.
Together, they silently observed an arrow smoothly glide over to
an icon depicting a spacecraft exploding like an overripe can of
spam in 4 brilliant shades of gray. The icon highlighted, and the
crew held their collective breaths. . .
But nothing happened. A minute passed. A small box appeared on
the screen saying "waiting for application to launch". And they
still waited. A person can wait only so long to be annialated, so
the crew quickly became bored.
Bryce slowly backed the EnterBoing away without so much as being
noticed, leaving the NextChip staring into space, waiting. . . .
"Gee, they don't even have a ZZ cloud or one of those cute watch
thingies!" commeted Dave.
"Well, that's what they get by using Version .999998245 of the
OS" snickered Piechart.
So, as the Ship sailed away towards greater unknowns, state-of-
the-art weirdness, voices could be heard emanating from the
bridge singing in unison. . .
"Only Amiga. . .."
"No no! That's the old one! The new one is 'Amiga-We're working
on it!'"
"Hey, are the johns working yet?"
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Will our crew ever meet the Guru before 1.4 comes out? Will
Kodiak ever meet Miss Pixmate? Will Dan Quayle ever get his foot
out of his mouth? Who cares? Join is same time, same DMA Channel
for Episode 2, of "Where No Geek has Gone Before!"
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feel free to make use of this however you see fit. If you
want to publish it in a local newsletter, please let me
know (and send me a copy). It may be published
only with the appropriate credit at the end, identifying moi, and
stating that I am the creator of Galileo.
And we thank-you for your support.
*** mike (still looking for a publisher) smithwick ***
"Los Angeles : Where neon goes to die"
[disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]