richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (01/05/88)
GADGET.Electronic Edition DECEMBER 1987 Copyright 1987 by Ray Radlein This file may be freely distributed to public computer bulletin boards provided this notice is included intact, but may not be used or published in any other form without prior consent of the author. What the Gang Did At AmiExpo by RAY RADLEIN New York. The Big Apple. The Capitol of The World. A teeming Metropolis even bigger than Columbia, put together. And, for three eventful days in October, the center of the Amiga World. Luminaries and celebrities from all over the planet were gathered together to celebrate the best-kept Industrial Secret in the Free World - the Amiga. Movers and Shakers and Industry Insiders and People in The Know converged on the Sheraton Hotel for three hectic days of Electronic Excitement. And was Gadget there, you ask? Was Gadget there? Are you kidding? The National Newsletter for Amiga Users? Have you been in a coma recently, or what? Of course we sort of went! And boy, oh boy, just wait 'till you hear about the goings-on! The parties, the meetings - was that really Irving Gould swimming naked through a vat of jello? Inquiring minds want to know! Arriving in New York, we headed straight for the Conference halls - there would be time for sight-seeing (and sleep) later! There were so many conferences to attend, that we hardly knew where to start. "Desktop Publishing and The Amiga"....."Desktop Video and The Amiga"...."Engineering and The Amiga"...."Sex and The Single Amiga"...."Commodore's Total Lack of Commitment, and The Amiga"....the prospects boggled the mind! Finally, we decided to go get something to eat. As we approached the snack bar, we were stopped by an officious-looking individual with a clipboard and a walkie-talkie. "Where are your passes?" he inquired. "We haven't signed in to pick them up yet," we replied. "We were just going to get something to eat first." "Well, think again, End-Users! This here is a very important Conference in progress: `Modern Snack Food Preparation and The Amiga.' So scram, before I call Security!" "But you can't do that to us!" We protested. "We're Journalists!" "Oh yeah?" he sneered. "Well, I don't recognize you! Who are you with?" "The Gadget," we replied proudly. "Never heard of you," he sniffed, and turned away. Well, we were starving, but food was the farthest thing from our minds at the time; obviously something was dreadfully amiss. It was, of course, impossible that he had never heard of Gadget, the National Newsletter for Amiga Users; hence, he was lying. But why? What kind of Evil, Twisted Game was he playing? We vowed to find out. Our first stop was Registration, where we ran into a stroke of luck: Perry Kibblebitz of ASDFG was at the Registration Desk, arguing with a facile-looking attendant. "But I tell you," he was saying, "I am a developer! If you'll just check that list again, you'll have to find my name!" "I'm sorry, Sir, but I can't find any verification of your status. Is your alleged product a poorly-designed and sloppy port from some lesser machine?" "Well, uh, no; but -" "Is it overpriced, overdue Vapor? Is it poorly documented and ridden with bugs the size of Miami cockroaches?" "Well," stammered Perry, "no. What it is, you see, is - " "Well, then!" Interrupted the Flunky triumphantly. "You obviously aren't a Commodore-Approved Developer!" At that point, I decided that hasty action was called for, so I distracted the Attendant with my spectacular Flaming Hair Mousse Trick, while Jay and Perry scooped up a handfull of passes. "Thanks," said Perry as we wlaked away, pockets bulging with passes. "I don't quite know how to explain this, but things have been decidedly....strange...around here." We assured him that we, too, had noticed, and that we were determined to get to the bottom of it. Just then, we heard a loud clanging noise behind us, followed by muffled curses. Turning, we beheld a strange figure with some kind of steel helmet clamped over his head. He was obviously incapable of seeing out of it, because he kept walking into walls and other obstacles. "Why look!" Perry exclaimed. "It's Leo Schwab, The Guy In The Mask!" "What's his story?" I asked. "Well," said Perry, "Leo, it seems, was visiting a small foreign country called Siggraphia, when it was decided that he looked too much like the reigning king, Pixar. In order that everyone know who was in charge, Pixar ordered Leo stifled in the fashion you see before you." "Scary! Fortunately, that could never happen in America!" I said. Perry just looked at me funny, and Jay muttered darkly, "That's what you think. And, anywa^, I think something even more sinister is afoot here..." We decided that it would be best to lay low and observe the goings-on discretely for a bit, in case our behaviour had aroused any suspicions. Accordingly, we decided to go out and see the sights of the city. Outside the hotel, we bought food from one of those Street Vendors, a small unshaven man who had a cart that advertised "Disgusting Little Brown Things That Will Make You Wish You Had Never Been Born!" "Great!" We said, and bought a dozen. Following the vendor's directions, we toured the city, seeing all the sights that have made New York so famous: Staten Island, The Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, The Brooklyn Bridge, and, of course, the famous Barge That Nobody Wanted, sitting in the harbor with its load of millions of PCjr's, all quietly decomposing as swarms of flies buzzed around and flocks of wheeling seagulls pecked at their cute little detatched keyboards. "You know," I said, "it seems kind of a shame. I mean, just think of all those infrared remote keyboards and sensors going to waste when there are thousands of children who can't afford to get their own Lazer Tag sets to play with." With that somber thought, we turned and headed back towards the hotel, filled with a new resolve to get to the bottom of this mystery. So this is how Nancy Drew must feel! I thought to myself as we neared the hotel. We had decided that our best course of action would be to wander around the Exhibition Hall, looking at the exhibits and trying to pick up any clues, any signs of unusual behavior which might lead us towards a solution. To avoid attracting attention to ourselves, we decided to split up, after setting up a series of coded whistles and animal calls in case any of us got in trouble or found a clue. The first booth I stopped at belonged to none other than our old fiends at Microsoft. Buoyed by the recent success of Word Perfect Corp. in bringing Word Perfect to the Amiga from the MS-DOS world, Microsoft has announced that they are going to be porting their Word Processor to the Amiga. The Microsoft representative referred to it as "the single most popular Word Processor in the entire MS-DOS world. More users of MS-DOS have this Word Processor than any other! Just wait until you get a look at the Amiga version of Edlin!" Undaunted, an official of MetaComCo announced that they had been planning to port Ed over to MS-DOS for quite some time. "However," he added, "we're having a lot of trouble making it multi-task correctly...and we can't seem to get the front/back gadgets to work at all!" Nevertheless, he predicted a release date of "any day now...really!" Speaking of Multi-tasking, I questioned the Microsoft guy about BS/2, their Vapor-Operating System for IBM. He swelled visibly with pride, and said, "It's gonna knock your socks off. It's gonna blow you away. We've got some amazing innovations in store for the world...for instance, you'll be able to do several things at once using BS/2! Right now, we're busy trying to come up with a catchy name for that, and - " "How about `Multi-Tasking'?" I suggested. "Hmmm....`Multi-Tasking'. Ya know, that does kinda have a ring to it. Let me jot that down.....anyway, we're also gonna be into graphics with BS/2 and its revolutionary new User Interface, Presentation Mangler. Who knows....if you Amiga folks buy enough copies of Edlin, we might even be persuaded to port BS/2 over to the Amiga!" I assured him that most Amiga owners obviously are not interested in graphics or Multi-Tasking, as was evidenced by Logistix and dBMan. The Rep went on to explain the extreme tardiness of BS/2 by saying that they "...had to fire Fred and Barney, and hire a couple of new programmers. However, we are confident that our new team of Moe and Curley will get things straightened out in no time." Also present in the hall was a representative from Progressive Peripherals, the people responsible (or culpable, to use Legal Terminology) for MicroLawyer. They were demonstrating Beta copies of MicroDoctor, MicroDentist, and MicroCoroner, all part of a new line of "Inexpert Systems." "The best thing about these programs," the spokesman was saying, "is that they are totally integrated. For instance, you can remove your appendix with the help of MicroDoctor, contract apperitonitis and die, perform an inquest with MicroCoroner, and, subsequently, sue the hell out of yourself for malpractice using MicroLawyer." "Sounds like what the Computer Revolution is all about," I said, and walked quickly away. I was becoming depressed. By the end of the day, all I had collected was a pack of lies, a pair of blisters, and an increasing sense of foreboding about the entire affair. At a predetermined time, I met up with Jay and Perry. "Well, Jay," I asked, after describing my wanderings, "what did you find out?" "Not a whole lot. I went by the Electronic Arse booth where they were showing off some new sports programs, like Bobby Knight Basketball, John McEnroe Tennis, Bo Jackson Base-er-Foot-ball, and, of course, Billy Martin Bar-room Boxing. They were also showing a new program called Smooth Printer. According to their Rep, they figured that if they could sell people a $50 program to make their Amiga talk, they could probably do just as well with a $50 program to make it print. They said that by the time it is released, you won't be able to tell it was ported from a Mac." "Meaning?" "They'll have taken the Apple logo off the menu bar." "I think that I may have gotten a lead." said Perry. "I ran into a friend of a friend of a friend, who told me that he had heard a rumor about a big top-secret meeting and some hush-hush new product announcement." "From Commodore? When?" "Tomorrow." "I have a feeling," said Jay, "that that's where we'll find the missing piece to our puzzle. All we have to do is sneak into that meeting." The next day dawned bright and sunny. The temperature was a bit chilly, but the skies were clear enough to see almost all the way across the street. My head was dizzy with anticipation as I surveyed the prospect of the day ahead. Or maybe it was just the lack of Oxygen. What spectacular new product would Commodore be unveiling? Would it be the long-promised and long-forgotten Transformer upgrade? AmigaDOS 1.3? The semi-mythical Electronic Arse forray into CinemaWare, Return to Atlanta? The equally overdue AT Card for the A2000? The 68020 MMU and UNIX System V for the A2000? Or...could it be...the Amiga Lie! frame-grabber? Whatever it was, it was bound to be something important! We sorted through the passes we had swiped, looking for ones that would be sufficiently important to get us in while being sufficiently innocuous to not get us recognized. I settled on "Vice-President in charge of Quality Control, Amiga 500," Jay picked "Vice-President in charge of Dealer Relations," and Perry decided on "Vice-President in charge of Overseas Developments." We hid the passes in our back pockets and set forth to try and figure out where this meeting would be held. When we had not found the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of the big meeting by lunchtime, we started to get a little bit discouraged. It was as though no one knew anything. "I just don't get it." I complained. "We've checked out every last conference room in the hotel! Where are they holding this thing - the Basement?" You could almost see the lightbulbs above Jay's and Perry's heads. After lunch, we started on a serruptitious tour of the basement. As the afternoon went on, our initial burst of enthusiasm had started to fade. It was getting late, and we still hadn't found a clue. We had checked out the basement as thoroughly as we had checked out the upper hotel, without success. We were on the verge of returning upstairs when Jay called to us in an excited voice. Hurrying over, we observed him pointing at an otherwise unremarkable patch of concrete flooring. "Look!" he cried. "Right there - a piece of Vapor!" I looked again, and, sure enough, there was a small bit of Vapor on the ground. Someone from Commodore had been this way! "There must be a Secret Panel or Hidden Door around here somewhere," I said. "There always is on Scooby-Doo!" Sure enough, a short while later, we found the Secret Door. Behind a crate of avacados, a passageway lead to a narrow flight of stairs spiraling down into the impenetrable darkness. After one or two spirals downwards, we were in pitch blackness, and the light from the world above was like a photograph of the moon, pasted to the vault of heaven and shedding no illumination whatsoever. A few more silent windings, and the stairwell opened out into a great cavern, and the stairs came to rest on the damp cave floor. The prospect before us stretched out into the darkness in all directions. "Well?" said Perry. "Which way do we go?" "I feel like a Miner!" said Jay. "We could use a little Luck," I replied. "Don't look at me!" said Perry. "I can't think of an R.J. Mical pun!" Eventually, we chose a direction and set forth. We wandered for what seemed like forever, lost in the gloom, until we became aware of a low rumbling sound, like the thunder of a distant cataract. As we made our way towards it, the noise swelled to a deafening roar, not unlike a B-52 revving its engines in an echo chamber. The walls of our cavern gradually became visible, as our path was illuminated by some source of light from ahead, and things were getting noticeably hotter. Just as we thought the noise could get no louder, we rounded a corner and beheld the most incredible sight it has ever fallen upon my eyes to witness. The floor fell away into an enormous cavern below us. Looking down to the floor of the cavern, we beheld a vista of flames. Flames were everywhere, dancing to and fro, flowing like the fires inside a volcano. Inside the flames, dimly glimpsed figures struggled and writhed in torment. "My God!" exclaimed Jay. "An Apple III!" Following his pointing hand, I was able to make out a hapless soul, his face a mask of sheer terror, chained to an Apple III. Next to him was a young woman, seated in front of an Atari ST, with her mouth opening and closing in an inarticulate cry of wordless grief. In fact, looking around the cavern, I was able to make out PCjr's, Commodore 128's, Coleco Adams, Timex-Sinclairs, TI-99's, Apple Lisas, PC Convertibles, PC-RT's, and even an occaisional Mattel Intelevision Set. "Good Lord," muttered Perry. "I thought it was just a myth." "What is this place?" I asked. "Computer Hell." How long we stood there I do not know. I thought of Bosch, I thought of Munch's "The Scream," I thought of Blake and his "Dark Satanic Mills"; however, I remain utterly incapable of fully describing the sight. I do not know which of us noticed first, but after a time we became aware of another observer. Through the heathaze and dancing air, we could dimly see a mysterious figure across the cavern from us. As we watched, he beckoned to us, and turned and disappeared into a tunnel behind him. It appeared to me that the ledge we were on continued around the cavern to where our visitor had departed. Perry looked very pensive. "I think," he said, "that I might know who that is." "Who?" I asked. "I think that may have been John Faustus. Rumour has it that he sold his soul for the ultimate Personal Computer. I think he was sent here to guide us away from this place." We followed our ledge around to where we had seen the apparition, but were unable to discern any trace of him. We proceeded down the tunnel he had apparently left through. After a few minutes, the tunnel took a couple of sudden twists and turns, and opened out into another cavern. As we entered the large cavern, we suddenly became aware of the cessation of the noise from behind us. Turning around, we could find no trace of the passage through which we had just come. "Like, Zoiks, Scoob!" I said. "I'm for getting out of here!" "Right, Raggy!" woofed Perry. However, it didn't appear as though we had much choice in the matter, so we bravely pressed onward. With the cessation of the noise from behind us also came the cessation of our illumination; we once again groped our way through darkness. However, from time to time we would glimpse our spectral guide, hovering in the distance ahead of us, always just at the edge of visibility. On one such occaision, when we had an especially good view of our elusive quarry, he did not dart away, as we expected he would, but, rather, he simply vanished, like a candle snuffed out. Moving over to where we had last seen him, we discovered a large rock with the words "Jack Tramiel Sux" scrawled across it. "Another secret door!" said Jay. After a moment of searching, we were able to get it open. Behind it lay a rough-hewn passage through the rock. "We must be getting near," said Perry. "The walls are still warm." "What does that mean?" I asked. "I dunno. It sounded good, though, didn't it?" Cautiously, we made our way down the tunnel. After a minute or two, things started to get lighter, and the walls began to get noticeably smoother. Then we came to another door: Not a secret one at all, this one had a knob and everything. And, best of all, it wasn't locked. Turning the knob slowly, we opened the door and stepped through. We were in what appeared to be a normal corridor. The hallway stretched out to our right and our left, and was well-lit by flourescent ceiling lights. After the murky cave, it was almost blinding. When our eyes adjusted to the light, we looked at the door through which we had come; it was labeled "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" and "DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE." "Well," I asked, "which way now?" "Ssshhhh!" said Perry. "Someone's coming!" Sure enough there were footsteps scuttling nearer. We ducked back through the door and listened as they passed. As soon as they had gone past the door, we opened it and beheld a small figure scurrying off. "It's Irving Ghoul!" said Jay. "Follow him!" At a discrete distance, we tailed Mr. Ghoul. "Did you see the look on his face?" asked Jay. "I peeked through the door as he went past. He looked like someone who had just gotten a new Toy to play with." After a couple of turns, he stopped in front of a door guarded by two large, hairy men who stepped aside and saluted him smartly. We dug out our passes and prepared to follow. Casually walking up to the guards, we presented our passes. "You're late!" the guard on the left accused. "You know that you shouldn't come in after Mr. Ghoul! Why are you late?" I realized that not even the Flaming Hair Mousse trick would work on this guy. "Er, um, we had trouble getting FCC approval!" I stammered out quickly. "That's what they all say," muttered the guard, as he turned and let us through. Inside, we quickly found sets at the back. Irving Ghoul was just taking the podium. "Whatever they are going to unveil here has got to be pretty spectacular," said Jay, "after the great lengths they went through to make themselves inaccessible!" "Ladies and Gentlemen," Mr. Ghoul was saying at the front. "I'm sorry for the two hour delay, but I had some problems - " " - WITH FCC APPROVAL!" everyone finished in unison. "Thank you. Before I unveil `Project X,' I would like to thank all those senior Vice-Presidents and other toadies who have helped to make this dream a reality. We are confident that this is what is going to push the Amiga over the top. "And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado..." he said, and swept a cloth off of something on the table in front of him, revealing what appeared, from our seats, to be an oversized disk drive and some manuals. The audience stood and cheered as he announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you....the CP/eMulator! At last! A program that will allow 80% CP/M compatability on the Amiga! This should finally convince all those Commodore 128 owners to switch! "And, best of all, your CP/M programs will run at up to 85% of their original speed! We plan on a Massive Media Blitz to push this product. We are going to bundle it with all of our new 8" disk drives! And we should have them out by Christmas - if not this year, then certainly by next year!" The audience rose, en masse, and applauded heartily. We just kind of looked at each other in disbelief. What was going on? He didn't look like he was joking! Mister Ghoul then quieted the applause and said, "But the best part of all is our Massive Media Blitz! We've been promising increased advertising for a long time, I know; but we've wanted to wait until we could get the perfect Ad Campaign designed. And now, working in conjunction with the Ad Agency of Akers, Sculley and Tramiel, we have designed a saturation campaign which will raise Amiga awareness among certain segements of the population which have been identified as prime merchandise targets. "Beginning in February, we will buy the next two entire issues of Oral Hygiene Quarterly and Shocking Detective Stories; and before that, in January, we will start running spreads in Worldwide Wrestling Review, Teen Romance, Sgt. Splat! Comix, and Redneck Hunting Monthly! And then there's television! We're talking spots during Kick-Boxing from The Phillipines on ESPN; we're talking about a major sponsorship of The History of Squid, a ten-part series on the Discovery Channel! And, yes, even network television! We're talking about spots on whatever show it is that runs opposite Cosby on The Fox Network! "And, as if that weren't enough, we're putting up three entire billboards, just outside of Needles, California!" By this time, the audience around us was giving Mr. Ghoul a standing ovation so loud that we couldn't even hear him any more; not that we wanted to hear any more. Was this supposed to be the salvation of Amiga? Suddenly, everything became very quiet. We became aware that Irving Ghoul was pointing straight at us. "Those people!" he screamed. "They aren't applauding! They're impostors! Get them!" In a moment the entire room was a glare of angry faces looking daggers at us. We stood up and I said, "But wait! You've got it all wrong! We were - Oh my God! Mr. Ghoul, sir! Your fly! I mean, er, your pants! That is, they're - Oh my God!" True to form, everyone had, by then, turned to stare at Mr. Ghoul. We scrambled for the door. "Special Mission for Mr. Ghoul!" I said to the guard on the left as we passed through the door. "And by the way, Mr. Ghoul is very worried that some people may actually try to leave during his presentation - he would like you to take all necessary steps to prevent that from happening." "Right, sir!" said the guard as we walked quickly away. As we reached the corner, we could already hear the growing noise behind us. As soon as we rounded the corner, we took off at a full sprint; and not a moment too soon, as we heard the pursuit break past the guards. "We've....got to.....find out...the reason...for this...strange...behaviour!" wheezed Perry as we ran. "If...we stay...alive...that is!" replied Jay. Panting, just seconds ahead of the frothing mob, we reached the "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" door and left through it. The last thing I did was remove my clip-on pass and flip it down the hall as far as I could past the door. "Look!" I heard someone on the other side of the door cry. "A badge! They went this way, all right!" "That won't hold them for long," said Jay, as we listened to the ravening horde stampede past us. "We've got to get moving." We secured the door as best we could from our side, and felt our way back down the tunnel. Upon reaching the end of the tunnel, however, we received quite a nasty shock, as we discovered that the door was solidly locked. We were trapped! We could not get out this way after all, and there was an angry mob somewhere on the other side of the door we had come through. "So this is it," I quoted. "We're all going to die." "Could be," said Jay, reassuringly. "I just wish I knew why!" Said Perry. "I mean, I still don't really know what's going on!" We all fell silent for a moment, as we regarded our prospects. "Tell me something, Perry," said Jay. "There's something I've always wanted to know, and I guess I'd better ask you now." "Shoot," said Perry, as I winced at the perhaps unfortunate expression. "The name of your company, `ASDFG'. Where did that come from?" "Well, Jay," said Perry, "that's kind of a funny thing. It's actually nothing more than a typo! You see, we were originally going to name the company after our first CEO, Mr. Qwerty, but the typist sneezed, and, well, you know the rest..." "You know," I said, "there has to be another exit somewhere. I simply can't imagine all those executive types coming this way to get in." "Hmmmmm," Jay hmmmed. "I bet you're right! Only - how do we find the other exits?" "Simple!" I said. "We go out and look for them. I mean, it's not like we have any other choice, is it?" Thus, we made our way back to the "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" door. After listening to make sure that the coast was clear, we cautiously peeked through the door. No one was in sight, so we tiptoed through. "Now what?" whispered Perry. "We start checking doors." We had just checked the next door to ours when a couple of guard-types loitered around the corner. "What are you three up to?" asked the lead guard. "We're looking for those fugitives." I said. "We thought that maybe they had doubled back." "Hmmmm...that's pretty good thinking. Hey!" he said, pointing at me. "Where's your pass?" "My what? Oh...gosh...I guess it must have fallen off while we were chasing those desperados. By the way," I said, quickly changing the subject, "what's behind this door here?" "What, that one marked `AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY'? I think that's some kind of service entrance or something." "Hmmmm...they might have tried to make good their escape that way. Are there any other exits near here?" "Ummm, well, just the one around the corner up there." replied the guard. "Okay," I said, "I'll tell you what. Why don't we search that other exit, while you two see if they got out this way, okay?" "Ummm, yeah, sure!" said the guard. As soon as the guards were through the door, we turned and sprinted for the other exit. From that point, it was pretty much a matter of routine: Ducking into a room, waiting for the lynch mob to thunder past, and then emerging to follow them. It reminded me of some kind of video game, even if the stakes were a bit higher than a quarter. Aside from the time I had to outwit an alarm system with a couple of pennies, a bar of chocolate, and my left sock (a little trick I learned from watching MacGyver), the only real excitement was the time when the door we hastily backed through proved to be the Secretaries' Sauna Room. Thinking quickly, we pretended to be the Laundry and Linen Service, and collected an armful of towels apiece from the secretaries. We didn't really want to leave, but duty called, and there was only so long that we could stay there picking up towels before someone would notice that we were wearing three-piece suits. And anyway, we had so many towels that we could barely see around them. At length, after traversing several more miles of tunnel and pausing several times to rest and eat twinkies and cheese crackers from the vending machines we had passed, we emerged into daylight, somewhere in New York City. It was early morning of the third day. All we wanted to do was get back to the Sheraton and collapse. "I still wonder," said Perry, as we walked in the front entrance, "what all that was about! What can have caused people to behave like that?" We walked back through the Main Conference Area, on our way back to our rooms. As we passed through the Hall, I was invaded by a feeling that we were being watched; a feeling that something was horribly wrong. It was akin to my earlier intuitions of trouble in the same way that an object is kin to the shadow it casts; there was something much deeper going on here. Hackles began to rise on the back of my neck. Up until that point, I had never really known what hackles were; but I had no doubts as to their identity. I whirled about, almost in a panic. "There's something wrong here!" I hissed. "Yes, I know," said Jay, sotto voce. The strain was evident in his voice. "It's so quiet!" observed Perry, in a whisper. "Almost...too quiet!" I announced, in my best `The Natives Are Restless' voice. Jay shot me a slightly annoyed look. "Listen carefully," he commanded. "There's none of the chaos; none of the bustle. It's so quiet you could hear a bomb drop!" "You can actually hear conversations!" said Perry, in an awed voice. "And My God!" I said, tuning in on a couple of nearby conversations. "Just listen to what they're saying!" Nearby us, a couple of men in impeccably bland suits were talking to one another with all the animation and expression of two spies at a rendezvous, trying hard to look inconspicuous as they mutter coded inanities about the weather and this year's fig crops. Listening closer, I discovered that they were talking about this year's fig crops. Across the aisle, a bored-looking sales rep was doling out product - er, sorry, Vapor - information to another bored-looking sales rep. In the next booth over, two men were talking about how overrated advertising and product support were in today's marketplace. "My God!" said Perry, nodding his head towards the latter. "I know those guys. Or at least, I thought I knew them. Just the other day they were up in arms about the total lack of interest Commodore's `Management' was displaying regarding those same topics!" "There's something funny going on here!" said Jay, marking at least the fortieth time that one of us had been moved to make that observation. "These folks aren't acting like themselves!" "Oh My God!" I exclaimed, as it suddenly hit me. "The Stepford Wives. It Came From Outer Space. Or, better yet, Invasion of The Body Snatchers. These people aren't sounding like themselves - " " - because they aren't themselves!" finished Perry. "Someone's taken them over!" said Jay. "Yep," I said, " it's The Invasion of The Brain Snatchers. It's The Night of The Living Brain-Dead. It's - " " - I hate to alarm you," interrupted Perry, "but do you remember what happened to the un-afflicted in those movies?" "Er...why don't we get moving - " I offered. " - before they become The Livid Dead!" said Jay. Indeed, I thought I detected some darkened looks and ill-concealed glowers from behind the clouded brows of the hypnotized throng. We left in haste, packing our bags in a hurry, and left through a side door. As we did, we thought we could hear the beginings of another Lynch Mob forming. We grabbed the nearest cab, pulled out our English-to-Cab Driver phrase-books, and told our driver to "get us to out of here in a hurry" in as many Dead Languages as we could. I think it was Linear B that finally did the trick, or maybe it was the Sanskrit; at any rate, we were soon running over Virtual Pedestrians at around Mach 4 or so. The horror dwindled gradually away behind the clouds of dust in our rear-view mirrors, but the shadow it cast seemed to grow larger still in flight. We knew the Fight was far from over. EPILOGUE "And We Alone are Left to Tell the Tale" (a Quinn Martin Production) We have all lived in terror ever since. Jay has been forced to move repeatedly to avoid detection, finally ending up far enough out in the country that he stands a fair chance of never being found - by either Commodore, their Mindless Minions, or even the U. S. Post Orifice. Perry, living as he does in New Jersey, is in constant danger. On his frequent trips into New York City, he is forced to don a grease-streaked Bruce Springsteen "Greetings From Asbury Park" T-Shirt with a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up into the sleeve, a pair of very worn blue jeans, and some cheap sunglasses; all for the purpose of passing himself off as just another Bridge-and-Tunnel Tourist. As for Ray, he has been under enormous financial strain as a result of infinitely subtle financial pressures, undoubtedly caused by Commodore; and he has been forced to the ultimate recourse of working with and teaching MS-DOS in order to diguise his true identity. The story is not a pretty one, but it is perhaps not too late to give up hope. No, wait - that didn't come out right, did it? Or maybe it did. Only time will tell. The Ignorant Armies of The Night are on the march; but at least we know that they are coming. Perhaps we will know which side is winning by the next Ami-Expo. Of course, I'm not planning on going anywhere near Los Angeles in February; but then, as we all know, things don't always go according to plan.... -- Well they say my too dark keys are in Santa Fe, or something like that. richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {ihnp4!scgvaxd!cadovax, philabs!cadovax, codas!ddsw1} gryphon!richard