Bill The Gates Meets Bill The Cat -- Microsoft Chief Star Of Pc Screen Saver

Opus the Penguin will be in it. So will Bill the Cat.

But the show stealer of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed's new "Opus 'n Bill" computer screen saver may turn out to be a homo sapiens Bill - Microsoft's Bill Gates.

All the Gates trademarks are there: goggle-sized glasses, big nose, disappearing chin and hunched gait. There are even special effects such as an audible "doink" when the software king pushes his glasses up his nose.

Due for release next Monday, the software promises to be a big hit with the techie crowd, which loves to make fun of the Microsoft mogul. Previews already have "cracked up" sales meetings and private showings, Breathed said.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, who lives on Vashon Island, teamed up with Delrina Corp.'s Kirkland-based consumer-software division to produce the screen saver, which pops up on a computer's monitor while the unit is not being used to prevent a static image from burning into the screen. Breathed merged wacky characters from his "Bloom County" and "Outland" newspaper strips with computer technology to produce animated cartoons.

Penguins swim around the screen. A ponderous "basselope" (cross between an antelope and basset hound) goes bungee jumping. Socially impaired Bill the Cat finds a love interest.

Breathed even takes a poke at a competing screen saver when Opus, armed with a shotgun, blasts away at a screenful of flying toasters.

As for Gates, the product packaging shows him about to be kissed by the feline Bill. And one of the sequences has His Billness giving a demonstration of "Microsquash's" Microboost 10,000 software. During the demo, Gates' head is blown off, the screen goes blank and a message appears: "Oopsie. Every last one of your files were (sic) erased."

"Everything is good-natured," said Todd Gilbertsen, Delrina development director.

A Microsoft spokesperson said Gates is in Europe and had not seen the program.

Breathed, whose closest contact with Gates came from standing next to him in line once at a Seattle multiplex theater, has made a mini-career of lampooning the Microsoft co-founder and chairman.

A recent "Outland" sequence featured Gates being genetically merged with the pratfall-prone Bill the Cat into Bill the Gates, who exhibited a tendency to devour small companies. When the procedure was reversed, one of Gates' genes accidentally flew into a nearby TV set, infecting Barney the Dinosaur. Barney then began gobbling up small children.

Breathed initially was contacted by Amaze software a year and a half ago, before the company was purchased by Delrina. Amaze co-founder Skip Franklin wanted to adapt Breathed's work to Amaze's line of computer calendars, which featured Gary Larson's "Far Side" panels and the strip "Cathy."

Breathed, who did not use a computer at the time and thought putting cartoons on computers was "boring," was lukewarm to the idea. But when the concept of a screen saver with animation was broached, Breathed jumped.

"He'd just gotten finished doing a children's special with Steven Spielberg (aired as "A Wish for Wings That Work" over Christmas, 1991)," said Delrina's Gilbertsen. "He saw the possibilities immediately."

Breathed hopes "Opus 'n Bill" will bring a few chuckles to the solemn world of productivity software. When he first visited a computer store, he found himself "amazed that I could not find anything that interested me except games. There was virtually no humor."

For a cartoonist, "It was like waving a red flag at a bull."

Delrina hopes to issue periodic upgrades of the screen-saver modules, as often as once a quarter.

"Berkeley's work is so topical, the new stuff he comes up with will have a lot more bang if it's issued on a timely basis," Gilbertsen said.