From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

bob- yeah I will interview with u.  meet me @ chuck e cheese @730

-oriole

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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

i will find u.  wear some bengals gear.

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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Won't there be a lot of people wearing Bengals gear?


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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

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With the meet scheduled, I flew in to Cincinnati.  Hailing a taxi, I asked the driver to take me to Chuck E. Cheese.  He looked at me with great suspicion, but finally asked which one.  After a quick Google search, I located the one closes to the WIS offices, and gave him the address.  I arrived at 7:15 pm, and walked into the restaurant.

I was immediately accosted by a ten-year-old kid.  "Are you bhazlewood?"  I nodded.  "Funny, I thought you would look smarter.  You're late!" 

I double-checked my watch,  7:16 pm.  "Look kid, I'm supposed to meet someone here and I don't have time for - wait a minute?  What do you mean I'm late?  I'm fifteen minutes early."

"No," said the kid. "You're nearly twelve hours late. If I wanted you here at night I would have said 1930.  Like when you were born, I'm guessing."

"Hold on a second," I replied.  "YOU are oriole_fan?"

"Yeah, what did you expect?"

"I dunno, someone a little more..... adult?"

"Yeah right, like WIS is gonna pay the bucks to hire some adult with my programming skillz, even if they could find somebody.  Look, go find us a booth or something where we can talk.  I'm going to go play 'whack-a-norbert' for a bit."

Dazed, I found a booth and sat down.  The gunk under the table was nearly as disgusting as watching 2Chair eat.  My thoughts were spinning, as I tried to rework the questions I was prepared to ask.   Eventually, the kid came and set down.  He carried a stack of prize tickets 22 inches thick.  

"I nearly have enough to win that Microsoft Surface Pro 2," he explained.  "Once I get that, I'll be able to check in to the WIS forums more often.  My mom confiscated my laptop after she found the "Girls of Leahy" thread."

"So that's why the updates have been few and far between?"

"Yeah, that and I got mad at Redhawk when he wouldn't let me add power-ups to the game.  What kind of game doesn't have power-ups?"

"You're trying to tell me the game has been left in a lurch because you weren't allowed to put in Gatorade+3?"

The kid gave me a withering look.  "No.  They couldn't use Gatorade anyway, cuz they wouldn't spring for a license to use the name.  No, the big problem was I wanted to add a Dynamic Sub-Cohesive Systemic Parameter-based series of multi-phasic n-stage polygon reticulations to the punter AI, and they refused.  They actually had the nerve to tell me an isokenetic quantum inversion induction cipher algorithm would function better.  As if."

I stared at the kid for a few moments.  Eventually, the uncomfortable silence made him uncomfortable.  "Ok, you got me. That's just a bunch of technobabble I heard on Dr. Who. It sounded good though, huh?  The real truth is I started working on this code, and I the more I dug into it, the more confusing it became.  I started making notes on a pad of paper, and that wasn't enough,  So I started putting up stuff on the wall, and it began to look like that scene in 'A Beautiful Mind' where the dude goes all conspiracy theory nuts on everyone and then the next thing you know my mom is calling some psychoanalyst and making me go to counseling and stuff and it made me miss the Pinky and The Brain marathon.  After that, i just couldn't take it anymore, so I started playing Super Tecmo Bowl on a video game system I build from spare bicycle parts.  And that's when I realized it."

"Realized what?" I asked.

"This game of yours really SUCKS. " said oriole. "Bad.  Like, really, really, really bad.  I don't know why you folks keep playing it."

"I thought you were supposed to fix it.  Make it better.  Make it --- playable and fun."

The kid just gave me a blank stare.  "Not. Possible." he said.  "The only thing that that would fix it is a total, start-from-the-beginning re-write of the application.  And we can't do that because of the Conte Code."

"The Conte Code?" I asked, fearing the answer.

"THE SINGLE MOST BRILLIANTLY DEVIOUS PIECE OF SOFTWARE EVER DEVELOPED!" oriole screamed.  "it ... it corrupts software.  Not so that the software crashes.  It just makes anything you try to do harder, and everytime you institute a fix, the Conte Code adds three or four more bugs. And then when you squash the bugs, it starts messing with the game logic, so things don't work like they are programmed.  Only... not always.  Sometimes stuff will work.  Other times, it won't.  It generates random results, so random that there's no rhyme or reason to it.  And it's like a virus, only a hundred times worse.  It's spread into every application at WIS.  It even started corrupting things we don't even run any more.  We tried to put up a firewall to stop it, but it somehow manged to get into the foxsports.com network and completely screw up their fantasy sports games.  It..... it is is terrifying... and ... somehow... beautiful...."

Oriole_fan entered a catatonic state, worse even than the ones people get when reading ceasari's posts.  After trying to snap oriole out of it for several minutes, I finally gave up, and started to leave the restaurant.  As I was leaving, a hand grabbed at my pants leg.  A crazed looking man sat curled up next to the "claw" machine, clutching a worn Boomer Esiason action figure. "It's the interface, man.  TELL THEM.  It's the Interface!  TELL THEM REDHAWK KNOWS.  It's.  The.  Interface."  I tore myself free from his grip, and grabbed the first taxi I could find.  "Get me out of here!" I panted.   "Anyplace.  Take me any place else!  Please!"







 

Immediately I grew suspicious.  First, my picture is nowhere to be found on the GUESS Reports page. And second, because he mis-pronounced the name. And third, because I don't deal with Fantasy SciFi Authors.  And fourth, because he was dressed in a dark suit, wore sunglasses, and kept talking into his cuff link.  What kind of taxi driver wears cuff links?

"I think you have me confused with someone else," I said, as I stared out the window. I was still trying to make sense of it all.  I suspected things had gotten bad at WIS, but I never knew they were THAT bad.  It seemed like just yesterday, that SimCurling was ready to be launched, amidst great hoopla.  Or minor hoopla, anyway. I had to find out what was really going on.  I turned to the driver.  "Take me to 1313 Whatif Way."  

Katz and harris leave the conference through the back door and down the back elevator to the side entrance and into the hazy sunshine, Both drop their sunglasses onto their nose in unison and head towards the dark, custom Crown Vic waiting on the street.
"You drive, harris, I gotta think!" katz says.
"Hey, don't I have to think too?" harris queries.
"You got to think yesterday. It's my turn."

They get into the car and head off downtown.
"Let's see, Jfootball was at Florida A&M before he got run outta there by losing in the early rounds of the playoffs twice. Heard he is in San Jose now. " Guess we need to get out to the west coast and pay him a visit. Let's get to the Gulfstream, we need to get there quick."
"I'll need a lighter shade of black jacket for this trip," harris quipped.

"AND - " continued 2chair as he looked at caesari, "Did you say that I inserted a code in my julius caesari play which will be continued this weekend with the assassination of julius caesari and lurid details of the nicknames which the other Senators have at the whorehouses?" 

"uh, wait," said caesari. "I get killed? I better have a good nickname. As for the code, I thought your code was to tell us that the forums are compromised."

"No!" exclaimed 2chair. "Who needs a code for that? What if my coded message was actually clues to resurrect the code for GD1.0? Then we wouldn't need BHaz. Well, except to solve the clues, write the code and get it to actually work."

"How come I haven't been on stage yet in your play?" asked sjurat. "And will I have a good nickname?" 

"It depends," said 2chair. "Do you agree that we should discuss this issue while sitting in a hot tub and drinking Makers Mark?" 

"Yes," replied caesari and sjurat in unison.

"Who's your daddy?" said 2chair to caesari.

"Shaddup," growled caesari.