"Oh, Popeye," Olive said excitedly, "today we start our new jobs at Macro Tech."  The two were walking through the hallway on the top floor of a modern skyscraper office building.

"Yeah, Olive!  This definitely does compute.  Ak! Ak! Ak! Ah!" Popeye laughed.

"Just think!  I'm going to be the private secretary to Bluto Van Megabyte, the world's richest man and one of the most handsome, eligible bachelors in America," Olive sighed. "But he's so busy, he probably won't even pay much attention to me."

However, as Olive walked past the water cooler, it came to life, gave her a wolf whistle, and the water inside it came to a boil.  As she went under smoke detectors and sprinkler systems,  they went off.  She sashayed past a copier and it began putting out page after page with the words, "I love you," on them.

Olive and Popeye went through the huge, magnificently paneled, oak doors that led into Bluto's office.

Popeye began to introduce himself, "Popeye..."

Olive cut in, curtsying, "And Miss Olive Oyl at your service."

Bluto looked up from his terminal with a bored expression on his face.  But when he saw Olive, his eyes popped out and his jaw dropped open.  An x-ray of Bluto's heart at that moment would reveal a computer screen appearing inside it that read, "On line - And How!!!"

"Very pleased to meet you, Beautiful," he said.

"Thanks, boss!" Popeye piped up.  "I does try to takes care of meself.  Glad it shows!"

Olive looked around the office and gasped in delighted amazement.  It was the size of a small palace with plush carpet, a swimming pool, a sauna, a huge entertainment center, a gymnasium, and more.  "Your office is dreamy, but where's mine?"

"You'll share all this with me," Bluto replied with a wave of his hand.  "Anything that's mine is yours."

"How utterly, utterly!"

Popeye butted in, "How about my office, Bluto?"

"Down the corridor, take the elevator to the last sub-basement, walk the hallway til you're in the next zip code.  Then turn right."

When Popeye got there, he found a minuscule cubicle that he couldn't even fit entirely into.
"This must be what they mean by RAM space."  He lowered his head and charged the outer wall of the basement, butting it a hard one.  It instantly moved back three feet.  The Sailorman did it again and again until he had ample room.  He dusted off his hat.  "Luckily my cap is hard wear.  Arf!  Arf!  Arf!"

Suddenly, Popeye heard cheers from around the basement as techies found that they could move around, and even out of, their cubicles.

"There are other people down here!"

"I can walk!  I can walk!"

"Free at last! Free at last!"

Popeye was puzzled, "Gee, I thought guys like you wanted to be glued to your computer screens."

"No," one techie replied, "it's just that we couldn't move our heads!"

Meanwhile, Bluto and Olive were sitting side-by-side on a couch.  Bluto was saying to Olive, "I need you to take a personal letter."

She prepared to take dictation.

"Dear Miss Oyl," he put his arm around her, "since I met you this morning I've become a believer in love at first sight."

"Oh, Mr. Van Megabyte, you're making my shorthand tremble," Olive giggled coyly.

"Call me, Bluto."  He went to kiss her.

Popeye burst through the doors.  "Found me office.  Now what's me first assignment?"

Bluto got up and quickly tossed 40 thick manuals off a shelf onto Popeye.  "See if you can get our newest system to boot up.  The info you'll need is probably in there somewhere." Bluto laughed to himself.

Popeye's voice tried to make itself heard from beneath the pile, "That'll takes a long time."

"Fifteen months if you work non-stop day and night with absolutely no breaks or interruptions.  So get on it, Lad.  I know I can count on you."

"Yes, sir!"

Somehow Popeye managed to lug the manuals back to his cubicle.  As he sat there scratching his head, surrounded by open books, and sweating bullets, he said, "I can't makes heads nor tails out of this stuff.  Forget the manuals.  I uses me fists."  He bopped the computer and it instantly turned on.  "Sometimes the old-fashioned ways are the best!"

Up in Bluto's office, Olive was trying to plug the cable for a new attachment into the back of the boss' massive terminal.  She got all tangled up in the existing cables until she could hardly move.

"Help!  This hook-up's got me hung up!" she cried.

"Don't worry, my dear.  I'm right here and I'd never let any harm come to you."  Bluto stepped toward her magnanimously.

Popeye hurried onto the scene. "I'll saves ya, Olive!  As a sailor, I loined ta say, 'Nuts,' to knots!"  He grabbed a cable and gave it a powerful yank.  Olive spun around at superspeed like a top, yanking connections out of ports right and left.  Finally, the wind from the Olive-tornado shoved them back into their proper places, but this time all the cables were neatly organized.  Olive herself finally came to rest in a large plush chair.

"Oh, Popeye," she gushed, "you sure know how to turn a girl's head - not to mention the rest of her!"

Bluto rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  "Hmmm...I've got to delete this hacker if I'm ever going to get a monopoly on Olive's heart."  He turned to Popeye and Olive, raising his voice.   "Good job, lad!  I think you're up to handling one of the company's greatest challenges."  He began whipping CDs at Popeye.  "Debug these important programs.  Nobody else has been able to."

Incredibly, Popeye was catching each CD and stacking it on top of the previous one.  He ended up carrying a huge, teetering tower that reached to the ceiling.  He stumbled and shuffled his way out of Bluto's office trying to keep his burden balanced as he headed for his cubicle.

"Wa...Wa...Whoa!  I ain't goner makes it.  These programs might crash!  I better debug 'em right here."  Popeye began puffing and puffing on his pipe until a cloud of dense smoke arising from it enveloped the tower.  Instantly, thousands of tiny coughs could be heard.  Then minuscule, robotic-looking insects began pouring out of the CDs, gasping for air as they headed for the elevator.

Popeye chuckled.  "Let that be a lesson to yuz on the dangers of second-hand smoke in the workplace."

It was now time for lunch and Bluto was escorting Olive to his sumptuous, private dining room.  There on a candle-lit table was food that Olive instantly recognized as, "My favorite food!"  She sniffed the air, following the trail of a scent until her face was firmly planted on Bluto's cheek.  "You're wearing my favorite cologne!"  From overhead speakers, soft, romantic music started playing.  "That's Winston Sharples!  My favorite composer!  How did you know?"

"My marketing department knows everything about everybody.  I wanted this moment to be absolutely perfect."

"It is!  It is!  It is!"  Olive squealed with glee.

The two sat down to eat, gazing dreamily into each other's eyes, when, suddenly...

"Oh, boy, lunch!"  Popeye was back.

Bluto muttered to himself, "One more nanosecond and she would have been mine."  He cleared his throat and said politely to Popeye, "Very sorry, My Boy, but this dining room is for executives only.  Don't worry, though, I'll fix you a doggie bag to go."  So saying, he began to fill a plate.

"Gorsh, Boss, that's mighty kind of you," Popeye said.

"Oh, yes, Popeye," Olive enthused, "Bluto's real generous!  Why, do you know that he's given me a raise every half hour?  Not to mention a mink coat and a sportscar!"

Surreptitiously, Bluto took out a bottle marked, "Sleeping Pills: Distilled Essence Of Corporate Board Meeting," and began liberally sprinking the pills over the food.  "There you are," he said, turning and presenting the plate to Popeye.

"Thanks, Pal!  I'll take it down to my cuticle right away!"  The Sailorman rushed out, licking his lips.

Bluto licked his, too.  "Now to upgrade my love life!"  But when he turned toward Olive, he found her on the other side of the room, sitting at a terminal with her computer glasses on.  "Huh? You're back to work?"

"Well, of course.  I have earn my raises, don't I?" Olive asked innocently.

Bluto zoomed over to her side and got down on his knees beside her chair.

"You earn your raises just by being here.  Why, when you're in the room, I feel like a customer in an electronics store seeing our latest version of PORTALS^TM going on sale."

"Oh, Bluto, you make my head swim.  No, wait!  It's probably because I'm looking at you with these glasses on."  She took them off.

Bluto began kissing her hand.

"Ooohhh, Bluto, you're giving me a strange sensation.  No, wait!  That's probably just my carpel tunnel acting up again."

Bluto kissed his way up her arm.

"Bluto, Bluto, Bluto, you're sending shivers down my spine.  No, wait!  I probably just set the air-conditioner up to high trying to protect the computers."  She glanced over at the thermostat.  Bluto took her head in his hands and gently turned her toward him again.

"Ahh," he began, "your skin isn't microsoft, it's macrosoft.  Your eyes are like two high resolution monitors displaying my favorite website.  Your hair is soft as fiber optic strands transmitting a message to my heart.  Being with you is like being on the net.  Time vanishes."

"You sure know how to process your words," Olive gasped.

C'mon, Babe, it's obvious that you and I are totally compatible."

Olive giggled coyly.  "I'm not sure how to reply to this message."

"Let's merge our files with a kiss!"  Bluto puckered up.  Olive responded in kind.  They moved even closer.  But just as their lips were barely starting to touch, Popeye popped up between them, forcing them apart.

"Funniest thing happened," he said.  "Right after lunch, I was getting real sleepy, and I could of swored I wouldn't be no good to anybody for the rest of the day, so I stepped outside for a breath of fresh airs.  The minute I lefts my place of work, I felt revitalicized.  The guys in the cellar say it happens to them every afternoon at quitting time.  Now, I'm rarin' to go!"

"You'll be going, all right!"  Bluto couldn't hide his anger and frustration any longer.  "You'll be going as email to Outer Mongolia!"  So saying, he delivered an uppercut to Popeye which sent the sailor sailing across the room to crash, stunned, near another computer.  Bluto rushed over to him and put one hand on his head, the other on Popeye's feet, and began to squeeze Popeye in and out like an accordian.

"First, your files need to be compressed," Bluto snarled.  Then he began stuffing Popeye into an access port.

"Hey, you!"  Olive shouted.  "What are you doing to Popeye?  He ain't formatted for that application!  Stop it!  You're violating protocol!"

But Popeye now was inside the computer.  Bluto stabbed a button labeled "SEND" on the keyboard.

Instantly in Outer Mongolia, Popeye appeared inside a computer screen belonging to a user of attilthehunnet.net.  Popeye could see an Outer Mongolian staring through the screen.  Popeye began pounding on the inside of the glass.  "Lets me out!  Lets me out!"

The user was worried.  "Oh, no!"  It's a virus wrecking my hard drive!  Never open strange email!"  His finger jabbed the delete key.  The screen went dark.  Popeye was gone!

Meanwhile, in the office on the other side of the world, Bluto plopped himself down in an office chair that had no arms.  He gave a mighty push off the floor with his legs and sent the chair, and him, rolling across the floor on its wheels to Olive Oyl.  It thudded into Olive and she landed on Bluto.

"Now that you've been fully installed on my laps' top, howzabout that kiss, Gorgeous?" Bluto put his arms around her and began making kissing motions with his lips as he pulled her closer.

"Access denied, you low-down-downloader!" She shoved him in the chest and broke free.

Olive raced to the oak doors, but Bluto touched a button on a computer console and suddenly steel plates slammed down from the ceiling blocking them.  A screen appeared on the plates with these words rolling across it, "Secure Document.  Password Needed To Enter.  Forgot Your Password?  N'yah!  N'yah!  N'yah!  N'yah!  N'yah!"

Olive whirled around to face the approaching Bluto.  "You let me outta this pentium penthouse, you, you, you, wolf in chic clothing!"  She then ran over to Bluto's private elevator located on another wall.  She punched the lobby button.  A question flashed on an LCD above the buttons, "Are you sure you want to exit this program?"

Olive punched in, "Yes."

"Maybe you'd like more time to think?"

Olive hurriedly typed, "No."

"In order to exit this office, you'll need to punch the 'ENTER OFFICE' button and then look at the menu options."

By that time, Bluto was practically breathing down her neck.  She took off at top speed across the office, with Bluto in hot pursuit.

Olive screamed, "Help, Popeye!  Save me!  I want this connection lost, and fast!"

Popeye came to, floating in limbo.  Strange symbols drifted past him.  "Cyberspace," he muttered, "some final frontier."  Suddenly, Olive's pleas come to him from somewhere.

"Help, Popeye!  He wants to make me more user-friendly!  This wolf is trying to join my web-ring!  Save me!!"

An arrow floated by.  Popeye grabbed hold of it and propelled it and him by kicking his legs, over to a suspended spinach icon.  He double-clicked on it.  Suddenly, his theme song was playing and spinach rained from the sky.  He opened his mouth and greedily took it in.  Suddenly the word "UPGRADE" appeared across his biceps.  Back in Outer Mongolia, in the real world, Popeye came bursting out of the computer.  Using his pipe for jet propulsion, he shot into the sky.

At speeds approaching that of light, he streaked to the office.  "Nothing beats Spinach for instantaneous data transfer," he thought.  Popeye burst through the steel plates, transforming them into molten slag as he did so.  He smashed into Bluto, sending the brute flying, head-first, into a computer monitor.

"You has performed an illegal operation," the Sailor pronounced.  "This application will be terminated."

Popeye zipped to the keyboard and typed in "Destination: Voyager Space Probe."  He whacked the SEND key.  Bluto was sucked the rest of the way through the monitor and, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Olive came up to Popeye, threw her arms around him and gave him a big kiss.

"Ooooh, Popeye, you're the only help feature I'll ever need!"

Popeye began to sing:

"If your patience is short,
Don't call Tech Support.
Call Popeye The Sailorman."
(Toot!  Toot!)

THE END