Galen wouldn’t look you in the eye, and his monotone voice wasn’t a treat to listen to, but the subject matter was worth it. Even if those odd royal blue eyes never met mine, or his voice wasn’t exactly lifelike, his words were.

I remember the first time he spoke to me. I was lamenting that I couldn’t find anyone that understood what I meant when I started talking about the core programming of the computer they were using, and he turned his head toward me.

“Seems like they’re all too busy on MySpace to realize how much is going on at one time to make it possible,” he said to me in the flat tone I’d come to recognize as friendly. I nodded, and he turned back to his Linux laptop. For a moment, I watched him code, wishing that I could configure open-source programming as deftly as he. Then, taking a risk, I sat beside him, openly looking over his shoulder.

“Anything familiar, or all new?”

“All new,” he replied, not looking up. “I don’t trust anyone’s work but my own.”