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"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific"


An electronically syndicated series that follows the exploits of two of the computer industry's bona fide eccentrics. Copyright 1991 Michy Peshota. All rights reserved. May not be distributed without accompanying WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files.


EPISODE #16

                Two Guys in a Garage
When the bashful programmer and the high-strung computer

builder find themselves without jobs, paychecks, government security clearances, or viable character references, they do what any desperate men would do–they start a high-tech company.«

                   by M. Peshota
   As the two former defense workers headed to S-max's

van, they reflected on the loss of their jobs, their paychecks, and their dignity, as well as their blasted reputations.

    "I have never been happier," the computer builder

said, strolling through the parking garage, the fake zebra fur from his computer chair draped over his arm. "And to think, we escaped the whole fiasco without being even made the subject of some lengthy TV mini-series." He grunted with glee. "Or a congressional investigation."

   The programmer shuffling behind him, his arms full of

boxes stuffed with fur dice, "Honk If You Want Complete Schematics" bumper-stickers, a plaster bust of John F. Kennedy, and all the other effluvium from their former office, didn't reply. He was too stricken with grief at the loss of his first engineering job to speak.

   "Did I ever tell you how I was once the subject of a

congressional investigation?" S-max continued.

   Andrew.BAS wanted to reply that no, he had not told

him, nor was he surprised that the mischievous S-max had been the subject of a congressional investigation, but he was too sad to answer.

   "This nudnik congressman thought fer sure that I was

the source of a recent spate of computer terrorism in Surinam, but I wasn't. I was in Guyana at the time." He grunted innocently.

   "I think I read about that in the papers."
   "You most likely did.  I received much fan mail after

my verile profile was transmitted over the wire services. Although many of the pictures that female correspondents sent of themselves »did« appear to have prison numbers on them." He grunted again.

   Andrew.BAS recalled a newspaper story he had once read

about a raggedy computer whiz who had practically taken Congress hostage, ranting and raving for hours in front of a microphone about various outdated computer architectures. How could he have known that he would one day find himself sharing his office–and his home even–with this same goofball? Had he known he probably would have foresaken his childhood dream of leading an impeccably logical life and become an art history major instead.

   S-max spotted the gloom on the programmer's face.  He

felt sorry for him, then realized with a start that this was the very first time he had ever felt sorry for a computer programmer. Usually he did not feel sorry for programmers. Usually he felt they deserved whatever they got. But he couldn't help thinking of how hard it must have been on the young programmer when the evil and demonic Gus Farwick had phoned his parents and informed them that their son had programmed a smart bomb to write 'Goose Farwook Sings the Big Kahuna' across the sky. (When Farwick had demanded that S-max tell him the truth about who had been the mastermind behind the bomb's blasphemy, the computer builder couldn't help it, the name 'Andrew.BAS' had just slipped from his mouth.)

   S-max's parents, on the other hand, were not at all

surprised when the engineer-manager called to tell them what their socially-challenged offspring had been up to. (Unfortunately, Farwick hadn't believed for a second that Andrew.BAS was the one most responsible for the bomb that had embarrassed him in front of half of the Pentagon's weapons shopaholics. He may flaunt a job title that was appended by the word 'manager,' but he was not stupid.)

   Not surprisingly, S-max's parents initially denied

having ever heard of him. They even denied that their name was Maxwell or that they had ever lived at the same address as anyone with a big nose and an orange and black afro. Only when pressed, did they admit–between sobs–that Sherwood Franklin Maxwell, self-proclaimed computer genius, was indeed their child. After that, they sympathized profusely with his former boss. They even invited him over to dinner and offered to do whatever they could to help the defense contractor pick up the pieces in the wake of their child's calamitous employment there.

   As S-max and Andrew.BAS shoved the boxes full of fur

dice and "Honk If You Want Complete Schematics" bumper stickers into the back of S-max's dilapidated van, the computer builder patted the programmer on the shoulder compassionately. "Farwick will regret it," he assured him. "He will wake up tomorrow and realize what he has done–that in one flash of blind and ignorant rage he fired his two most whimsical employees. It will forever after that seem to him like nothing but a horrible dream."

   "I'm sure it does already," Andrew.BAS said.
   They crawled into the front seat.  As the computer

builder steered the satellite dish-topped van down the steep garage ramp with daredevilish swerves, he reflected on what they should do with the rest of their lives.

   "We could raise labrador retrievers," he suggested.
   "Do you want to build the kennel?"
   "Do you really think one is necessary?"
   The programmer frowned.  How he had gotten himself into

this mess with such a loonball he would never know. Sometimes he felt his life was being authored by, not by Fate, but a sadistic sitcom writer whose last paying gig was 'The Gong Show.'

   S-max continued, "We could go on a lecture tour."
   "What would we lecture about?"
   "Stuff."
   "Stuff?"
   "We could simply rail on and on for several hours in an

entertaining fashion about things that irk us, then pass out floppy disks full of free software afterward."

   "Like you did before Congress?"
   "Very similar, but we probably wouldn't have to quote

so much from 'Thus Spake Zarathustra.'"

   "This sounds like something you could do without my

help."

   "I think you're right.  Were we to go on the road

together I suspect it wouldn't be long before I'd be itching to branch off into a solo career."

   The programmer looked out the cracked window at the

street and sighed.

   S-max rattled on, "We could hire ourselves out as

consultants."

   "What kind of advice would we give?"
   "We could..."  He paused, uncertain.  "We could tell

people how to play their video games correctly."

   "And?"
   "Do we have to tell them anything else?"
   "If they're paying us we do."
   "You're sure about this?"
   "Certain."
   "That's really too bad."  S-max swerved around a

fireplug in a broad, illegal U-turn over a grassy island. Both considered the problem in silence, stunned by the enormity of it. Tentatively, the computer builder suggested, "We could start a high-tech company together?"

   "With you?"
   He bristled, "Yes, with me.  It's not like I haven't

started high-tech companies lots of times before."

   "You have?"
   "Yes, I have.  All you need is a post office box and

one of those little trays that you use to process credit cards. It's not that hard."

   Andrew.BAS considered.  <<Start a business.>>  It

wasn't such a bad idea afterall, once he got over the disbelief of the notion of starting a company with someone as capricious as S-max. They could sell software by mail, and maybe some ingenious computer hardware device too, if S- max dreamed one up. They could run the business out of their home. No one would ever know it was just a weathered A-frame with fraternity letters on the front rail. They could install a bank of phones in the livingroom, and answer the ringing phones crisply, and make it sound like their company inhabited a sleek office tower. They could put the computers in the livingroom too. They could work whenever they liked–late into the night if they wished, and take regular breaks to watch "Star Trek" episodes. His eyes widened. He especially liked that part about taking breaks to watch "Star Trek". His mind reeled with the possibilities.

   "Do you really think we could?" he bubbled finally.
   S-max snorted pompously. "Like I said, I've started

high-tech companies «oodles» of times."

   The programmer's mind was too muddied by grief at the

loss of his first job to see things clearly and ask about the outcome of those "«oodles» of times." Instead, he brightened and grew enthusiastic about the possibility of going into business with the hardware hacker. "But do we have all the stuff we'd need to start a high-tech company?" he asked.

   "Look--"  S-max pointed over his shoulder toward the

junk in the back of the van. "We got a bust of John F. Kennedy," he said, referring to the bust of the technology- booster president with the pocket protector pencilled on his chest, looking lonely and afraid. "We got a model of Sputnik." He pointed to the plastic rocket propped against a pile of boxes.

   "It's a model of the Apollo 11," Andrew.BAS corrected.
   "Whatever.  We got a complimentary copy of guided

missile software that writes 'Goose Farwick Sings the Big Kahuna' in the sky." He pointed to the printouts tangled at the base of the Apollo.

   "A complimentary copy?"
   "Well it's a copy."  He grunted, not caring to divulge

how he had smuggled classified software out of the defense contractor. "What more do we need?"

   "A product?"
   He shrugged.  "That's hardly as important as having a

copy of guided missile software that writes in the sky 'Goose Farwook Sings the Big Kahuna.'" He smirked.

   And that's how it began.  Two guys sharing in that most

magical moment of modern capitalism: the union of two newly unemployed men and an ill-defined dream. Later, they would reminisce about this moment–Andrew.BAS blaming S-max, S-max blaming Andrew.BAS. At least once the police would be called to break up the scuffle that arose in the course of reminiscence. But for now, it was all silicon and gossamer, and fantasies of growing rich enough to get all of S-max's soldering irons out of hock.

   As the two wannabe entrepreneurs roared down the

freeway, they spoke of technology in brave visionary terms. Each attested to the thrill of invention, both drew parallels between the number of patents that would be registered in their names and the number of Wall Street money bins that would bear their famous monograms. Andrew.BAS recounted the inspiring tale of Bill Gates who, like him, had one day been a freckle-nosed squirt writing BASIC programs in his college dorm room and the next had enough money in his checking account to finance the colonization of little known star systems. S-max dreamed about someday having a credit line big enough to wage hostile takeovers of bloated computer manufacturers with nothing but an American Express card.

   "Since you're going to be my business partner, there's

something I would like you to know about me, Andrew.BAS," he announced.

   The programmer glanced at him with a frightened

curiosity, not knowing what to expect.

   "I would like to share a secret about my inner self,"

he said, zig-zagging the van from one lane into another on the freeway with a kamikaze abruptness that caused the tires to squeel, horns to honk, and the satellite dish on top the van to creak and shiver. "I have never told this to anyone before. I don't know why I'm confiding this now in a mere programmer such as yourself, since it's unlikely you will understand. You can have no way of empathizing with the primitive desires of a hardware hacker such as myself. Maybe it's because I still feel guilty about having told Gus Farwick that you were the one who programmed the bomb to destroy a chicken coop because you considered it the mythic archetype for the design of his intellect–"

   "I did no such--!"
   "Please!  Do not tarnish the sanctity of this moment

with your squeels of innocence. I am about to confide an important secret about myself!"

   The programmer was quiet.
   "This is something that must be said, something that

must be said now before our business plans go any further." His voice grew grave. "Without knowing this bit of truth about me, you will never understand me or the computers I design, you will never understand why I lead the life I do. It is a reality that is at the heart of my technical genius, a truth that courses through every fiber of my being like a savage animal instinct." He leaned over and whispered, "I have always wanted to buy IBM."

   "You buy IBM!?"
   "Yes, me, wild and impossible as it may seem."
   "I would have never guessed it."
   "It's true!  Often, I lay away at night dreaming of how

I would refurbish their entire line of silly computers by adding super-cooled circuits, gallium arsenide chips, parallel processing, game ports, 300-key keyboards, and built-in soft-serve ice-cream makers." He grunted blissfully. "Of course, I would also put an end to their employees' unnatural obsession with coordinating the color of their belts with their wallets."

   With that, he turned the van into the driveway of their

house and his request that Andrew.BAS get out and check the ground to make sure that no pieces of his satellite dish had fallen in the driveway appeared to signal the end of the conversation.

   Later that afternoon, after they had unpacked the John

F. Kennedy bust, the fuzzy dice, the guided missile software, the "Honk If You Want Complete Schematics" bumper stickers, the model rocket, and all the other flotsam from their office, they confronted the cold fact that neither knew exactly what it meant to be incorporated (S-max insisted it was a sort legal limbo found only in the state of Nevada), neither was sure whether Customer Service was a New Age movement or a sign you hang on the john, and both were completely baffled as to whether a business proposal was a form you file with the IRS or a legal defense you use when your investors try to boot you out.

                        <Finis>
In the next episode of "Lone Wolf Scientific" (coming

11.18.91), dreams of shrinkwrap spun into dollars give way to the harsh realities of starting a computer company when Andrew.BAS and S-max bicker over who will be the vice president of research and whether moving the computer builder's dirty socks and old electronics magazines out of the livingroom will inhibit his ability to design innovative products.«<

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