taking only two hours to check the information on her computer. After the Great Smoke, with the death of most computer scientists, a happy consensus opened among the few computer connoisseurs left alive. Some of them whispered forbidden words like GÜINDOUS, IPONES, YAVA and a thousand other nonsense.
All that hellish string of incompatible programs had been left behind with the whole old system. Throw the incompatibility out. The World Federation Programmers had created the definitive Operative System, free, compatible one hundred percent with all electronic device of the planet. The SOS, as the Super Operative System invented by WFP was affectionately called was a substantial improvement in global computing. In addition, the new programmers, full of good humor had taken the opportunity to include in that name, an implicit play on words, using as a base the famous dead language of antiquity, English.
In any case, despite great advances in computer science, the ineptitude of some receptionists had not improved much at that time.
“Will it be much longer? I get bored” Peter’s daydreams vanished with the advent of Corinne's mystical question, who added a yawn from his professional jargon of “I get mortally bored”.
“It's that house over there.”
Peter's index finger pointed to a large white house. The building had two floors with a huge porch at the bottom. The house was in the middle of a green grassy meadow and the estate contained several majestic looking oaks. The whole house was surrounded by wire fences. Large red-bottomed signs and white letters displayed: NON-SMOKING AREA.
Someone dressed in a white suit opened the front gate for them. Peter drove the caravan into the compound. The young man in the white clothes shaken his hands in a friendly way. Corinne, camera on her shoulder was the first to enter the house.
“We are Peter and Corinne; we are delighted to be able to visit Mr. N...
The young man interrupted him abruptly.
“If you call him ‘sir’, you are doomed. You must call him ‘Rick’. Just ‘Rick’.”
“Rick?” Peter replied.
“Yes. Call him Rick. Rick Grimmes. Follow me.”
The future interviewee was sitting in a rocking chair on a small balcony at the back of the house. Between his hands was a strange gray-faced doll. That figure did not have any human features, in the face of the alleged toy were missing eyes, nose, ears, eyebrows, hair. The strange figure wore a wide white gabardine, the hat of equal color, was surrounded by a blue ribbon and a scarf, also blue, appeared timidly under his neck. Rick looked at the inanimate object as if he were talking to it. On the torso of the doll were eight shimmering green buttons, the belt, colored as the buttons was tied tightly to the abdomen. The rag doll’s feet ended up in tiny red boots.
“Rick? Rick Grimmes? We are Peter and Corinne from the PPC.”
The man who answered to Rick Grimmes' name was sitting in a wheelchair. When he heard his name, he nervously left the doll on the floor. From the description in the psychiatric chart, the man must have been over a hundred years old, but it was barely noticeable. Rick took advantage of the pause to scratch with his right hand the leafy beard of his face.
“Please sit down,” commented the young man dressed in white attire.
Peter and Corinne agreed.
“They're coming back,” the old man in a wheelchair said.
“Excuse me Rick, what did you say?” Peter interrupted quickly.
“Smokers. They're there. They're waiting for us.”
Corinne had been recording the whole time. She was a real nail fanatic, quite a snob, but above all she was a professional camera operator. As soon as she smelled something similar to news, she connected her camera and recorded everything. It was like a disease. Peter couldn't help but look at Corinne's professionalism and, by the way, also noticed the two extra good reasons that Corinne always had hanging on her front.
“It's not over. It's just a truce” Mr. Rick abruptly pulled Peter out of his erotic daydreams.
“Rick, why do you think that? Would you mind if we record him while we talk?”
“Do as you like.”
The old bearded face in a Texan hat stared at the horizon. He kept muttering something to himself, as if Peter and Corinne were not in that room with him.
“It all started years ago. One day I woke up after a long coma. At least that's what they told me. Then I went out into the street and met one of them for the first time. His face was swollen, his eyes glazed, his skin rotten, and worst of all, a cigarette butt in his right hand. They looked at you with their lazy eyes, their arms hanging down and the eternal smoking cigarette fag-end that they put in their mouths by simple inertia. Some even babbled ‘giiiiive me a liiiiight...’. They hissed each and every syllable of the words they uttered through their filthy mouths filled with rickety yellow teeth. No, the young people can't even imagine what that was all about. Hordes of smokers ravaging everything. Do you know what was the worst thing about it?”
“No, Rick, what was the worst?”
“Their touch. If a smoker touched a person for a long period of time, that person became a smoker instantly. It's horrible. One day Bill and I found ourselves inspecting an old gas station. Bill was a young boy from the Kansas area, I don't think he'd ever left his village, and he was checking the pumps for gas and then I smelled them. When that happened, problems started to take place. I remember that conversation: ‘What... what...? What's up, Rick,’ stammered the good Bill who sensed the problems in the air. ‘They're here,’ I replied. ‘You're... you're... Are you sure?’ ‘Yes. “How... How do you know for sure?’ poor Bill kept replied incredulously. ‘Because of the smell, Bill, because of the smell’. ‘Smell, smell of what? Rottenness?’ ‘No, Bill, nicotine’.”
Rick looked at the place on the floor where he had deposited the faceless doll and continued talking.
“Then, without warning, a smoker came out of the shadows. Bill fell to the ground. He rolled and rolled across the ground. A brave boy is able to hurt. I missed the first shot to the head of that smoker; both were very close. Bill couldn't get the smoker off his back. Finally, I fired an accurate shot, the bullet pierced the smoker's right temple, but that wasn't enough. Smokers could resist worse injures. After all, they never had brains, and that smoker was so small that a single shot wasn't enough for anything. The smoker continued to fight the desperate boy, without giving him any truce. The smoker's hand rested on the face of the poor, frightened Bill. He fought with all his soul, managed to kick the monster out of the way and shot him twice bluntly. But it was too late. Then I noticed the first symptom in my companion, he started crawling like a desperate little dog on the floor, looking for some cigarette butt or something remotely similar to put in his mouth.”
Rick put his right hand to his chin, scratched his beard hard, as if trying to remember something.
“Then the second symptom appeared. Bill had never smoked in his life, but he began to intone the words a thousand times cursed: ‘Giiiiive me a liiiiight...’. He had already been converted. Luckily, I had three nicotine patches in the pocket of my jacket. I shot a porous patch right into his hand. That gave me a vital time. Bill, or what was left of him, started desperately sucking on the patch. He was eager for nicotine. It's the last thing he saw before I shot him with an accurate gunshot between the eyebrows.”
