textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0652.txt

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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #652
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8
    888     888 888      888 888              "A Plane Ticket for Yuri"
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8
    888     888 888      888 888    "               by Trilobyte
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o               5/22/99
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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        first day at atari headquarters.  yuri looked at the vending machines
 and decided they were not enough for his needs.

        "i need cans of roast duck.  without roast duck i cannot develop the
 games that you need to survive," he told his coworkers.
   
        the cans of coke were fine with him.  he went to his cubicle and set
 up pictures of his family back in russia and his dog, molly, who was back at
 him in his apartment.

        yuri was in love with a girl who worked at a cafe he liked to go to
 there in sillyvale, california.  she didn't like him, though -- she thought
 that he was a scary, overpowering comrade.  that turned her off.

        yuri sat down in his new chair in his new cubicle and spun around.
 he then stood up and looked at everyone else in every other cubicle.

        "hello!" he shouted and began to shake his arm in the air.  "i am
 yuri!  i am your new coworker.  if any of you want to play any video games
 against me on break i will kick any of your asses!" 
   
        the people who had looked up at yuri when he began his tirade
 immediately looked back down at their work when he stopped.  yuri continued
 to survey his surroundings and then returned to his chair.

        his boss came up, sweating and nervous.

        "heh, yuri, it's great to have you here," he panted.  "heh.  you 
 introduced yourself to all your coworkers, that's great.  they all knew you
 were coming but i'm sure they didn't know exactly what kind of person you
 were.  heh."  he adjusted his shoulders.  "i heard about your, uhh,
 complaint about how we haven't got roast duck.  i'm going to work on that
 for you.  maybe we can send someone out to the market when you want to eat.
 how does that sound?"
   
        "no.  i no wait when i get hungry.  either i get roast duck or i get
 a plane ticket back to russia," he replied.
   
        his boss began to sweat some more.  "heh," he replied nervously,
 "well, like i said, we will work on that for you, yuri.  well, this is bob,
 the project manager, who would like to have a few words with you."
   
        "what you say?" yuri questioned.
   
        "he wants to tell you about the project you'll be working on."
   
        "oh.  yes.  well i tell him the project _i_ be working on.  bob, you
 come listen to _me_," yuri commanded.
   
        bob walked over and put his hands in his pockets.  "ok, what," he
 said, condescendingly.
 
        "i work on program that is all about love.  that is what i work on.
 you pay me, i work on program.  it will make me happy."
   
        bob stared at yuri for a moment.
   
        "you mean that we flew you over here, offered you tons of money, and
 you think you're just going to code something to make _you_ happy?  no...
 no.  yuri, you are here to make _us_ happy.  then we pay you, so _you_ can
 be happy."
   
        "money is nice, but money is not all.  i work on this program and it
 will make me happy."
   
        bob was getting peeved.  "you're going to do what we want you to do,
 because we're paying you.  you're working for us, doing a job for us.
 that's why we pay you.  so you have to do that job.  if you have some
 program to write that you just thought up, you're going to have to write it
 on your own time."
   
        yuri decided to stop the battle.  he shouldn't push his luck, because
 maybe they don't need him as much as he thought.  sure, he was a great
 programmer over in russia.  he wrote some of the best secret software
 programs for communist-era soviet government management.  he wrote cold war
 simulations.  he began this depressing work as a warm young man,
 enthusiastic about ideas and possibilities.  years later, atari ended up
 hiring yuri as a 35-year-old man disinterested in what others believe are
 his accomplishments.  none of them meant anything to him.  he had loftier
 goals which he was not allowed to achieve.
 
        he was willing to cooperate with atari.  perhaps he could be happy.
   
        "ok, you win," yuri told bob.  "it is dumb for me to write my program
 on your time.  i work for you, i write program for you.  it is my job."
   
        "yeah," said bob.
   
        bob began telling yuri his assignment -- some sort of realistic 3D
 tank simulation.  it involved a lot of mathematics and computers with a lot
 of horsepower.  and it was very very heartless.  perfect work for yuri.  
   
        weeks went by and yuri had already designed a perfectly efficient
 core to the simulation, cleanly replacing the one developed over the course
 of 4 years by the team.  he hadn't consulted with them at all.  another few 
 weeks went by and atari moved the other people on the project away from it,
 giving complete control to yuri.  government representatives stopped by the
 offices frequently to view progress because they would likely be licensing
 the software.
   
        6 months went by and the simulation was complete.  yuri had made
 oodles of cash and built himself a giant mountaintop mansion.  he said he
 owed his quick success to nights of study and careful planning at the cafe
 in sillyvale, and to his cans of roast duck he has at home.
   
        the government came to atari's office for the final showing of the
 tank simulation.  hundreds of army officers crowded into the room to stare
 at the 20-foot projection screen that would be the display.  atari's top
 executives stood by, beaming with pride.  yuri stood up in front, next to a
 supercomputer, and in front of the display.
   
        it was time for the presentation to begin.
  
        the lights went dim, but not out.
   
        "ladies and gentlement, colleagues, patrons, and friends, i welcome
 you to this room today.  i have designed the most advanced tank simulation
 in known history.  i will show it to you soon.  first i must say thank you
 to my project manager, bob.  without you, i couldn't have found the
 motivation in my heart to write this program.  but you convinced me. and i
 hope that this will make us both happy."
      
        yuri flipped the switch.
  
        the display looked amazingly real, showing two ultra-detailed tanks.
 they had robotic arms and seemed very large.  the program controlled the
 movement of these tanks as they travelled across the landscape.
   
        eventually the tanks split courses and the display went split-screen.
 one tank began driving through an ultra-realistic depiction of downtown
 sillyvale, the other one was driving through a suburban neighborhood.
   
        the tank in the downtown stopped in front of yuri's favorite cafe and
 its robotic arm smashed through the window.  the view switched so that it
 seemed to be coming from the hand on the end of the arm.  it weaved through
 the crowd in the very detailed representation of the cafe, and came upon
 yuri's favorite waitress and grabbed her.  the arm retracted back through
 the cafe, knocking over a few tables and hitting some people.  when it had
 completely removed the waitress from the cafe, it turned around and headed
 back the way it had come.
   
        "hmm, hostage recovery abilities," thought many of the army
 officials.
   
        meanwhile the other tank drove down a street called "meadowbrook
 lane".  it stopped in front of a very large 3-story brick home, number 1206.
 a loud noise filled the simulation room.  it sounded like a stampede.  
   
        yuri took this moment of loud volume to sit down on a nearby chair.
   
        suddenly a whole slew of ducks came into view.  very very well
 rendered.  there were probably about 190 of them.  the tank's robotic arm
 broke through the doors and windows of the house, and then a super powerful
 air compressor blew all of the ducks toward the house and through the
 openings.  the tank sprayed some sort of liquid all over the house and then
 spit fire at it with a flamethrower.  the house instantly glowed and burned.
 ducks inside were roasting alive.  the tank turned around and headed back
 the way it had come, again showing the lonely streets of the suburban
 neighborhood.
   
        "that's really versatile," thought a few army engineers.
   
        "this simulation can be used to simulate any use of tanks," thought
 a few others.  
   
        yuri stood up in front of the crowd and stopped the simulation.  the
 army officers stood up and applauded, as did many atari executives. that is,
 all except for his boss and bob.
   
        bob, in fact, phoned the police, but couldn't tell them what he
 wanted to because just as the station answered, a tank, carrying a girl,
 burst through the wall of the room. it was the waitress from the cafe.  the
 army engineers ran to another end of the room as the tank quickly crushed
 their collapsible chairs.
  
        yuri walked up to the tank when it had stopped moving.  he grabbed
 the girl's legs and shouted "NAY".  the tank released its grip on her and
 she fainted in his arms.

        bob then ran up to yuri, shouting and wailing, "ARE YOU INSANE?  ARE
 YOU FUCKING INSANE?  I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS.  THIS IS CRAZY!  YOU ARE
 CRAZY!  YOU HAVE DESTROYED EVERYTHING!"
   
        fire engines were heading to bob's house to try to put out the fire,
 and maybe to save a few of the roasting ducks.  that is, all the ones that
 hadn't already been roasted.
   
        yuri hopped in the tank with the waitress and headed off to the
 sillyvale airport.  his route was surrounded by tanks under his control,
 from the atari offices all the way there.  waiting for him at the airport
 was a privately chartered jet.  all yuri had to do was show them his ticket
 and he would be whisked away back to russia with his new girlfriend.
 
        and they lived happily from then on.
 
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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #652 - WRITTEN BY: TRILOBYTE - 5/22/99 ]