Copywrite 1999 - Robert Baer Jr. 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 -- "The Forest Fire" It was a rainy Friday evening, and we all were entertaining company. Our old friend, the Computer Gila Monster, had stopped by for a visit. He of the black leather jacket and 2 x 4 that he always carried, he's a very "rough and tumble" reptile with a heart of gold. While Nathan and Wanna were in the kitchen preparing a snack, I noticed that the Gila continued to stare at my wife, Samantha, as she was carefully packing her knapsack. "Are you a goin' somewhere's, ma'am?" the Gila Monster asked. "Yes, Mr Gila Monster, sir," she replied,"in a few days I'll be starting college, going to the same place that your friend the Computer Dinosaur attended as well as my father and my sisters! I'm very excited to be going there!" "College?" the Gila Monster questioned,"why do you want to go someplace like that? Just look at me! I ain't never had no formal edumacation, and I turned out great, didn't I?" As he spoke, he grabbed a passing fly and stuffed it into his mouth. Samantha and I tried very hard not to laugh, good thing he had gone into the kitchen to see how the humans were doing. That's when I received an emergency signal on my internal receiver, an urgent plea for help! I ran into the kitchen and told the others. There was a large forest fire raging out of control in the Pacific northwestern part of the country. Many firefighters and rescue units are on the scene, but the fire continues to spread, the authorites wanted our assistance. "We must all go there at once!" Nathan said,"Wanna, get into your costume, Otto, go out to the stable and tell Starlight, we'll need all the help we can get!" "Then I will come with y'all also!" the Gila Monster insisted,"me and my big 2 x 4 friend here!" "Well, I don't know," Nathan said with doubt in his voice. "Hey, C'mon there!" the Gila Monster snorted,"didn't I help y'all out that time when the Leader grabbed you and Wanna, and how about the time when....." "Ok, ok, you've made your point, my friend!" Nathan said,"you can come with us also!" "Great!" the Gila Monster said as swung his 2 x 4 in the air,"and the best part of it is, I won't even have to wear a mask, like you and your wife will!" With a loud BOOM! All of us, Samantha, Starlight, the Renegade, the "Masked Mellita," the Gila Monster, and myself were transported to a ranger station approximately 2.3 miles from the huge blaze. There the chief ranger met us outside and explained the situation. The fire was burning out of control, the many firefighters and volunteers were getting exhausted, and everything they had attempted couldn't stop it. "Well," the ranger told us,"do any of you have any suggestions? Tell us, my people and I are at your disposal!" "Perhaps the weather may help us, sir," the Renegade replied,"Starlight, do an atmospheric scan for any rain storm patterns that could be headed this way." "None in the immediate vicinity," Starlight said sadly,"not much out there except a huge storm system in the Pacific Ocean a hundred miles south of Hawaii." "Well, that rules out any help from 'Mother Nature' guys," the Masked Mellita agreed. "Have you got any ideas, Starlight?" I asked. "No, not a one!" the great white horse sighed. "Wait a minute here!" the Gila Monster grumbled,"y'all are the most smartest people I know! Can't you guys think of something, like using all those high tech gizmos of yours to move some rain over the fire, and ..... " "That's it!" I yelled in excitement,"Mr Gila Monster, you're a genius!" "I is?" the leather-jacketed reptile asked. "Yes, listen to me, everyone. I have an idea that will work, in theory." "Theory?" Startlight asked,"tell us what you have in mind." "Well, Starlight, retrieve your data files on BirdWorld." "BirdWorld?" Samantha asked,"that's the place where Robin Mallory and her family lives, right?" "Right, honey! The entrance to BirdWorld is a portal, a natural occuring 'doorway' into another dimension." "Now I see where you're going with this, Otto!" Starlight added,"we can make our own portal using our black boxes, is that correct?" "Correct! We'll need six points of contact, three to open the portal at the center of the storm, and three to create the other side of the portal over the fire!" "You want to harness the rain from that storm out in the Pacific, right?" the Renegade said. "Yes, Starlight and I will coordinate the exact calculations, this won't be easy." "That's right, Otto," Starlight interrupted,"that storm is moving fast, we'll have to act quickly or we'll lose our chance!" "But we need six points of contact," Mellita said,"and we have only five of us here that either have black boxes or internal circuitry, we need one more...." "We have it!" the Renegade said,"I brought an extra black box with me, and our good friend the Gila Monster can use it to help us, right, my friend!" "Jist tells me what to do!" the Gila Monster said. "We will, Gila!" the Renegade said,"Chief Ranger, move all of your personnel out of the fire area, if this works, it could cause some flooding and you need to get everyone away from here." The Ranger began radioing all the fire fighters and volunteers to evacute, "ok, they're all moving away from the fire!" he said. While we were discussing our plans, a number of television crews converged in our area, trying to get a 'good look' at us! One brave reporter walked up to us and tapped the Gila Monster on the shoulder. "Excuse me, lizard man," the eager reporter asked,"Ted Binkley, Action-Wide News, may I have a word with you?" "No!" the Gila Monster grumbled as he turned away. This prompted the reporter to tap him on the shoulder again. "Look, Binky the clown!" the Gila Monster roared,"I gave you one word, and that word was NO!!! understand?" "But I must ask you, ehh...... what is your name? Are you some sort of superhero?" "Yeah," the Gila Monster shouted sarcasticly,"I'm the Green Meanie, and I take my 2 x 4 here and I mash reporters and camera crews who bother me and hinder me from helping my friends, how would YOU like to go FIRST, Binky?" As the Gila Monster started swinging his board in the air, the news crews retreated. "And stay away from us! We're doing something important here!" he yelled as he returned to his friends. "Ok," I told everyone,"here's the plan, Starlight, Renegade and Mellita will focus on opening the portal under the storm, while the rest of us will focus on opening the other end over the forest fire." "Alright!" the Gila Monster cheered,"now one of y'all will have to show me how to set this thing." "Don't worry, my scaly friend!" I told him,"Starlight will send the coordinates and set Renegade's and Mellita's black boxes, I will electronically set yours and my wife's collar to the coordinates that we'll need, OK?" "Ok!" the Gila said with a smile. "Starlight, you and I will have to activate this 'portal' in unison. The slightest deviation in timing will stop the portal from forming." "I understand, Otto!" Starlight said,"I have my coordinates set, I've got my end of the portal set a few miles ahead of the eye of the storm because it's still moving." It was at this time that I made a discovery. Although I could set the black box the Gila Monster was holding to the exact coordinates and activation sequence, I couldn't do that with Samantha's collar! Since it was programmed to act only on her brainwaves, she'd have to set and activate her "point of contact" by herself. When I explained this to her, she started to panic. "Oh no!" she barked,"I can't do it! I'll mess up again, like when I sent us all to Guam, or when I sent you and the big guy back in time last week, I can't do it, I'll let everyone down again!" "Samantha, honey," I said,"you can do this, we need you! This end of the portal can't open without three points of contact, we're running out of time, stop doubting yourself, I believe in you!" "I does, too!" the Gila Monster said,"you're a brave young mammal, and a lot brainier than me, you can do this!" "Thanks, guys!" Samantha said with determination,"tell me the proper settings and let me know when to start it!" I told her the coordinates, I could see that Samantha was concentrating will all her might, "ok, I'm set!" she proudly stated. "Alright, everyone, it's almost time!" Starlight said as she began counting down to activation. "10....9.....8.....7......6.....5.....4.....3.....2......1.......NOW!" I could see Samantha flinch her head a little and I looked up into the sky. I could see in the distance our brightly glowing portal and see the heavy rain falling through it! "It's working, everybody!' Starlight yelled out as the wind began blowing stronger at the place all of us were standing. The strong winds accompanying the storm helped to blow the rain over the entire blazing forest, we could all see that the fire was dying out, all of us could see, except Samantha. Her eyes were still closed as she focused all of her thoughts on maintaining her "point of contact." The winds were getting stronger, my master and his wife were having trouble maintaining a standing position, even the Gila Monster was swaying a little bit in the wind. "Hang on, everyone!" Starlight shouted to us,"we need to keep this portal open as long as we can!" The wind got even stronger! Starlight and I activated force fields around the entire group to shield us all from the wind, but we couldn't turn it on at full strength because of the power drain the portal was causing to both of us. After ten minutes the strain became too much. Starlight and I both fell to the ground and the portal instantly vanished. All I could do was look up and ask, "is the fire out?" I needed no one to answer me as I heard a huge round of applause and cheering all around me! All of the firefighters and volunteers had been watching us from a distance and could see the results of our 'experiment.' The monsoon-like rains and winds we had 'brought' from that Pacific storm had completely vanquished the once raging forest fire! Starlight and I slowly stood up and saw with our own eyes that it was so! We were all so happy! The Renegade hugged his wife, the Gila Monster hugged Starlight and I look at my lovely wife and said,"see, honey, I knew you could do it! We couldn't have formed the portal without you!" With that, Samantha hugged me and wept. The camera crews returned, taking pictures and shooting live footage of the now extinguished fire area, and of us! The light of the flashbulbs enraged the Gila Monster, he grabbed his 2 x 4 and yelled,"I thought I told you idgets to git, now it's clobbering time!" As he ran towards them, I quickly shouted,"time for us to leave now!" and wiith a loud BOOM!!! all of us were instantly standing in our rainsoaked front yard again. Looking bewildered and shocked, the Gila Monster turned to me and growled,"HEY! Why did we leave? I wanted to knock some sense into them reporters, give them an "attitude adjustment" with some lumber, them snooping reporters are a bunch of twerps and ...." "And don't you remember that I used to be a reporter, Gila Monster?" Mellita asked as she took off her mask. "Oh," the Gila said with embarrassment on his face,"you, ma'am, are the EXCEPTION to that rule!" "Thank you, my friend!" Wanna said as she pointed to the house and yelled,"let's all go inside, we're getting soaked out here!" "May I zap myself into the living room?" Starlight asked,"my stable gets mighty chilly in this type of weather." "Sure!" Wanna shouted,"why don't you zap us all there now?" She did, and soon all of us were sipping on hot cocoa and relaxing. As Starlight and I went to the basement to recharge our internal power sources, I could still hear the conversation going on upstairs. "See, Samantha!' the Gila Monster spoke out,"I solved that forest fire problem all by myself, and it didn't take no college edumacation to do it with, neither!" "Well, Mr Gila Monster, sir," Samantha replied,"wasn't it all of our technology that actually opened that portal up and got the rain water to where it was needed? Engineering, meteorology and science, all those things you learn in school." "Ok, I reckon you does have a point there, ma'am," the Gila Monster admitted,"but they can't learn you this in college!" The Gila Monster leaped on top of the coffee table and snagged three passing flies instantly with his long tongue. Everyone laughed as Samantha conceeded,"you win, sir, they certainly don't teach you skills like that in college!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >