I arrived at work at eight o’clock and, after laying out the whole maypole of cables, power supplies and elements of the project I Was trying to push a little forward at home, I enjoyed my first coffee today. A staff candidate, our prospective future programmer, should be arriving any minute. He presented little experience on his CV, but as we all know, the job market is starved in this area and there is no need to exaggerate the requirements. He had done two years at a corpo and was already programming in the languages we were using. That’s always something. 

I heard rustling from behind the wall, and as within the company our studio is in the attic and has a heavily soundproofed door with an extra two steps leading up to the threshold, it’s not everyone’s guess that he has to knock on the handle almost at forehead height to be heard on the other side. We have simply squeezed the maximum amount of space out of the premises we have and there are no marbles and no reception desk like in big companies. I arranged with the secretary to take him to my hole when he turned up. He’s probably coming,’ I thought, so I got up quickly and opened the door. 

He was standing there, looking at our handy stash of cables and connectors placed on the mezzanine floor, but when he heard the sound of the hinges creaking he turned towards me and walked a few steps. I pointed sweepingly to the chair of a colleague coming later to work, saying: 

— I invite you to come inside. Please rest here. 

He walked uncertainly up the steps into the interior of our small laboratory. I eyed the supplicant. Of small stature, wearing the long sleeves of a very overstretched grey jumper and with a pale complexion, he did not really resemble a candidate for a programmer. If only he had a beard… Actually, he didn’t remind me of anyone. Although maybe there was a virtual character, a musician, a singer. Also, such hands to knees. 2-D. 

He sat down, hunched over, in the chair I had indicated, some two metres away from mine. I have returned to my working desk. I gathered my thoughts and, turning to the candidate, began commonly: 

— Well, what language do you program best in and have you dealt with embedded projects?

— Copper. Give me copper… — he whispered in a cracking voice. 

Well, yes, but I Was dumbfounded. I was fundamentally mistaken — after all, he’s a joker, not a computer scientist. A sudden hit, and I invite him here to the rooms to have a better look around to see what can be stolen during a break-in. 

– We don’t have copper or scrap metal. I can give you two zlotys,’ I finally choked out angrily in his direction. 

– I don’t want to. It’s impure copper. Give some copper, a little copper, please. Here, you have cables after all. 

– A little means how much? – I asked. 

– A few grams is enough…

– Here and now, do you want a few grams of copper, the kind from a cable?

– Yes, cable, please, here and now…

After a moment’s thought, I moved a bag of transformer soldering iron tips towards him – they are copper after all. He took them, opened them, packed them all in his mouth (God, what a wide mouth he had…) and started literally chewing them. I sat petrified, and after a while he visibly became animated. He raised his head and, turning it slowly, looked around the room. Then I saw between his dark hair falling over his forehead huge, unnaturally large and completely black eyes. The strange feeling that flooded me I wouldn’t call fear, but I felt something like serious doubt as to whether I would survive this encounter. 

I began cautiously: 

– You know, I Was supposed to have a meeting with a job candidate, programming…

He looked at me and in a calm voice replied: 

– He ran away. I don’t think he’s coming back, because you all, when you run away, you don’t come back. Although – no generalisations. You are still here. Surprising. And what are you programming in here?

– In terms of language? In C ++, something in C Sharp. Does that ring a bell to you?

– Yep – he twisted his face. – heavily object-oriented. Show the code, some piece of your code. 

I hesitated – after all, the code of our programs is a company secret. I stood up and closed the door to make sure no one from other departments could hear what I Was saying here. 

– OK, I can show you what I’m working on now – a car loader. You’ll have to wait awhile if it’s going to work. I’ll put the prototype parts together, I don’t have it ready like that because I Was taking it home. 

– Just set Bluetooth on. 

– How do you know this stuff, after all, I can see you’re no ordinary person. Even thirty years in a corpo does not change that. 

– I know because I read the internet. Partly, of course, because you have a lot of it and much of it uncool, but I focused on what interested me. I filtered out. 

– In terms of where you read it, the internet? Are there still any internet cafés in town? Did they let you in with that look? Did someone give you a plug?

– Otherwise. I read the bookshop first, but without much success because I Was asked out. I only managed a little bit. And the rest with Wi-Fi, as soon as I understood how it worked and how it was secured. I managed to mentally connect. There’s some kind of Wi-Fi everywhere in the buildings. Okay, I can see your Bluetooth. 

I calmed down a bit and got my breathing under control. Curiosity was starting to take over fear. I asked: 

– Why did you need the copper? Do you feed on it?

– You’re guessing. 

– And why did you come here, up the stairs to me?

– But inadvertent. Because I smelled copper. I apologise for the intrusive begging for food, but I’ve been chasing after the last of my strength. So what, can I programme?

I hesitantly gave way to him. I was finally able to get a good look at his entire figure. He was maybe a metre and a half tall. Before he sat down in my chair, he scratched his back. He did this with a hand with seven fingers without an opposable thumb. It looked both scary and funny at the same time, a bit like being in a palace of fear in a travelling amusement park. 

His jumper was branded and completely earthy, which didn’t escape my eyes because he wore it inside out and the label was sticking up at the neck. I even knew the brand. Richly. 

– Where did you get that jumper?

– I stole it. I mean at the time I stole it, I didn’t know I had stolen it yet because I found the Wi-Fi later to find out, among other things. But now I know and I’m sorry. Oh, look – this is where you went wrong, this is an incorrect use of a pointer, do you see that? I’m correcting it. 

I compiled it. It worked. I’ve been thinking about it for two days now. It’s not bad. 

– All right – I decided to orient myself a bit more to my benefactor – no offence to ask, but are you some kind of mutant human? Do you have a name?

– It is impossible to offend me. As to your question – if being a generation away from yours is being a mutant, then yes, of course. I don’t have a name in your language, because we don’t have names at all and communicate non-acoustically, soundlessly, with brain waves – yet here they call me Jesus most of the time, but they don’t make contact and run away. Cringe – as the youngsters here say. Sometimes they have also referred to me differently, but these are vulgar words. I know this from your national dictionary of swear words and vulgarisms. I managed to read it in a bookshop all the way through and even applied it widely to those who wanted to throw me out of it…

Well, yes, he was a quick learner and precautionary consolidator of knowledge, using it immediately. Like little children at the dinner table at a brother-in-law’s name day. They also absorb knowledge so quickly, like a sponge. – How long have you been here? And where did you come from?

– It’s going to be your fortnight, and I’m rather trying to avoid contact because I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable with my unusual appearance. As I have done everything well in my programme I am back to myself today. And I have appeared here because I have been sentenced to death by being re-vectored to a random place in the local Universe. 

– Re-vectored, you say. Local Universe. Well, yes. Are there any others?

He nodded his head without saying a word. I felt strange. – ’Then maybe I’ll just say „Hesus”, because I associate Jesus unequivocally with another person.’ – I shook hands with him, which he embraced with his cold claws

– Pleased to meet you, Hesus, my name is Thomas and I am also a programmer. You have a cold hand – are you ill? Or are you cold-armed?

– The latter, for the sake of saving energy and being able to live in unstable temperatures, but out of respect for you, as I know how you should be greeted, I kept it down under my jumper, as that’s where I’m warmest – he showed with his finger where. – I wanted to make it unpleasant for you to squeeze such a cold body. 

I violently wanted to wash my hands. I went to the bathroom. It took a while. When I returned, Hesus Was constantly reworking my programming excrescences. 

– Would you die in a vacuum, Hesus?

– Of course – Hesus was showing divided attention. While answering, he was simultaneously sorting out the programme code. He literally registered himself on my computer as a Bluetooth keyboard and scurrilously typed straight from his head. He was doing it at a sort of frenetic pace. The separate issue is that he didn’t have to press the keys. On the other hand, he would probably have been faster on the keyboard, with the advantage of the number of fingers. 

– And did you hit just here and not in a vacuum?

– Because luck has to be helped,’ he looked at me again with black eyes, pushing his hair back from his forehead, ’I Was the one who wrote the firmware for the teleportation system we used to move around and hid the backdoor in the death penalty procedure. But it didn’t work out perfectly for me and something in the dimensional division procedure rounded up. I landed slightly underground, half a metre maybe. Fortunately, my hands were sticking out above the surface of the ground and I caved in. By then I had already heard from the locals what they called me here, although they weren’t sure whether Jesus, or Holyfuck, or alternatively, Zombie. And of course, they ran away. Strange methods you have of contacting newcomers. 

– Well, you must have done something pretty bad, there at your place, how did they sentence you to death? – I concluded. Is ’messed up’ the right word for a person sentenced to the highest penalty?

– As in your films – all because of the female. I messed up a bit in the teleportation code to impress the one I wanted to connect with in the future. I made it so that I would be where I needed to be when I needed to be there, and a common armageddon came out of it. 

I was silent for a while without commenting. Hesus puzzled: 

– Let’s not get into that again. Then what else is this charger of yours supposed to do?

After a moment’s hesitation, I started telling him the premise and showing him sketches of the user interface, and Hesus glanced at them and programmed. He was adding huge chunks of code straight away. It was indeed magic. After a short while he compiled the programme and everything worked as it should. I was looking at the effects stupefied. 

– I’ll read up on you later. Can you add a description? – I finally choked it out. I wanted to make sure I Was up to the task of potentially leading the development of such a keyboard genius (yes, yes, a Bluetooth keyboard genius). 

– OK, I’m already commenting on the code – he nodded affirmatively. 

The screen was flooded with green comments. 

– Listen, Hesus, why do you need seven fingers without an opposing one and such claws?

– Evolution, as in you. Our civilisation has solved virtually all social problems, and manual labour is robotic, but the problem of scratching under the shoulder blade remains. And we have acted genetically, improving our structure so that this trouble disappears too. See how it passes the test and works beautifully. 

He scratched under both shoulder blades at once, with his arms crosswise. Lovely. 

Suddenly, out of the blue, he started shaking. 

There something wrong? – I asked, taking a step back. 

– My time is passing, I’ve already got the signal, the feeling that in a moment he’s going to re-inflect me. 

– Like in the movies, in a shaft of light through the ceiling?

– No, I’ll just disappear, in ten seconds. 

I thought to myself, how I wish I had an employee like that. But now that it’s over, perhaps it’s worth asking the one most important question. It had already been going through my head, and now I decided to almost shout it out in a hurry: 

– Hesus, tell me some wisdom! Something that you think will have the greatest impact on humanity. After all, your civilisation is far more advanced than ours. Push ours forward too!

He looked at me with those big black sad eyes of his and said emphatically: 

– Object-oriented programming sucks. 

And he disappeared. 

The electric car charger went into production. It sells well and works flawlessly. As I noted, it is even equipped with artificial intelligence. The Hesus code I have not yet grasped. To understand it, however, you will need help from heaven. 

2021, Krakow