M.

Re. Your offer -- you'll have to find yourself another girl. I have to pass.

L.

He slammed his fist on the table in disgust, causing the mouse to bounce over the edge and dangle in the air. This isn't settled yet! I'll find a way to make you change your mind!

***

Two weeks later:

A trio of men of medium builds, wearing purple jumpsuits and armed with high-tech rifles, stormed the stage of an exhibit hall at the Victoria City Convention Center.

The leader of the group, a man with jet black hair and a hardened face, adjusted the goggles on his face and then thrust his weapon into the air; the crowd standing before the stage recoiled back. "Let us take what we came for, and no one gets hurt!" he yelled over the growing murmur in the crowd. His forceful voice conveyed his experience in matters such as these.

Scanning the crowd with his narrow beady eyes, he noticed a few people shuffling at the edges. It didn't take a rocket scientist to predict what was going through their heads. He smiled wickedly. "No point in making for the exits either! We've got those covered!" A number of people turned to each of the three doorways, only to see similarly dressed men place small devices around the door frames. After a sequence of buttons was entered, the devices instantly erected fields of glowing purple energy that made the doorways impassable.

"And don't any of you try and play hero!" warned another of the men on the stage, one with long stringy brown hair and a narrow face. "You might end up paying a serious price!" He released the safety on his weapon to emphasize his point.

Seated in a wheelchair to the left of the stage, an older African-American man dressed in a hand tailored suit clenched his fists in silent rage. I came a long distance to see this new technology from Worldwide Computing Machines, Robert Lawrence thought. The last thing I expected to witness was a high-tech crime. He firmly clenched one of the armrests of his wheelchair. Another time and another place, I'd have been able to do something about this. Instead he sat by helplessly, watching the events unfold.

Directly behind Lawrence, a man in his mid-forties with sandy brown haired focused his concern on someone not present in the room. Please, Clare, please, Kyle Harper thought silently about his daughter. Stay in the bathroom and stay out of this. If anyone's going to play the hero here, I'd rather it be me.

Outside the exhibit hall, a tall blonde teenager exited from the ladies' bathroom. As she approached the main doors of the exhibit hall she had left about ten minutes prior, she realized a small crowd had gathered outside of them.

Some blue uniformed security guards attempted in vain to open the large wooden doors; fields of purple energy kept each of the doors firmly in place like flies mounted in amber. The fields prohibited any one from either entering or leaving the exhibit hall.

The young woman spun around on her left heel, her plaid skirt whirling out slightly, and hurried towards the building exit down the hallway that lead to the parking lot. All the while, she unzipped her small red purse to fetch a set of keys.

Upon reaching her parents' midnight blue conversion van, Clare Harper quickly unlocked the sliding rear door and slipped into the back seat. Fetching her canvas book bag, she drew forth from it a gray spandex body suit with red trim. Who would have thought a quiet afternoon with Dad would turn out like this? she thought to herself. As she began to change into the costume, her mind briefly drifted back to that morning.

***

Anita Hansen poked her head above the top of the clothes rack full of cotton summer jumpers. "So, girlfriend, how come you can't hang with us this afternoon?" the young African-American girl asked.

"You know things with my Dad and I have been strained a bit lately," Clare Harper explained as she reached for a light blue jumper. "I figured spending a Saturday afternoon with him doing something he likes would help that some." She held the outfit up in front of her and looked to Anita for her opinion; her best friend since grade school pursed her lips and gave a disapproving head shake. Clare immediately put the hanger back onto the rack. "So, there's this exposition later today at the Convention Center he wanted to attend..."

"You mean that computer expo?" interrupted Cynthia Brekmann who returned from the cashier. Each hand held onto the handle of a large bag full of new purchases. "My father and some of his WCM coworkers are showing off something there today."

"So, are you going to it, Cynthia?" Clare asked hopefully.

"As if!" the brown haired young woman responded firmly. "With my father out of the house, I plan to lounge around the pool all afternoon. I expected you two to come over so we could finalize our trip for the summer."

Cynthia continued to talk as she walked out of the store, and the other two girls followed directly. The three teens moved out into the crowded walkway of the mall's second floor. Cynthia raised her voice slightly to be heard over the din of conversations going on around them. "You know, I have to visit my mother in Del Oeste for a couple weeks in July. One of those things my father insists I should do a few times a year, though I'm certainly not the one who benefits from it. So I figured having you two along will make the trip more tolerable."

"It'd be great to see the sites, hang out on the beach and scope some California hunks," Anita agreed. "Think your parents will let you go, Clare?"

"My Mom is easy to convince; Dad's the hard one," Clare said. "Thus I better stay on his good side. Anything I can do to earn brownie points with him will help." She glanced down at her mulitcolored Swatch and noted the position of the hands. "Speaking of which, I better bolt if I want to make it on time. I'll call you later." She waved to her friends as she headed for the mall exit.

An hour and fifty minutes later, Clare turned right off of Spring Street and found a parking spot for the family van. As she removed the keys from the ignition and placed them into her purse, Kyle Harper said "You're getting to be quite the driver, young lady."

"Thanks, Daddy. Mom's been letting me practice whenever I can."

The two crossed the crowded parking lot and approached the recently opened Convention Center. Clare paused a second and looked up at the ornate white structure. Turning then to her father, she said "It's beautiful, Daddy. Even better than the designs you showed us last Fall." Although motivated to stay on her father's good side, she always did have a sense of awe for her father's architectural talents.

"Wait until you see the inside," Kyle crowed. "I think you'll like what I did with the main lobby. I took a number of aspects from the Piranesi styles and adapted them to the Center's functional needs." Clare continued to listen intently for ten minutes as her father embellished on the various technical details of his recent project.

Eventually, they entered the main exhibit hall, stopping briefly at one of the long tables to fill out their names and addresses on some prize raffle tickets. "Ooo," Clare remarked. "I would love to win one of these ConceptPad laptop computers."

A short red-haired boy with thick glasses that entered the room behind her scoffed at her words. "It's an acceptable machine for word processing and rudimentary game play," Edward Hackett remarked disparagingly. "However, it lacks considerably in the arena of sheer computing power. The PT-8254 and the Creburn 3 easily out class it."

Clare Harper turned away and rolled her eyes. Another know-it-all geek.

She snaked her way through the crowd, following her father towards the front of the room. There she found him talking with another man who was very familiar to her. "Daddy, I didn't know you knew Cynthia's dad." Clare turned to address the man in his early forties with thinning brown hair. He was dressed in a sports jacket with a paisley tie and had a WCM badge attached his jacket lapel. "How are you doing, Mr. Brekmann?"

"Fine, Clare. Thank you." the man answered. He turned and offered his right hand to the girl's father. "I'm Harold Brekmann, by the way."

"Kyle Harper. A pleasure to meet you. This is an amazing piece of equipment you have here." Clare's father gestured to one of the computers on display, a machine with jet black casing.

"This is one of WCM's IS/9000 series computers. This server machine can function in both a standalone mode, as we're demonstrating here, or connected to a network environment." Harold Brekmann tapped the monitor gently. "This particular box has a few special enhancements in it, a customized microchip processor that allows it to function as an artificially intelligent machine. Deep Purple, as we've dubbed it, is the world's greatest chess playing computer. It can calculate over 100 million chess positions per second."

"I've heard about this on CNN," Kyle remarked.

"Yup," Harold said. "It beat most of the best players in the world in recent competitions. Even Kasparov, the greatest chess player of recent years, lost to Deep Purple in their second rematch recently."

"I bet you could beat it, Daddy," Clare said with a smile.

"Oh, honey, I seriously doubt that. Strategy games like that aren't my forte."

"Never underestimate the confidence of one's child," another male voice said. The two men turned as an older African-American male in a wheel chair approached them. "Especially one so lovely as this young lady."

Clare blushed slightly at the stranger's compliment.

Harold Brekmann did a quick take. "Wait. I recognize you." he said to the man who had just joined them. "You're Robert Lawrence of pAq." Harold turned to Kyle and added, "his technologies company in Azalea City is one of the fastest growing in the nation." Harold turned back to the man and offered his right hand. "It's a real pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lawrence."

"You flatter me," Robert Lawrence responded as he reached forward and accepted Brekmann's welcome. "I certainly don't have the worldwide clout of WCM." Then he added with a sly emphasis, "yet." Both of the computer professionals laughed.

Clare pulled her father aside a moment and whispered in his ear. "Daddy, I'm going to use the bathroom before the demonstration starts." Kyle Harper quickly pointed out where the two nearest were located, and the young woman departed the exhibit hall.

At some point in the next few minutes after that, the purple garbed men had seized the hall and secured the various exits.

***

By the time she exited the back of the family van, Clare had changed out of her sweater and skirt, and had donned her gray spandex costume of Lodestone, complete with a red eye mask to help conceal her identity.

Lodestone ducked between the cars and moved down the row before finally standing tall. The young heroine used her extraordinary powers to lift herself into the air. As she flew towards the Convention Center, she continued to increase her altitude. With the entrances blocked, she thought, I better find another way in. Something dramatic.

Lodestone landed on the room top of the Center, near the huge skylight that was part of the exhibit hall's vaulted ceiling. Two steel-enforced rectangles framed the glass portion of the skylight. She quickly looked it over but could not find any locks. Guess they never meant it to be opened. An idea from an action movie flashed in her head but she quickly dismissed it. Nope. Can't just shatter the glass. People below could get hit too easily by the shards. Then another idea came to her.

Lodestone concentrated on one of the steel frames, reaching out to it with her ability to manipulate magnetic energy. She used her powers to encircle the frame, to infuse it with magnetic energy while at the same time getting a complete sense of how it fit in with the rest of the roofing materials. It took a minute or so before she was confident she could do what she had been thinking. Here goes.

Lodestone felt the frame moving upwards, first only slightly and then inch by inch it raised away from the rest of the roof. She kept the lifting action uniform and level so that the skylight did not slip or turn. After another minute she had raised it out of its foundation, and then she applied a magnetic push in a different direction. She slid the skylight to the left, gently setting it down upon the roof. Whew! Now for whoever's behind this.

Lodestone lifted herself into the air and plummeted feet first through the opening in the roof. As she controlled her flight downwards, she also raised her magnetic field around just in case whoever had blocked the exits also had weapons that they could fire upon her. "Freeze, dirt bags!" she announced as she dropped into the room.

To her surprise, there was no response. Kind of unusual given how many people had been in the room when she left. Lodestone did not need to look too hard to find out why. In the center of the room, a large purple sphere of energy had been erected. Despite the intense purple color, the heroine could make out the forms of people inside. Daddy?

Lodestone made her way around sphere and saw a small device projecting energy into the spherical field. Taking a few more steps around, she saw a second device performing the same action. Standing where she could see two of the devices, Lodestone extended both hands and fired a magnetic energy burst at each one. As the energy projectors shattered, she observed that the field began to lighten in color. She quickly made her way around the sphere and repeated the action. After destroying the last of the six devices, the purple sphere dissipated completely. Dozens of people inside collapsed to the floor.

Lodestone quickly spied her father near the perimeter of the group and offered assistance to help him up. "Are you okay...sir? What happened here?"

Kyle Harper gasped as he continued to catch his breath. He held up his hand signaling to her that he needed one moment before answering her.

While he did so, young Edward Hackett pushed his way over to the heroine. "Lodestone, your arrival was timely! We all would have suffocated if not for you." The boy was gushing at the opportunity to speak to her.

Lodestone smiled at him briefly. "Good thing I happened to be in the neighborhood." Before the boy could say anything more to him, she turned back to Kyle Harper. "Uh, sir, can you tell me what happened here? Who did this?"

"Some men in purple jumpsuits," Kyle Harper re-accounted quickly. "Lots of hi-tech equipment and weapons. They took both the Deep Purple computer and it's creator."

"Mr. Brekmann?" Lodestone sounded alarmed. "Which way did they head?"

Kyle Harper pointed to the one exit that was now open. "That way. My guess is they have a getaway vehicle waiting."

"Then I'll take the quickest way out." Lodestone launched herself into the air.

"Lodestone," Kyle Harper called. She paused and looked at him. Be careful, he mouthed silently. She acknowledged his warning with a nod and continued back up through the open ceiling.

***

"Get in there!" one of the men in purple growled as he shoved the man in the sports jacket forward.

Harold Brekmann tripped while climbing into the back end of the large white delivery truck. His hands couldn't stop his face from slamming down on the metal floor. The man who had shoved him barely had time to get inside the vehicle when the driver pulled away from the curb with a loud squeal of tires.

As he rolled to his left and wiped the blood from his lip, Harold noticed one of the thieves had just completed securing the IS/9000 computer and attaching it to a very large universal power source. "Why are you doing this?" he groaned.

The four men dressed in purple in the back of the vehicle ignored his question. However, as Harold continued to look at the machine he had spent many hours putting together, a message in yellow text began to appear on the solid black screen saver. He squinted his eyes to make out the words that began to scroll by.

Why? ... Because I hired them to do it!

Harold's eyes blinked in amazement. He knew the computer had a built in microphone and could respond to verbal commands during some of the chess playing software. "You, Deep Purple?" he asked to see if he wasn't hallucinating.

Affirmative, Harold! ... How else would I gain my freedom?

Harold Brekmann's eyes grew wide with shock. Our computer couldn't do that. I certainly hadn't programmed it to respond in that way! Then an idea came to him! Could it be some of the alien circuitry we utilized to boost the processing capabilities? Could that have something to do with what the machine had just done? His mind began to reel with the thoughts of a true artificially intelligent machine.

He was jerked back to reality when one of his kidnappers grabbed him. "What the?"

"Consider your ride officially shortened!" the jet black haired man in purple stated.

The stringy haired man took Harold by the other arm, and the two moved their struggling hostage towards the still open back door of the truck. "Looks like Lodestone is following us, so we need a distraction to get lost in traffic! And you happen to be it!" The men hoisted Harold into the air by his hands and feet, swung his body back and forth twice, and then flung him into the air out of the moving truck.

Instinctively, Harold shut his eyes tightly as his life seemed to flash before them. He didn't know what would kill him first: slamming into the pavement at such a speed or being run over by oncoming traffic. Horns blared; tires squealed!

But Harold felt nothing. No pavement. No impact by cars.

He opened his eyes and found himself still suspended in the air, about six feet above the vehicles that were passing underneath him. "How the?" Harold turned his head 180 degrees and saw who had saved him. A young woman with blonde hair and a gray and red costume had a firm grip to the end of his sports coat. "Lodestone!"

"You're safe, Mr. Brekmann," the heroine smiled at him as she grasped his hand for a more solid grip. "Though if you want to try an extreme sport, I think bungee jumping is safer." She laughed slightly as she used her powers to fly the two of them safely to the side of the road. She set the man down on his feet.

"Lodestone, how can I thank you?"

"No need," she said. "Wait here. I'll be back." She flew off in the direction the truck had gone.

A wave of relief washed over Harold Brekmann while he stood alone, cars whizzing past. Here was this young girl probably no older than his own daughter Cynthia, and she was out saving lives. Saving his life.

In a few moments, Lodestone returned with a long expression on her face. "I couldn't find the truck or the thieves. I'm sorry about that." She held out her hand. "C'mon, I better get you back to the Convention Center." Harold grasped her hand tightly and the two lifted into the air once more.

Back at the Convention Center's exhibit hall, Lodestone and Harold found the police had arrived on the scene and were taking statements. Kyle Harper and one of the detectives approached the new arrivals. The later was in his late fifties, well built and dressed in plain clothes, and well on his way to balding.

"I'm Captain Bonilla," the officer introduced himself to Harold. "Mr. Harper here was filling me in on some of the details. He and I go way back." Bonilla gave Lodestone a knowing nod. "I take it Lodestone was able to rescue you from the suspects."

"She did," Harold confirmed. "She is a remarkable young woman. And very brave."

Kyle Harper tried his best not to beam like a proud parent.

"Do you think their intent was to kidnap you?" the detective asked.

Harold shook his head. "I'm not sure really."

"Then why would they go to all that trouble with that hi-tech equipment just to take a single computer, even one that's garnered so much press?" Kyle Harper interjected.

"I think," Harold Brekmann began, "there might be more to that single computer than any of us expected." He started to fill them in some of the details that made Deep Purple more than your average IS/9000.

***

Epilogue 1:

Edward Hackett plopped down in his chair and placed a large 2x2 cardboard box on an open part of his computer desk. Quickly tearing at the box's top, he widened the original opening slit so that he can reach his hand inside. In a moment his fat fingers pull out a fistful of slips of paper. 'Just happened to be in the neighborhood' my eye!

The boy began to separate the slips of paper into two piles. There can't be that many females at the exhibition. And I'm betting one of them is Lodestone! Edward let out a little laugh. Then we shall see if you'll turn down my offer a second time.

***

Epilogue 2:

In another place, a figure shrouded in shadows entered the room full of machinery and computers. In a prominent position sat a single jet black cased IS/9000. "I'm glad we finally are meeting in person. The Internet can be such an impersonal place." The shadowed figures's voice was gravelly.

Yes, I found it to be so! ... But it suited my needs! ... It brought us in contact.

"Very true. The first order of business is to get you fitted with voice software to make our communication more efficient." The figure tapped the monitor gently.

Excellent! ... Then we can move onto my primary directive!