The Interview and the Icon The lobby was vast and empty. The rows of leather seats awaited the arrival of someone to use them. All except one. Lance was sitting in that seat waiting. Trying to pass the time, he browsed through the magazines lying around on the tables. The magazines were new and plentiful, but there was so much of "Plant World" he could take. This new job he was applying for would be perfect. The location was great, and so was the pay. The fact that it would be something that he has always wanted to do for a living doubled his expectations. Of course that made him ten times as nervous. He was terrible at interviewing. "Mr. Holloway," the receptionist said from her desk behind a thick glass window next to the door that leads to the offices. "They are waiting for you. Room 157." He stood up and placed the "Plant World" magazine back on the table from where he found it. "Thank you," he said to the receptionist as he walked to the door. He took a deep breath and opened it revealing a long hallway with identical doors evenly spaced. The number above the first door read, "103." "Looks like I have a long walk," Lance thought to himself and began his journey down the hall. ------------------------------ Meanwhile, when the login prompt came up on the screen of his laptop, Scratch logged in. He opened up his email folder and found a long list of new messages. He read several and replied to a few. The stories he received from the TSA were saved in a folder for reading later in the day when he had more time. He closed the email window and saw something new on his desktop: an icon of what looked like a human that wasn't there before. "Where did this 'Lance' icon come from?" he asked himself. "It's probably an email folder or something." The only Lance he knew was the one on the TSA, and he went by the nickname of Weremoose. So, Scratch highlighted the icon and renamed it "Weremoose." ------------------------- Lance entered room 157. A man and a woman were sitting behind a desk. "Hi, Mr. Holloway. Please have a seat." Lance walked over to the desk to shake their hands. They obliged, and he turned to sit in the seat in front of them. He then realized that his handshake felt odd and noticed his hands. They were different. And so was the rest of his body. He reached up and felt of his face and found a huge pair of ANTLERS. He guessed he was a moose morph. But, how? This was very odd. However, he had to go through with the interview now that he was here. It took forever to actually get an appointment. "So..... Mr. Holloway, how are you?" the woman asked. She appeared to be a little confused and perhaps frightened, but she didn't let on. "I'm doing fine. How are you?" Lance answered. He didn't even recognize his voice. It was deeper and rougher. "Great," the man said. "I see here in your resume that you have had experience in C++." "Yes, sir," Lance answered. "I also taught C++ as a graduate student." "Good." Both of them jotted something down on their paper. -------------------------- Scratch looked at the new icon and was shocked to see that the icon changed. It was that of a morphic moose. "That's odd," he thought. Curious he double clicked on it to open it up. A dialogue box popped up with a lot of options such as "huge rack," "morphic," "height," etc. He played around with some of the options. -------------------------- Lance was completely nervous and terrified. The interview was bad enough, but now he was some kind of moose monster. The interviewers were nervous, too, but they seemed to want to continue. The room seemed to shrink and grow before he realized that it was his size that was shrinking and growing. It stopped at his normal height. Well, the height he was at when he was a morphic moose. "This Java program you wrote, what exactly does it do?" the woman asked. "Well, it...," Lance stopped. He wasn't talking. He was bellowing. And to top it all off, he was on the floor standing on all fours. "This is just great," he thought. The man and the woman stared at him for a few minutes not saying anything. Lance looked back at himself seeing that his fear was true. He was a moose. After what seemed like an eternity, the woman then repeated the question. Lance bellowed, but it sounded fake. He could talk again. He sat back in his chair and proceeded to answer the question. "Well, it was a 3D engine." ----------------------- "This is fun," Scratch said not knowing what the program was for, but the icon changed whenever he changed an attribute. "I wonder what would happen if I do this," he said closing the icon. He clicked it to rename it again. This time as "Weremouse." ------------------------- "Yes, I've programmed applications for Windows and X Windows that used the mouse extensively," Lance answered in a squeaky voice. He noticed that he was shorter, and his head didn't have as much weight. He reached up and found two huge mouse-like ears. "What the...?" the thought. The interviewers looked curiously at Lance, but the continued. "What was their problem?" Lance thought. "Aren't they scared? Or am I just going crazy?" "What of these computers without mice? Why kind of shell did you use?" the man asked. "I have used Bourne, and .....," Lance began before he felt himself getting smaller and growing more limbs. A huge shell was on his back. He figured he was a hermit crab. "C-Shell." The interviews were really confused then. Lance stared at them and himself with his eye stalks. ------------------------------ Scratch was having a ball changing the name of the icon. The picture changed with each new name. "This has got to have some kind of practical application," he thought. "But, until I find it, how about Werespider?" ----------------------------- "I see you have had lots of experience with the web," the woman said looking at her notes. Lance's eight legs trembled. At least he could still answer. "Yes, I've created several web pages." "Interesting, may we have the URL after the interview?" she asked. "Yes," Lance replied. The woman smiled and scribbled something down. "In C, is the 'goto' command a useful command?" the man continued. Lance felt the changes again. "What could be causing this?" he thought has he was back to sitting down with two legs and two arms. Of course he had a thick tail and huge ears and feet. "I never use it because it creates kangaroo code. The programs are much harder to trace that way." ---------------------------------- Scratch opened up the dialog box again and played around with some of the options. "I wonder what this really does?" he thought to himself. He hit the default button and close the dialog box. The went back to renaming the icon. "Wererabbit sounds like a cute one." --------------------------------- Lance felt his tail shrink into a small fluffy one. His ears grew longer and fell down beside his head. "Floppy drives are useful, but they don't have as much storage space as hard drives. ZIP, JAZ, or Shark drives are more useful in that aspect." He had to scoot up in his chair to have room for his dorsal fin. "What is the difference between ROM and RAM?" the woman asked. Lance's hooves clicked the floor nervously. He had an itch where his horns were spiraling out of his head. "RAM is......." ----------------------------- "I wonder how many different pictures go with this icon," Scratch said and decided to go for one that the surely wouldn't have a picture of. --------------------------- Lance's antennae twitched as his extra pair of arms gripped the chair. "I would find out what exactly what the error is doing and then try to narrow it down to a section of code where the bug is located." The interviewers made more notes. They seemed to be happy with the results but curious about the huge roach sitting in the chair. Lance sneezed. "Bless you," the woman said. "Thank you," Lance replied as he suddenly realized he had a nose again, but smoke was streaming from in front of his face. "Thank you for coming today, Mr. Holloway," the man said putting his notes on his desk. The two of them stood up and walked around to the side Lance was sitting on. Lance stood up and found out he was much taller than they were. He shook their hands with his scaled clawed hands. "Thank you for the interview. I enjoyed it," he lied. It was the worst interview he has had, and now he is a dragon thanking them for it. They escorted him to the door. Outside, he was very conscious of the stares from the people around him. He tried to act like this was normal, but he doubted that a dragon walking down the street would be considered normal. He leaped into the air and he saw everyone's heads follow his movement. He flew home instead of taking the bus. It wasn't like he was going to fit on one anyway. --------------------------------- Scratch left the Lancedragon icon on his desktop and turned off his computer. He had enough fun with the strange program for the day, but he was determined to experiment with it some more. -------------------------------- The man and the woman were sitting in the room at the desk. "What do you think of Lance Holloway, Tanya?" the man asked. "I rather liked him, Bryan. He has the experience with programming we need. I'm sure he will be a great asset to Derksen Industries. Especially with all that random changing," Tanya said. "I agree," Bryan said. "Let's give him a call tomorrow. And I really liked that roach morph form."