Silicon Dreaming

You’ll never guess who I just bumped into, little Johnny Lightsmith from back at Immotec Inc. Now there’s a kid who could sell just about anything to anyone, ice to an Eskimo I think the saying goes, but I’m not too certain where that comes from. He was never really too good with the technical side of things, but you’d have to be careful when around him because he could just about talk you into anything. I remember one of his favourite jokes was that he could talk anybody into anything, but was surprisingly terrible at trying to talk girls into going out with him. “I can generally talk a girl into doing virtually anything, as long as it doesn’t involve me” he was always saying. He was always quite a laugh back in the day.

It seems that time has somehow change him though – seems to change everyone – I mean he’s still the same Johnny Lightsmith, but I’m not sure anymore, just a little different, almost like he’s been through something substantial that has really changed him fundamentally, but like he is still trying to act like his old self. We ran into each other in the hall – literally I mean – as I was heading back to my room just before. I guess we were both looking the other way or something, or maybe it was that cute blonde who was walking past that took our eyes and minds off where we were going. “Oh my lordy!” exclaimed Johnny from the floor, “Now I’ll be damned if that’s not Fitzroy Stargazer himself. What brings you to these parts of the galaxy?” He went on to ask a whole lot of other questions before I’d even had time to answer any of them. But that’s Johnny for you.

Now I had planned on just going back to my room, perhaps reading a bit with some good tunes playing in the background or watching something decent on the reality screen, but somehow – like he always does – Johnny managed to persuade me into having a drink with him in the lounge. It was really good to catch up on old times; we talked about all the different antics we used to get up to and I told him about my ordeal with Daisy out there. “Oh, so that was you out there in the whale?” he remarked just before cracking up into hysterical laughter. Later he managed to get me to tell him the rest of my story, about Lillie, and a little about the junk freighter and how I ended up here on the Sirrus 12 Docking and Departure platform. I asked him if I knew any way I could get in touch with a member of the Free Radicals. At the sound of this, Johnny all of a sudden went quiet and as he leaned over across the table, he whispered in my ear, “It’s not safe to talk here about such matters. Meet me at the departure bay tonight at twenty hundred hours and we’ll take a short flight.”

posted by Joshua @ 17:31