The Captain came and helped his youngest crew member back to his quarters.
Once they got there Lucas asked the Captain to turn on his laptop for him, well he was doing this Lucas turned on a monitor he had over his bed a picked up a trackball mouse and a keyboard from a shelf by his bed. Lucas then lay on his bed staring up at the screen. He opened up one of his music files labelled college rock band. The captain saw this on the screen of his laptop and wondered what that meant, just as he was about to ask Lucas he saw him changing the picture in the background to what looked like a group of college kids with instruments and a teenage boy with a guitar in his hands poising some what like Angus Young on the cover of AC/DC Highway to Hell album. He then looked over to Lucas and saw him playing air guitar to just that song, he turned to him and said "I have a few questions for you young man, one what's with the folder labelled College Rock Band and Two why does that look like a picture of you about a year ago."
Lucas looked up at the man and debated about weather to answer him or not. He thought that after what he had just told him about the Vocorder yesterday he figured it would be best to be honest with him. Lucas looked over to the captain and said "to answer both your questions at the same time, when I was in my second year of college some of my dorm mates wanted to start a rock band the only problem was they didn't have a guitar player, I mentioned to one of them that my Mom had made me take guitar lessons when I was a little younger then I was then, and am now. Anyway they asked me if I could play electric guitar. I told them that I had only played a regular one but was willing to try and play an electric one. One of them, a close friend of mine called Jason, had an old Gibson SG that his brother had given to him before he ended up buying a guitar of his own. Jason ended up teaching me to play it a little bit better then I could before. We practiced for a few weeks before our first gig at a local bar that was willing to let me in only to play and not have any drinks. It was probably one of the hardest things for me to do, as I was standing on a stage with my friends with a guitar in my hands, about to play before a group of complete strangers who had been drinking for most of the night. We started out doing the classic AC/DC song Highway to Hell, during the intro I just kind' a stood there playing my guitar like any one else might, but as our lead singer a friend of mine by the name of Jordan stated singing the first few lines of the song I just started playing it the way I saw Angus do it in a video that they had shown me. I started running around the stage and duck-walking across it, when Jordan got to the end of the song I slid across the stage and stuck the neck of my guitar between his legs well still playing it. He looked down and said 'getting a little low there Lucas', the audience just laughed at that and gave us a huge round of applause."
The Captain looked at Lucas and smiled at him and said "how come you've never told anyone any of this before?"
"Well my dad was never too thrilled about me playing guitar so I always kept it secret from everyone. They eventually had me dressing in a school boy uniform; I also sang a few songs myself."
"What songs did you sing with them?"
"One of the songs I sang was Both Sides of the Story by Phil Collins"
"That's an interesting song for you to have chosen."
"I actually didn't chose that one of my friends handed the lyrics to me and said 'this song reminds me of you a little, especially the second verse' I looked at it and said 'man that's exactly what happened before my parents divorced, but if I'm going to sing it I want to make a little change to it.' I ended up changing it from
"A neighbourhood peace is shattered it's the middle of the night young faces hide in the shadows, while they watch their mother and father fight he says she's been unfaithful, she says her love for him has gone and the brother shrugs to his sister and says "looks like it's just us from now on"
, to
"A neighbourhood peace is shattered it's the middle of the night a young face hides in the shadows, while he watches his mother and father fight she says he's been unfaithful, he says her love for her has gone and the boy shrugs to himself and says "looks like it's just me from now on"
Captain Briger looked at him and said "I was in a bar near Stanford one time and a group of students came on and played that song well a boy who looked almost to young to be there sang it with the lyrics you just told me about, I now know that boy was you that night."
Lucas nodded to the captain and said "So what did you think of the rest of the set, that night."
The captain looked over to Lucas and said "it was really intrusting and I liked when you came back after the intermission dressed in a schoolboy outfit to play AC/DC."
The captain started looking around Lucas's room, who of course noticed this, out of the corner of his eye well he was chatting with one of his friends on the internet. He saw the captain looking at has desk which had a pile of papers on it, most of them contained complex equations that the Captain was sure only Lucas would understand, however some of them contained sketches of dolphins. Most of the sketches seemed to be of Darwin. The Captain looked at them closely and said to Lucas "I never knew you could draw like this."
Lucas looked over to him and said "It's just something I start doing when I'm board, I took a few art classes in high school and one or two in college. As you can also see I like to do complex math equations too."
The Captains attention was then drawn to the bookshelf above the computer desk. It contained a number of computer textbooks along with ones on marine biology and physics. He also saw books on astronomy and a couple of books on linguistics. There was also a copy of the Hitch Hacker's Guide to the Galaxy complete trilogy in five parts that looked to be well read as did the copy of Lord of the Rings next to it. "Interesting book collection textbooks and then the Hitch Hacker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Lord of the Rings, have you read all of them."
Lucas looked over to the captain again and said "Lord of the Rings and Hitch
Hacker's Guide to the Galaxy yes, but I've only read about half the textbooks as there mostly reference materials for my thesis."
"How's that going?"
Lucas put down his keyboard turned to the captain and said "Unfortunately I haven't had much time for it lately as I was busy the last couple of months designing the new systems for SeaQuest II, and fixing the bugs in the new systems. But I am hoping to get back to it soon. I was actually thinking of asking you to look over it for me as I'm dyslexic and sometimes have a hard time reading over it."
The captain looked at him with a look of surprise on his face did Lucas just tell him that he was dyslexic. "How come you never told me that before?"
"It's never usually a problem for me as most of the work I do around here is on the computers, so it never came up."
Lucas returned to his online conversation with Wolfman and Julianna. While the Captain sat on the chair in front of Lucas's desk he then saw three binders on the books shelf, one was ladled Prof. Martison backup, the Captain pulled this one off the shelf and flipped it open, and he saw that all it contained was about 200 CD-ROMs. "What's this" he said holding up the binder to show Lucas, who looked over to see what he was holding up.
"That's the backups for his entire knowledgebase and the program itself. I started that when I rewrote the program for this boat. I did it so I wouldn't have to do it again if you decide to crash the SeaQuest again."
The Captain looked at him and laughed saying "don't worry I won't be doing that again."
After putting that one back he picked up the next one that was much thicker and had no title on it, he opened it up and found that it also contained
CD-ROMs; he estimated that there must be at least 3 or 4 hundred of them. He figured this must be the backup for the Vocorder.
Lucas again looked over to see what the captain was looking at, "that's the backup for the Vocorder. The first 20 disks I copied the week before the
SeaQuest went down."
Just then Doctor Westphalen came in to check on him, she knocked on the door and waited for a response. Lucas heard it and told whomever it was to come in.
Dr. Westphalen opened the door and said "I hope I'm not interrupting anything but I'm just here to check on Lucas."
She walked over to his bed and asked him how he was feeling; she checked and changed the IV that he still had in his arm. She smiled at him when she saw that he was chatting with his friends on the internet, she figured if he could do that he probably wasn't feeling too bad. She then asked him if there was anything that he need. Lucas yawned before saying "yeah maybe some sleep."
"Do you want some help getting comfy?" she asked.
Lucas sleepily said "yeah that would be nice, and I'm sorry about this morning in med bay I was still kind of out of it from the drugs you were giving me."
He then signed off his computer and put the keyboard and mouse back on the shelf were he kept them. When he reached up to turn off the monitor Dr Westphalen did it for him. Lucas just smiled at her and said "Thanks."
Next both her and the Captain helped Lucas with the covers on his bed as he got comfortable under them. The Captain ruffled Lucas's hair and said "goodnight kiddo I hope you feel better soon."
Captain Briger and Dr. Westphalen then left his room after turning out the light. As the left the captain saw Darwin floating in the Aqua Tube beside Lucas's bed and knew that he would be fine. He took one last look around the "organised cause" that was Lucas's room and thought about how much he had found out about him both yesterday and today. Lucas was still a great mystery to him, but he was gradually finding out more about him.