-------------------------------------------- "THE ADVENTURES OF LONE WOLF SCIENTIFIC" ----------------------------------------- "The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" is an electronically syndicated series that follows the exploits of two madcap mavens of high-technology. Copyright 1991 Michy Peshota. May not be distributed without accompany WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files. ------------------------------------------- EPISODE #7 ---------------- The House Guest with 172 Soldering Irons >>Andrew.BAS naively offers his homeless officemate a place to sleep. He and S-max are barely out of the company parking garage when the generous-to-a-fault programmer begins to regret his offer of hospitality.<< By M. Peshota "I don't know about you," S-max said to Andrew.BAS, as the two reluctant defense workers shuffled to the parking garage, their fingers weary from bending Gumbys into poses of intelligent earnestness to seat inside the miniature model of NASA's Mission Control they were building in their office closet, "but this project has fired my imagination in a way no other has since I endeavored in my youth to be the first man to implement true parallel processing with a Z80 chip and sandwich bag ties." He grunted. "Who would have suspected that when we arrived at work this morning, two innocent young men, the sum of whose life ambitions could be clamped together with an alligator clip, would have, by the end of the day, transformed four of the five main corridors of the research sub-basement into real-life replicas of space shuttle landing strips, each so authentic in their detail that even the rubber snakes glued on alternate linoleum floor tiles appear to have been run over by space shuttle wheels careening at top speed." "What about the super-string defense links?" his officemate asked, referring to the top-secret project that their boss, Gus Farwick, had put the computer builder in charge of that morning and which seemed to involve a lot of kite string. "It pales in significance," came the response. It was punctuated by a self-important grunt. They arrived at a small apple-red motorbike parked in an out-of-the-way stall. It looked like a one-eyed space insect, with its over-sized headlight bulging from the front fender and two long-armed mirrors protruding from each handlebar like insect antenna. In contrast to the bike's buggy cuteness were its polished curves, sleek, beautiful, and cerebral, looking like an idea still sketched on a design board rather than a welded object. It was the bike of an impeccably sensible man who is often over-cautious, sometimes over idolatizes efficiency, but always moves with a swift, impala-like, mathematical grace. Andrew.BAS stuffed his briefcase in one of the wire- baskets that saddled its sides, while S-max examined a small triangular flag that flew on an aluminum pole above the back fender. It read "BASIC Programming Madman On Board. Please Drive Extra Carefully." "Yes, I would certainly want to drive extra careful if confronted by a BASIC programming madman on the road," S-max snorted. "That's old," Andrew.BAS said self-consciously. He hopped onto the seat and buckled the chin strap of his helmet. With the oversized helmet cocooning his freckled face, he looked like a test driver for toy race cars packed in cereal boxes. "Where do you live?" he asked S-max out of curiosity. The computer builder pointed toward the opposite end of the parking garage. "See that satellite dish?" "You live in a satellite dish?" Andrew.BAS strained to see it. Nothing about the screwball computer builder would have surprised him. "No, in the van to which it's cleverly attached." "You live in your van?!" "It's very convenient. I keep my oscilloscope and all my favorite wrenches in the back." "But why do you live in your van?" "Because the rescue mission where I was sleeping threw me out after I rewired the light above my cot to blink off and on in Morris code whenever my blanket caught on fire." "Your blanket would catch on fire?" "The extension cord they provided me with was insufficient to simultaneously power my PDP-1, my popcorn popper, my 450-pound dot matrix printer, my electric tuba, and the blinking Budweiser sign of the miscreant in the next cot named Phil." He grunted. "I don't think it was Underwriters Laboratory approved." "Gee." Andrew.BAS felt suddenly sorry for his socially outcast officemate. Without thinking, he blurted, "You can stay at my house." As soon as he said it, he regretted it. "Why, I'll do just that!" S-max enthused. He bustled off in the direction of the satellite dish. From across the parking garage, Andrew.BAS heard him yell: "Lead the way on your childish-looking scooter, I'll follow!" The gentle programmer shuddered. The last thing he wanted was the wire-fisted bigot for a house guest. As Andrew.BAS steered his tidy cycle down the garage ramp, he heard a thunderous thumping coming from behind him. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Within inches of his back fender lurched a hell-torn micro-bus, painted heartache gray except for the copious rust that spotted it like an Appaloosa. Both of its headlights were smashed. A yellow stenciled lightning bolt zig-zagged down its blasted grill. On its roof twirled a satellite dish, cocking side to side like Rube Goldberg's martini about to capsize. S-max poked his orange electrified head out the window. "Andrew.BAS!" he howled. "How many electrical outlets did you say your house has?" In terror, Andrew.BAS sped up. "Do you happen to have 2,000 electrical amp service? You don't have 60 amp service, do you--?" His voice was momentarily drowned out by the volcanic backfire of the van's exhaust pipe. "--because if you do, we're going to have to knock out some walls and find an electrical transformer tower and put in a big cable or sumpin'--" "Hoooonnnnngggg--gggrrewwww--!" the S-max-mobile went. Andrew.BAS felt his hair stand on end. As he shot out of the parking garage and into the street, the van trailed him closely. It sounded like a million broken screwdrivers being sucked into a blackhole. When Andrew.BAS stopped at an intersection, he heard squeeling tires behind him. It lasted for nearly three full minutes. It sounded like the background to a film shown in remedial driving class. In his rear mirror, Andrew.BAS saw that the S-max-mobile was haloed by a filigree of purple electrical wires as ostentatious as the walls of a temple. They streamed from its half-opened windows, they were strung into the wheel wells, they snaked around the grill, they sprouted from the roof and curled into space like inexplicable circuit paths in a dubious high-school science fair project. Under each of the van's broken windshield wipers were stuffed fistfuls of parking tickets. Like S-max himself, the van, even when stopped at the light, jiggled with the nervous irrepressability of a hyperactive inventor's mind. The light glowed green, and Andrew.BAS proceeded soberly across the intersection. For several blocks, he didn't hear any squeeling tires behind him, and began to wonder if he had lost S-max. He tried to recall if he had given the loquacious computer builder his address, then sighed relief upon remembering that he had not. A few blocks later, though, the S-max-mobile reappeared behind him, clanking and lurching, looming out of the fog like a garbage barge. As it once again nosed within inches of his back fender, Andrew.BAS noticed that a <> newspaper box was now impaled upon its grill. The box dangled from the vertex of the grill's lightning bolt like some kind of pillaged space-age treasure chest. S-max poked his fright wig-haired head out of the window again. "Your electrical service is not 60 amp is it?" he implored. "Please tell me that it's not." Fearing that the thumping van was about to overtake and crush him, Andrew.BAS sped up again, but to no avail. S-max steered the van clumsily up onto the sidewalk beside him, its tires embracing the curb like giant bolgna rings, as he drove alongside him. "I once lived in a house with 60-amp power," he continued breathlessly, "and everytime I plugged in my 450-pound dot matrix printer in the outlet above the kitchen sink at the same time that the outlets in the bathroom and bedrooms were servicing my X.25 packet-switched network, my electric tuba would fill the air with the scent of smoldering duct tape (this was most likely because my tuba is bandaged to a fair with degree with duct tape)." He added, "I mean <> didn't mind, things like this do not bother me, but it certainly <> bother the Kurdish family I was staying with." Andrew.BAS observed that S-max's van looked like it had been battered all about with a baseball bat. He wondered if the Kurdish family had been responsible for any of that. When the programmer eventually glided his bike into his house's driveway, he glanced over his shoulder to see the S- max-mobile bump to a stop halfway in the driveway, halfway out in the street. Its clamorous pistons puffed to silence. The endomorphic computer builder struggled out of one of the windows and jumped down to the sidewalk. He took a place behind a ravaged back fender and began pushing the van the rest of the way into the driveway. In the course of this effort, the satellite dish made one final exhausted twirl through space and the <> box fell off the grill and into the gutter. Andrew.BAS dismounted his bike and hurried over to help. "I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, Andrew.BAS," S-max hailed, inching the exhausted vehicle further into the drive. "My transportation system always breaks down when I'm on the threshhold of a new and exciting stage in my life. It's a propitious sign!" Bereavedly, the computer programmer wondered <> it was propitious. >Finis< >>In the next episode, "The House Where Andrew.BAS Lived," S-max discovers that not only is Andrew.BAS's home no Hilton, it's not even near a Radio Shack.<<