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Picture of mini computer with pig-and-dog icon
Every time Mark laughed he felt an awful pain in his leg. He wanted to take his mind off the horrible tickling feeling so he took out his mini computer and switched it on. He found that there was a new icon, A pig and a dog.
He had to think for a moment what this meant. Then he had remembered that he had asked for this new program to be downloaded as soon as it was ready. The pig and the dog both had a very good sense of smell and could be used for sniffing things out. This program could find all kinds of information that the main search engines could not.
He remembered that there had just been a snail race at his brother's primary school. Could this program find the result? He decided to try it out.
He filled out a form and clicked "SEND" The computer said, "The winner is Speedy Snail."
The next thing that happened was that a message from Michael Jones appeared on the computer. It said,"Would you like to have me as your hospital buddy? Mark knew that people who had been ill or disabled for a long time, would be a friend to someone who had come into hospital for the first time. Mark typed in "Yes" and a picture of Michael Jones appeared on the computer screen.
Picture of Michael Jones
" How are you getting on?" said Michael. "Well they say I am doing very well but they have put a spider on my leg and it is very tickly."
"I have read about that," said Michael. My book said the spider they bred has very thin legs and it could not live on earth. I also read that there is a treatment which would make me walk again but it can only be done in zero gravity."
"Surely they will do that for you soon?" said Mark.
"They cannot because I am not allowed to go back into space ever again,"
said Michael. "They say I damaged a space station."
"But I was talking to someone who said that he did not believe you did," said Mark.
Michael said, "I don't remember very clearly but I'm sure I did not. No one would have fired the rocket motor when they say I did unless he was crazy and I half remember the computer warning the commander that he was approaching the space station too fast."
"But doesn't the record at space command show what happened?"
"That's the funny part about it ,"said Michael, "The record of that flight is not there and it should be. Perhaps someone deleted it. Now I have sometimes thought that a lot of people listen in to space flight commands and store the data at home. If I could only find out if someone has the record of that space flight."
Mark didn't say anything but he looked very thoughtful. "What is it?" said Michael.
"I have an idea that we might just manage to get that record!" said Mark.
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