When I was very young, I started trying to find work online. I did a “job” for a guy in Greece who owned an internet cafe to make changes to a game server whose source code was in Java. I wish I could remember the exact age, but it was around 12 years old. In a huge codebase, I found the exact spot where the changes needed to be made and made them myself. I was sent a small amount of money, but to me at the time it was more than I had ever been given at once from my parents.
I tried learning C++ around this time, but after making it through the online tutorials at the time, I was lost on how to actually make anything interesting. I tabled it for a while. I went to the local library and checked out HTML and DHTML books to start learning how to make websites.
I continued with Java and dabbled in C#, which had just come out around 4 years earlier. I also started picking up on x86 Assembly because I wanted to learn how to make hacks for computer games (mostly just StarCraft).
A few years later, around 14-15 I started becoming more proficient in C++ by reverse engineering. I never made any cool user interfaces, but I was able to make a lot of cool things happen that nobody else I knew could do.
I picked up D which is a native language that has a garbage collector. I wrote a few projects that are still in use to this day, mostly utilities. During this time, I also learned JavaScript and TypeScript. I spent months learning about babel, webpack and brushing up my HTML. I also spent a lot of time with React and Redux.
I never got to make use of any of my knowledge that I had earned for an actual job. That is, until I got hired at Beckett Gas. After working my way from one of the lowest-paid positions in the company up into the front office, I was given an opportunity to write code for my job.
I picked up LabVIEW while working here and completed around 5 rather large projects using it.
I have worked most of my life, but I never made much money. My bank account has never had more than $3,000-$4,000 in it at one time, and I have never held more than $2,000 in cash in my life.
It has been 3 years since Beckett Gas fired me. When I tried to get a job after I got back on me feet after my termination, bad things kept happening to those who offered me a high paying job.
It has been 1 year since I started being held down inside my mind. 24/7 intelligent dialogue running in my internal monologue that does not originate from inside my body. No investigation, no help. During this year some of my memories resurfaced such as waking up and opening 1 eyelid for just a moment while being dragged out of the apartment at Redwood.
The police I fear are the perpetrators here. What kind of police force or authority wouldn’t investigate something like this happening to someone’s life? The culpable kind, in my opinion. When I found out that my partners ex got 30 years, I thought he may have been the one to do this to me and it would be over soon. Turns out, not the case. I started to think maybe this same thing was done to him and he didn’t handle it as well as I did. I’ve never spoken more than a few words to him, all of it being at work.