Artifact 36: The Skreen Doktor Attacks!

Josh had one central goal—find his cargo—believing it caused the strange EMP/Black Hole anomaly that was reported and then retracted. Will he find Dawn with it or is she now somewhere inaccessible?

 

           

 

            Ecstatic to be back on the road, Josh maneuvered through the few side roads he remembered from when Tommy took him to repair the tire. In minutes, he was accelerating almost silently up the on ramp to the interstate.  Between third and fourth gears he noticed the accelerator pedal hung up a little. He looked down and noticed some water on the floorboards. He blipped the pedal that seemed a bit sticky, but then it worked okay. He went on up to sixth.

 Josh took a deep breath and keyed up Newsline to locate the location of the strange EMP/black hole anomaly, hoping there was some mention of it that hadn’t been expunged or suppressed by the media mafia. The operations screen just flickered and went blank.

 “Oh this is great,” Josh complained as he typed up the command to back up a few steps in calling up the map while keeping one eye on the road. No results.  “OK, let’s reboot.” 

              The engine monitoring system ran on a subroutine, so was unaffected by a reboot and the heads up display continued to show engine data.  As the processor went through its self-diagnosis as Josh instructed it, the transom display flickered a couple times grew dim and brightened and flashed and then went blank. He smelled smoke! A smoke wisp twisted up and whisked away in the draft of the cockpit. His finger hovered over the KILL switch.

            Printing appeared on his screen that he read in pieces as he drove. It read: CAUTION: Do not boot the hard drive of this unit. Well, that was exactly what I was going to do next.  The hard drive has sustained a powerful electrical surge. What? Electrical surge? Critical components of the hard/software are/could have been compromised. I suppose so if an electrical surge did hit it. Please refer to owner’s manual XPS-13, return this unit to your original retail outlet, or have it inspected by a reputable ITT for test and repair. Never was an owner’s manual for this hashed together unit, I didn’t actually buy it, and I’m the nearest ITT and though reputable, not so tech savvy.

            He pondered a few moments.   Huh! I never thought I’d use the Self-Driving Mode after explaining to Tommy that the car had one. Well, this is one good use for it�"repair on the go!  

He mashed the SDM. The car shuttered a little and maintained its speed. Josh stuck his head below the dash and immediately saw something of concern. He had failed to notice that there was a significant puddle of water sloshing back and forth on the floorboards. Well, this thing ain’t waterproof so maybe some water got into the unit and shorted it out. Easy fix, just air it out. He pulled the hard drive out and noticed the smell of smoke get stronger. The unit was not wet.

Getting a sudden brainstorm, he shoved the unit back in and pulled the tiny keyboard out. Terry the programmer told me my program was in the Ethercache. What was that link? Josh could hear the road below, wind whistle, and other cars buzz around, but he trusted the precision of the SDM system. He pondered the link.

 Something to do with my full name, Terry’s acronym, and what? C’mon, remember it Josh!

Suddenly, it struck him like a lightning strike. He typed in the link and without hesitation pressed ENTER. CONNECTING appeared. He waited a few moments. CONNECTED appeared.     

Abruptly, the car started shaking, rattling, and swerving back and forth with shoulder gravel peppering the undercarriage and sides of the car. Josh’s bodily center of gravity shifted from one side of the car and then to the other. Something was happening, something not good. He jerked his head up.

“WHAT THE!!??”

            The right side tires were already past the gravel shoulder and headed for the grass with the left side almost off the pavement as well. Sitting next to his bucket seat and unable to see the road itself due to his low position, he whipped the wheel to the left and the car promptly went sideways to the right with a horrendous squealing and gravel roar from the tires. The trees surrounding the road spun about in Josh’s view, but what got Josh’s immediate attention was the high-pitched scream of an E-Van’s horn. He saw the roofline slide by in his opposite-bound view windshield no less. They must have missed by inches. He bounced up and slid behind the wheel.

            “IDIOT!  Watch it! I’m out of control here!” He gave them an indecent salute.

            Josh punched the accelerator pedal that finally released it from its stuck position. After a couple overcorrections, he managed to straighten out the car and braked to a safe stop on the shoulder. As he sat there collecting his nerves, he looked down to tiptoe and splash in the puddle of water that lay on the bare medal floorboards.

Gees, a little water couldn’t have hurt anything. Besides the unit is dry. Electrical surge? Oh, oh we had thunderstorms last night�"lots of thunderstorms, but a car is insulated from lightning strikes�"usually. Oh no, not this one! The car had a good solid ground connection with that jack stand under the axle sunk in the mud! Damn all the bad luck!

 Josh sat there with his head against the steering wheel deflated after all his intention to get to where he wanted to be�"where ever that anomaly had occurred. He looked up and around to take stock. The engine still idled smoothly, but now all the electronics including the HUD, and apparently the SDM, as well, were out of order. Of course, the analog gauges were functioning properly.

Double damn!

            Josh collected his thoughts�"and nerves�"and decided to press on to find somewhere he could spend some quality time with his computer gear. He pulled back out on the highway nice and easy.

***

            Within minutes, he pulled into a turn off and parked away from a couple other cars and trucks that were sitting there. In the preceding few minutes he had recalled that the on-board computer had a Tookie TALON self-diagnosis/repair subsystem program.

            Terry the depressed introverted programmer had proclaimed that the repair program could repair any software glitch and if possible work around hardware malfunctions as well.

            Well, Terry old woebegone friend, let’s see if your handy work�"works!

            He pressed the old clichéd access key combination. And waited. He took a deep breath thinking that the program must have been fried as well. Suddenly, the screen brightened to what oddly looked like an old time stage with footlights surrounded by curtains on three sides.

            Without a sound from out of a door that appeared on the stage’s edge, a rotund, frizzy white-haired man appeared, dressed in bright blue scrubs wearing a surgeon’s cap on his head with a stethoscope wrapped around his neck. 

            “TA DA! Da’ Doktor es enn. Ah, em the TALON Skreen Doktor! Ha! You mus’ have seeerrrrriiiiiious problem, no?”

The ridiculous cartoonish character walked across the transom stage, pulled down his stethoscope, put the earpieces in his ears and placed the sensor pad on various places around the outside frame. He then turned his back on Josh and put the sensor on what was supposed to appear as the backside of the display a few times around a couple side locations, and then did the same seemingly outwards facing toward Josh. 

The Skreen Doktor shook his head slowly and clucked, “Thet, thet.” 

            Josh was getting pissed.  “Forget the cinematics, just fix the damn thing!”

A door appeared in the transom and the Doktor took off his stethoscope, hung it around his neck, and went back out through the door.  The twice times before Josh ran this program, he thought the comic strip really cliché but the politically incorrect demeanor was rather entertaining, but now the Doktor’s antics just irritated him.  

            The screen flashed and the Doktor reappeared wearing reading glasses and a cone-shaped hat examining X-rays he was holding out in front of him. The X-rays looked like a simple motherboard with a few wires hanging off of it.

 “Thet, thet,” he clucked again shaking his head.  “Ah so, solly, Josh old boy ah plognosis is velly glim.” The Doktor’s accent changed every time he spoke. 

             Josh stabbed the help function key.  “Tat won’t change a ting. I ahm besides maself, wit’ ‘dis problem.” The Doktor had changed his appearance again. “Me dinks you got bugs. Parasites to be quite exactly precisely correct. But me, the TALON Skreen Doktor will taak car of dem.” The Doktor pronounced seemingly moving out toward Josh with a determined face. His nose got unbelievably immensely huge that filled the screen until it flattened on the end.  He backed off a little.

            “Well okay, where did I get them?” Josh mumbled to the grotesque clown Doktor, but the cartoonish character didn’t hear him.

               The camera followed the Doktor through a door and into another room with overhead surgery lights. He donned a thick surgical gown, pulled up a facemask, pulled down what looked like a welding helmet while wielding a long tool or weapon connected to a hose. He donned a cowboy hat and pulled up leather chaps.

 “Hoooowdy! Partners. Stand back ya’ll, da Doktor is truly in, amd I do in ‘dem pesky varmints!” 

With that, he pulled a trigger on the weapon and with flames bursting from it the Doktor ran across the screen directing the flames all around the screen behind the screen and out toward Josh who just silently shook his head at the absurd antics. 

            The computer then spun up into an automatic program check, with all files, folders and operating schemes rapidly scrolling down the transom. Josh thought that this was getting somewhere at last. Outside, cars continued to stream by as he waited for the Doktor’s anti-virus scan to run.

Periodically, the Doktor would come back along side the scrolling list with goggles and flamethrower ablaze wearing a nasty grin across his now soot smudged face. He wore a charred loose white blouse, tan shorts, argyle socks, and buckled shoes.   

 “Gott en himmel vee geeting the best of ‘vem!”  And with that ran off the side again with flames spurting from his gun.

            Josh had an idea. He reached into the dashboard storage compartment and pulled out his handheld along with the tube of his rolled up flex screen. He pulled out the flexscreen and stuck the tab on the passenger seat. He unrolled the screen to its twelve-inch length. Then he connected the power source and IR connection to his handheld and turned it on. It came up instantly. Using the mini-joystick, he hesitatively toggled on the Amerika On Line icon and signed on. Don’t know if this is wise he thought as his hands hovered over the screen. He mashed it.

The AOL home page displayed: Version 28, and it said aloud, “You’ve got mail.” Accompanied by a tinkly melody.

Hmmmm, I shouldn’t have mail on this account, but I’ll check later.   He stopped a second, wondering if this access would be traced.  Supposedly, this was a discrete account, but still Josh hesitated. He looked at the car’s screen. The Doktor was still running around chasing imaginary ‘bugs’ with his flamethrower as files slid down. It’s the only way, so I gotta do it.  Well, if someone is watching I’ll let them sort it out.

            With that, he logged into the ‘Find-your-way’ map program and requested a route to Minneapolis. Yeah, conceivably I could go there�"not a direct route if someone is watching�"tracking me. After looking at that a few seconds he stored it and requested a map to Alamogordo, New Mexico.  Maybe that would get their interest up.

For added interest, he called up a follow-on trip to Tijuana, Mexico. He grinned at that, storing it on the phone’s mini-hard drive. Okay how about Anchorage? Let’s be specific, ahhh…Northern Lights Boulevard.  That side-trip took a little longer to store with over a thousand miles of route to plot.  It just occurred to Josh that he remembered when everyone used paper fold out maps or atlases. Boy, those days are long gone but one map would sure save my butt here!  A couple more trips: San Francisco: Golden Gate Bridge and then a continuation to Sunnyvale, or specifically Silicon Valley! Whoops! That doesn’t exist anymore! Finally, for good measure, he plotted out a round about way to Las Vegas.  Good place to spend my well-deserved cash.

            All maps were stored on his mini-drive when he thought about the mail on the AOL welcome page. Who could it be?  What could they want? Terry the programmer?  That would be just too coincidental or�"just plain suspicious? He recalled the warning when he started out: Don’t trust anyone. He mentally went through the list of people that might know this account but checking, he didn’t recognize the address; perhaps it was junk mail, maybe more bugs for his phone too.

 “Not this time; I’m not a fool everyday!” And he signed off.

            He turned back to the operations screen and the Doktor was standing there with a tweed suit albeit charred and smoking and on top of that frozen with a dusting of frost from a so-called auto-fire extinguisher.

  “Sorry, ol’chap, they got the best of me!” The Doktor said in an English trill.  

The Doktor’s was hair burned off in patches and his face shield was half-melted away and his exposed face blackened. The screen flashed again and the Doktor appeared again, back in tattered and burnt scrubs.

 “I tought I had ‘im but dey too powerful for me, I say, we need some pro-fessional help!” 

The Skreen Doktor program automatically shut itself down and the image dissolved with the Doktor grimly waving good-bye to soon disappear.

            “Well ain’t this sweet?” Josh muttered. “So I guess I’ll wing it, no mapping, no proximity, no special contacts, no search or anything else.”

 Josh shut down the operations drive and stowed his handheld and flexscreen. Calculating his possible route in his head, he recalled that the anomaly occurred just south of west from where he had broken down. He figured that his present location was south and short of that possible location.

Could I find the place? Will I know it if I DID locate it? Doubtful. Do I feel lucky? Well after the computer taking a lightning strike AFTER having that expensive flat�"no, not all that lucky.

Josh checked traffic and pulled out onto the highway a little faster than he should have letting the tires break loose, letting the boost rise up to the yellow. The engine note roared! He exceeded the speed limit in a couple seconds. He felt the need to vent a little of his frustration. After a few moments, he let the speed coast down to a safe speed.

 He reminded himself to be careful about that sort of thing because he sure didn’t need to get nailed out here by the old, ornery NSPS. Especially not knowing their true connections�"they’d love to impound this car, take it for a drive to see what she’d do, take it apart, sell the parts, and on top of that, drill me senseless on the location of the cargo and demanding I reveal what it is and what it does. 

Definitely not an altogether appealing prospect.