[The usual...questions, comments, thoughts? Complaints looked at 
and then routed to /dev/null. :)

Operation: Marraketh
Friend or Foe?

"We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our 
best friends are trying to kill us."
	--random fortune

	It was a sunny Monday morning. Katze had returned from 
Colorado the night before, and was surprised to find that Josh 
was not home. This was strange. And those glowsticks were awfully 
suspicious too. Why would Josh be hording glowsticks? And if he 
was hoarding them for a reason, wouldn't they be better off in 
his room?
	Katze shrugged and set down to watch the morning news. 
About halfway through the news, Josh stumbled in the door drunker 
than the beggars on Telegraph. Katze took one look at Josh and 
wondered where he had been.
	"Josh?" she asked.	
	Josh didn't even see her, he just wandered in his room 
and slammed the door. Katze pondered. Was he drunk, or was he 
just majorly upset about something? It was kinda hard to tell.
	Katze turned back to the news. Darn it, he had been doing 
that more and more lately. Katze was beginning to worry about 
Josh, in high school, or even last year he'd never do that. 
Sighing, Katze turned back to the news, when suddenly the door 
opened to Josh's room and he screamed, "He is your master, do you 
realize that? Quit fighting and join him!"
	Katze spun back around to see Josh pointing an accusing 
finger at her. "Josh, are you okay?"
	Josh looked straight through Katze. "You are either for 
him or against him. Quit fighting, you must give in. He is your 
master."
	Katze stood up. "Josh, are you okay?" She started walking 
toward him.
	Josh looked at Katze. He suddenly blinked. "Where am I?" 
he asked.
	Katze shook her head. "You're in our apartment, on Haste 
Street. Where else would you be?"
	Josh grinned. "I had the strangest dream. I was told you 
were the enemy because you belonged to this super-secret group or 
something. Hehe, I guess the imagination does the silliest 
things!"
	Katze blinked, and then grinned. "You do come up with the 
silliest things. Now, go to bed. I don't think you're feeling 
well."
	Josh nodded. "I think I'll do that."
	Josh headed off to his room, and Katze turned back to 
watching the news. But there was a slight whirring noise in the 
room that reminded Katze of when she was in the machine room at 
headquarters. But her computer was back in her room, so what 
could be making that noise?
	She looked around the living room and found a simple 
explanation. The VCR was recording something. And it was set on 
the PBS station. This was strange.
	Katze reached for the remote and pulled up the 
programming screen. The VCR was set to record PBS for three hours 
every morning, 7 AM to 10 AM. What was Josh doing? This was too 
weird.
	Katze grabbed the TV Guide that came with the Sunday 
paper and referred to it. "Sesame Street, Puzzle Place, Big Comfy 
Couch, and two episodes of the fiend... but he's missing Reading 
Rainbow and Mr. Rogers, which are both pretty good shows..."
	Something was not right with this picture. But what the 
missing piece was, Katze had no idea. Maybe a trip back to 
headquarters would clear everything up.	
	But not this week. Katze had classes to get through.
	Linguistics, Friday afternoon lecture. You think it would 
be a heady subject, but Katze was doing well in it. She had 
grasped the concept right away that language provided a map to 
express your thoughts, and that sometimes your thoughts got 
caught up in this map.
	And Professor Schmidt was an awesome professor. He knew 
exactly what he was talking about. Language pleased him, and he 
understood those thoughts perfectly.
	But today, Katze could not concentrate on lecture. The 
VCR incident Monday had possessed her thoughts. Why was Josh 
taping three hours of PBS? And why was he doing it every morning? 
And why did it begin and end with the Wyrm's show? And if he was 
just taping kids programs, why didn't he tape Mr. Rogers, or 
Reading Rainbow?
	Oh well...it didn't matter. It was soon time to go be a 
JAO head again. After class, she'd go down into the bowels of the 
BART station and find a semi-dark place to make the hop back.
	Katze glanced at the back of the classroom to notice Josh 
slipping in. Josh was having a hard time with linguistics, she 
noted. She had tried to help him, but his violent temper flared 
up halfway through a tutoring session, and he had thrown the book 
violently at her. Since then, she had refused to help him.
	[His temper has gotten wilder,] she thought. [That isn't 
the Josh I knew growing up. I wonder what is up with him.] She 
added a mental note to talk to Ari when she had the chance.
	Katze patted down her pockets to make sure she had her 
keys. She had forgotten them once before and it had been a real 
pain to sneak back in and get them. If Josh had been home... but 
that was something not to think about.
	She ran down her mental list of things to bring home. 
Feeling confident she had everything, she started walking down to 
the machine room to update Calculus on what needed to be done. 
But as she was coming down the last flight of stairs, she ran 
into Ari coming up them.
	Seeing Ari reminded her of the past week. "Hey Ari," she 
called out. "I need to talk to you!"
	Ari stopped on the stair she was on and waited for Katze 
to come down. "You be hopping most all over and now you be 
walking? What be wrong?"
	Katze smiled. "Nothing. I'm going home here soon and Josh 
kinda has this image of me being normal -- whatever that means." 
She frowned as her recollection of the past week swum up out of 
her memories. "I've got something to ask you about though. I was 
watching the news last week when I noticed a slight humming 
noise. After a little bit of searching, I discovered the VCR was 
recording PBS.  I pulled up the display, and then checked the 
listings for that time period. Josh is recording a bunch of kids 
shows -- including two episodes of B'harnee and Fiends. And he's 
got a strange fetish for glowsticks. He keeps a bunch of them in 
the freezer."
	Ari thought about it for a second. Finally she said, "I 
think Josh is a sponge-minion."
	"Josh is NOT a sponge-minion."
	"Look at the evidence in front of your eyes! He be taping 
children's PBS shows, he be keeping strange things in the 
freezer, and he won't let you into his room. Don't be dense, 
Katze, he is seeking something from you."
	"He is NOT hiding something. Josh is my friend... and 
we're honest with each other."
	Ari scowled at Katze. "So I take it Josh knows all about 
the Jihad and where you be from!"
	Katze suddenly faded out. Ari scowled some more at the 
space where Katze had been. "Fine, Katze, be stubborn. But if you 
refuse to see, I will show you."
	Machines were beeping and chirping all over the room. 
Disk drives whirred, monitors hummed, and a computerized voice 
was singing the Free Software Song. In the centre of the room, 
there was a computer in pieces. The mage with a screwdriver[tm] 
was happily ripping that computer into even more pieces.
	Ari stepped into this room and blinked at all the chaos. 
She grinned as a local voice joined in with the .au the computer 
was playing. "Join us now and share the software..." She couldn't 
contain her laughter.
	The mage looked up from the pieces of the computer he was 
tinkering with. "Oh, hey Ari," he said. He reached around the 
piece for a keyboard, pressed a few keys, and the software song 
stopped playing. The mage spun around in his swivel chair. 
"Bovine Computing, Calculus speaking. How might I help you?"
	Ari started laughing some more. "Oh, Calc, you have quite 
a way of making me laugh." She then sobered up a bit. "I need you 
to run a scan on somebody. Schneider, Josh."
	Calculus reached for another keyboard. "Is that 
S-N-Y-D-E-R or S-N-I-D-E-R?" he asked. "Neither," spoke up a 
third voice.
	Ari and Calc both spun around. Leaning in the doorway was 
Katze. "It's S-C-H-N-E-I-D-E-R. German spelling. And he's from 
Minnesota."
	Calculus grinned. "Thanks, that helps a lot." His fingers 
flew over the keyboard. "Okay, Schneider, Josh....no records 
found."
	Katze blinked. "But he exists, he lives with me!"
	Calculus shrugged. "He has a driver's license and things 
like that, but there's absolutely nothing on him before he met 
you."
	Ari grinned and started to say something to Katze, but it 
was too late. Katze had disappeared again. Ari looked at Calculus 
and Calc shrugged his shoulder again.
	Ari decided it would be a good idea to see what was up 
around headquarters. But part of her thoughts were on Josh and 
Katze and those rather strange glowsticks.
	Katze reappeared in her room. The apartment was quiet. 
Katze poked her head out of the room and saw that it was dark, so 
Josh was either down at Wall Berlin playing chess with his 
buddies, or he was elsewhere. Either way, he was out.
	Katze walked out of her room and into Josh's. The sign 
still hung on the door, but it was too important for her to obey 
it now. She pushed the door open and looked into Josh's room for 
the first time.
	In one corner was Josh's unmade bed. Next to the bed was 
a table with a chess board set up with a particularly nasty chess 
problem. Scattered around the table was the San Francisco 
Chronicle chess problem of the day for various days. Katze 
remembered Josh's addiction to chess even in high school, and his 
habit of saying "Checkmate!" when something good happened to him.
	Hanging over the bed was a picture of the two of them 
taken on graduation night. Josh had his chess tie on, and a Cal 
hat. Katze was wearing their high school seniors shirt with a Cal 
pin, and she had her arm around Josh's shoulder. It was obvious 
that the two of them had been best friends. [Had been? What am I 
thinking,] she thought to herself. But the picture brought a tear 
to her eyes.
	She yanked her attention away from the picture to the 
rest of the room. In front of the closet set a video editing 
machine, and there were video tapes all over the room. Katze 
didn't even have to guess why. Next to the editing machine (with 
a lot of cords connecting the two) sat Josh's computer. Katze 
idly flicked it on to see if she could find anything interesting 
on it. She watched the computer go through the Win95 boot 
sequence and then pop up asking for a user-name.
	Katze tried "josh." It didn't respond. Katze tried 
"joshs." It still didn't respond. Katze tried "blacknite," which 
had been Josh's old BBS handle. That didn't work. Katze tried 
re-spelling it to the way Josh had done it for his email address. 
That didn't work. Giving up, she flipped the computer off and 
wandered over to his dresser.
	Along with the scattered odd things you'd expect to see 
on a college student's dresser, there was a rather strange arm-
band. It was the same pukey green and purple that the Hell Wyrm 
was, but it had some familiar lettering on it. Katze closed her 
eyes to prevent the memory from taking over, but it was 
impossible to control.
	Katze remembered an old man coming to visit, who wore an 
arm-band with the exact same letters. The arm-band had been 
black, with silver lettering then. Katze was a little surprised 
that the man looked a lot like Professor Schmidt. [Katze, calm 
down, your memory is playing tricks on you. Now go back to your 
room and go tell Ari what you've found. She was right, and you 
had to be stubborn.]
	Katze calmly walked out of Josh's room, not noticing she 
had left her 'linker sitting right in plain sight on Josh's 
dresser. She walked back into her room and made the jump back to
headquarters, intent on hunting Ari down to tell her what she had 
seen.
	Calculus was busy with another project now. He had left 
the PC in pieces on his table, and was now replacing a shorted 
card in another computer.
	Phoenix walked in to find Calc looking at a melted card 
under a magnifying glass. "Whatcha up to, Calc?" he asked.
	"Oh, trying to figure out why this card shorted out on 
me. I have a funny feeling somebody's been pushing this computer 
a bit too hard. Either Mal with all his data (although it wasn't 
him), or keeb, trying to get the ultimate net.Quake game going... 
oh I don't know. Just, whatever it was, it messed up this card 
really bad."
	Phoenix nodded. "I just came down to see if there was 
anything you wanted me to do, since I can't seem to find Katze 
anywhere."
	Calculus shrugged. "I haven't seen her since earlier this 
afternoon. But there's really not much to do around here. There 
are little tasks that can wait... but nothing really major."
	"I just wish I could find Katze and make sure there was 
nothing important."
	Calculus spun around in his swivel chair. "Actually, come 
to think of it... Katze usually gives me a list of things that 
need to get done while she's gone before she leaves. And she 
hasn't done that yet. I wonder what's up with her."
	A spatial distortion weaved its way through the room. 
Calculus noted it and frowned. Something wasn't right here. Then 
he grinned as he realized what was up.
	The space in front of the computers in the back of the 
room blurred a bit, much like those mirages that form in summers 
heat and make the road all shimmery. Then a figure appeared. 
Calculus grinned some more. "Kat!"
	Katze waved, but looked semi-preoccupied with something. 
"Where's Ari?" she asked.
	Phoenix spoke up. "Last time I saw her, she was up in the 
situation room. You might check up there."
	Katze nodded, and then faded out again. "It's a bit too 
important to take the stairs," she called out as she faded out 
again.
	Phoenix looked at Calculus. Calculus shrugged. "Wonder 
what's going on," Phoenix said.
	Calculus nodded. "I'm going upstairs."
	"I'm coming with you."
	Katze appeared in the situation room. The closet stood in 
one corner, open, but there was nobody in the room. Katze 
wandered over to the closet to see if somebody was hiding in 
there.
	The second she stepped in the closet, the door slammed 
shut behind her. "Oh, not again," she sighed and hopped back out.
	Ari was standing in front of the closet door grinning. 
"Gotcha," she said. Then noting the rather serious look on 
Katze's face, she inquired, "What's up?"
	Katze sighed. "I went into Josh's room. I discovered some 
interesting things. Besides his fascination with chess, which 
I've known about since middle school at least, he had some rather 
interesting things in there. Like a video-editing machine."
	Ari raised an eyebrow. "He a film major?"
	Katze shook her head. "German."
	The door to the situation room flew open. Calc and 
Phoenix fell into the room. Ari grinned as she saw the two 
Commies lying on the floor. "What gets you two up here so fast?"
	Katze grinned. "It was probably me. I thought you might 
still be in the machine room. But these two were there and you 
weren't. Probably got a little excited."
	Calc and Phoenix grinned sheepishly. Ari looked at Katze. 
"You're holding back one thing. Out with it."
	"Welp, I found an arm-band that was our favourite shades 
of purple and green, with the letters MRFG on it..."
	"Katze... Josh IS a sponge minion, and you know it."	
	"No, he's not a sponge minion! How many sponge minions do 
you know that play chess?" Katze patted down her pocket, and her 
expression turned to one of absolute horror. "Fsck it!  Left my 
'linker in his room!"
	Katze quickly faded out. Ari looked at Phoenix and 
Calculus. "I'm gonna go get one of the glowsticks. I'll prove to 
Katze what's going on."
	Ari faded out, leaving Phoenix and Calc to try and figure 
out what exactly was going on here.
	Katze appeared back in her room. She heard the TV going, 
and sighed. Josh was home. This was not going to be good. She 
crept out of her room and out to the TV. For some reason, 
somebody had tuned it to the Home Shopping Network. Katze sighed 
and switched channels to PBS, where there was some boring nature 
show on.
	Josh walked out of the kitchen. "Hey, Katze," he said. 
Then he scowled. "What the heck were you doing in my room?"
	Katze sighed inwardly. "I was looking for the telephone 
bill. You have a habit of taking it into your room and not 
showing it to me. And the phone company called today and was 
threatening to turn off the phone."
	Josh scowled some more. "That's not the real reason. 
You're getting too darn secretive, Katze. You who talks about 
honesty and trust."
	"Who am I supposed to be honest to, somebody who hasn't 
let me into his room since day one? That's a laugh, Josh."
	Josh scowled some more. "Yeah, and what do you do on 
your weekends? You sure as heck can't be a ski freak, all the 
damn snow has melted! It worked for a while, it isn't gonna work 
no more. Who are you, Katze, and where do you go on the 
weekends?"
	"I could ask the same question of you."
	Josh pulled the 'linker out from behind his back in 
triumph. "Then, what's this, Katze?"
	Katze thought quickly. "You remember, Gary, my EECS[1] 
friend?"
	Josh nodded. Katze continued. "Gary's trying to build a 
better pager, one that lets us check our e-mail and stuff from 
anywhere. That's one of his prototypes; he asked me to help him 
test it because he didn't want just EECS geeks[2] testing it."
	Josh handed it back to Katze. "Okay. But from now on, 
stay out of my room!"
	Katze scowled back. "And you stay out of mine." She got 
up from the couch and left the room. A few seconds later, the 
sound of a slammed door echoed throughout the apartment.
	Josh said to himself. "We'll see who gets the last laugh, 
Katze. And I know exactly what your hiding, but you have no idea 
what I am."
	In the kitchen, Ari decided she had heard enough. She 
pulled a glowstick like thing out of the freezer and hopped back 
to headquarters.
	Ari appeared back in the situation room. Calc and Phoenix 
were sitting down at the situation table and were working 
together against the computer in a game of Battleship. Ari placed 
the frozen glowsticks on the table. "Calc, Phoe?" she asked.
	Calculus glanced back, saw Ari. He issued an order to the 
computer, and the battleship game went away. Phoenix had already 
gotten up, and was examining the glowsticks. "What are these?" he 
asked.
	Ari looked at them. "Don't know. Phoe, will you run these 
in the lab?"
	Phoenix nodded, scooped them up and left the room. "Where 
be Katze?" asked Ari to Calculus.
	Calculus shrugged. Ari looked rather upset. "It be a 
nasty fight, Calc. I worried about Katze."
	Calculus nodded. He pulled up a chair and sat at the 
conference table, with his head in his hands. He still didn't say 
anything though.
	Ari began to wonder if she should go back to the 
apartment and see what was happening when a figure appeared out 
of nowhere juggling paperwork and stuff. The figure dropped 
everything on the Couch[tm], and then said, "Okay, Ari, you were 
right. You win."
	Ari looked at the dejected Katze and decided not to rub 
it in. "We'll get Mal to get you an apartment here. It not be 
safe for you to go back to Berkeley."
	"But I have to, I've got to finish my classes!"
	"No, Katze, you be killed if you do."
	"Then let it be so."
	"Katze, you be too stubborn for your own good. Just stay 
out of that place, okay? Somebody be having a grudge, and your 
excuse, although good, didn't see right."
	Katze nodded. "Maybe it would just be easier if Katze 
Brenner left this world."
	"Katze, that would be tough on you, and I don't want to 
see it happen."
	Katze nodded. "Okay, I won't, but..." She shrugged 
dejectedly. "My best friend is trying to kill me. What am I 
supposed to do?"
	Ari shrugged. "I don't know, Katze. We'll see." 

to be continued in "Slip Slidin' Away"

[1] Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Pronounced 
"eeks"

[2] A semi-derogatory term to describe somebody majoring in EECS.