Hello boys and girls. You might not know me, but I'm a famous scientist. I work extensively with space locomotion technology and time travel equipment. That means I work on many important ideas that will help make life easier. Many of you have to ride on stinky buses for potentially hours just to get to school and make the same fun-filled trip home. A good temporary remedy might be to get nose plugs until I can get this stuff working well enough for safe human use.

I should first mention that Jeff and I are quite close, despite what I said to him when he was leaving with Ness. I knew that if we had a long goodbye he might loose heart and give up on his journey so quickly. Though the expression on his face told me he knew what I was doing. With a heavy heart I kept my feelings hidden to make it easier on the both of us.

I remember years ago when Jeff was still going to Snow Wood Boarding school as Christmas drew nearer and nearer, he kept asking me if I could buy him a brand new Thinkpad computer. He was always interested in computers and admires machines that can take a beating and still work. I of course tried my best to get it for him to open on Christmas morning but there was a big demand for them and I was out of luck. He wanted a particular model and as usually happens the particular one the child wants is the only one to be sold out. I could have bought him another model, but I knew he wouldn't have as much use for it. As much as I didn't want to, I had to wait a few weeks after Christmas to buy one for him.

Anyway, that year I wanted to go to Snow Wood and bring gifts for all the children that work so hard to learn all year. I believe it is important to reward such hard work in some way. I stocked up on plenty of CDs containing Beethoven, Bach and other extremely talented composers that many children of their caliber enjoy. I thought about buying games for many of them, since research has suggested that a small amount of playing skill based games develops a skill. Many of the children also enjoy reading books in their off time and so I purchased books that tell history, science study and a variety of other redeeming books.

My gifts in hand and dressed up like Santa, I made my way to the school from my Laboratory, Brick Road offered to help me carry them. With smiles on our faces we made it quickly to the school. I wish you could have seen the smiles on the children's faces. Without haste I began passing out the gifts. The kids were really excited and many had never seen Santa before. Most didn't recognize me but were happy regardless. I can't tell you how much fun I had that night. The children were so happy with the gifts, especially those who got the CDs. But then I quickly realized that Jeff was soon in line and I hadn't yet figured out what to say to him. He of course recognized me and I knew what the smile on his face meant.

My mind flashed through thoughts of him as a child and how dedicated he was to learning in an attempt to follow in my footsteps. I came to reward the dedication of these kids as a whole and I would end up disappointing my only son. I remember him working feverishly for hours to grasp the concepts of what computers could do when he was a mere lad of five. I remember that he would not let me help him, because he thought that if he got the easy answer now he would get lazy later. Needless to say, he figured it out not long after and has been working hard since. He is learning to be a scientist, but he understands both the uses of a computer in his experiments but also in recording results permanently. He sees value in almost everything, that's an admirable and useful quality. His turn came all too quickly and I didn't have what he wanted. He saw my face and quickly figured out what had happened. With a reassuring smile, he said, “Don't worry pop, I'm sure you did your best in trying to getting the Thinkpad. It's alright.”. He had shown the maturity I saw in him many times before. Still I was very disappointed that I couldn't deliver on the promise I had made.

Within a few weeks the Thinkpad arrived and he was excited beyond belief. Almost immediately he opened it and began tinkering. As an older generation scientist, I never really got to use computers much, but he showed me how to use it. Within hours he had set up Linux and began working. I was impressed at how sturdy feeling it was, it really felt like a quality piece of work. He laughed often as I stumbled while using it and we got some good chuckles. It was really fun experience. For the first time I learned how useful these computers are. I even bought one for myself a few weeks later. He came by to set it up for me, I insisted that I would learn the way he taught me. It was really a fun time. Having him at the lab is always something I look forward to, I was thankful to learn the computer, because he comes by often to check on my progress when he doesn't have a lot of school work to do. I can say honestly that even if I didn't find such good uses for this computer, having him come by so often was worth what I paid and more.

I hope all you children enjoyed this story. I hope you will work hard in school and learn as much as you can. Well, I'm off. I haven't had a dough nut since morning and I'm awfully hungry.