Chapter 1: Solitary Man

(Gilbert)

Name: Gilbert Ender York

Sex: Male

Age: 16

Birthday: 2nd of April

Height: 5'8''

Weight: 128 lbs.

Hair colour: Dark brown

Eye colour: Hazel

Occupation: Student, Senior year in high school (skipped one grade)

Blood type: O

Marital status: As single as can be

Likes: Logical solutions to problems

Dislikes: Bullies

Hobbies: Computer science, discrete mathematics, formal theorem proving, linguistics, reading and cooking

Favourite food: Penne all'arrabbiata

Favourite colour: White (since it is technically every visible colour)

Most prized possession: Signed first edition, first printing of Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools

Biggest idols: Prof. Dr. Edsger Dijkstra

Goals in life: Getting at least one Ph.D.

Special ability: To be invisible at social events

Opinion of Amanda Johnson: One of the worst persons in my high school. She has probably never said a kind word in her life.

Hello! My name is Gilbert York and I'm one of the two protagonists in this story. A story that began only a few months before the end of my senior year in high school. In my high school, and probably many other high schools there was three kinds of people. There was the social elite, which consisted of cheerleaders and jocks, the normal people and the geeks. I did not fit in any of those categories. The best description of me would probably be have been the word übergeek, too geeky to even hang out with the geeks.

For those of you who don't know about geeks there is a wide scale of geeks. Take the type of geek I happened to be, a computer geek. The average computer geek is just someone who is shy or who likes to surf the internet and play computer games all day. The more extreme computer geeks like writing their own computer programs and studying technical manual. These are much rarer than one would think, but since they carry some status among the geeks many pretend to be a extreme geek. I was something even more extreme, I was a übergeek.

Saying that I was a computer geek is actually a bit misleading since I actually very rarely used my computer. I would rather say that I was a computer science geek. What's the difference you may ask. Well to put it in the words of my biggest role model, "Computer science is as much about computers that astronomy is about telescopes." In other words computers are just tools we sometime use. In fact I see computer science as a subset of discreet mathematics. Instead of actually writing programs I liked to calculate the efficiency of algorithms that programs uses. I liked evaluating compilers, programs that translate information readable by humans into information readable by computers. I liked proving theorems by the power of deduction.

I know that this may seem a bit boring to you, but I found it fascinating. There is a beauty that can be found nowhere else. That clear logical structure that almost seems divine. How an infinite private universe can be built upon a handful of axioms. The beauty of proving a theorem by breaking it up with other theorems until you reach the axioms. I like the simplicity of a problem only having three solutions; true, false or undecidable. Everything has it's place in a perfect structure, unlike the real world.

Well how did I become a übergeek? Well I must blame my parents. Don't get me wrong I love my parents, but they are both geeks. My parents met at a science fiction convention, when they had shared the first place in a Doctor Who trivia contest. In fact that they are such geeks that they originally intended to name me James Tiberius Kirk York after the main character from the old Star Trek show. Luckily they changed at the last moment to Gilbert Ender York. Gilbert after my mother's father and Ender from the main character of my father's favourite book, Ender's game. The computer interest came partly from my mother that worked as a programmer, and partly from my father that was a mathematician. My entire upbringing was not normal. When I was five I knew most science fiction shows by heart. When I was seven I started writing simple computer programs and reading technical reports. When I was nine I could solve simple differential equations.