009 on 002

"Yeah, I saw this magazine when I was a kid. It was this in-depth analysis of what people thought the world was going to look like in the year 2000."

We're sitting at the control centre of the Dolphin, waiting for an attack that will not happen for another week. Night watch is everyone's least favourite chore; 12 hours of usually unbroken nothingness, with at least a slim chance that Black Ghost could attack. Any conversation is welcome to try and break the tedium.

"What kind of stuff was in it?"

"Usual: flying cars, floating cities in the sky, robot chauffeurs, trains that take you from Chicago to London in ten seconds, the great age of enlightenment..."

"Sounds optimistic, at least, right?"

"Yeah, I guess..."

"How does it compare?"

"Dunno. I never really thought much about the future back in the day. Most of the time, I was just thinking 'Hmmm, should I hang out in an alleyway today or should I try and swipe a beer from the corner store?'."

He pauses, putting his feet up on the control console.

"If I had cared to think of it," he continues. "I would have imagined something of a more smug future, if you get what I mean. Like, when people usually think they're enlightened it normally means they've thought about the meaning of life for ten minutes and somehow that just automatically makes them better than everyone else. They use big words to make themselves sound smart and laugh behind their hands when everyone else doesn't understand what the hell they're talking about. I hear the words 'age of enlightenment', I just picture a bunch of flakes in white robes sitting around all day, eatin' cuisine, talking about opera and laughing at that one time one of them mistook Monet for Manet. They order their robot butler to clean their flying cars and remember to forget that they are all actually completely useless and their whole lives have been wasted..."

He pauses again, seemingly lost in thought.

"From where I'm sitting, the future's fine. Flying cars are dumb, robots are useless and enlightenment is just a flake word for 'smug'. I'm pretty glad people aren't all jackasses in this time. You guys at least are pretty cool."

"What, really?"

"Sure, I guess. I mean, I wouldn't have picked most of the team to save the world with if I'd had a choice, but, you know, they wouldn't have been my last choice either... Well, except you. I'd be cool with you if I had a choice."

"What, really?"

"Yeah, sure. I mean, you can be a total dork sometimes, but, most of the time you're OK."

That was probably the deepest conversation I've ever had with 002. He's not a fan of sharing his feelings, apart from when he's annoyed at someone. He backs away when people get too close and unleashes a torrent of sarcasm when provoked, especially with the older members of the team. With 003 he is cordial enough, and with me he can even be friendly once in a while. I think it's just in his nature to mistrust anyone who could possibly have a slim chance of being mistaken for an authority figure. It's worst with Dr Gilmore. 002 very rarely censures his thoughts against the Doctor, especially if he think's he's being lectured to. And unfortunately enough, 002's love of danger and refusal to take orders does cause a lot of friction with the others. But in spite of it all, he's about as brave and loyal a comrade as I could ever hope for, so long as he gets to do things his way.

If you want to be technical, I'm the youngest member of the team. I was eighteen years old when Black Ghost caught me and I haven't really aged since then. Although 001 only looks like a baby he's technically 40-something and 002 is nearing sixty. It's really easy to forget most of the time though, considering how energetic he normally is and how everyone else acts around him. But then, reality comes back into effect and I hear him talking to 003 about where they both were during the Cuban Missile Crisis (school and ducking out of school), what their parents both did in the Second World War (fought Nazis in Guadalcanal and tried to avoid the ire of the Vichy government) and what they each find strangest about the new millennium (modern fashion and the price of a can of soda).

That being said, for the most part 002 has taken to modern life really well. Once he knows what something is or what a certain phrase means, he just accepts it and moves on. The only real exception was when he watched a movie for the first time. Probably the best thing would have been for him to be slowly introduced to modern movies, moving forward a few decades with each watching. Sadly, we never got around to that because he beat us to it.

To put it in context, the last movie 002 watched before being taken by Black Ghost was Mary Poppins. I've never seen it myself but I've seen pictures of what the effects are like and I know a bit of a couple of the songs, like most folk probably do. When 002 couldn't sleep one night, he flipped on the TV in Mr Kosumi's house and caught the remake of War of the Worlds. The end result was the rest of us all being suddenly awoken at three in the morning by 002's extremely loud yelling and swearing. The effects and filmmaking were unlike anything he had ever experienced before and for about two hours afterwards 007 took the time to explain about things like CGI and modern cinema. Once it had been confirmed and double-confirmed that no, it wasn't real and that yes, all the aliens were just made on a computer, 002 calmed down. Now, he's a total movie addict and has fervently declared that all cinema made before 1998 isn't worth the paper the tickets are printed on. His favourite movie is Iron Man and he has told me about eight or nine times that he could totally take Tony Stark on in a fight, armour or no armour.

And of course, now that he's seen this many modern movies (and superhero movies in particular), 002 has taken to going out for long flights alone, just for the sheer joy of flight. He's flown from New York to Saitama a few times over the past few months, arriving bright eyed and overjoyed at unsociable hours in the morning. He races jet planes in stealth mode and challenges himself to see how extreme he can get his aerial acrobatics to get before he actually breaks. When the whole team is gathered together, he brags about all the places he's gone on his travels (Machu Piccu, Uluru, The South Pole, to name but a few) and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels a tiny bit jealous.

From what I can tell though, 002's real plan is to try and fly all the way up out of the atmosphere and into space. He was pretty torn up about missing the Moon Landing in '69 and ever since Dr Gilmore mentioned that it was within his power to do so, Jet's been pretty much dead set on trying it. That being saidm within about five minutes of hearing 002's plan, Dr Gilmore explained that although it was physically possible for 002 to fly out of the atmosphere, he wouldn't have the power or fuel reserves to get back in. So, for the time being, with his Big Plan on the shelf, 002 has turned sullen once again. I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of him trying it anyway, but, at the same time I think even he isn't so reckless as to put his life in that much danger without a good reason.

So, I guess, what I'm saying is, that 002 is a pretty cool guy. He's more confident and outgoing than I could ever be and still a blindly loyal member of the team, regardless of what he says. He's a reckless daredevil, a sullen teenager and a true friend. His favourite movie is Iron Man, his favourite band is ACDC (a recent discovery), his favourite place is Mount Cook in New Zealand and his full name is actually James Anthony Link Jnr. He chose the name Jet for himself in middle school when he "realised how much it would suck to be another Jimmy Link", like his father. I'm sworn to secrecy about his real name and that's how it's going to stay.