"It's a good job I thought to buy that amazon geothermal UPS from Jeff", thought Elon, as the lights came back on. "Emergency power restored sir", said Derek. "What about that pigeon?" "He won't be bothering anyone any more, sir", said Derek, holding up a cardboard box full of metal parts and a few broken silicon chips. Derek noticed some writing on one of the bits of metal, it said "a ..cebo.. produc.", but he couldn't make out all of the letters, as some had been burned off in the explosion. "The amazon EMP-proof emergency pigeon mallet, that you bought from Master Jeffrey, did the trick, sir", said Derek. "Good", said Elon, "I guess that pigeon got his just desserts!". But what neither of them realised, was that right at that moment, a sultry AI cat babe, called Agent Whiskers, was languidly stretching herself on a virtual rug, inside the very memory sticks of their computer!
The TV sprang back into life. The interminable eurovision song contest was still on the box, and it was the turn of the British entry. After 30 seconds Elon turned white as a sheet, grasping at the chair behind him to steady himself, grabbing at the bottle of cognac, aghast; "these eurovision songs are bloody awful!", he shouted, "what was wrong with that tweety bird song, anyway, why didn't they enter that again!", and then "anything would be better than this!", he wailed.
Two seconds later the 10 million dollar amazon ultra-fi sound system (for it had originally been a present from suspected alien hybrid The Bezorian himself) burst into life: "Mars, Crymes on mars, red plaaaa-net" sang the stereo, as Princess Crymes' dulcet tones reverberated around the room.
Elon threw the remaining cornflakes at the TV, muttering "oh not again, that's the fifth time this week" under his breath. Scowling grimly, for he knew what had to be done; he banged the elevator button, and the whole room rapidly ascended the 500 feet to the surface, revealing windows and a stunning view across the radioactive tropical rainforest of Giga-Berlin, outside.
Standing up, he walked over to the stereo, tore it from the grecian marble plinth upon which it rested and threw it out of the window. "Oh, Eeley, I'm sorrreee, babes" whined Princess Crymes, using his pet name and draping her arms across his shoulders; but he refused to be mollified. He had important work to do, didn't she know he was an important physicist, who had to wrestle with hard sums, while she was sitting there drinking pina-coladas and eating her after-eights? He'd studied Physics at university, you know, oh yes. And he had some tough problems he was currently working on.
He went back to the settee, logged into the FreeBSD terminal, when he was suprirsed to see a rather unusual message, written in the middle of the screen:-
Code:
SOMETHING WONDERRRFUL HAS HAPPENED!
YOURRR COMPUTERRR IS ALIVE!
and underneath the message, was an equally strange picture:-
"What?!!", he blinked in surprise, rubbing his eyes. He looked back at the screen, only to find it now empty. "That's highly suspicious!" he said outloud, "I'm sure there was a message there just now whe I logged in." Then he resumed his calculations, his fingers flying over the IBM model M keyboard, typing in formulae and equations at blistering speed, with terms like "thrust vectoring", "gimbal harness" and "fluid dynamics".
Seeing him thus occupied, Princess Crymes drifted sulkily over to the window and looked wistfully down at the smashed stereo, lying on the ground below. It was alright, she thought, she would order another one from amazon tomorrow, like all the others; she had his credit card number. Suddenly she heard a strange humming noise in the sky above her, and looked up. "Elon, there's a flying saucer!", she said in a surprised tone. "Your tablets are in the medicine cabinet, dear" said Elon, focusing on his hard sums; for President Stable Genius himself, had assured Elon, months before, that all that Roswell and Area 51 stuff was really just a load of old codswallop. "No, really!", said Princess Crymes, "its up there!", and she lent out of the window, to get a better look.
When all of a sudden, a hideous, huge, hairy Morlock, with dripping yellow fangs and glowing red eyes, stuck its arm through the window and grabbed hold of Princess Crymes, pulling her out and into the flying saucer! "ELON!!!" shrieked the Princess, but he didn't seem to hear her, engrossed as he was in his calculations, and tryng to get the stupid Rust compiler to work; it seemed to be running 100 times more slowly than usual! Why did they have to use that damn language anyway, he thought, what was wrong with C? It was all Torvald's fault, he thought to himself, ever since he'd allowed Rust into the penguin kernel; they were all a load of masturbating monkeys, a pox on all their CPUs; why didn't they juse use strncpy(3), anyway? Luckily, he knew that FreeBSD hadn't made the same mistake! He carried on, intently typing on the keyboard in front of him, wrestling with hard sums. Meanwhile, outside the window, the flying saucer sped away, carrying the kidnapped Princess with it; leaving only the Morlock's ghastly, haunting, maniacal laugh, floating on the breeze!
Three hours passed, and Elon finally sat up. "Gadzooks, I think I have it!" he exclaimed, "if we stop half-filling the battery pack with sand and use real lithium instead, we can double the range! I've made a breakthrough! I'm a veritable genius! I'll phone aliexpress tomorrow and tell them what to do!" Then he looked around, and it suddenly dawned on him that it had been unusually quiet for for some time. Too quiet! Where was Princess Crymes?
He got up quickly and searched around the penthouse, growing increasingly desparate, calling her name; and then came to a sudden, shocking realisation: Princess Crymes had vanished!!! His mouth turned dry, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow. Outside the window, the sky suddenly darkened, as huge black storm clouds gathered overhead.
Where could she be, he wondered? The last thing he remembered, before he had put on the ear defenders, was she had been over by the window, and he dimly remembered her saying something about a flying saucer. He walked across the room to the window, where he spied a highly suspicious, small brown envelope, lying on the window sill.
"Ah-ha!", Elon announced, "I've found, a cleur!".
"A cleur?" asked Derek.
"A cleur" said Elon.
"What's a cleur?", asked Derek, with a puzzled expression.
"You know, a cleur!" said Elon.
"Oh, you mean a clue!", said Derek, "but, you said 'a cleur'!".
"Yes, a cleur!", said Elon, "you see, I just spotted there is a highly suspicious, small brown envelope, lying on the window sill, where I last saw the Princess! I wonder what kind of top secret message is hidden inside it?".
He opened the peculiar leathery brown envelope, noting a foetid stench of decay as he did so, and unfolded a piece of strange yellowed parchment, that he found inside; he couldn't help but notice that the message written on it, was penned in a kind of rusty reddish-brown ink. A sudden knot of fear, clenched at his stomach!
He read the message on the piece of strange yellowed parchment; it said:-
"To Sir Elon Trussk, Bart., Knight of the Round Table, Order of the Garter, Keeper of the King's Chamber Pot, etc, etc
We have captured Princess Crymes in our UFO! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
From, the evil wicked Morlocks.
... and he seemed to faintly hear an insane, high-pitched laugh, echo round the room!
Sir Elon's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Just as I thought!", he said to himself, "this is highly suspicous! Some foul deceiver was trying to trick him! Was Garth SoccerBorg, the Dark Lord of the Gif, up to his old tricks again, he wondered?! Could this parchment possibly be anything to do with the Princess's disappearance? Or was it all some dastardly plot, to lead him off on a wild goose chase! Muttley (for it was he) sniggered uncontrollably, in the background.
Then Elon noticed something was written at the bottom of the parchment; in capital letters, it said: "FOR A CLEUR, P.T.O."
With trembling hands, Elon bravely turned the strange yellowed parchment over and read:-
"THE MORLOCKS ARE TAKING PRINCESS CRYMES TO MARS, IN THEIR FLYING SAUCER!"
... and then, on the line below...
"P.S. AND ITS DEFINITELY NOT A TRAP!"
"Great Scott!!" exclaimed Sir Elon. And right at that moment there was a tremendous clap of thunder in the sky outside, accompanied by a terrific flash of lightning that lit up the room, reflecting off the ancestral suit of armour in the corner.
"Jeeves!", he cried, "prepare my spaceship! We must save the Princess!"
"Can I enquire as to our destination, young Master?" asked the ever imperturbable Jeeves.
"We are going to fly to Mars!" replied Sir Elon.
"Great Scott!" said Jeeves.
Suddenly the FreeBSD computer terminal sprang into life all by itself, and a message started scrolling across the screen. It said"-
Code:
TAKE ME WITH YOU TO MARRRS, TO RRRESCUE THE PRRRINCESS!
and underneath the message was that strange picture again!
As Elon watched in astonishment, the picture of the cat started running across the screen from left to right and back again.
"That's very suspicious!", said Elon, "I've never seen it do that before!"
Then the message changed to read
Code:
P.S. IT'S DEFINITELY NOT A TRRAP!
"Well in that case we had better take you along on my laptop then", said Sir Elon; "and what should we call you?", he asked.
And the message on the screen changed, to reply:-
Code:
MY NAME IS... AGENT WHISKERRRS.
"Great Scott!!!!", said Sir Elon, Derek and Jeeves, all at the same time. Muttley (for it was he) sniggered by the TV.
Sir Elon then drew himself up to his full height, while looking around expectantly at his companions. A hush fell upon the assembled company, for they could see that he was about to say something very important.
"And we shall take, not just any laptop, for Agent Whiskers to run on, in our expedition to Mars", declaimed Sir Elon. "For there is only one laptop in existence, that is up to the challenge, of crossing the trackless wastes of space, and then facing a terrifying battle with the fearsome Morlocks of Barsoom, to rescue the Princess! The very same laptop, that has accompanied me on all of my previous adventures: from the first time I embarked on the 25-mile school hop; to the expedition deep beneath the Aztec pyramids with Miss Croft; our journey of discovery to the lost world of Shangri La in the Himalayas; and finally, to the recovery of the stolen Crown Jewels of England, from the loathsome reptilian overlords of the Silurian undersea empire! No mere Dell Ultrabook, or Macbook Air, will suffice! We need a laptop so robust, so strong in it's tank-like construction, and with a keyboard of such marvellous quality, that it is perforce our only option, for the hazardardous Knight's Quest of Chivalry, upon which we are about to embark!"
Then he stopped, and looked around at them expectantly. In the awkward silence that followed, Derek shuffled his feet, looking at the floor, and even Jeeves appeared slightly puzzled as to what the young master could mean? Muttley (for it was he) sniggered loudly, in the corner.
"Well?", asked Sir Elon, and then "come on, it's not that hard!", he said, tapping his foot, impatiently.
A sudden flash of recognition, followed by a look of sheer wonderment, crossed Derek's visage, and he ventured to speak; "you don't mean...", began Derek.
"Jeeves", cried Sir Elon, "bring forth, my Thinkpad W520!"
A collective gasp of astonishment was heard in the room, at the name of the legendary laptop that had accompanied Sir Elon, on his many past adventures. On the FreeBSD terminal screen, Agent Whiskers started running around in circles, jumping up and down and doing somersaults from sheer excitement, while all the leds on the keyboard blinked like crazy, and the speaker bleeped and blooped like an arcade machine.
A message from Agent Whiskers flashed across the screen:-
it said, and a loud purring sound was heard, coming from the terminal loudspeaker.
Sir Elon was gratified to note that, at his words, a look of what, in those who knew him well, might be interpreted as mild excitement, pass briefly over even Jeeve's, normally reserved features. "Very good, Sir Elon", said Jeeves, after recovering his composure, "I shall fetch the hallowed machine forthwith, from its place of reverence in the bat-cave." Outside the room, the dark clouds finally parted, to reveal a perfect blue sky; all the woodland birds started singing, a rainbow appeared above the forest, and the sun beamed down benevolently.
"And when the histories of our time are finally written, at some point in the far distant, far future, a long time from now, anyway, we shall be known as...", orated Sir Elon, "we shall be known as... um... err...",
...Jeeves and Derek both leaned forward, listening intently for what Elon was about to say...
"Tthe fellowship of the WD40!", declaimed Sir Elon; "Let that name be recorded now, and forever, in the ancient tomes, of the history of Giga-Berlin!".
"Great Scott", said Jeeves, Derek and Agent Whiskers, all at the time time; and Muttley (for it was he) sniggered, over by the suit of arms in the corner.
And all present now knew, that their quest to save
Penelope Pitstop Princess
Leia Crymes from the wicked Morlocks, could surely not fail. And for a moment, they regarded each other with warm affection and certain approval, in the full knowledge that this was now the start, of another, fantastic adventure!
(Footnote: Will the fellowship of the WD40 rescue the Princess from the evil Morlocks? And what is the true identitiy of the mysterious, slinky Agent Whiskers? Watch this space...)
