DW-21 "Professor Plum's BBS"

A Chapter by dw817

The demographic of the BBS I was pretty sure was 12-15. I remember getting in a heated debate one time about the importance of math and education when I saw I had been banned from the board.

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Dating Wyona

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D A T I N G W Y O N A

© April 2021 - Written by David Wicker
Please do not reprint without permission

CHAPTER 21 - "Professor Plum's BBS"

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* * *

This chapter is Rated: TEEN

Adding to the uncomfortable she started to sing a nursery rhyme which was pretty silly I thought ...

Hush little baby, don't you say a word.
Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don't sing,
I ain't buy you another fcking thing !

Not quite the way I remembered my own Mother singing this quiet and tranquil song.

But, I did sleep. And I did wake up. Several hours later I noticed all the lights were off except the television which clearly showed The Legend Of Zelda in full swing.

Jade was there still playing. I looked for a second and saw she was in some area with graveyards and ghosts. I thought it would be a good idea to get up and use the bathroom.

She saw me and without turning her head asked, "You good ?"

I nodded, "Yeah. Just fine. Are you - going to sleep soon ?"

"In a bit." She was intense on the game.

I went to get myself a drink of water. Used the bathroom. Came back out and the TV was off but a smaller light was on. It was then I could see there was an area for 2 sleeping bags.

I looked to her. She got cross, "Hey ! I'm not sleeping with you on the first date !"

I held up my hands defensively, "No no, it's not that, I just - I wanted to thank you for a nice evening."

She looked at me suspiciously, "Yeah ?"

"Yeah." I said and held my hand out.

She ran over and shook it. "Yeah, aight."

Then she went to her sleeping bag, I went back to mine and didn't wake until morning.

And morning had an odor to it. A nice pleasant one. Smelling strongly of cooked BACON !

I stumbled out of bed to see that Jade had a little cooker to the side and was making eggs and bacon. On the TV instead of Nintendo it was showing Davey & Goliath. So she could get a television reception in here.

She even had a toaster. I came up behind her and patted her on the back.

"Breakfast soon." she said.

I then found where she had the towels went into the bathroom and took a proper shower getting myself all cleaned up.

I came back out and she had set a paper plate beside the TV where we could both see. There were two bacon slices, some nicely sunny-side up eggs, two pieces of buttered toast, and what clearly had to be black coffee.

"Nice." I told her.

She smiled sweetly and patted the area next to her. I dried off and got dressed. We watched some of the kid shows they usually show on Sunday.

Then after we finished eating she threw away the plastic forks and paper plates. I got together my stuff back in the suitcase. She carefully unlocked her front door to listen.

She whispered back to me, "They could all still be having a hangover."

I followed after her. She relocked her door and then we were sludging our feet through the mess, right past her Mother who was asleep in the chair the TV still running, an empty wine bottle in her hands.

Then to the front door where we met no-one else.

We got to her green roadster and putting the suitcase back in her trunk, we drove off.

She drove me right back to the side of Albertson's.

I looked to her for a second, wanting marriage and wanting babies. And - could I provide all this ?

* * *

"I'll be in touch." she said simply and then leaning forward kissed me on my forehead.

I smiled, got my suitcase, stepped out of the car, retrieved my bicycle and skated back over to Dad's, where he was waiting asking how my Dungeons & Dragons game went.

I said fine.

"Did you have a shower too ?"

I nodded. "Yep. Thought it would save me the trouble from being grungy till I got here."

We did our usual long walk, came back, I read the funnies while he read the rest of the newspaper. Then Dad said he was still tired and wanted to lay down for a bit.

So I went back to the computer room and checked Matchmaker.

Apparently I was still pretty popular as I had a lot of mail. I sometimes wondered if it was just because of two things, one I was male, two I was 17-years old.

I wondered if let's say I was much older would I still be so sought after ?

Weeding through the emails of little consequence I came across Wayne's, and it surprised me what he said.

"How was your date ?"

Hah - he was pretty smart after all.

"Yeah she was fine. She wants to get married and have babies though."

"What do you want to do ?" he asked me.

I bit my lip in thought. "I don't want to be corralled in to anything."

He wrote back, "You know that won't happen with me."

I nodded, "Yeah. You've been pretty relaxed about the whole thing."

He asked, "So are you coming this next Friday ?"

I nodded, "Yep. Same time."

He wrote back, "Good. We're going to do a bit more exploring of Dallas if that's okay."

I wrote back, "Sure. Signing off." and closed Matchmaker.

I worked a bit more in GWBasic not really liking it. Oh I liked that you could create variables on the fly and set down to write what I thought was the best rocket lander game ever complete with high-score name entry.

But it was not a very productive programming language overall for what I wanted and that was MEMORY. It only had 64k to work with and the graphics were slow.

Dad had just bought Borland Pascal so I took a look at that. I wrote my classic simple benchmark program, to initialize graphics and draw colored pixels as quickly as possible to the screen.

And, I was pleasantly surprised to see Pascal ran at about 20x faster than GWBasic - so I would stick with this at least for today.

After finally getting the benchmark program finished I saw that I could easily create a game that would run 24-25 frames-per-second. Exciting stuff ! I saved off my work and returned back to the BBSs.

One of the BBS types I went to call was for the Commodore 64 called Professor Plum which would let the IBM neatly call them up despite not being Commodore.

I enjoyed these as most other BBSs were all serious and these Professor Plum BBSs were run by a bunch of loud-mouthed and often rude kids.

At the time I was going by the alias of Dreamwalker and while I did engage in some of their rude conversations it was pretty obvious to them that I was an outsider and not a snot-nosed kid like they were.

The demographic I was pretty sure was 12-15. I remember getting in a heated debate one time about the importance of math and education when I saw I had been banned from the board.

But not before received a message from the SysOp:

"Dreamwalker if you're reading this do me a favor and kiss my a*s, and while your at it kiss Spit and Nightwatchman. Oh yeah don't forget Lee."

Disturbing words to be sure, apparently all from the staff, but just me imagining them all lining up so I could give them a smooch there gave me a chuckle.

I called the remaining Professor Plum BBSs and stayed low key. I only replied if someone was asking me a direct question and yeah usually it was regarding programming or ideas for video-games.

I was pretty well known to the BBS world as Dreamwalker and that I both wrote video-games and designed them.

Anyways, night came. The week went on like normal. Then it was Friday evening. Dad didn't even ask where I was going now.

Once again I pulled my bicycle out, locked up, skated to the side of Albertson's and unlike Jade - Wayne was waiting for me.

END OF CHAPTER 21