We had plans to discuss sensitive work, and the mansion was full of construction guys, so we crammed into the little half-office behind the Death Star throne room set.
Harry sat the Dude down at the computer. "Alright. He's here now. No more twenty questions. Tell me how it works."
The Dude hit some keys on the keyboard and a line played from the computer's tinny built-in speakers. "So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie--"
I chuckled as he cut the line off. The Dude's software to pick and play lines was more advanced and responsive than I remembered. The Dude leaned back in his chair, refusing to help. He could be a real pain when he wanted, and his rig was so customized with things like the movie quote interface, nobody else could use it.
Harry looked at me. "Will you tell him to turn that off?"
Harry pulled me off my normal work around then to act as a sort of interpreter, because I've known the Dude longer than anyone. Harry promised to change the system so my work would be a bigger part of it again, but his plans to rebuild the company would necessitate a lot of conversations with the Dude. He needed my help.
The Dude played another line. "Uh, Dick? Excuse me, Rich. Will milk be made available to us?" Harry's nickname was "Vernon," from The Breakfast Club. I think it suited him, but associating him with that movie gave the Dude plenty of vocabulary to be petulant in our chats.
I asked nicely, "Dude, why don't you install the code base into another computer, without your... accessibility services?"
The Dude pressed some buttons, and the speakers played back, "What good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak."
I gave him a quote I thought he'd know. "Come on, this bypass has got to be built, and it's going to be built."
The Dude's hand hovered over the keyboard. I could see him trying to process that line. It was from something we shared so long ago. Finally, his fingers picked something. "Efficiency is priority number one, people, because waste is a thief."
I shook my head. "I'm not connecting."
"Just do it, Dude!" Harry knocked the keyboard away.
The Dude reacted by slipping off his chair and crawling under the desk.
Harry actually seemed surprised. "What's he doing?"
I said, "I think you scared him."
Harry pounded on the desk. "I got him to talk to me before."
"Think anything might have soured your dynamic lately?" I didn't want to push the Dude too hard while he still had eight stitches holding his shoulder wound closed, but the company was suffering from a lack of leadership while they figured this out.
I knelt down and looked under the desk, trying to think of a way to reach out to the Dude. "Um... Okay, I got one for you, Dude. We need to talk about your flair."
The Dude's weak voice came from under the table. "Really? I have fifteen pieces on."
"No, you're being very un-dude."
He answered again. "Never send a human to do a machine's job."
Harry lost patience again. "This is stupid. Why do we have to do this?"
I sighed. "It's a game we used to play."
The Dude agreed. "Before the dark times, before the Empire."
I remembered, Star Wars was a big part of that game when it first started. I said, "I don't know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you'll do as I tell you, okay?"
The Dude poked his head out, a defiant look on his face. "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
I laughed. "Yeah, good times, three movies of magic and blasters, good and evil and a whole galaxy left for us to wonder about for twenty years." I sat on the floor to be on a level with the Dude. "How old were you when we all went to the, uh -- when the original one came out in theaters again?"
The Dude said, "Ten years, five months and one day." I had him. He was back.
"There you go. You still have a hell of a memory. Your parents didn't know what to do with that. They just put you in front of the TV all day. Alan's the one that found you." I looked up at Harry again. "This pasty redhead used to wear a cowboy hat to the office. He met this kid at a computer center someplace, brought him in. I didn't want him there, thought he should have been with other kids after school, learning social skills, not stuck in with a bunch of smelly adults, coding and quoting movies." I shook my head. "We had this place South of Market with beanbag chairs and pingpong tables, a real cliché now, but what he must have seen when he walked into the office, an incredible future laid out in front of him. None of us knew what we were doing. We payed ourselves in stock options and Mountain Dew, because we truly believed all it took to be a success in the world was one good idea."
"Good times," said the Dude with a smile.
"Yeah, good times." I leaned towards him. "Would you copy those programs over now, for old time's sake?"
The Dude's face went blank again. He got up, sat at the desk, hit a few keys, and my answer came out of the speakers. "Do you think that after what you did to Han, that we're going to trust you?"
Harry said, "It's not working."
I held up my hand. I had another idea. I said, "We looked out for you, the weird little boy we started to see as our mascot, called you 'little dude.' That was our name for you, but it couldn't last forever. We went bankrupt the same summer the prequel movies ruined what we once bonded over." I didn't want to have to do this, but I said to the Dude, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
He squinted, recognizing that line. He cued a line in response. "Stopped they must be. On this all depends."
I didn't stop. "Yousa thinking yousa people ganna die? I can keep doing this all day or stop right now." The Dude shook his head. "Your choice."
The Dude cued something else from the keyboard. "Dantooine. They're on Dantooine."
I stood up. It was hurting me too. "Now this is pod racing. Yippie!"
The Dude tried to cover his ears, his face scrunched in pain. His hand whipped out and cued, "That condo was my life, okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That wasn't just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was ME!"
I put my hand on his shoulder. "Give him the system, little dude."
More keystrokes. "Yes, Greedo. I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba I've got his money."
