DVANDOM _____ ______ _____ _______ GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL part 2 of 4 [ ]__ [ ] [] [ ]__)) [ ] ` [ ]__ #98 - "Training Wheels" [ ] [ ] [] [ ] \\ [ ] [ ] copyright 1999 Dave Van Domelen [_] [_]__[] [_] \\ [_]___/ [_]____ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [cover shows Shane Boxer releasing Picochu from its Hackesack to attack an off-panel opponent while a hail or rocks pelts him.] As Shane rode along the back roads of northern Illi.net, he decided there was one small advantage to taking the RoboMAC [MAC = Mobile Artificial Consciousness - Ed.] ATV Frank as his ride. Since Frank was self-motivated, Shane didn't have to pay attention to the road. Super cruise control. Instead, he read over the files Dr. Elm had provided him, using his Backhand (TM) PDA. "The first thing you must realize," the file started, "is that the Hackemon have been living in this area for several months now, mostly under the noses of people. Not surprisingly, it has been the children who were first to discover Hackemon, and some of them know much more about the creatures than I do." Shane pondered this. He really wasn't sure how to deal with kids. When he was growing up, everyone was pretty well indoctrinated from cradle to grave, and children were seen but not heard. Only a handful had strong enough wills to resist this insidious brainwashing into adulthood...he hadn't met another "wolf" like himself among the sheep until he was recruited by the resistance in the late 2060s. When most people complain about "kids today," it's just a lot of hot air and forgetting their own childhoods. Not in Shane's case. He shrugged and went back to the file. "It turns out that Hackemon run a variant of the Linux operating system, although significantly more advanced...several hundred 'generations' more, as far as I can tell. Still, the core concepts are the same as current Open Source code, and many of the older children have taken to modifying the code of their Hackemon, then trading tips on doing so. You will find that any Hackemon owned by one of these coders will be much stronger than the wild variety. However, due to the competitive nature of the Hackemon subculture, you will probably have to best them in Hackemon combat before they will give up their secrets. It is vitally important that you train your Hackemon well if you wish to use these advanced 'patches' to undo the damage done to your Picochu." Shane searched for more references to these patches. Maybe Dr. Elm knew where he could get some. Aha, there.... "The children are reluctant to open up to me about the location of the Hackemon Tyms (short for Training gYM, I'm told), but there is apparently one in RAC.ford, Illi.net. I got the impression that this is not a very good Tym, but the coder there may have more information." Suddenly Shane caught something odd out of the corner of his eye. "Frank, stop for a sec," he shouted, making sure to get a good grip on the handlebars first. ATV Frank came to an abrupt halt that almost threw Shane onto the road despite his precautions. Shane dismounted and looked carefully at the tall grass. Something was moving out there. It was green and blended in with the grass, but he knew it was out there. There! A computer monitor moving slowly through the undergrowth! Just a dinky 13" screen, hard to make out despite its boxy shape. Shane ran out into the grass...maybe he could capture it without a fight. "BULBAS.ORG!" shouted the Hackemon as Shane got within arm's reach. Cables whipped out from behind the monitor and tripped Shane up, binding his legs together. And without his powers, he wasn't strong enough to break free! "Go, Picochu!" he shouted, opening the Hackesack at his belt. There was a flash of light and the small yellow computer mouse flew from its Hackesack. "Pico!" it cried out, severing the entangling cables with a swipe of its electrified tail. Shane kicked free and scrambled to his feet. The Bulbas.org squawked and scuttled backwards on its stubby legs, then cut loose with a bright flash of light from the monitor on its back. "Pico?" Picochu blinked, momentarily blinded. "To your right!" Shane shouted, as the Bulbas.org hopped to one side. "CHU!" the little mouse squeaked as it unleashed a blast of Edit. It turned the dirt into a dart, which poked into the soft underbelly of the Bulbas.org. It must have been a poison dart, because the Bulbas.org's eyes rolled back and it flopped onto its side. "Org," it gasped. Shane pulled an empty Hackesack from his belt and opened it in front of the paralyzed Bulbas.org. There was a flash of light, and suddenly the chunky Hackemon was inside the sack. "Another mouth to feed," Shane smirked, tying the Hackesack to his belt. * * * * "So," Sidewinder said to the room in general as he lounged in front of the TV. "Hm?" Squidman looked up from the document he was reading. Macroman likewise stirred from his meditative state and fixed his gaze on Sidewinder. "What now?" Sidewinder asked. "The future, I mean. We've taken care of DeFacto V. Umlaut's not a threat. The Pact is gone and buried. The Constellation Gang is going to be in jail for a long time. The original Acton Lord is on our side now, and the new one's in a rubber room. Someone else has taken over the street-level stuff in Sig.Ago, and Net.ropolis is as hero-dense as ever. So." "Well, something will come along. It always does...nature of the world," Macroman shrugged. Sidewinder started to reply, but Squidman broke in. "No, I see what Sidewinder's saying here. We have to decide if we're just going to wait for something to 'come along,' or if there's something better we could be doing with our time and resources." "You mean, like go out and try to change the world and all that Watchmen type stuff?" Macroman shifted in his chair, a bit uneasily. "Perhaps, that's one option. Sitting here and waiting for someone to attack us is another," Squidman ticked off the points on his fingers. "We could also look for something that's already going wrong, something no one else has noticed or no one else can fix, and try to go deal with it." "We could relocate to Keystroke City," Macroman suggested. "Nothing's currently going haywire there that I know of, but it's a big city and it's only a matter of time before a net.villain decides it's a nice soft target." Squidman nodded, making notes on his laptop. "Then there's the matter of the Super Flight.Thingy Raven, which has been lost for some time now on its shakedown cruise. We don't exactly have a lot of space travel resources, but it might be possible to search the dreamlands for the missing LNHers." Macroman smirked. "Judging from Pocky's descriptions, we may want to concentrate on the dreamlands themselves for cleaning up. Looks like a pre-Revolution France, waiting to explode. Arrogant and detached leadership at the top, dreamers playing the part of neglected and downtrodden citizens." Squidman rubbed his temples and winced. "I don't even want to THINK about the fallout if we help instigate some kind of revolution in the dreamlands. At the very least, it'd be a crossover from Hell (TM)." Through all this, Sidewinder just nodded. There were times he really hated his "power" of being sidelined in any conversation he started.... * * * * It turned out to be pretty easy to find the RAC.ford Hackemon "Tym," since someone had set up crudely hand-painted signs all over the place. Many of the signs were covered in even cruder slogans and the like, confirming Dr. Elm's assessment of the local Tym-leader's lack of prestige and respect. Still, it'd be a start. Shane pulled up in the driveway of a suburban-sprawl house. A big sign reading "RAC.FORD TYM!" was nailed up over the garage door, which was open. "Stay put, Frank...I doubt this'll be much trouble," Shane instructed the RoboMAC. "Is anyone home?" he called out in the direction of the garage. There was a rustling sound and some metallic crashes as someone moved around behind a stack of boxes. "Whaddyou want?" demanded a somewhat whiny, constricted voice. "I'm here about Hackemon." A rather odd figure suddenly stumbled into view, obviously excited that someone had come to see him about the little creatures. He was somewhat shabbily dressed in what looked like a bad net.hero outfit with some sort of Poly.net.ian mask covering his face. His eyes, visible through the mask, seemed to be permanently squinted. And he was obviously a little too old for what Dr. Elm had described as a kids' pursuit. In fact, his demeanor just screamed "adult son living with parents" in the most pathetic way possible. The masked trainer tried to straighten up and look important, but that was pretty much a lost cause by now. "My name is BRACK!" he said proudly. "I'm Shane," came the reply. He considered extending his hand to shake, but thought better of it after noticing how grimy Brack's leather gloves were. "I...ah, don't suppose you have any Patches for Hackemon?" "Oh YEAH!" enthused the freakish trainer. "I got me a GOOD one. But ya gotta beat me in a Hackemon duel first!" "Um, couldn't I maybe just buy one?" "NO!" Brack almost screamed. "I want a DUEL!" he insisted. Obviously, none of the locals had been willing to duel him lately...no surprise there. "Fine, a duel," Shane pulled the two Hackesacks from his belt and got ready to open one. He'd run into a few desperate souls like this back in his days in the resistance...or would that be forward in the days? Anyway...so desperate for a little human contact that they'd do almost anything once you showed them some kindness. They were the sheep that even the other sheep didn't care for, but a wolf could convince to open the gates of the pen. Brack jumped up and down and clapped. "C'mere, monkeys!" he shouted into the rafters of the garage. He turned to Shane and explained, "I like MONKEYS." Two furry things dropped onto the floor of the garage and flanked Brack. They looked like brown tennis balls with limbs and faces...no torsos, just limbs coming off the heads. Oddly, they appeared clean and well-groomed. Either they did that themselves, or Brack took better care of his Hackemon than he did of himself. "Go, Manpage," Brack commanded, gesturing for the smaller of the two to attack. Shane responded by opening Picochu's Hackesack. "Get the furball," he ordered as his Hackemon flew out in a burst of light. The Picochu and the Manpage circled warily for a moment, then the yellow mouse charged the monkey-thing. It sidestepped, but barely. "Manpage, KILL!" Brack commanded. The Hackemon grunted, "Manpage reformatting...." Suddenly, -------------------------------------------------------------------------- KILL(1) Linux Programmer's Manual KILL(1) NAME kill - terminate a process SYNOPSIS kill [ -s signal | -p ] [ -a ] pid ... kill -l [ signal ] DESCRIPTION kill sends the specified signal to the specified process. If no signal is specified, the TERM signal is sent. The TERM signal will kill processes which do not catch this signal. For other processes, if may be necessary to use the KILL (9) signal, since this signal cannot be caught. Most modern shells have a builtin kill function. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- dropped onto Picochu, stunning it. "Pico?" it shook its head, confused by the sudden slam of jargon. It tried to strike back, but rammed its head into the wall of the garage in its confusion. Shane realized this was a bad situation. "Come back, Picochu!" he shouted, opening the Hackesack. It needed time to shake off the effect of the Manpage's attack. "You giving up?" Brack asked, his voice carrying a mixture of triumph and disappointment. "Not hardly. Go, Bulbas.org!" he opened the second Hackesack, releasing the monitor-backed lizard. No sooner had its four squat legs touched the driveway than the Bulbas.org cut loose with a blinding flash. Brack was already squinting as hard as was humanly possible, so he didn't really notice it. But the Manpage reeled back and grabbed at the air for support. The Bulbas.org ambled over to the blinded Manpage and sunk its teeth into its opponent's tail. "YIPE!" the Manpage exclaimed, flailing about and trying to hit whatever had its tail. "Muwmas.orm!" mumbled Shane's Hackemon as it tossed the Manpage about by its tail. Within moments, the Manpage stopped screeching and just flopped limply. It had fainted. Brack wasted no time calling in reinforcements. "Pineape, get 'em!" "Pine Is Not Elm!" the Pineape gibbered as it lurched into battle. The Bulbas.org charged the Pineape, pushing it back several meters and knocking the breath out of the furry spheroid. But Brack's Hackemon recovered quickly and threw the Bulbas.org way up into the air, nearly two stories up. It landed with a crash as its monitor screen cracked. Then the Pineape threw up a barrier of mail folders around the Bulbas.org, trapping it. "I hope the mouse is okay by now," Shane muttered. "Get back here, Bulbas.org! Picochu...shock the monkey!" "Picochu!" "Pine Is Not Elm!" The two Hackemon stared at each other for a moment, and then the Pineape pulled a rock out of thin air and threw it. Picochu dodged the projectile and lashed out with its lightning-bolt tail, scoring a direct hit on the bulging vein on Pineape's forehead. There was a sizzling sound and all the Pineape's hair stood up even more on end than it had before. But it wasn't out of the fight yet. It fixed Picochu with an evil leer. "Pico?" it replied, quivering in fear. Then it shook for a moment and used its Edit power, turning the leer into a leek. Confused, the Pineape stared at the evil onion-like plant now between it and its enemy. Picochu took advantage of this pause to give the Pineape another taste of its electric tail. ZZRT! NOW the Pineape was out of the fight. Shane called Picochu back, then stepped around the fainted monkey Hackemon. "You beat up my monkeys!" Brack wailed. "I guess I need to train them more," he resolved. "For beating me, you get the BOULDERPATCH, which I made myself. It's really neat...it lets your Hackemon throw rocks!" Shane sighed. * * * * "Hold still a little longer," Anna asked the prone Kat. "I think I finally have your aura in focus." Kat muttered, "I have this tremendous urge to make some kind of disparaging comment about magic, even though I've seen time and again that it's real." Anna smirked. "Part of the world we live in, I'm afraid. You're a high-tech sort of person, and it's an ongoing cliche that anyone smart enough to make power armor or robots or whatnot is going to have a kneejerk 'magic isn't real' reaction. Sometimes I think it's a prank pulled on techies by the magical energy of the world itself. It sees you as a rival and tries to make you look like a jackass." "That would explain a LOT," Kat frowned. "So...what's the verdict?" Anna leaned back and shook the tension out of her neck. "Looks good, as far as I can tell. Aura-reading's one of those basic magic talents I'd never gotten around to, but it seems a good idea to add it to my toolbox now that I'm fully getting into my role as dreamqueen. Anyway, your injuries look to be mostly healed, just some tenderness in the ribs. Physically you're in good shape." "I sense a 'but' in there," Kat sat up and tugged at the back of the baggy sweatshirt she was wearing. "You don't need me to tell you that you're still a wreck emotionally," Anna shrugged. "Ya think?" was the tart reply. "I *am* your official nightmare, after all," her face twisted into an unflattering frown. Anna sighed. "You know that was just a dodge to get you past the bureaucracy. True Nightmares don't have bodies in the waking world. But you are an ally...and I'd like to hope, a friend. And you're going to be ending up in my dreamlands more and more now...I'd like to help you have some good dreams." "So spin me some nice fluffy dreams then," Kat got off the couch and started to move for the door. "It's not that easy...dreams need some foundation in reality." Seeing that Kat was about to end the conversation by leaving, Anna played a hunch and rolled the dice. "Kat, have you ever been in love?" Kat stopped dead in her tracks, never taking her eyes off the door. Finally, after a moment that seemed to stretch into hours, she spat, "Al put you up to this, didn't he?" "No, he did *not*," Anna spat back. "If you must know, he was asking me about the torch Shane's carrying for me, and that got me thinking about you." "Playing matchmaker?" Kat sneered, turning towards Anna. "More like one of those 'compare and contrast' exercises," Anna smirked. "Both of you have similar backgrounds, both of you have big holes in your lives for one reason or another. But while he's desperately reaching out for someone or something to fill his gaps, you're pushing everyone away so they can't see the gaps. Can't exploit them. I'd like to know if you've ever let someone in far enough to love them, or if your whole life has been filled with pushing people away. After all, when there's nothing to plug the holes, Nightmares leak in. So," she repeated the question, "have you ever been in love?" Anger and resentment, then uncertainty, then a deep weariness flitted over Kat's features in rapid succession. "No. Never in over a century of life, if you can call it living. Oh, there's been lust and purely physical relationships, and I think a few have been in love with me...not just Al... but I guess I always had some reason not to love." Kat came back to the couch and sat down, cradling her head in her hands as she spoke. "I didn't even love my parents, not really. Mom died before I really knew her, and that killed dad on the inside. I suppose you know about how that is," she added. Anna nodded, although her father had been loving and vibrant up until that horrible night when Baron Umlaut had gotten his final revenge. Kat went on, "I spent my childhood drifting from clique to clique in the school, then just started to drift in general later on. I didn't really care about art or poetry or music or any of the things that we 'squishies' could excel at. I liked science, but no organic mind could even be in the same league as the *least* of the robot scientists, so I wasn't encouraged to try. I cared about nothing and no one. Not even myself. I guess when my father finally died from his drinking, I wasn't as much sad as I was angry. Angry that humans had such a tiny place in the world I was born into. I spent the next decade or so being angry instead of apathetic. Now the mission was too important to be distracted by anything else...show that humans could make a difference in a world of RoboMACs. Got me killed, then scanned into a RoboMAC body. Then I drifted again for a while. My whole crusade was a sham now, since I wasn't human anymore. By the time I really cared about something again, it was too late, I got to see hundreds die before my eyes, and I finally abandoned the RoboMACs that had raised me, protected me and brought me into their ranks. A few decades on the run as a mercenary kept me from letting ANYONE in. And the few times I've tried since coming here haven't exactly turned out well, have they?" Kat looked up and met Anna's eyes. "So...no, I've never been in love." * * * * The next few days passed at a fairly relaxed pace as Shane meandered west forwards Freenet. Brack said there was a "nice girl" there who had Hackemon, and Shane figured that meant this was whoever had taken pity on Brack and showed him how to train the little biomech critters. Nice or not, though, it was getting clearer that he was going to have to fight for any concessions, he couldn't buy what he wanted. These kids were serious about their duels. Already he'd fought three minor duels with children ranging from about eight years old to high school age. Much to his chagrin, he'd lost to the youngest one, mainly because his Hackemon were tired from the previous fights. So he was taking it easy and letting his little minions rest in their Hackesacks. He'd made an exception only once while out here on the road, when he'd seen what looked like a set of speakers bobbing through the alfalfa fields. A quick struggle later and he had himself what Dr. Elm's files called a DOS.duo, a sort of ostrich-like Hackemon with two heads...each head being a computer speaker with a long beak sticking out of it. They had no eyes, so Shane figured they got around by using echolocation. A useful trick to remember if he had to fight any duels in the dark. Of course, between Bulbas.org's glowing monitor and the electric flashes Picochu could generate, Shane somehow doubted he'd ever be completely in the dark so long as he had active Hackemon. "Are we there yet?" ATV Frank whined. "Hey, I thought I'd turned off your voicebox?" "You did, so I routed self-repair functions to the area and built myself a secondary voicebox, nyah," Frank replied in a much higher-pitched voice than his usual wheedling baritone. "Oh, poopie...now I sound like Einstein." "Albert Einstein?" Shane puzzled. "No, silly. A motorcycle from the really bad movie Warrior of the Lost World starring Donald Pleasance, Persis Khambatta and the Paper Chase guy. Everyone cheered when Megaweapon ran over that little git. Ah, Megaweapon. Now THERE'S a major Hollywood talent gone to waste." "Frank, shut up or I'll remove your secondary voicebox with a very large crowbar." "..." ATV Frank replied, shutting up. The next few minutes passed in the relative (and blissful) silence of ATV Frank's whirring electric turbine engine and the occasional sound of farm equipment aside the road. "Freenet - 2 mi" said a roadside sign. Shane pulled over and plugged the three Hackesacks into ports on his Backhand so he could check the health of the beasties. DOS.duo was still a little winded from being captured, but it looked like the Picochu and Bulbas.org were fighting fit. Time to go looking for that trainer.... ============================================================================ Next Issue: Shane meets a much more clueful trainer named MSTie, whose Hackemon may very well end Shane's quest! But if he wins, is there a more sinister fate awaiting him down the road? Be here for the penultimate issue of Dvandom Force, "Evilution!" ============================================================================ Author's Notes: For those just joining us and who haven't done an archive dive yet, RoboMACs is, among other things, a roleplaying game I wrote. The original setting for it was a sort of Transformers pastiche, but set after an initial strike by the evolution-obsessed Antiochus V wiped out most of humanity and set the stage for a century-long struggle. Kat was born a couple generations after this war started. The actions of Acton Lord during the Looniverse Adrift crossover (see Constellation #17) triggered an invasion of the Looniverse by Antiochus V's faction and left Kat more or less exiled to the Dvandom Force. Since then, Kat has lost her robotic form and gotten a human body again (Dvandom Force #72). ATV Frank was built by Firebrand, one of Antiochus V's scientists, in the Looniverse to act as an assistant. Because he was built in the Looniverse, he wasn't shunted back to the RoboMACs reality by the plot device that ended the Robot Invasion (Constellation #24). And yes, Firebrand is a pastiche of Dr. Clayton "Firebrand" Forrester of MST3K, with ATV Frank being TV's Frank. Now for more Pokemon/Hackemon conversions: Tyms = Pokemon Gyms, with a ref to Tymythy Twystyd (see Dvandom Force #42, "Crysys of Ynfynyte Tyms"). Patches = Badges, which you get in Pokemon for beating Gym leaders. Bulbas.org = Bulbasaur, given the usual net.name treatment. Brack = Pokemon trainer Brock (with the eternal squint) plus Space Ghost foe/sidekick Brak. Manpage = Mankey. In Unix or Linux, a "manpage" is a sort of online manual for commands. The one for kill is clearer than most. The particular manpage I included was from eyrie.org's version of Linux. Pineape = Primeape. Pine is a mail program designed after elm, and stands for Pine Is Not Elm as far as anyone knows or will admit to me. Boulderpatch = Boulderbadge, the first badge you get in the Pokemon video game. And it doesn't let your Pokemon throw rocks, but Brack's a lot lamer than Brock in terms of his patch/badge-making skills. DOS.duo = Doduo.