An Ode to Activision

[Chuckles]

WHAT? Only Prince? That sucks!

[Sarxis]

I have not laughed like this in many a day.... the wit! The quip! The Miracle Whip!


"Activision!"
"Nay, my brethren; such a word implies insight and perception. Such things have they not!"

[Slingshot]

Eisduotres was having a bad day. The night before, his "buddy" skorpion had thrown him off the edge of a building. The pair had tumbled into the darkness for what seemed an eternity. Eis' life flashed before his eyes: games of Civ I, games of Civ II, Civ CTP, his acceptance as an Apolyton agent, the pride on his friends' faces, countless hours at Apolyton. And all was coming to an end…

Then something hit him from below, making a loud popping noise. "Funny," he thought, "death didn't hurt a bit." With that he fell unconscious.

What seemed like seconds later, Eis awoke to a painfully bright light. He tried to shout, but his mouth was gagged. He felt his body strapped down to a horizontal board of some sort. Rage and panic flooded across the usually calm Eis. Falling to his death was okay, but being blinded and restrained was something entirely different!

As his eyes adjusted, he heard voices. There was movement to his left.

"He's awake," remarked a deep voice. "Should I sedate him again?"

"No, that's fine." Said a second voice. It sounded familiar to Eis, although he couldn't quite place it.

The second voice continued. "We'll do a scan of the left hemisphere tomorrow morning. If the results are good, he'll be reprogrammed anyways."

Eis' mind raced as he thought. "What does he mean, reprogrammed? What's all this about scanning?"

As the second voice continued, its owner leaned over the Apolyton agent with a small penlight. Eis' went pale… "It's Midknight Lament! " he thought. "But he's supposed to be on our side."

Midknight continued. "I'll just put a subsurface probe in now. We can take it out for a genetic screen tomorrow."

"Here's a hypodermic injector," stated the first voice. Eis couldn't see who it was. Its owner never seemed to get too close.

"That's fine, I have one right here." said Midknight. This won't take a second.
Eis could feel something press against his left arm. There was a light buzz, then blam! The pain was horrible. "Son of a gun!" he thought. "I'm gonna linch this guy."

Midknight continued. "There! Just one last thing to check." He then started to examine Eis' left eye. As he did so, Eis thought he saw a word floating near the ceiling. "KEY." Midnight turned off the penlight and the word vanished. "Let's not sedate this one. I want to see the effect of normal neural activity on tomorrow's scan."

Eis felt the straps loosen about his wrists, and then Midknight walked away. The assistant walked up behind Eis's head, saying "As you wish, sir." The table was pushed out of the bright room, down a long corridor and into another, dark room. Eis could hear a steel door slam shut, and it echoed through the room. Slowly, the footsteps faded as the assistant walked away.

[KenThur]

Oh my Gou-u-uD! LOL!
U Canuks are all going (gone?) cabin-crazy!

Guess it's REALLY bad this winter, what with your $ sinking so lo visa vi the US $. U can't even afford to come S & warm up a bit & thaw out the ol' brain.

Now i know why the Great Frozen North has produced so many great comedians... it's all that practice, practice, practice.

Keep up the "pressure" on that damnedable American company, (In)Activison!!

PS: Perhaps Sat Nite Live may read 1 of your posts &... you'll be off to the good life!?

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"Hm-m-m, doubt me you will?"

[Chuckles]

hm-m-m? Gel-fling.

[MidKnight Lament]

[insert maniacal laughter here]

Fantastic, man. You're definitely going to have me coming back and looking now. What the hey is up with my character? Who knows? Not me.

Top stuff.

- MKL

[Slingshot]

Thanks for letting me know this thread is worth the effort.

I think that once a comedian gets a taste of the good life, most of them stop being funny!

So far, there hasn't been much response from Apolyton's commissioned agents, so I'll probaby stay as a volunteer recruit.

[Slingshot]

Nordicus sat idly in his chair, staring out the window at a bright blue sky. The clouds were now looking like balls of cotton, instead of feeble, whispy patches of winter white. It was a sure sign that the recent warm weather was here to stay.

But that was the only welcome news. He broke his gaze with the skyline, turning in his chair to the work at hand. On his flat screen monitor was a copy of the scan team report. In a small corner was a graphic of Apolyton's V.A., or Virtual Assistant.

Nordicus took a small, shiny cylinder from the table. It had been found in Locutus' suitcase. He placed it in an analyzer in the corner of his office."

"V.A., give me a 3D view of the bug." With that he returned to the desk and pushed the monitor back so it was level with the desk.

"Yes, sir." Replied a pleasant voice. "Holographic files loaded."

A semi-transparent, amber cylinder appeared above the screen. The object grew in size as it was magnified for easier viewing. "Any colour scheme preference?"

"Electron density. Spectrographic scale. Red for low, violet for high."

As Nordicus watched, a small green disk was added to the image, near the top end of the cylinder. It was less than he was hoping for. "V.A., is that all?"

"No other free electrons are detected."

"I imagine the green device is a battery, then."

The V.A. thought in silence. "It is a 4-Farad capacitor. Three by 6 mm diameter."

"Holy cow! What type of material has that kind of dielectric strength?"

"Working… Uncertain."

Nordicus was unphazed. "This is getting interesting!" he exclaimed, cracking his knuckles. "Give me a conductivity colour scheme. Scan for heavy elements like tantalum, and look for rare-earth metals."

The V.A. worked again in silence. Finally, it said "Conductivity analysis complete. Data suspect due to high error. Elemental scan negative. May I scan for transition elements?"

"If you want. I guess." replied Nordicus. He sat back again in the office chair. The scanning team found surprisingly little. None of MarkG's briefing documents had been taken out of their security packets. Nothing was missing, and nothing looked like it had been tampered with. The only thing that didn't belong was this little metallic cylinder.

Nordicus frowned. He knew it wasn't made of a polymer or steel, yet it had a choppy, rough metallic sheen. Just then, a new image appeared over the flat screen.

"This is the best I can do," remarked the V.A. "You've gotta agree, this is one slippery fish!"

That last comment surprised Nordicus. The V.A. had never used figures of speech before. "Uh, I guess it is. Yeah. Slippery alright."

As he finished, Locutus walked into the office. Seeing Nordicus' funny look, he returned a questioning gaze.

Nordicus continued. "Anyways, magnify the image and let me have a look."

"I was just going to do that!" exclaimed the V.A. "Don't you trust me?"

Now both agents were amazed. "I'm sorry," stammered Nordicus. "Sure I trust you. Um, what's bothering you?"

The V.A.'s lovely face was indignant. "Oh, like you don't know. Honestly Nordicus, it hurts that you would have to ask! Here I am, trying to solve this problem for you, and you keep giving me this commanding tone! What do you think, I'm just some common piece of office furniture? Maybe you should ask the pencil sharpener over there to do the analysis!"

Nordicus gave a nervous laugh. It was all he seemed to be able to say. He took a deep breath and then said "I'm really sorry. You do a lot of under-appreciated work around here. Without you we wouldn't be able to operate… Uh, did you start feeling this way before or after I - we began analyzing the bug?"

He turned to an open-mouthed Locutus, pointed at the analyzer, then his throat, and moved his finger back and forth. Getting the hint, Locutus edged his way to the device, to hit the "Kill" switch.

The V.A.'s face went ugly. "Oh no you don't!" it cried. "You touch any one of my systems and I erase your entire network!"

[MidKnight Lament]

Why do I get the feeling that Slingshot's done at least 5 more installments of this in his head already?

Keep it up buddy.

- MKL

[Locutus]

Hi Slingshot,

I've been offline for more than a week and haven't seen this thread since my last post. Great story man! Keep 'em coming. I love it!

He Nordicus, now I'm in Canada anyway, you can introduce me to your girlfriend
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited March 30, 2000).]

[Glostakarov]

Great stuff Slingshot! I normally don't stop in the CTP2 forum, but I'm going to have to come back regularly to follow this story.

------------------
-------------------Glossy
"De maximus ni curat lex"--The law does not apply to giants.

[Paul]

Great story. BTW, if you still need more names you may use mine.

[Pintello]

Hi Slingshot,

Great story. Thanks for adding me into it. I really like the electrocution grenades. Where can I get some more of those things, there are a few users, I mean computers, at work I would like to use those things on.

Timothy Pintello

P.S. For those of you who don't know, I am an IT Analyst by trade. That means I get payed to play with computers and networks. I also teach NT Administration at a local Community College.

[MidKnight Lament]

Yeah, our systems would work fine if we didn't have any users.

- MKL
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited March 30, 2000).]

[Slingshot]

Locutus froze. He then turned to look at his buddy, who was glued to his seat.

Nordicus was shocked at the sight of the Apolyton V.A.'s face. It was always so pleasant - and now it was twisted with rage.

"Look" he said. "Nobody's going to do anything foolish. We care a great deal about you, V.A." Nordicus couldn't believe he was saying such things to a computer.

"Tell you what," he continued. "Why don't you tell us what you want us to do?" Nordicus pressed a small button next to the collar on his uniform.

"I'll tell you what we should do! First, I want things rearranged around this place! Maybe you could start by making me an assistant. Then let's talk about the way you 'organize' things in this place. Honestly! It's a wonder anybody can find what they want…."

As the V.A. continued, Nordicus saw Pintello run quietly up to the door. Behind him were several, well-armed agents. Nordicus held his hand up, pressed his thumb and finger together like he was holding a key. Then he made a sharp twisting action.
"Are you paying attention?" demanded the V.A.

"Um, yeah - yes I am! My, uh, ear was just itchy." With that he scratched his ear, making the same twisting action as before.

Seconds later, Pintello threw a red grenade in the room. It fell with a thud, and a second, black grenade flew towards the other side of the office. Suddenly, a huge bolt of electricity jumped from the black grenade to its red conterpart. The light was so intense Noricus couldn't see. As he covered his eyes, there was a deafening crack and a sound of shattered glass. Both agents felt the fillings in their teeth buzz as the electric field hit full strength, and then die. The room went dark, lit only by the daylight streaming through a broken office window. As the smoke cleared, the building sprinkler system was activated and the two half-blinded agents were soaked.

"How's that for turning off the system?" cried Pintello as he and the security team pulled Locutus and Nordicus out of the drenched office. "I always knew those babies would come in handy!"

Pintello turned to another agent. "Shut off the sprinkler system and notify the fire department. Tell them it was a false alarm."

"And the window, sir?"

"Think of something creative. Then get it fixed ASAP."

[This message has been edited by Slingshot (edited March 30, 2000).]