Copyright 1999 - Robert Baer Jr.  Revised - 2000.

PROLOGUE

This is the story of a superhero, The Computer Renegade, as told through
the eyes of his faithful bionic German Shepard Otto.  Disguised as
Accountant Nathan Lovejoy, the Renegade and his friends fight a never
ending battle against crime, injustice and danger.   This is yet another
entry from Otto's 'personal' log.

The Renegade Files - "A Trip Down Memory Lane"

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and the entire Lovejoy household was
spending the day at Uncle Buford's place.   Everyone, Nathan and Wanna
Lovejoy, I and my wife Samantha and even Starlight were all treated to one
of Buford's famous cookouts!   After supper, Nathan and Wanna took a
stroll in the woods while Starlight, Samantha and I went with Buford
behind the barn, he said he had something important to show us!   We all
spotted a large black tarp covering something very large underneath it.  
"This is it, my friends!" Buford proudly shouted as he pulled off the tarp.

"WOW!" Samantha barked,"that looks very interesting."

"A huge machine," Otto said,"with an uncertain porpose."

"Why is your dog Maxx wired up to it, Uncle Buford?" Starlight asked,
observing the many wires that were attached to Buford's robotic Great
Dane.  

"Because this machine will boost the power of his internal circuitry,"
Uncle Buford explained,"and I can use it to help both you and Otto expand
your capabilities, increase your power output, and ...."

"That sounds wonderful, sir!" Samantha exclaimed,"but will it work on my
Otto?"

"Well," Uncle Buford said as he unhooked the wires from Maxx,"I'll have to
adjust the settings for him, since he has more canine in him than computer
chips and circuit boards."

"I assume that you've tested this device thoughly on Maxx?" Starlight
asked.

"Of course!" Buford said as he motioned for Otto to come,"these new
settings will make Otto virturally twice as powerful as before!"

As Uncle Buford finished setting all the wires on Otto, Samantha got an
idea.  "I'll bet our friend the Computer Dinosaur would love to watch this
experiment too!   I'll use my collar and zap him right here!"

"Darling, are you sure you know how to do that?" I asked.

"Yes," Starlight added,"no offense, but remember the free trip to Guam you
gave us all last week?"

"Hey, I've been practicing!" Samantha said with a smile,"watch this,
everybody!"

Samantha closed her eyes and focused her thoughts, and with a loud BOOM!!!
 our friend the Computer Dinosaur did appear!   Only he materialized
twenty feet off the ground!   As he fell to earth with a loud thud, the
ground shook, tilting the machine over on it's side.   The impact caused a
power surge through my body, which sent out a strange orange ray through
my eyes in the Dinosaur's direction.   In a matter of seconds, both he and
myself had vanished!

I never knew what had happened while I was "gone" until I downloaded
Starlight's personal log sometime later.   

Samantha was in a complete state of panic.   "WHERE'S MY HUSBAND?" she
screamed.

"Maxx, Starlight, scan for Otto and the big guy!" Uncle Buford said
excitedly.

"It appears that neither of them are registering on my scanners," Maxx
said coldly.

"I can't find them either," Starlight said with a heavy sigh,"but there
seems to be some sort of unnatural temporal disturbances nearby."

"Temporal?" Uncle Buford said in shock.

"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, WHERE'S MY OTTO?" Samantha barked loudly.

"Young lady," Uncle Buford explained,"it's not WHERE they are, it's WHEN
they are, it appears the accidental discharge from my machine has sent
both your husband and our dinosaur friend backward in time."

"Oh NO!"  Samantha cried,"this is all MY FAULT!  We'll never see them
again, and it's all my fault!"

Samantha began to weep uncontrollably, Uncle Buford asked Startlight to
'zap' the Computer Counsellor to the scene to help her from going berzerk.
  

Meanwhile, the blast from the machine left me and the Dinosaur
unconsceince for a while.   We awoke to find ourselves in the middle of a
large, green meadow.  I tried to get a fix on our position, but my
directional indicators were all offline.  The Dinosaur looked around and
muttered,"this place looks so familiar, but I don't know ....."

It was then that a strange looking man in a tuxedo drove his pick up truck
to our position, honking his horn repeatedly.  "I know that man!" the
Dinosaur thought outloud.   "You better know me!" the strange man
laughed,"I'm your best man!"

"Best man?" I asked.

"Yeah, Rover!" the man replied,"hey, Dinosaur, you better hurry up!   You
don't want to be late to your own wedding now, do you?   See you at the
courtyard!"   

As the strange man drove away, the Dinosaur said,"Now I know that man,
that's Barney Badde!   He was a long time friend of mine and the best man
at my wed...."

The big guy stopped in mid-sentence, with a very puzzled look on his face.
  My internal systems were slowly coming back online, so I began to gather
data.   I noticed that a newspaper had blown from Mr Badde's truck, so I
quickly retrieved it.   It confirmed my suspictions, we had somehow
traveled back in time to the day that the Computer Dinosaur was to be
married!   When I explained our dilema to him, instead of being upset, he
was delighted!

"This is SO COOL!" the Dinosaur shouted,"now I can run over to the
courtyard, and talk myself out of getting married!  I wasted a lot of years 
in my marriage, now I can stop it from happening!"

"Wait a minute, CD!" I said in haste,"you can't do that!"

"Why not?" he asked me,"we're in the past, right?   Now I can stop myself
from making the biggest mistake of my life!  I can her at the alter and find 
Dree-'el and have a good ....."

"Stop that!" I interrupted,"if you change any of the circumstances in your
life now, you could destroy the future, OUR future!"

"I don't understand," the Dinosaur said in bewilderment.

"It's simple!' I explained,"all the events in our lives not only affect
ourselves, but also those around us.   What if you succeed in breaking up
your wedding?   You'd have never met the Computer Counsellor, or for that
matter, the Computer Renegade either.   You've never even dreamed of
Dree-'el, and would the Dree-'el of THIS time fall in love with you?   And
what about your contract with the Colonel Krispy company, would you have
that fine job now if you were to change your past?   My friend, changing
this event could hurt many people, maybe even me!"

"No!" the Dinosaur agrued,"I could help people!   I could stop my wedding,
write a letter to Ben Maddog warning him about the accident that will soon
take his wife's life, and I could find Nathan Lovejoy and get him away
from the 'Leader' before he got too deep into his organization!   But most
importantly, I'll tell myself all about the future, he ... I mean I could
make millions!"

"No Dinosaur!"  I begged,"don't do this!   All those things sound well and
good, but what if you decided to do evil things, like beat up your
ex-wife's boyfriend, while he's still a hatchling, or get into a fight
with the Leader BEFORE Nathan has all those life-saving devices, or ....."

"I won't hear anymore of this!" the Dinosaur roared,"I can avoid all the
pain I've gone through all these years!   I don't care what else
happens, she hurt me so deeply, and it still hurts today!   All I have to
do is run over that hill over there and break up the wedding, and that's
exactly what I'm going to do!   Don't try to stop me, Otto, I must do
this!"

As the Dinosaur began to run away from me, something strange was happening
inside my internal systems.   Using my systems log, I discovered a way to
duplicate the strange beam that sent us back in time, so as my large
reptile friend approached to top of the hill, I fired a purple ray out of
my eyes in his direction.   He and I were immediately returned to the
present.

Samantha and the Computer Counsellor were hugging, the scared young collie
was still crying her eyes out.   When she heard to loud BOOM! she turned
and saw her beloved husband.   "OTTO!" she screamed as she ran to him and
hugged his neck.   "I'm so sorry!" she said through her tears.   She
wasn't the only one crying.   Realizing that he was now back in the
present, the Computer Dinosaur lowered his head and began crying also.   

Samantha felt so guilty about the entire incident, she ran up to the
Dinosaur and begged for forgiveness.   The big guy slowly lifted his head
up and said softly,"Samantha, there's nothing to forgive, I only wish that
you could send me back there, all I needed was five minutes, that's all!" 
 As he began crying again, Samantha and all of our friends didn't
understand why our large reptile friend was acting that way until I
quickly explained what had occurred in the past.   It was the Counsellor
who truly comprehended it the most.   "Please, everyone, let me talk to
him alone, OK?" she asked.  So Uncle Buford, Nathan, Wanna, Samantha, Otto
and Starlight slowly walked away toward the garden while the Counsellor
tried to talk to him.

"C.D." the Counsellor began,"you know that you've come a long way in these
past two years.  You're a better person since your divorce, I'm so proud
of you!"

"I appreciate that, Counsellor," the Dinosaur muttered through his
tears,"but I was so close to changing all that.   I could've avoided my
cruel marriage altogether and been happier for it."

"Do you really think so, my huge friend?   What if you had stopped your
wedding and....."

"I know, I know, Otto explained to me about altering history, but my life
would have had a lot less pain and sadness...."

"But what about all of your friends, big guy?  Would you have met any of
them if your life circumstances would've been different?  Remember how WE
first met?"

"Yes, it was only weeks after my wife left me, and I was feeling so low,
and we contacted each other in ancient cyberspace"

"And you wouldn't have been there if you haven't been alone and
frightened, right?"

The Dinosaur was beginning to see her point, that only made him cry
harder.  

"Just think, Dinosaur, think of all the things you've achieved and all the
lives you've touched, including mine!"

"You're right, Counsellor!" the Dinosaur said as he lifted his head off
the ground,"but I STILL hurt inside, sometimes I still feel so alone, so
empty, so confused, am I making any sense?"

"Perfect sense," the Counsellor explained,"every divorced person goes
through this, I've been divorced a lot longer than you have, and I still
have those feelings, too!"

"Really?" the Dinosaur said in surprise.

"Yes," the Counsellor replied,"we are both hurting, but we're both a lot
wiser and have learned much from our mistakes.  Don't sell yourself short,
big guy, you have a great job, lots of friends that care about you, and
even a lovely young lady Baerasaurus who loves you.   You don't need to
change your past, you're headed for a great future just the way things are
now, do you understand me?"

The huge longneck reptile nodded his head and even smiled.   "Now,
Computer Dinosaur," she said to him,"let's rejoin our friends and please
talk to Samantha, she was so upset over the accident, tell her you forgive
her, OK?"

"Sure thing!" the Dinosaur said happily,"and maybe the rest of y'all can
help Mr Buford fix that machine of his!"

"That's a good idea," the Counsellor agreed,"let's do it!"

We all spent the rest of the afternoon repairing  Uncle Buford's
invention, between me, the Counsellor and the big guy, we finally got
Samantha to calm down and relax.  This whole situation was strange, but
yet rather revealing.  I've always heard humans talking about giving
anything to change their pasts, I was in a position to do that for my
dinosaur friend, but decided not to.  Oh well, perhaps there are times
that it's better not to take a stroll down "memory lane."

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