mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) (06/13/88)
[photon powered line-eater]
the following drivel is Copyright 1988 by Mike Smithwick
And now, boys and girls, geeks, and geekettes,-what you've all
been waiting for :
AmigaTrek - The Next Generation (v 3.0, part 1)
tonight's story : Revenge of the Marketroids
(vitamin enriched for your reading pleasure!)
----------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 0001
Captains Log 33-24-32.1 : We've just completed exploration of the
empty void, once known as Jerry Pournelle's brain. This region is
unique to the Universe as it contains the purest vacuum known to
man. Not finding anything of great value or interest, except for
a substantial stash of empty beer cans, and cheap SF novels, we
find ourselves heading towards MouseFleet Academy. It is here we
hope to be joined by a new recruit, one Ensign Bryce. . . .
The transputer was enabled, and a ghostly form began to take
shape. Molecules blitted about the room while computers busily
worked to reconstruct the patterns encoded in the chunk-header.
The FORM suddenly flickered, and then disappeared altogether. "My
GAWD! He's been HASHED!!" shouted a hallucinogenic technician.
The captain darted to the console and grabbed the mouse. Yanking
this screen, and that slider, nothing seemed to happen. "Those
damn system bugs, you think that they would've fixed them by
Kickstart 53445.2 Gamma 29!". The visage reappeared in the
chamber to a chorus of heavy gronking from the transputer drives.
At last his full solid form came together.
"Sorry about that Ensign, system bugs ya know. . ." apologized
the Captain.
"That's Ok" replied the new recruit, unfazed by the incident. He
held up a disk and announced "I found that bug last week, and
patched Kickstart to fix it. Sorry I can't give it to you though,
MouseFleet frowns on custom Kickstarts".
"So the rumors are true, I think you'll be a welcome addition to
the crew. Here fill out this bug report, and well forward it on
to MouseBase".
StarChip EnterBoing sailed on towards it's next stop to pick up a
delegation of high-priced pseudo-luminaries to transport them to
the MouseFleet DevCon.
Using the new ensign's disk, they successfully downloaded the
delegation aboard. After de-arc'ing them, there stood the
Assistant to the First Secretary of MouseFleet, Major Lauren.
Behind her was the Chief Engineer Carolyn from the Crafty Amiga
Technical Star System, CATSS. The third member of the group was
non other then the enigmatic, yet familiar caped figure of Lord
Leo of Schwab, the original Vagabond Hacker.
"Captain ", said the comely Major said wrapped in a resplendent
blue MenuStrip made of the finest DropCloth, "I'd like you to
meet Chief Engineer Carolyn, and I'm sure you know Lord Leo. . ."
Dale stepped up to Leo and grabbing his hand. "Your worship, we
are priviledged to have your presence on our humble StarChip" he
said falling to his knees.
"Gee, thanks. Wanna see my latest screen hack?".
"Some other time perhaps, right now we have a story to finish. .
."
"It'll take only a minute!". Leo parted his cape, revealing a
vest bulging with hundreds of the new .03 inch mini-micro-
floppies. He moved swiftly and with confidence over towards the
nearest computer, an aging Amiga 12000, still running a 980000
series CPU at only 13x10^8 MIPS.
The computer seem to come alive, nervously twitching as if
possessed by some ancient deity. It jumped off the table and
started darting around the room like a small furry animal in
heat. Suddenly it stopped then slowly, ever so slowly, it began
to rise off of the floor on top of a pillar of iridescent vapor,
turning 16 different colors. Halfway to the ceiling it entered
into a little jig while playing "Stay'n Alive" in Quadraphonic
sound. Images of scantily clad Alien females flashed on the
screen to the beat, while the rocking motion and music reached
towards a fevered pitch turning the EnterBoing into an
intergalactic floppy-disco. All at once the music, vapor and
scantily clad alien females came to a sudden stop, and the
computer crashed to the floor with a sickening munching sound. A
familiar red message softly flashed on the screen.
"Damn, must've been a compiler bug! You'd think that Jim would've
gotten those fixed by version 3.7."
At that moment a voice crackled through the message port from the
bridge, "Captain, we've picked up a distress signal. . ."
"Coming from where?"
"One moment please. . .OH MY GAWD! It's coming from, The Office
Zone!"
Now, the Office Zone was where hacker nightmares come true. It is here that the inhabitants live their entire lives in something
akin to a dazed zombie-like state. They make sport of shunning
technical progress of any kind, forever condemning themselves to
thinking that a window is something that looks out over a
dumpster, or that 3 1/2 inch floppies are "just a fad". In fact,
many have been known to hoard 8 inch drives for the day when
everyone else "will come to their senses". No sir, not a safe
place for innovation. If it's not 10 years out of date, it can't
be trusted.
The group quickly exited the transputer room and made their way
towards the Bridgeboard. Leo hopped onto his miniature recumbant-
Color-cycle, and brought up the rear.
----------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 0010
Ensign Jim leaned back in his chair, feet propped up on the
console.device, reading a cheap SF novel he picked up during the
Pournelle Excursion ("Women Sumo-wrestlers from Negative
Dimensions"). With a walkman in place, he was intently working
his way through a box of munchies, scattering crumbs everywhere.
"What are you eating Jim", inquired Dave.
"Display Cookies [this is a real inside joke, don't expect to get
it], want some?" he replied, his mouthful of crumbs showering the
deck. The door opened and the captain strutted in with his
guests. In one continuous graceful move that would make Brian
Boitano proud, Jim tossed the box, book and walkman under the
table and swept the crumbs aside. With a slightly pained look on
her face, Major Lauren jotted down something on her Notepad for
the masters back at HQ.
As the captain settled into his seat, Lauren and Carolyn stood
back ready to observe these closet renegades in action, their
real mission as given them by Commodore Toy. Bryce took his
position behind the symbolic-debugging console, prepared to make
any patches demanded of him. Meanwhile, Leo scurried over to an
unused console, and quietly slipped in a disk. . .
"Anymore on the distress signal Ensign?"
"It's in some ancient code sir, I think it's EBCDIC, I can't
decipher it."
"Why not use that new decryption program we downloaded last
week?"
"Good idea sir". Booting up the program, a screen appears "hi
there! Decrypt X15 is shareware. If you find this even marginally
useful, send me all the money belonging to you and that guy
sitting next to you, and I may send you a manual if I feel like it."
Ignoring the request, Jim piped the incoming message to the
program. Words began to flash across the screen like the marquee
in Time Square : "Help, I'm being held captive by a band of
crazed Marketriods! There must be more to life than C prompts!"
Silence settled over the bridge like a fine cloud of dust. The
Captain's mouth dropped open in exaggerated horror, silent rage
swelling up inside him. After a long pause, he forced out a few
breathless words coming through tightly clenched teeth. "No man
should ever be forced into a position servile to that of MS-DOS!"
he said, his voice hitting a crescendo at the end.
"The captain's really popped his stack now!", whispered Jim.
"We're going back into the Office Zone. Bryce?"
"Yes sir?"
"I hate to do this to you son, on your first assignment and all.
. ."
"That's Ok Capt'n, just as long as we don't meet the Really-Dark
Lord Skyles."
"Well then, it's decided. Set course to vector $C00000, enable
the cache, activate the 68881, and accentuate the positive. . .
"Course set to $C00000".
The mighty engines oscillate to life, so loud they could even be
heard in a vacuum. What fate awaits our crew? They will certainly
find out in a short int.
----------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 0011
Captain's log 10.0.0.78 : Traveling in the Office Zone was no
easy decision. Unspeakable danger lurked behind every moon of
every planet in every solar-system. There was the land of 300
baud modems, the planet of Valdocs users, and the World Without
Subdirectories. Then there were the legends, the many legends, of
the mysterious disappearance of other like minded StarChips with
their like minded Commanders. The most famous story dealt with
the S.S. Red Fruit, which vanished into the inky black void some
3 years before. Once guided by the sure hand of capable hackers,
some say that a mutant life form sucked the very life out of
their bodies and sold their souls to the dreaded Power Users.
Still other rumors persisted of madness inflicting even the most
stable of characters who would return babbling such nonsense as "connectivity", "desktop presentations", "multi-finder is multi-
tasking". No sir, it was not an easy decision. But still, someone
had to bring the light into the darkness, and someone had to look
mediocrity in the eye, and refuse to blink!
"Message coming in for Ensign Bryce" reported Dave, "it says. .
., 'call your mom'".
At that moment, a warning klaxon interrupted their thoughts.
"Unknown vessel off of the right, er, starboard side sir",
exclaimed Kodiak.
"Activate the Digi-Viewer, and lets get a look at this guy".
"Digi-Viewer activated sir. Right here is the red view. Now let
me turn the wheel, here's the green view, and. . . and the blue.
Can't we afford a Digidroid??".
Captain Dale stared in unblinking disbelief. Whispering to
himself he commented, "And I thought those were just rumors. . .,
it looks like the S.S Red Fruit. . ."
"How can you tell?" asked Bryce.
"Just look at all of the those price tags hanging off of the
thing".
"It's the S.S. Odyssey now Captain" echoed a god-like voice
emanating from everywhere, "and this is General Scull-ee. We've
been observing you for some time now and have concluded that you
are violating some, nay, many of our cherished copyrights."
Jim snapped as only Jim can snap, "Oh yeah?".
"And naturally," the voice continued,"we expect you to stop it
immediately, or we shall be forced to take action. . ."
"Dale here General, I apologize if you feel that way. Of course
our Prime Directive states, 'give credit where credit is due',
and so I really doubt if we could be guilty of such things. You
must be mistaken. . ."
"Mistaken??", the voice returned, now indignant, now with a
sadistic tone, sounding more and more like a Power User.
"Me mistaken?, You're the one who is mistaken sir. Let's start
with those menus of yours, shall we? Hmmmm? Or how about 'your'
windows, not to mention, that cute little trashcan, I wonder
where you got that idea, ha ha ha,. . ."
"Captain" Lauren whispered in his ear, "They can't possibly own a
copyright on those things, can they?"
". . .And don't forget the mouse" the voice continued, carrying an increasingly Draconian character, "you do have a mouse don't
you? Then there is that little matter of the keyboard. . ."
"No one has that much arrogance Major".
". . .the on/off switch, the rubber feet. Oh, and what about
those little screw thingies that hold the case together?. . ."
Unable to bear it any longer, Carolyn finally posted a message,
"maybe they do Captain, after they signed those treaties with the
Fortunate-500 civilizations. . ."
". . .then there's that little matter of the alphabet you're
using on your CRT, have you ever bothered to license that from
us? Oh, by the way, about the CRT. . ."
"Captain, I'm scared" blubbered Jim.
". . .certain frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum
between 3000 and 7000 angstroms. . . .Oh, excuse me but I got to
go to some more interviews with a couple of newspapers, CNNN, and
(real)Time magazine. I'm transferring you to our legal
department".
The very thought surprised the crew. A StarChip with a it's own
lawyers was an impossible thought. Especially since by MouseFleet
decree, the species had been quarantined to the Habeas Corpus
planetary system years before following the great Tort Wars. They
had become simply too much of a stumbling block to progress for
any civilized society to deal with. Ahhhhhh, but that's another
parody.
Apparently the Odyssey had kept a few lawyers in hiding, breeding
them for use as secret weapons. . .
By now the EnterBoing was stationkeeping, slowly drifting in
front of the SS Odyssey caught in the middle of a stare down with
it's expensive monitor. Faint sounds of the distress occasionally
signal broke the background silence.
"Uh, EnterBoing, this is the Odyssey Legal Department. Pursuant
to the Federal Copyright act of 1937. . ."
"Captain, look at that", the science officer shouted, waving his
hand frantically towards the main Viewport.
The Odyssey's screen flickered off at first, then burst forth in
a fiery blaze of electro-magnetic fireworks. Images of scantily
clad alien females appeared, followed by little computer people
stealing the arrow pointer from each other. Static popped up out
of nowhere, followed by a red unicycle juggling fruit. A blood
curdling scream cut through the ether, "arrgghhhh!. . . Someone's
taken control!!! We've lost the Finder!"
A thin little laugh drifted over from the corner. Six pairs of
eyes turned in unison towards Leo. "Hi guys", he giggled, waving
his fingers at them, "would you believe that took only 17 bytes
of code? written in Jovial just to make it hard??"
All eyes swept back towards the screen, observing the vaporware
which was now gushing out of the NuBus. The Odyssey quickly
drifted away from the EnterBoing, consumed in it's own problems.
Once again the crew turned back towards Leo, in silent awe over
his great mastery.
The Captain wandered up towards the screen, hands clasped behind
his back, and stared longingly off into the distance. "Dave,
engage the Supra-Drives, and let's get outta here".
The EnterBoing was redirected back towards the signal, her crew
even more determined to succeed.
[Will our crew find the distress signal? Will 1.3 ever be
released? Is "Max Toy" his real name? Stay tune for the second
installment of AmigaTrek-The Next de-Generation]
******************************************************
And now a word to those of you who have breathlessly awaited this latest
release, who've delayed vacations or stayed up late at nights. . .
The reason for the delay is that the boys at RoboCity.News want
unpublished material, so they asked me to avoid posting this to
the net until they went to press. But, since RoboCity has had
some delays recently, I said, "what the heck". Plus an
impassioned plea from Robin LaPasha a couple of weeks ago pushed
me further over the edge then I have been.
--
*** mike (starship janitor) smithwick ***
"Being a dwarf does have it's shortcomings"
[disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]egranthm@jackson.UUCP (Ewan Grantham) (06/14/88)
As the summary says.... WOW... when's the next installment?
--
Ewan Grantham (601) 354-6454 ext.358
{pyramid or bellcore or tness..}!swbatl!jackson!egranthm
I'm not responsible for my bosses, and vice-versa