Utopia (2): Meet Gavin Poullan

The question is if Paul is the help I need. Should I tell him about my problems? Will he believe me? I wouldn't do it by myself - it's really more than impossible to happen anyway, isn't it? However - still I have some time to the evening. Although - gosh - we should at least settle on a specific time. Never mind, I guess that mobile phones will solve this problem when it comes.

So - who is Gavin, where does he work, ...? Many questions - answers needed. Id card itself doesn't contain any useful information. Personal id, name, birth date, photo with my face on it. Well, I need something else. I returned to that drawer with documents. It looks like I live in a town called Rotherham. Never heard of it. Now the date would be fine. I went to the desk again and checked the computer screen. Yeah, there it is... it's simply the date after yesterday. Everything looks fine. So how could I get here without even noticing?!

Many things gave me a hint that I'm not on the Earth I know. Unknown computer environment, many unknown things and really more modern equipment in the house here and there. There is great chance that I may not know every technical devices in a foreign flat, but this was beyond the level of suspicion.

Work - Gavin (or me or whoever) has job. This answer took more papers to go through but after all I found it. Software Developer. Nice... I stop to believe in coincidences. Why I even have the same job? Well - not really - I never heard of the language. There may be much more what can surprise me in the job I guess. However at least the style of thinking should be the same. Whatever, I'll ask Paul later.

Computer applications were similar to ours for a first sight. There was some type of network browser - although there seemed to be no difference between local and remote resources in the way how they were treated. And it was more... well - object oriented from my professional point of view. Even remote objects (not only pages, far from it!) were very responsive. I found some chat application after a while. Hm, Gavin has really BIG contact list. It's even hierarchized. Well, no wonder when he has... unbelievable - 2474 contacts?! And not only that. It took me some minute to find out what's the semantic of the chat but then I can see that there is more than one hundred of unread messages. Stupid spam!

After another few minutes I can see that every message is really addressed to me and it has meaning and that senders obviously know me very well. Him-me... let's face it - I'm Gavin, so I'm quitting that "he" pose from now on. And here it is! Caren McKinley, my co-worker, age 26, some task list, generic contact identifier (eh, whatever that is) and also some personal notes. Nothing applicable right now, but there is new message from her few minutes old.

Caren: Hi Gav. I heard that you have some problem with coming to work. I hope it's nothing serious. :-)

Now what? I have no idea how I possibly could break this if I pay attention and say less then nothing specific. Let's try it.

Gavin: No serious problem when it comes to health or so. I'm just kinda dazed after the night - don't know why.
Caren: Kinda dazed? :-)))
Gavin: Well a little bit. ;-)
Caren: Kinda? :-) What... you started to invent new words or what?

Oh, gosh... write properly! It isn't the right time to study histories of Gav's chats right now - however I know that it's great idea at least. I decided to skip this problem somehow at this moment.

Gavin: Just dazed - now you can see it. :-)
Caren: So full day off today?
Gavin: Yes... rather.
Caren: Well, I'll try to go through it alone. ;-)

I stopped for thinking for a while. Go through what? Was it personal or professional? And how to find out without raising suspicion.

Gavin: I hope you're not so alone. ;-)
Caren: Oh, c'mon, I don't have mood to join other pair now. I can do something on alone, don't worry. :-) And maybe I'll see you in the eve.
Gavin: Right, I think that eve is no problem.
Caren: BTW: That problem with business message library is fixed at last.
Gavin: Great!

Really great, I have no idea what is she talking about. Caren is silent for a while so I decided to check other possibilities of that object browsing thingy. It has even name - World Browser. Oh, how original... I created class called WorldCotroller once - that was much more powerful designation, wasn't it? Ok, let's browse now.

I was working for company called Allied System Applications (I knew it from chat notes for Caren) and with this information it's proper time to find out how to search for things in Browser. And it is much easier than I expected - I can hit upon search feature on every step. Yet still it's not intrusive. Nice.

Allied System Applications is company based in Newberden (never heard of it either) with some branches in Kees, Archsta and Rotherham. 933 employees all around, 114 in Rotherham. Well, my new company is obviously larger than the one before. Strange thing for me is that I can find too many things about the company in that Object World (really hard to narrow it down to our Internet even after a few minutes experience). Full employee list, for example. Ah, my name - and link.

Gavin Poullan, 28 years old, Arto (that's the programming language name) application developer, 6 years in ASA, some projects I was working on were named too. Everything with possibility to navigate there for closer detail. It looks like the ASA is really open company. However this was some public record about the company. ASA has also their official portal (page?) and there were much more objects containing something about ASA too. There is even list of competitors! Eh... I really don't know what I should think about that.

I took a quick tour around the Object World (or simply World - as it looks like they call it so simply) and found out that similar information is provided for every named company. And I was more and more sure that I need a little help and explanation what I should think about this. Well, Paulie, call or come - and do it quickly.