Pinocchio comes into the auditorium for the seminar class. He steps over a row of chairs, as I am so inconsiderately sitting at the aisle and blocking the end, and settles in near me.
"I saw someone cutting wires on the Hamsters," he says.
"Did you stop them?" I know better than to react.
"Really! Someone was cutting wires and bending the microcontroller modules to see if they could bend," he insists.
"Didn't you hit them?"
"They were breaking things in half!" He opens his eyes wider as if that makes him more believable.
"And you didn't stop them? Why not?"
"The door was locked. But I banged on the window, they were cutting wires…"
"Oh, you know how to get into that lab." I roll my eyes.
From behind my chair, where he's hiding with his laptop near a power outlet, Smiley calls to me, "You are cool. Like —" (Here he kind of mumbles and I don't quite catch it.)
"Like what?" I twist around and peer down at him.
"It's from a game," he says.
"Oh. Okay." I guess.
Some of the other guys nod along with him. And smile. Even Pinocchio.
It would be really cool if I could remember the game he named and get some confirmation on this.
214 words | March 2, 2005 11:18 PM | Ivory tower