Genius and Geniuser

Bogosorter and The Shover in...
Genius and Geniuser
by Elisa "Autumnleaves" Fadri


At four in the afternoon in the heights of the shiny, new R.U.R. headquarters, a lone engineer shuffles very carefully and quietly into his office. He wears shades, which is not unusual for him at this time of day. In his right hand, he holds breakfast--a whole pot of very dark, very strong coffee. In his left hand, he carries a delicate and specialized Engineer's tool. It looks alot like a sledgehammer.

The engineer puts down the hammer and coffee ever so gently and sits before a grid interface console. He begins to type, wincing at each soft click. Ctrl. Alt. Delete. B. O. G. O. S. O. R. T. E. R. Tab. 1. _. R. 0. X. X. 0. R. Z. m. a. n. Enter.

As the console begins to churn, he lifts the coffee pot and is about to take a sip... With a perfectly timed--if not perfectly considered--Pavlovian reflex, he slams his hands over his ears, spilling coffee down the back of his shirt.

"YOU HAVE MAIL!"

With a clean shirt (the filing cabinet is full of them for just these occasions) and a fresh pot of coffee, Bogosorter gingerly checks his email.

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$$$Buy $hares in Notum Now$$$
Daria Walzer like you've never seen her before!
Attention: New Productivity Rules and Office Assistants
Genuine Omni drugs at Clan prices!!!
Can we borrow The Shover?
Rhinoman hornz the cure you're porblem!

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"Man... I don't ever get a chance to have that problem," Bogosorter mumbles. "It's all spam man. Delete, man. Delete. Delete. Delete."

"YOU HAVE MAIL!"

"Man..."

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squeegie.tapioca.rur.omni-tek.rk1 (mailserv) has detected that you deleted the following message without reading. The message has been resent. Have a nice day!

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"Man..."

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Hey, Bogo? Can we borrow The Shover? You're always going on about how good he is at sorting out the wildlife. Maybe he can have a go at the new alien tech down here?

Thanks,
Stanislaw
Head of New Alien Tech Department Without an Official Name Yet

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"Yeah, sure, man. Whatever." Bogosorter dials up The Shover.

"Yo," says The Shover.

"Shover? Stanislaw wants you to--"

"Aw, Dad.... Not now, I'm with a chick..."

"Huh?"

"You know that hot dancer at Reets last night?" asked The Shover, knowingly.

"We were at Reets last night, man?"

"Yeah, Dad. So how did it go with that Clan chick?"

Bogosorter massaged his temples. "Er... Clan... Um... Huh?"

"I thought she was into you, Dad. I mean, she's probably a spy, but you don't know anything important, so you got nothing to lose. So how did it go?"

"I don't rem--" said Bogosorter. "I don't want to talk about it, man. Just head down to the, like, xeno-lab when you're... done."

"Sure thing, Dad."

Bogosorter took another large gulp of coffee.

Bogosorter's door burst open, which led to the ruining of another uniform. In the doorway stood... a girl. Bogosorter's first thought was that she was a very pretty girl. His second thought was that she was not very pretty right at this moment with her arms crossed that way and that expression on her face. "Where have you been all day?" she demanded.

"What's a hot chick like you doing in an office like this?" This was not, perhaps, the best question under the circumstances. Or any circumstances. But when it came to women, Bogosorter did very little thinking. He was more like a force of nature. One of the less reputable forces of nature. "I mean, I have hot chicks in my office all the time, man. I mean--"

"I'm your new secretary," said the girl. "Didn't you get the memo?"

"I must have," Bogosorter looked around for an answer. His eyes drifted to the filing cabinet. "I must have, like, filed it, man."

The filing cabinet, of course, did not contain any memos. Those generally went in the trash or out the window after being folded into airplanes. What the cabinet did contain is much more interesting. The top drawer contained various hangover remedies (most of them completely ineffective, but suitably disgusting), a portable sonic shower, and a few clean uniforms. Rumpled, faded, a bit nano-bot eaten in places, but generally clean. Or at least cleaner than their owner. The middle drawer contained several storage crystals with the latest productivity software. None of which had ever been installed. And the bottom drawer... Well, Bogosorter didn't like to think about the bottom drawer. He hadn't opened it in years.

But something else had.

"So, um," said Bogosorter. "Like, what's your name, man?"

"Do I look like a man to you?"

"No, man. Of course not, man," said Bogosorter. "Why do all the chicks, like, keep asking me that?"

The girl glowered. She was quite good at it. Bogosorter tried very hard to look at anything else in the office. Anything but the girl. He didn't want to see her expression right now, and with an expression like that, looking at any other part of her was probably out of the question.

"Um, right, man," he said. "Like, um. So. Um. What's your name, again?"

"Call me Girl Tuesday," said Girl Tuesday.

"Like, don't you mean Girl Friday?"

Girl Tuesday narrowed her eyes even further. "My parents were very specific about it," she said.

"Er," said Bogosorter. "Right, man. So. Um. Like, what do you mean, exactly, when you say you're my secretary."

"Dabblez said you were way behind schedule," said Girl Tuesday. "I'm supposed to make sure nothing distracts you from your work."

"Oh, sure, man. Like, a hot chick barging into my office every five minutes won't distract me at all. Brilliant, man." Bogosorter

"Well, things are certainly going to be different from now on," the secretary said as she moved towards a large and unbalanced pile of office memos, many of them with incriminating crease marks. "I'll just sort and file these while you get back to wor--"

"I need a drink, man," said Bogosorter

"Oh, no. The new productivity rules clearly state that employees are no longer allowed any mind-altering beverages inside R.U.R. labs."

"Then I'll, like," Bogosorter waved his arms vaguely, trying to jumpstart his brain, "have a drink outside the lab, man."

"The new productivity rules state that employees can only have one drink during lunch--"

"Then I'll, like, have a drink for lunch, man."

"--and employees must take lunchtime within one hour of noon," continued the girl, undaunted.

Bogosorter stared at her. The crossed arms. The tight lips. The narrow eyes. No, it was no good. "In that case, I need to, like, check up on The Shover, man."

Bogosorter walked carefully around his new secretary and headed towards the elevators. Girl Tuesday followed. "Don't you have, like, something to do, man?"

"I'm coming with you," she said. "The new productivity rules state that office assistants must accompany their assigned persons except for the following--"

"Man..."

After Bogosorter and Girl Tuesday left, the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet slid open. A strange looking device with orange and green lights crawled out of the cabinet on spidery legs.

It approached the computer and duplicated the login it monitored earlier. Once logged in, the Kyr-Mart Spy-Zix 5000 began looking for the files with the highest security. Surely the secrets of Rubi-Ka's domestic robots would be inside!

It didn't take the Spy-Zix long to find what it was looking for. A very large number of very big, very heavily secured files.

Down in R.U.R.'s Xeno-Labs, Bogosorter didn't like what he heard.

"And this," said The Shover, holding up something that combined the worst characteristics of a tree-stalker and a tuba, "is obviously a hypnogogic unobtainium reflex gauge."

"Amazing," said Stanislaw. "I would never have guessed. Well, label it and put it in the pile."

"And this," said the Shover, holding up gold-plated, nine-armed leet, "can only be a... positronic... field inverter... which... reverses the polarity of the neutron flow."

"Of course! Why didn't I think of that," said Stanislaw.

Bogosorter shoved the shower curtain aside. "What the Dubbayu Tee Eff is going on here, man?"

"Oh, hello Bogosorter," said Stanislaw. "The Shover was just helping us sort through the alien devices."

"He... you... I mean..." Bogosorter took a deep breath. "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND, MAN? You let The Shover... like... handle alien tech?"

"Of course, Dad," said The Shover. "Stan says I'm a genius."

"He really has a knack for this kind of thing," Stanislaw said. "I don't think there's a single alien device he hasn't managed to identify."

"He's just making it up, man," said Bogosorter.

"Aw, c'mon Dad," said The Shover.

"I don't understand," said Stanislaw. "You always bragged about how well he sorted the wildlife, so I just thought--"

"Okay, man. Okay. Time out, man. I admit it. The Shover's no good, man. He can't even push around the wildlife, man."

"But you said--"

"I lied, man," said Bosogoter. "I lied. Half the time it's the, like, wildlife that pushes him, man. And the other half, he runs all over Rubi-Ka, heading every direction except towards the target. He's useless, man. He gets stuck on, like, three centimeter rocks."

"You had to ruin it, didn't you, Dad?! Well, no more rolodex service for you! The next time you want some hot chick's grid number, you're on your own!" The Shover ran into the shower curtain, which ripped off its hangers and draped itself over his head. The Shover ran into the wall three times before finding the doorway. And then he was gone.

"You idiot," said Stanislaw. "We'll never get this mess sorted out now."

"I don't think you should treat your robot that way," said Girl Tuesday. "Obviously he's been working very hard down here, taking on new assignments and helping out the company, while you've been--"

"Man..."

Meanwhile, aboard the alien mothership, Sergeant Xoch'Sinuh waddled onto the command deck. "The Spy-Zix 5000 has reported back, Sir!"

"At last," said General Xxx'vkzz'h'qq-B. "Now the secrets of vacuum cleaner bots will be ours! Kyr-Mart shall rule the domestic servant market with a bio-material fist!"

"As you say, Sir!"

General Xxx'vkzz'h'qq-B paused dramatically before issuing his orders. "Bring out the Zix."

"Sir!"

Sergeant Xoch'Sinuh waddled away and returned escorting a Zix with a modified Q.P.W. (Quadrupolar Proprietary Widget or "thing with green and orange lights"). The Sergeant attached the Spy-Zix 5000 to the main holo-projector and began uploading the top-secret data. Sergeant Xoch-Sinuh pressed "play" and took an appropriately inferior position just far enough away to allow General Xxx'vkzz'h'qq-B to view the data privately.

After a few minutes, General Xxx'vkzz'h'qq-B said, "What is this?"

"Sir?"

"What orders did you give the Spy-Zix?"

Sergeant Xoch-Sinuh saluted and said, "Sir! I programmed the Spy-Zix 5000 to allow itself to be captured, to appear dormant and undetected! Once it was inside the headquarters, it was to find the most secret places and return with a copy of the most secure files. Sir!"

"Of course," said General Xxx'vkzz'h'qq-B. "These humans are more cunning than we believed. They anticipated our plan and replaced their most secure files with this... this..."

"Sir?"

"You may observe, Sergeant."

The aliens peered over the greenish 3-D display. Even warped by the alien display, the actions of the unclothed humans were unmistakable.

After a few minutes, Sergeant Xoch'Sinuh asked, "Do the humans not need a male to reproduce, Sir?"

"Perhaps that... device they're using... replaces..."

"Sir?"

The aliens continued to watch the display, but not, one might hope, in quite the same way a human would.

"Is this some kind of message, Sir?" asked the Sergeant.

"Yes," said General Xxx'vkzz'h'qq-B. "We have underestimated our foes. They mock us. We must be clever. Er. Cleverer. Yes, indeed."

"Sir?"

"I have a plan," said General Xxx'vkzz'h'qq-B. "A cleverer plan."

(( That was so, so funny. Best Bogosorter and Shover story with the snappiest dialogue yet! ))

((This was just a hoot to read, lmao! You write very well, Autumn.....can sort of see it happening, keep it up :) , and thanks for putting a huge smile on my face ))

((only one word: Awesome . Man.))

(( too funny, my compliments to the author ))

(( You mean that there are more stories like this? This was funny. ))

[ That was, like, great, man! Best Bogo/Shover story so far!

Keep up the good work! ]

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Originally Posted by Zemkarik

(( You mean that there are more stories like this? This was funny. ))

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Here are the ones that still exist in the forum DB:

The Canary Project (unfinished... which reminds me...)
The Movement of the Heavens
Chicks Dig Leets
A Transcript of the First Asimov Symposium
The Great Notum (Sort of a Halloween Story)
Bogosorter's Lucky Day (not very funny, really)
The Theory of Everything
Guards of the AO
The Shover vs. the Terrible Secret of Space

To understand Bogosorter and The Shover, you need to see these links, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogosort
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=287

A little "shove" from the past.

Read the science symposium logs. Lots of old names in there...and of course, bogosorter.

((cogs, Aazamon, Ariekel, Demenzia, and someone named Dabblez that no one seems to have heard about. ;) thanks for bumping this. I loved these stories.))