Chapter 9:
Trudy Dementor rubbed her temples and reminded herself once again, to never schedule a progress meeting on the Monday after 'party weekend.' After meeting Bonnie Rockwaller, she and Ellie had celebrated by pouring an incredible amount of Absinthe and Ouzo down their throats. Trudy didn't have any coherent memories of leaving the club or getting home. She assumed that Hendle had done his usual, competent job and looked after her after she had drunk herself incapable of looking after herself.
However, even Hendle couldn't do anything about the massive hangover she was sporting at this moment, beyond offering her some coffee and aspirin. In a way, Hendle was still doing his job; he was making sure that she was suffering just enough to learn her lesson but not enough to retard her effectiveness.
"Okay everyone," she addressed the half-dozen individuals gathered in her office. "Where do we stand?"
"Your latest enhancements have increased your communicators' range by sixty percent," one of her lieutenants reported. "We have just finished the first production run and the response has been heartening. We hope to filter some through a front company and sell them on the standard market."
"Profits?" Trudy prompted, flinching at her own voice. It wasn't only louder than she remembered; the rasping quality was almost nauseating.
"The same percentage," the man reported. "But you have to admit that it's a plus."
Trudy's tired mind was forced to agree. Her production costs had increased by fifteen percent. Since her profit margin remained the same, on a percentage basis, that meant fifteen percent more profit per unit sold. The chance of selling her communicators via legitimate markets promised even greater income.
"How about the personal shields?" He asked, this time in a whisper.
"The side effects remain the same," another man informed her. "Although you've added twelve percent to the duration. If you don't mind me saying, making them a one-shot item was pure genius."
Trudy smiled through her pain. Ellie had been the one to suggest she make her shield projectors one-shot items. Sure, they were expensive but they only snapped into an active mode to protect against an attack. Already, several crime bosses owed their lives to a shield suddenly popping up between them and bullets, grenade fragments and other, unpleasant things. These same crime bosses and supervillains didn't hesitate to purchase additional units.
"As per your suggestion, we're not planning on trying to sell these items on the open market," this second advisor continued. "Government testing will reveal the side effects, which will probably adversely affect marketability." A low round of chuckles greeted this pronouncement.
"How are we doing on our production line capacity?" Trudy asked. Several scowls answered her.
"We're falling behind," her factory supervisory informed her. "We're working three shifts and we've trained our workers to be very efficient but we're barely keeping up with demand. If we experience continued, increased demand from your established products or we implement your additional ideas, we're going to need increased production capability."
"So my trans-dimensional stealth coating and magnetic field manipulator?" Trudy prompted.
"Are dependent upon your production capacity," the manager told her. "You simply don't have any more capacity at this time."
"This puts us at risk," Trudy grumbled. "The way I see it, we can either move to another lair, with the disruptions and risks involved, or we can establish a second lair."
"Two lairs means double the chance of the authorities discovering us," Hendle reminded her.
"And twice the bribes and security expenses," another voice chimed in.
"I know, I know," Trudy grumbled back with her hangover really coming back full force. "Is there any way we can increase our productivity here? Call up the usage charts again."
The lights dimmed, to Trudy's immense relief, and the computer system projected a chart on a blank wall.
"As you can see," Trudy's factory supervisor pointed at a couple of the figures with a laser pointer. "The majority of the factory's run time is devoted to the communications devices and the protective field generators."
"That's only seventy percent, combined," another voice chimed in. "What about the other thirty percent?"
"Ten percent is devoted to maintenance and routine servicing."
"Okay, what about the final twenty percent?"
"Retooling the line between production runs," the supervisor informed the audience. "Our two showcase items require different assembly techniques, so resetting the production line takes time."
"Could we increase our production runs and cut the number of retoolings?" A financial advisor asked.
"Potentially yes," Trudy informed him. "But that would take away our main selling point. This technology is very new and thus constantly changing. By keeping our production runs short, we're constantly improving the product."
"I still think that the retooling time is the key," the financial advisor informed her.
"There may be a solution here," she admitted. "I experimented with using projected force fields instead of actual dies, cutters, molds and other equipment. We can reconfigure these force fields in minutes, rather than the hours it takes us to retool the production line."
"The beta run was very promising," the factory supervisor agreed. "But that wasn't a full scale production attempt."
"And the energy requirements for that experiment left the rest of the lair without power," Trudy's lair manager reminded everyone. "If we were to replace all of our major fabricating machines with force fields, the local power grid wouldn't be able to supply our energy requirements."
"We could request additional capacity from the utility company," the factory supervisor suggested.
"Which would risk the national authorities wondering why a small, 'private research laboratory' needs so much additional power." The lair manager reminded everyone. "We have to work within our cover story."
"We could generate the power ourselves," another lieutenant suggested.
"We would need something on the line of a nuclear reactor to deliver the power we need," the lair manager informed him. "And after Dr. Drakken's Diablo scheme, the world's governments have started to track nuclear materials much more seriously."
"I'm beginning to see why my father was so infatuated with Camille Senior," Trudy chimed in. "She had the potential to power this facility, many times over, without alerting the authorities that we were up to something."
"We could still get her," another lieutenant informed her. "She won't stay on Senior's Island forever."
"No… ow." Trudy shook her head, even though it made her vision blur. "Ellie's my friend now and if I take advantage of her and seize Camille, things could go very bad for her. If only we had another…" Trudy's voice faded into silence as she grasped at an idea with her dehydrated brain.
"Okay, the boss is coming up with an idea," Hendle snorted, recognizing the vague look on his employer's face."
"I've got it! Ow!" Trudy exclaimed, then immediately regretted it. Holding her aching head, she continued in a much more subdued voice, "if you can't get what you want from the shopkeeper, talk to the factory."
"That one went over my head," Hendle admitted. The rest of the assembled underlings nodded their agreement while Trudy started to type furiously at a computer terminal.
"Camille wasn't born with her shape shifting ability," Trudy explained, her excitement at finding a technical, and villainous, solution overriding her hangover. "She gained it after visiting a plastic surgeon named Dr. Bofox."
"Didn't he have a rather controversial reputation?" One of the assembled staff asked.
"In some circles," Trudy chuckled. "OK, the polite circles. The rest of his critics called him a quack. Anyway, if he gave Camille this shape shifting capability, he can give someone else the same ability."
"Who?" Several people asked at once.
"Haven't gotten that far," Trudy admitted. "Still, my father's research showed that she was most likely moving mass to and from an alternate reality."
"How does that solve our energy problem?" The lair manager asked. "I overheard some of your father's rantings…"
"Discussions," Trudy insisted.
"Okay, discussions. He was saying that she wasn't producing or consuming energy."
"Ah," Trudy snickered. "My dear papa was only interested in one aspect of inter-reality access and that was moving matter from one reality to another."
"I'm still not understanding your reasoning," the manager admitted.
"My father didn't care about how matter got from one reality to another; he was only interested in moving it from one reality to another. He was sort of like a man shipping a package overseas; he didn't care if it went first by truck, then by rail, then by ship, then by truck again; only that it reached its destination."
"I'm still in the dark," the assembled crew agreed with the manager.
"It is child's play…for multi-dimensional physics! Matter does not follow the same rules in all realities; therefore it cannot cross the barrier between realities while still matter. At the moment it crosses the barrier, it converts to energy and reassembles, under the other reality's rules, on the other side! I proved this when I was fourteen years old. Papa had assembled a small-scale vortex between realities. I pushed a working, biological system through the vortex and recovered it. There were some significant changes when it returned."
"I remember that incident," Hendle remarked, before shaking his head in sorrow. "Poor Admiral Whiskers."
"Okay, matter changes to energy," the manager said. "So why didn't your father detect it during his experiments?"
"He wasn't looking for the right manifestation," Trudy told him, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "This barrier energy doesn't display the standard attributes, like light or heat."
"I'm still not understanding that."
"Okay, imagine that you're a blacksmith, back in the eighteenth century. When you think about energy, you understand heat, light, kinetic energy and potential energy. You don't understand radio waves and electric fields. You can experience them every day but you don't know they exist because you don't know how to look for them."
"But your father's a brilliant physicist!"
"Of course he is…in the fields he's interested in pursuing. He isn't very interested in the forms of energy to be found at reality's border, so he didn't look for it. I am, so I look for it and find it."
"Wait a minute!" The manager interrupted. "If you knew this, why didn't you tell your father while he was performing his experiments on Camille?"
"What? And stop all of the irritation and humiliation he was heaping upon her?" Trudy flashed a truly evil smile. "Anyway, if we can convince Dr. Bofox to give another subject shapeshifting abilities, I can recover a great deal of energy at the cost of some mass. I did so when I pushed my cat through the dimensional vortex. That's why he had…considerably less mass…after I recovered him than when he first went through."
"Uh, Trudy," Hendle interrupted. "We've never done cold-blooded murder. If you do to a person what you did to that cat…"
"I've learned how to control the reaction and limit the power expenditure…theoretically. Relax, when mass is converted to energy, small amounts of mass produce enormous amounts of energy. Even if we only recover a fraction of the energy generated, a mere thimble full of matter, each day, from our test subject will meet our energy needs."
"Just what part of the subject's body gives up this thimble full of matter?" Hendle asked. "There are certain parts of my body that I wouldn't want to give up even that little bit of matter."
"Hendle…" Trudy chided, starting to blush.
"I mean my heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, brain…you get the idea," Hendle coldly informed his employer. "I think I could give up a thimble full of blood a day with no ill effects, but if the matter comes out of someone's innards, we're dealing with murder."
"That's something I'll have to work on," Trudy admitted. "No matter! We will struggle on with our existing production capacity for now. We will acquire Dr. Bofox's services and create another changeling. After this, I will conduct experiments until I can control the source of the mass that we convert to energy. After that, we will harness our changeling as an energy source, increase our production capacity several times over and use the income to fund my worldwide extortion plans."
"This experimenting with the subject," the lair manager interrupted Trudy's ranting. "Will it be harmful or painful?"
"It won't hurt me one bit," Trudy answered, with a truly evil smile.
"So who gets the honor of being the power source?" He asked.
"Why, someone we don't like very much, of course."
"So how does this work again?" Avers, known to most of the world as Avaiarius, scowled suspiciously at the large vat his benefactor wanted to lower him into.
"I have already spliced the gene sequence for the body you want," Miss Go told her new servant. "I have already inserted this DNA into several tissue samples you provided."
Avaiarius grimaced. The 'providing' had proven rather painful.
"I will also alter your brain's chemistry. Your body is designed to repair itself but not to re-grow lost limbs or to rebuild itself. After I'm done, I will immerse you into this tank. Between the biological compounds in the tank, the alterations to your own brain and the DNA I inject into you, your body will reform itself into what we want."
"Just how painful is this going to be?"
"I've gone through the process twice," she informed him. "You'll be sedated and unaware during the change, so there is no pain. Afterwards, the side effects can be irritating."
"Side effects! I think you're going to explain this before I get in that tank."
"Simply the side effects of operating in a different body," she assured him.
"When I made my first change, I more than doubled my height. I kept hitting my head on ceilings, doorframes, pretty much anything overhead. The first few times I sat down, the chairs collapsed under my increased bulk. After my change into this body, I kept stumbling over stairs because I didn't realize I had to lift my feet up much farther, relative to my new body. If you think you're just going to come out of the tank and fly, effortlessly, you're mistaken. You're going to plant your beak into the ground a lot of times before you finally figure out how to fly. You're going to have to learn to handle the new you."
"Okay, I can deal with that. How long will it take?"
"A few weeks. Don't worry, it will seem like a few moments."
"It will be worth it," Avaiarius told his new master. "I have an interesting piece of trivia for you. Do you know what a arboreal monkey's most dangerous predator happens to be?"
"No."
"A bird of prey."
"Okay, Hank, what do you have?"
"Well, Mr. Lipsky, I have the latest reports from the telephone company."
"That was a stroke of genius," Drew admitted, congratulating himself for his foresightedness. "By bribing some of the phone company's employees, I've managed to find out who Global Justice is calling, and when." Drew looked over the report before feeding it into his scanner.
"I'm a little confused about this," Hank admitted.
"Shoot," Drew ordered his employee.
"First of all, Mr. Lipsky, aren't we supposed to be working for Global Justice? If that's the case, why are we spying on them?"
"It's part of my job, Hank. Dr. Director expects me to spy upon her organization."
"Isn't that a little odd?"
"Not if you look a little more closely," Drew told his assistant. Hank Perkins realized that he was about to receive the benefit of his employer's wisdom. The overly perky young man settled in, reflecting on the saying that every engineer has a teacher inside, waiting to come out.
"Dr. Director has a very long-term approach to her organization," Drew began. "And that includes her subsidiary organizations, like HenchCo. She realizes that HenchCo has to thrive in order for it to provide her with benefits so she wants me to maintain our villain cred. One of the ways I do this is by spying on Global Justice itself. Very few criminals will believe that I'm actually working for Global Justice when I'm spying on Global Justice."
"Doesn't that put Global Justice in danger?"
"To an extent that Dr. Director is prepared to accept. We have an agreement; I'm free to use the information I dig up but I have to tell her within thirty days of finding it. She forbids me from telling her how I came up with the dirt, since she says that she has to be able to track down her own leaks."
"Okay, that makes sense, in a bizarre kind of way. How does this information do your customers any good? I mean, we don't know what anyone actually said during the conversations. The fact that Global Justice's phones placed sixty-five calls to Bueno Nacho last month isn't a very big secret."
"There's no such thing as a small secret," Drew corrected his assistant. "There are only small applications. Now, I can cross reference these calls with actions that these calls' recipients take to find useful patterns."
"That's why you've fed the records into your computer?"
"Exactly! Sometimes you have to really dig to find something useful and even a computer can take time to find patterns. The Bueno Nacho item, on the other hand, is too easy."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Just this, Hank," Lipsky printed out some figures and showed them to his assistant. "Notice that Global Justice placed two, long calls, every Tuesday and Thursday, to Bueno Nacho, just before noon. This has been going on for three months now and Bueno Nacho started ordering more supplies from corporate about the time that these calls started. I'm willing to bet that a couple of GJ's departments have lunch meetings and they're ordering lunch from BN twice a week. In addition, GJ started to make more calls to BN shortly after the fast food franchise expanded its hours to overnight."
"Interesting but not very useful," Hank replied.
"Au contraire, " Lipsky chided him. "Imagine if you were planning a strike against GJ. Knowing that a couple of people would be picking up a large order from BN twice a week could be useful information. You could, hypothetically of course, introduce drugs, poisons or even a bold saboteur."
"Dr. Director lets you sell this information?" Hank was incredulous.
"She insists upon it…ah, what have we here?"
Drew Lipsky's computer chirped and printed out a single page of paper.
"What is it, sir?"
"Initial findings," Drew replied. "It's a listing of calls to destinations that GJ doesn't regularly call. Hmmm, it seems that GJ phones called a major bowling pin manufacturer several times last month. I'll have to see what that company did either shortly before or after these calls. There's also a call to the Club Banana corporate office. GJ hasn't called that bunch, pardon the pun, for months. I'll have to see if I can construct a pattern."
"Sir, do you really think it's worth the effort? I mean, Club Banana specializes in teenagers' fashions."
"You'd be surprised," Drew told him. "Innocent calls like this can, potentially, have enormous consequences."
Drew Lipsky made sure that his computer was properly set to print out actions the various companies took shortly after Global Justice called them. Satisfied that he would have some summaries to read the next day, he retired to his lab to see just how good Trudy Dementor's latest communication devices really were.
"So you want permission to go where and do what?" Nate, after visiting Edward Lipsky again, was confused about Ed's latest hobby.
"Robot Rumble dude, seriously!" The big man told him.
"What's that?"
"It's a seriously gnarly contest bro," Ed explained. "You build up the most serious butt-kicking robot that you possibly can and you fight it against other dude's robots. I'm working on one right now."
Ed led Nate to a corner of his shop, where he uncovered his latest project.
"What do you think, dude?"
"I really don't know much about these things," the public official admitted.
This was true enough. Nate had come to realize that he would probably never really understand Ed Lipsky very well, but he had to admit that he actually liked the man. Unlike most of the parolees he was forced to monitor, Ed showed no interest in either returning to a life of crime or simply becoming a burden on the taxpayer. The man was energetic and motivated, even if his motivations were alien to most other people.
When Nate first started to monitor the big mechanic, he thought that he could understand the man. He quickly discovered that Ed liked heavy metal music (the louder the better), building things, trashing things and repairing the things that he trashed so he could trash them again. The man also had an incredible drive to build things larger and flashier, if not necessarily better and more practical. This had led Nate to believe that Lipsky was sort of an overgrown adolescent but he had been wrong.
In the weeks that followed, Nate learned that the big man had a moral compass, of sorts, that didn't always point the same way everyone else's did. There were similarities; for one thing, the man took an almost obsessive pride in his work. When Ed repaired something, it was better than new. This compulsion went beyond his paycheck. Ed honestly demanded outstanding performance from himself. After that, Ed's motivations tended to be harder to follow. For one thing, he couldn't understand why his loud tunes irritated the neighbors. Believing the music was good or, in his own words, seriously awriiiiiiight, he felt he was being friendly by letting everyone within three blocks hear him play it at any time of the day or night. Once a couple of policemen informed him that jail time would happen if he kept cranking his jams throughout the neighborhood, he soundproofed his garage. Ed didn't understand personal space, at least in other people but as long as he realized that 'the man' could put him back in the slammer unless he played ball, it was good enough for Nate.
Another thing was Ed's strange relationship with vehicles. While Ed had no problem earning some extra pay by working on several cars simultaneously, he steadfastly refused to own more than one of any type of vehicle at any one time. A case in point was the big man's motorcycle. He had custom built the machine while still in a supervised living facility. Last week, a classic Harley had come up for sale and Ed refused to buy it, despite the fact he was interested, because he already owned a bike. According to Ed, owning more than one bike was somehow cheating; breaking the moral bonds between owner and machine. Yet, somehow, the man didn't see any problem with owning a bike, a car and a snowblower, which was really a modified motorcycle, at once.
"If ya already got one, ya can't get another one," Ed had declared. "It's just not the way things work."
Ed Lipsky looked at vehicle collectors in much the same way that the rest of society looked at polygamists.
Finally, there were the man's eccentricities when it came to how he viewed vehicles. The man seemed to view internal combustion engines the way most people viewed holy icons and handled repair manuals in a way usually reserved for the Koran or the Bible. Nate had personally seen his own priest handle his communion set with less reverence than Ed handled his tools. Somehow, Ed seemed to think that the process of converting fuel to kinetic energy, and everything associated with it, was something akin to achieving a state of grace.
Still, for all his oddities, Ed was actually a likable sort of person. He always offered Nate a brew, which the inspector always refused, being on the clock. Nate also realized that Ed really didn't have a vendetta against anyone. The only reason he had tried to kill Kim Possible was because he was convinced that it would help keep his cousin away from the electric chair. While that didn't excuse his actions, it showed Nate that Ed hadn't done it for personal gain. Somehow, that made Nate feel a little better about the big man.
"I actually expected something bigger," Nate admitted, looking at Ed's fighting robot. The vehicle in question was a low, circular vehicle about two feet across.
"They have weight classes," Ed informed him. "So I had to do a serious job scaling it down."
"Is that a wig with a mullet on top of it?"
"Seriously bro! That's how I keep track of which end's the front when I'm rolling it."
"What does it do?"
"Check it out! And stand back!"
Ed produced a remote control and hit a start switch. Nate heard a small motor inside the robot roar to life. With Ed at the control, the robot rolled across the garage to a piece of sheet metal along one wall. A metal piston suddenly burst from an opening on the robot's front, punching a hole in the sheet metal.
"It's an auto piston and cylinder," Ed explained, killing the robot's engine. "It took me some serious time to cut that baby out of the block, but the engine was trashed anyway. I've put some more surprises in this little dude," here, Ed gave the robot a fond pat. "But that was its main kick, seriously."
"Wait a minute," Nate consulted his PDA. "Didn't you use a similar weapon when you tried to kill Possible?"
"Uh, yeah," Ed's enthusiasm dried up. "Look, I'm sure you've caught the whole story. I really don't have anything against Red but it was for my cuz. I know that if I had to check out, that's the way I would have wanted to go."
The funny thing was that Nate knew Ed was telling the truth.
"Isn't this a violent activity?" Nate asked the man.
"Seriously!" Ed agreed. "But it's robot on robot. No animals or humans harmed, y'know?"
"When and where do these contests take place?"
"Every Saturday afternoon, at the civic center," Ed told him. "At least, that's where the Canon City chapter holds the contests. If I win the qualifying rounds, I'll be asking permission to head to Middleton for the state competition. If I win there, I'll be wanting to go to Go City for the nationals."
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Nate cautioned him. While Nate didn't have the authority to give Ed permission to enter these events, his recommendation carried a great deal of weight. Nate considered it for a few minutes before coming to a very simple conclusion: Ed Lipsky never got into trouble when spending time in his garage.
"I'll recommend that you receive permission to enter the Canon City events," he told the big man. "As for the state and national competitions, we'll have to play it by ear."
"Sweeeeeeet!!!!" as Ed jumped in the middle of the garage.
"AHHHH- YEAAAA!!!!!!!" As he ended his solo.
Nate shook his head at the spectacle of Ed playing his air guitar once again.
"Time to wash up for dinner boys," Dr. James Possible called out, stepping cautiously into his garage. Painful experience had taught the rocket scientist to neither startle his sons nor walk into an area where they were working without checking the territory first.
"Awwwww, dad!" One whined.
"Do we have to?" The other asked.
"We were just getting started on the launcher," they finished, in unison.
"What's this?" The elder Possible asked. "I thought you were simply using a spinning body to do the damage." Dr. James Timothy Possible found himself intrigued with his boys' work. Ever since their cousin Larry had introduced them to Robot Rumble, they had been determined to build the ultimate fighting robot.
"We're still using it," Tim told him.
"But we realized that this required our robot to actually contact the other one," Jim added.
"We want to try to disable the other robot at a distance," they concluded.
"So what are you going to be launching?"
"A dual net!" Both boys exclaimed.
"Two interwoven but electrically separate nets," Tim informed his father.
"Both with exposed, penetrating barbs," Jim added. "We launch the net over the other robot…"
"The other robot's own locomotion will draw the net tighter," Tim continued. "This will inhibit both its locomotion and steering systems as well as force the penetrating barbs through its body and into its electronics."
"That's when we charge the separate electric paths," Jim concluded. "And wham!"
"We fry its electronics systems!" They finished.
"That sounds like fun, boys," James admitted. "How are you planning on launching the net?"
"We're using a carbon dioxide cylinder," Jim answered.
"Plenty of power for a light net," Tim added. "The gas isn't flammable, so it won't be as much fun but at least we won't be banned from the rumble."
"Yeah, if we start a fire, Larry might get expelled, as well," Jim added.
"How about targeting?" James asked. "Since the net won't be guided, you'll have to be able to aim accurately."
"Ultrasonic sonar," Jim added. "When the enemy robot's in range, it will light an indicator on our robot…"
"So we'll know when we can fire the net," Tim added. "Of course, we'll have to adjust the angle of launch based on the other robot's height."
"You'll also need very good timing," James told them. "Why don't you just use a computer-monitored servo to adjust your launch barrel's elevation and another one for the azimuth?"
"We didn't have time to order them," Tim admitted. "And our first match is this weekend."
"I don't suppose you have a couple laying around the garage?" Jim offered, hopefully.
"I don't know of any well-stocked tool shed that doesn't have a couple," James assured his boys. The rocket scientist went to one of his cabinets and pulled out a couple of the devices. "We might have some work to calibrate their feedback with your on-board computer, but it shouldn't take very long."
"Yay!" Both twins cheered. Moments later, James and his sons were hard at work installing the new weaponry on the twins' fighting robot. All three were enjoying themselves so much that they lost track of the time, and the fact that Anne had sent James to fetch the boys for dinner. By the time the Possible matriarch got fed up enough to go out to the garage, herself, the three Possible males were testing the automatic targeting system they had installed in the robot.
Anne Possible was both fortunate and unfortunate with the following chain of events. She was unfortunate in that her sons and husband had decided to point the robot at the garage door and set it to launch at any movement. Anne Possible was already annoyed when she stormed into the garage, demanding to know why her sons and husband were not at the dinner table. When she burst through the door, only to be caught by a hyper-strong, polymer filament net, she became downright cranky. As her husband and sons struggled to free her from her bonds, she realized that she was indeed fortunate that they hadn't installed the high-voltage discharge circuitry…yet. Still, she was more than a little peeved at her family for forgetting dinner. She supervised, with crossed arms and a tapping foot, as her 'three boys' deactivated the robot. Then she marched all three to the bathroom to wash up for dinner, wishing that Kim was still at home to help her control them.
Thank you all, once again, for the continued interest and support. I must again express my appreciation to Joe Stoppinghem for his continued beta work.
Until my next posting, best wishes;
daccu65
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