'None of those—too clunky for me. I have my own platform that I use. It's sort of similar to the old Linux platform I guess. And the code, well, it is most similar to the old Multi-Agent Markup Language,' I responded.
'You ever worked on this level of coding before?' he asked.
'I used to work on router code and stuff back before . . . uh, here.' I motioned to the repair shop but I wanted to say, The Rain. I felt sad all of a sudden.
'I see. Uh, what's your name again?'
'Steven, Steven Montana,' I replied.
'Well, hey Steven, thanks and good job.' He left.
What an odd fellow, I thought. He was about five nine with neatly cropped black hair wearing black pants, white shirt, and tie. He carried himself more like an engineer or a business manager than a programmer. I meant to ask why he wanted that old thing fixed so badly. Heck, the repair bill was more than that thing was worth, but I forgot.
A few days passed and Mr. Waterford came back to VR's and had some interesting questions for me.
'Steven, hi.' He sounded excited. 'How are you?'
'Doin' all right I guess. Havin' trouble with your game again?'
'Huh . . . oh, no. I came back to talk to you. Do you have a minute or perhaps I could buy you a burger or something?'
'Uh, man I'm straight, but flattered,' I replied.
Waterford looked at me and started chuckling. Holding up his left hand and pointing out his wedding band he said, 'Mr. Montana, I assure you this is purely business. I might have some more, uh, lucrative possibilities for you than this place.'
'Okay. There's a sandwich shop around the corner, you're buying.' Didn't hurt to listen, especially for a free meal.
'Good,' he said. 'Lead the way.'
'Hey Robert, I'm takin' my lunch break now. Be back in a bit.' The little blue-haired punk just grunted and nodded at me.
The actual lunch part of lunch was not that exciting, just a foot-long club loaded and a bag of Doritos, to wash it down a super-sized Mountain Dew. I hadn't had my sugar or caffeine fix that morning so I figured a couple refills on the thirty-two-ounce Mountain Dew should hold me through the afternoon. Pretty standard lunch stuff for me. The lunch conversation, on the other hand, turned out to be quite exciting.
'You see it's like this,' Mr. Waterford was telling me. 'That was some pretty good code decryption, hardware reverse engineering, and code writing. Just so happens I could probably use someone like you in my outfit.'
'What kind of outfit?' I asked.
'I work for the United States Air Force Space Vehicles Directorate out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We have a branch lab here at Wright Patterson. I'm the Lead Systems Engineer over the local division of the Innovative Concepts Group. We call it the ICG for short.'
'No shit?'
'Uh, yeah no shit. My group does a lot of . . . uh . . .
'Hey, that's pretty cool. So what does that have to do with me?' I hoped I knew where this was going. If I was right, I knew a blue-haired and pierced punk that I was going to say good riddance to.
'Like I said, you did some good reverse engineering on that game console of my wife's. That was her favorite game back in college that you fixed. I gave it to her for our twenty-fifth anniversary. She used to play that thing all the time. I found it in the attic a while back and had been trying to find someone that could fix it. VR's is the first place I found that would touch it. My guess is because of you.' He paused to check my reaction and to take a bite of his sandwich. With a mouthful he continued, 'So, have you ever been arrested for anything before or done any illegal stuff? What about drugs? If you can't pass a drug test I'm wasting my time.'
'Uh, no I'm pretty dull. Sequencing is my only addiction. I have some prescription drugs if that matters.'
'Nah, that's fine. Okay, what about education? Where did you learn how to do all this stuff?' He took a sip of his soda.
I proceeded to tell him about the high school science fairs and the University of Dayton and . . . The Rain. And finished up with how I ended up at VR's.
'Sorry to hear that about your family and friends. I had a lot of friends at Space Park in El Segundo and my first cousin was stationed in Ramstein. I understand some of what you went through, sorry. On the other hand, it's good that you're doing okay. It would be easier if you had finished school though. How many more classes do you need?' He seemed fairly genuine with his concerns. He would be much better to work for than Robert. I was beginning to feel underdressed and too unprofessional for this meeting. I was getting nervous.
'I believe I am six classes short. I could probably finish it up in one hard semester. Two tops. Are you seriously considering making me a job offer?'
'Two semesters sounds about right,' he began. 'How about this, you come and work for me as a cooperative education student while finishing your degree as fast as possible. As soon as you graduate we will move you from a co-op to an engineer at a GS-07 pay scale. That's about forty-seven thousand a year. Of course until you graduate you will be at a GS-4 bringing in about half that. The government has good benefits and insurance, so, my guess is that you would be much better off with us. Also, by the time you finished with your co-oping your security clearances might be through.'
'You mean this would be secret stuff?' I was getting excited.
'Oh, I thought I had mentioned that. Is that a problem for you?' he smiled.
