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Old 12-27-2009, 01:26 PM   #25
LazyScot
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Posts: 3,201
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Hants, UK
Device: Kindle, Cybook
The scene changes to what appears to be an exotic island beach. Golden sands gentle lapped by the quiet wash of waves. Almost clear blue sky dotted with a few cotton wool clouds. Scattered artistically along the shoreline are groups of two or three palm trees. A gentle breeze cools, and moves the fronds. This idyllic scene was somewhat strangely interrupted by two people sitting on typical office chairs. Their chairs themselves were sitting on a typical, hard office floor that decidedly did not comprise of paradise island sand. Then behind them a typical computer "bing" bonged.

One of the people wheeled his chair round and back to a desk at which sat a small number of computers, and behind which was a glass wall opening onto a large machine room full of a Hollywood executives idea of a computers, next to which was a door.

"Message from the boss," said 'D'. We shall call him 'D' both for the convenience of a name and to convey the air of mystery that working in a secret, shadowy, government organisation is supposed to bring. Any indication that his is because the author is completely unable to come up with interesting names should be completely ignored

"What now?" asked 'A' with an air of weary resignation, bringing her chair to the desk. Again, we shall use 'A' in place of a name to maintain the air of mystery.

"An email from Torquilmina." At which point both 'A' and 'D' uttered naught words, and the door handle rotated.

And instantly the tropical island disappeared. Briefly, three white walls appeared, which where then covered with a wide range of status screens and other meaningless scrolling numbers, all projected from a wide range of ceiling mounted projectors. The more expert viewer, when combined with the range of meaningless bings and whirrs, would conclude that they are watching "The Boss Button DVD vol 3". And that it was automatically triggered when the door was opened.

A head appeared round the door.

"Hard at it, I see. Well don't think I'm reducing your time in the room after you took the credit for the last discovery. Anyway, I've just got an email from Torquilmina. Have a look at it and do whatever she asks. And use my code this time, not your own. I don't want you getting more brownie points with her." And with that his head disappeared, the door closed and the tropical scene reappeared.

"What is it?"

"A 1Mbyte reminder we shouldn't have put the speech to text app on her iPhone," replied 'D' slowly ploughing through the message, before giving up and feeding the whole lot into a synopsis engine. A few seconds later the message was reduced to "Put M.U.S. on the terrorist list."

"Why would we want to put the M.U.S. on the terrorist list?"

"M.U.S. That could be mistranscribed as Emuss," said 'D'.

"Emuss? Isn't that the Electronic Monetary Underwriting Service Syndicate."

"Yup…. Hmmm," said 'D' looking various items up. "Apparently it is headed up by our old friend Algernon Smythe-Wilcox."

"The one with the boring clothes?"

"The very same."

"I suppose that there could have been a corruption in the message."

"Indeed," agreed 'D' whilst making edits to all sorts of computer records.

"So we'd better put Emuss on the terrorist watch list using the boss' code."

"And I'm doing just that."

"Oh look," said 'A' indicating a watch screen. "We've just found Algie's car."

"So we'd better dispatch someone. Who's available?"

"Squadron Eleventy," giggled 'A'.

'D' stared at 'A', "I though squadron eleven were still on sick leave after their unfortunate encounter with the llamas."

"They're back on service now. They've been having therapy."

"And how has that been going?"

'A' giggled again.

"I don't suppose you know anything about that?"

'A' continued giggling.

"Well, I suppose we should dispatch them to intercept Algie's car," and with that 'D' issued the relevant commands.

And from some military base deep in southern England, two Apache helicopters took off accompanying two troop carriers; all four craft stuffed full of people suffering from an advanced fear of llamas.
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