[written in pieces from May to September, 1988 for USENET] 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) 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-pico- 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-o-Matic 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 signal occasionally 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 Amix ever be released? Is "Max Toy" his real name? Stay tune for the second installment of AmigaTrek-The Next de-Generation]