Chapter 1: Sam White
Chapter 1 – Sam White
Jazz played low as the air hung heavy with cigarette smoke and the smell of good booze.
I took another drag off my smoke, marveling at how little time I had left to enjoy this.
Indoor smoking would soon be banned, at least if this place followed the same pattern as where I came from...and it was walking almost lockstep with it.
That was the precise reason that I chose this place.
It was like home...before it all went to crap.
Figured I could carve out a nice little life here...remain unnoticed and, if need be, step in to set things right from behind the scenes.
It doesn’t take much to adjust the course of fate...if you know the path pretty well already.
Because let’s face it...there was always some useful idiot just dying to be somebody. And they never wanted to do the work for it.
Enter somebody like me...well, there really wasn’t anyone like me, but that’s not the point...Sam White...with the knowledge to give that starry-eyed fame chaser everything they could dream of.
Who would say no?
Nobody.
I blew out a gout of smoke and felt my jaw set as my thoughts drifted back to home.
I shook myself. No, not today.
I turned my attention to the quietly blaring television in the corner of the little bar.
Big announcement.
So the starry-eyed young man that I had bumped into made good use of the designs that I handed him.
Good.
He had been working tirelessly on his inventions and hadn’t had any success...but he would have.
He would have made a breakthrough very soon...and that breakthrough would have led, eventually, to the device that laid waste to my home...the Thoughtmate.
With a quick nudge and a few words in his ear...he decided to abandon the project he was working on. Even traded me the plans...in exchange for the specs to a computer.
He had to reverse engineer it. I always made people work for it a little.
But he was a smart lad, and he had the particular sparkle in his eye that said he would do just about anything to be somebody.
Middle school, high school, and even his early life hadn’t been kind to him...and so that drive to succeed was ratcheted up beyond the point of reason.
Good for me.
He was a good kid, real bright...just in a mindset that let his drives cloud his judgment.
Even better for me.
The television kept going on about his new wonder invention. Everyone had to have one.
And soon everyone WOULD have one.
He would bring about the personal computer and all kinds of nifty variations. Portable...life-changing tech.
This world would become dependent on it soon enough. But again, it was on a different road...a much safer one!
I watched the huge cars roll by outside...the sky had been sunny and bright blue when I came in...it was now gray and overcast.
I could feel the swell of a storm coming.
I enjoyed them. I enjoyed when nature did its thing instead of being harnessed and controlled by government mandate.
Nature had been one of the major collars of the last century for my home.
Everything was regulated down to the millisecond...can’t possibly have something that had been running things just fine before we came about keep doing its job. We had to control EVERYTHING.
I suppose it was human nature.
I thought back to the poor kid’s garage...covered in every available spot with electronic parts and plans pinned to the walls.
It was chaos...but at the same time, pure genius.
The kid also had a hell of a mind for business.
If anything, that was where he would outshine any potential competitors in his field. He was a true-to-life genius engineer...he was also a business and sales prodigy.
And he had ZERO shame!
Which meant he would hit up literally anyone he thought could help him...and was open to advice.
Strangely, once he got a few buddies working for him...because honestly, with his personality, that was the only way it could go...he was on his way to building something that would last the test of time.
When I sat down and ran him through the possibilities of what he was working on—avoiding what I knew would actually happen—and then gave him a quick peek at the plans for this computer...he made the decision to abandon his work.
He hadn’t even asked if I wanted any credit, or how much I wanted for them...he just jumped on it.
When I went by to meet with him again and his friends were there, they asked about me, and he just said I was nobody who mattered.
It made me smile.
Good.
I motioned for the bartender to pour me another glass of whiskey.
It felt good to have staved off the collapse here.
While the Thoughtmate was the engine of my home’s disaster...it was the one thing that I salvaged and brought with me to my new home.
Not because I thought it would be great here...because I knew it would be able to stop what would come.
Once I landed here, I set my Thoughtmate—each one is imprinted to its owner’s brain patterns for ease of use and efficiency. Only one imprint per Thoughtmate, no sharing—to scan for any recognizable tech.
It had three pings right away...which meant these were the closest predecessors of itself.
I visited each of the three and found they were all young, shy, bullied kids. Kinda weird, outcasts, and loners.
Color me less than shocked.
I approached each in turn...I expected at least one of them to turn me down flat.
Not a single one did.
They all dropped what they were working on and all but lunged for the plans and the story that I handed them.
Each respected my desire to work from the shadows.
Heck, they didn’t care. If some schmuck wanted to give them all the credit and most of the money, who were they to balk at it.
