textfiles/magazines/LWS/15.lws

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"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific"
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An electronically syndicated series that
follows the exploits of two madcap
mavens of high-technology. Copyright 1991
Michy Peshota. All rights reserverd.  May
not be distributed without accompanying
WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files.
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EPISODE #15



             The High-Tech Weapons Demonstration

>>Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace unveils their newest crop
of computer-guided missiles to military dignitaries.  Will
the proceedings be disrupted by a certain hardware hacker in
ratty sneakers?<<


                     by Michy Peshota


     "Aren't those bull's eyes rather large?"

     "Not if you're a really large bomb."

     A missile sailed past General Figgerty and Bing-bing
Huntz in the bleachers and disappeared with a tuckered out
whistle in a clump of bushes on the other side of the test
field.  Both gazed in disappointment at the missed twelve-
foot-high bull's eye.

     "That missile has a much higher reliability rating on
the battlefield where there are no lilac bushes present,"
the president of the aerospace company said.  He pointed to
the next event listed on the program in the general's hands.
It read "Demonstration of THERMONUCLEAR GUERNSEY."
THERMONUCLEAR GUERNSEY was the bomb's codename.  "Our next
smart bomb contains so many microchips," he said, "it is
capable of honing in on, not just bull's eyes, but giant
cardboard cutouts of cows.  Even under cover of darkness."
Raising his binoculars to his eyes in executive
anticipation, he focused on the technicians a hundred yards
off who were loading a football-shaped object into what
appeared to be a giant slingshot.

     The general glanced uneasily at the other side of the
field where a billboard-high cutout of a milk cow straddled
the grass like a Texas barbecue decoration.  A bull's eye
was lashed to its flanks.  "But if they're smart bombs," he
persisted, "why do they need bull's eyes?"  It was a
question that had nagged him all through the high-tech
weapons demonstration.  "Don't the bombs contain the
electronic circuitry and computer software to zero in on the
cows themselves?"

     "General, oh, general," the executive sighed, resting
his binoculars in his portly lap.  "We at Dingready &
Derringdo have found, through years of experience with
ballistics--and I mean years, we have more experience than a
certain competitor of ours whose smart bombs seem to keep
capturing the public's imagination solely on the basis of
their accuracy--that software <<always>> works better when
there's a bull's eye present."

     The missile launcher lobbed its football into the air.
It arched toward the clouds with a wobbly uncertainty.
Reaching the crown of its flight, it cracked in two like a
candystick, and its halves fell earthward with a heavy
futility.  One knocked over the cardboard guernsey.

     "We may be in the experimental stages for years with
some of these highly sophisticated weapons," Bing-bing Huntz
said.  Peering through his binoculars, he spotted what
appeared to be a parasitic spot scurrying up the bleachers
toward him.  It quickly grew to the size of a three-piece
suited monster in his otherwise sunny view.  He jerked the
lenses from his nose to see, crouching in front of him, the
wiggly form of the irritating engineer-manager Gus Farwick.
His head was clamped between two over-sized audio earphones,
he waved a musical baton like an aspiring instrument of
torture.  He wheezed, "Is it time yet?"

     "No, it's not time yet, Mr. Farwick!  When it's time,
believe me, I will tell you."  Huntz lifted his binoculars
back to his eyes and tried to ignore the impatient manager.
It was the fourth time that afternoon that Farwick had
interrupted him to ask if it was time yet for the musical
portion of the smart bomb demonstration.  Granted, Huntz
found the engineer-manager's composition "Onward, Dingready
Soldiers, as Sung to Chariots of Fire" as spiritually
uplifting as anyone else in the little aerospace company,
but there was a time for leading engineers in song and there
was a time for firing overpriced munitions, and, in the case
of Dingready & Derringdo's weapons demonstration to General
Figgerty and his retinue from the Pentagon, Farwick's Greek
chorus from R & D was not going to start their antistrophes
until so many over-budget munitions had missed their mark
that drastic measures were required to lift the audience's
flagging spirits.

     Farwick, faced with the indifferent, binoculared eyes
of the company president, sighed and scurried back down the
bleachers to the sad-eyed phalanx of engineers clenching
music sheets waiting for him below.

     As he disappeared amid the red choir robes, the general
watched him and, as his eyes scanned over the pasty faces
and rumpled hair, they came upon a familar lopsided nose and
condescending, indignant scowl poking up from above a choir
robe.  The general could not recall where he had encountered
those eyes and that nose before, but he was suddenly
overcome with a feeling of primal helplessness and a dark
forboding that seemed to bring with it a mental image of
copious amounts of duct tape.  He instinctively turned his
head away so as to avoid any painful recollections of who
this engineer was.

     "The next smart bomb," Huntz continued, pointing to the
codename 'THERMONUCLEAR CHECKERS' printed on the general's
program, "is designed to completely annihilate any and all
billboards painted with giant checkers that the enemy may
have to offer."  He directed the general's gaze across the
field to a checkered billboard.  A large bull's eye was
strapped to it.

     "Huntz, I fail to see the strategic significance of
having bombs that can seek out and destroy billboards
covered with giant checkers--"

     "General--"

     "Please, let me continue.  I've already paid you $17
million in R-and-D costs.  I have a right to be heard."  His
face flushed red.  "I simply fail to see the purpose of
having computer-guided warheads that can seek out and
destroy cardboard cutouts of cows, piles of watermelons--"

     "General--"

     "--or warehouses full of old phone books, OR mattresses
spray-painted with the words 'UNDERGROUND SILO,' or--"

     "General, general," the executive chuckled.  "<<You>>
are the great military strategist.  You are the military
mind who has been compared to Patton, to Eisenhower even.
You are the one who's job it is to deploy state-of-the-art
technology on the battlefield.  Our purpose is merely to
provide you with the tools you need.  <<You>> are the one
who must provide the imagination to use them.  We can't help
you with that."  He chuckled again.

     Another warhead whizzed past them.  It missed the
honeysuckle bush with the bull's eye lashed to it to which
it was headed and disappeared a hundred of yards off in a
grove of trees.  All necks cranned to see where it went.
From the vacinity of the company parking echoed a "boom!"
The tinkle of shattered glass and clink of rolling hubcaps
followed.  Two technicians lugging kitchen fire
extinguishers dashed off across the field.

     "Looks like another honeysuckle bush got away," the
general gloomed.

     The next bomb on the weapons demonstration program was
codenamed THERMONUCLEAR FIELDS.  It was engineered
specifically for blowing up large empty fields.  As the
general and Bing-bing Huntz watched it arch into the air,
then vanish permanently in the clouds like a delinquent
kite, the general asked, "What happens when you lose bombs?"

     "They're usually identified soon after by nearby
residents as UFOs."

     "But you do recover them, don't you?"

     "Well, yes, sometimes, assuming we can retrieve the
pieces fast enough before they're sold to the supermarket
tabloids."

     From two steps below on the bleachers came a familiar
whine.  "Is it time yet?"

     Both the general and company president stared down in
mutual irritation at the unctuous engineer-manager who had
once again struggled up the steps with his assailant's baton
and was now standing before them with the peevish foreboding
of a psychopathic accapellaist.
     
     "No, Mr. Farwick," Huntz moaned, "it is not time yet."

     The general inspected the waiting chorus on the field
and once again sighted the man with the brooding scowl and
lopsided nose.  Beneath his choir robe, he wore large ragged
sneakers, and orange t-shirt printed with what appeared to
be a faded infinity sign poked out from beneath the robe's
open collar.  He seemed to be skulking in the back of the
chorus as if he didn't want to be seen.  Suddenly, the
general knew who the crooked-nosed man reminded him of.
"Huntz," he said worriedly, as the latter watched the
insect-like form of the engineer manager struggle down the
bleachers, "you wouldn't have the bad luck to employ a
research engineer by the name of Sherwood Franklin Maxwell,
would you?"

     "Maxwell?" the executive mused.  "No idea."

     Farwick, who was stepping awkwardly between two gun-
wearing CIA agents and had just tipped over the popcorn of
one, froze upon hearing the dreaded name.  <<Maxwell.>>  He
shuddered and listened.

     "Curious fellow," the general continued.  "An I.Q.
higher than the odometer on my jeep, and with more advanced
engineering degrees than can be found in an emerging
industrial nation, but let me tell you, he's more trouble
than a nuclear submarine lost under the Pacific."  The
general grew suddenly impassioned.  "Do you know that we
once had to redesign a two-ton Star Wars satellite because
of him?"

     "You can be certain he's not an employee of <<ours>>,"
Huntz chuckled.  Secretly, though, the president of the
defense contractor wondered if this Maxwell-character
<<was>> a Dingready & Derringdo employee.  Afterall, Huntz
never bothered to venture into any of the aerospace
company's mamy, many research sub-basements, and god only
knew what went on down <<there>>.

     "He mailed the satellite's blueprints to the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration," the general
continued, "along with diagrams for how to fasten it inside
the space shuttle's cargo bay with duct tape.  I was told he
was trying to get transferred to NASA or something.  It
almost worked."

     Farwick congratulated himself for having been wise
enough to quarantine Employee S-max in his office during
this most important weapons demonstration.  At this very
moment, the meddling computer builder was sitting behind his
desk, far from either phone or electrical outlet, flipping
through an employee motivation calendar and memorizing the
quotes from employee motivation gurus that were printed
therein.

     As the general and company president's conversation
turned to an examination of why a four-million-dollar
computer-guided rocket bomb designed to seek out and destroy
mounds of tangled up coathangers had just ended up in a
patch of mulberry bushes, Farwick continued stepping his way
through the CIA panjandrums, confidently, with a renewed
sense of managerial omnipotence.  Suddenly, he heard a
bellow of "Farwick!  Start them singing!" and his musical
baton knocked the hats off three lieutenants in front of
him, and he bolted the rest of the way down the bleachers,
tripping over briefcases and knocking over popcorn along the
way.   Arriving on the field, he hurriedly gathered together
his acapellists, lifted his baton with the surety of one
about to strike out with a fly-swatter, shaped his mouth
into a sordid "o", and brought the baton down with the force
of one semaphoring on an aircraft carrier in the fog.  His
songsters began: <<"Our blow-torches are reeea-dy!...">>

     "Our next smart bomb," Bing-bing Huntz shouted to the
general, his words drowned by the off-key chorus, "is an
especially deadly ground-to-air missile...."

     <<"Our shoestrings are tieeeeed!....">>

     He pointed out the codename on the program.  THE LAST
WORDS BOMB.  "Our programmers have been working very hard on
this one," he shouted.  "According to Farwick, some have
even pulled an all-nighter or two.  I can't imagine what has
inspired them."

     <<"Our desks are in orrrrder!  Our courage is too!">>

     On the test field, the sling-shot-missile launcher
lobbed what looked like a giant pineapple into the air.

     <<And when the dawn breaks above our research and
development sub-basement, we'll be waiting...."

     The pineapple soared toward the clouds with a sonic
crack that caused the bleachers to shudder faintly and the
singers to lose their pitch.

     <<To build a better spy-plane, or maybeeee...">>

     It curled across the blue with drawing board-perfect
grace, red smoke unfurling behind it.  It swept into the
letter G.

     <<An onboard pizza-maker for a B-2!>>

     It wove a U over the clouds.  It scrawled an S.  It
skipped a cloud, and after it scribbled with hasty
determination "FARWICK."  The singing stopped for a moment
as everyone looked upward and gaped.

     The engineer-manager cracked his baton on the portable
podium with oblivious determination.  The choir resumed,
"<<But the thing we are best at....>>"

     The bomb plundered further into the clouds.  It wove a
red curlicue, then it spelled, "S...I...N...G...S...T...
H...E...B...I...G...K...A...H...U...N...A."

     The onlookers gasped.

     Annoyedly, the engineer-manager cracked his baton so
hard on the podium it cracked.  The choir, still watching
the sky, shakily resumed, <<"...is the thing we most like to
doooo!...>>"

     The missile swooped down like a vulture at its prey and
everyone in the bleachers and on the field dived to the
ground or under the seats, their hands covering their heads.

     Farwick stubbornly sung the last words of the song
himself. "<<And that is, making things explode when they're
supposed to!>>"  He stretched out his arms out like
Pavarotti.

     The Last Words Bomb curled to the side and flew
straight into the heart of a bull's eye propped on hay bales
in the center of the field.  It exploded in a white burst of
flame.

     Stunned spectators struggled up from the ground or
crawled from beneath the bleachers, as a blanket of smoke
drifted over the hushed field.  Many stood silently looking
up at the sky and its curious proclamation "GUS FARWICK
SINGS THE BIG KAHUNA."  Some wondered if it was a message in
code, and others if it was a typo.  A few considered it a
fitting overhead caption to the warped singing on the
ground.  A handful even toyed with the possibility that some
of its nouns and verbs might be clever dodges of the bomb's
rumored language parser, and a more subtle, potent message
lurked beneath. <<SINGS...SOCKS?...
SUCKS?>>  For whatever reason, the crowd spontaneously
erupted in a huzzah of blind and barbaric gusto.

     General Figgerty slapped Bing-bing Huntz on the back.
"Golldamnit, your research people never cease to surprise!"

     The company president smiled and said, "Now, I never
want to hear you or your people complaining again about $17
million being mispent."

     The only one who was unappreciative of the screwball
proclamation now smearing across the sky was the former
aspiring symphonic choir conductor.  He pulled off his audio
earphones and gazed at the clouds with the malevolence of
one who's greatest work of art has just been hideously
maligned.  He clenched his cracked baton and envisioned
himself administering deadly karate chops to the perpetrator
of this fiendish affront, a man who at this very moment was
probably slouching in his zebra skin-covered computer chair,
smirking.  Gus Farwick Sings the Big Kahuna, indeed!

     Far down the test field, a man in a faded orange,
infinity-sign emblazoned t-shirt, his choir robe trailing in
the dirt, shuffled off in raggedy sneakers.  He did not know
exactly where he was headed, except that he had a suspicion
it might be best if he went to clean out his desk.  He did
not want to forget his ten pound roll of duct tape or his
classic SIMMs extractor collection in the top drawer, as he
had done at the last place of employment from which he had
been fired.  Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace's five-foot-
thick concrete walls, laser-eye security system, and armed
guards might make sneaking back at night with burglary tools
to retrieve them rather difficult.

     He also figured that he had better tell his officemate,
the ever-naive Andrew.BAS, about this latest turn of events.
He seemed to recall the programmer having said something
about planning to pay the rent next week, and since he had
liberally commented the The Last Words Bomb's software with
"ANDREW.BAS WROTE THIS" he figured he had best tell him
before he wrote the check.


                          <Finis>


>>In the next episode of "The Adventures of Lone Wolf
Scientific"....When S-max and Andrew.BAS find themselves
without a job and without any viable character references,
they decide that the only option left is to start a high-
tech company together.<<