By

Brian W. Antoine

March 19, 1993

As I slammed the bag down onto the counter top I heard the crack as the jug of apple juice broke and began to drain out all over the counter and onto the floor.

"Shit! Damnit, there goes my dinner..."

As I began to curse and try to prevent the juice from making a bigger mess than it already had, Penny must have watched and decided to say something even though she usually keeps real quiet when it's obvious that I'm upset.

"Uh, ummmm... Not having a good day?"

I was trying to salvage something from the mess when I managed to cut my hand on the remains of the glass jug. I was holding the remains of a sandwich that I proceeded to throw across the lab at the wall. In my anger, I must have added a little velocity mentally because the sandwich imbedded itself in the wall before it vaporized.

"Uh, right. Definitely not a good day... Want to talk about it?"

"No! Yes..." I stopped and concentrated to heal the cut on my hand, then just stood there and tried to relax. "You know, there are one hell of a lot of morons running around loose. You would think that people that stupid would be incapable of using a computer, but quite a lot of them manage."

"Anyone we know?"

"You don't and for that fact neither to I directly, but he decided to start in on me in public today with some of the stupidest claims I've ever seen. If you want to see it, go take a look in 'Heartland' on tau-ceti."

For the next few minutes Penny made noises to herself, while I cleaned up the mess and then collapsed into my chair and tried to calm down.

"Has this guy been diagnosed as a paranoid? He sure seems to fit the profile. Secret plots against him, people out to get him, the whole thing."

"I don't know what his problem is. From what I've heard, he has a grudge against both Jeff and Bob. I don't know whether he really thinks I was involved in his so called 'Secret Agenda' or if I just got included because I work with both of them."

"So what's the problem? You answered him and he's left, never to return."

"Hah, he'll be back. People like that never vanish, they can't be happy without an audience. I wasn't really bothered by his post. Those people whose opinion I care about know better and the rest can go screw themselves."

"Again then, what's the problem?"

I stopped and thought about it. After a few minutes I started to chuckle to myself. "You know, the problem is that I can't really handle this the way I want to."

"Oh? And how is that?"

"Well, if it wasn't for my oath and the fact that it would be obvious to anyone who has read any of the 'stories' I publish, who had done it, I'd really like to do something silly like turn him into a frog." The more I thought about Dave sitting in front of his terminal, trying to type, the funnier it became.

"Oh my, that would cause a few problems wouldn't it."

Now I started really laughing, "Can't you see it? This little green frog hopping from key to key, trying to type out a message to the network letting them know about me. He claims to live in the back of a tavern and he'd have to do it before someone found him and decided to have a frogs-legs dinner special." By now I was laughing so hard that I fell out of the chair and sat on the floor holding my sides.

"Oh gawd, I can just see it. Whhhaaaa Ha Ha Ha." Now Penny started in laughing, and Smaug flew out of his niche and landed on the back of the chair to stare at me like I'd gone nuts. I saw him and pointed his direction. "I wonder if Smaug likes Frogs-Legs?" That set me off again and for the next few minutes Smaug sat there looking first at me and then towards Penny, while the two of us laughed ourselves silly.

When I began to calm down, I stood up and extended my arm for Smaug to hop onto. After I transferred him to my shoulder I walked back to the counter and began to see what I could salvage for dinner.

"Its a shame it will never happen. A good 'toading' might be just what Dave needs to wake him up."

"Oh?"

"Yep, he needs to learn that the world doesn't revolve around his wishes and that when you want something, it's poor form to piss-off the only people who can provide it. Of course in my case, the consequences might be a little more extreme then he'd expect.

"That's one way to describe it. <chuckle>"

"Oh well." I looked over at Smaug, who was busy digging through the remains of the bag on the counter. "I hope you like your pretzels with apple juice. Lets see what we can salvage."