Johnny Winger...A Brief Biography

In my last post, I promised to provide a little background detail on my recurring main character Johnny Winger.  Winger shows up in all my stories in Tales of the Quantum Corps and also will be the main player in Nanotroopers.  So, here goes…

Age: 20 years (at the beginning of Nanotroopers)

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 180 lb

Build: stocky, broad shouldered

Face: chiseled, sharp nose, high cheeks, prominent chin

Distinguishing Features:  Piercing blue-green eyes, heavy eyelids, has a somewhat sleepy, droopy look

A Brief Biography:

Johnny Winger (JW) was born 6 June 2030, Pueblo, Colorado, the youngest child of Jamison and Ellen Winger.  He has an older brother Brad and older sister Joanna.

From his earliest days, JW loved outdoors activities.  He started rock-climbing, hiking and caving almost as soon as he could walk.  By the time he had become an adult, JW was a very experienced caver.

In his early school years, JW was an indifferent student.  His best subjects were American History and World History.  Science too.  He showed an early interest in Biology.   His earliest career aspiration was to be a surgeon.

JW’s Dad, Jamison Winger, was a farmer-rancher, and self-taught engineer/inventor, who loved to design and tinker with small unmanned aerial vehicles (drones, UAVs, etc). One of his more memorable accomplishments was to build a series of drones he called Baileys to remotely herd cattle, buffalo and sheep on his ranch, the North Bar Pass Ranch. 

As a youngster, JW learned how to operate and tinker with the drones himself.  He developed a love for gadgets and tinkering from his Dad.

JW’s best friend in early childhood was Archie Hester.  Hester was a tiny dynamo of a guy—a red-haired mop with green eyes and a perpetually sly smile.  Archie Hester was trouble personified.

When JW and Archie were 10 years old, they went caving one afternoon after school in the Dorado complex south of Pueblo and got lost in a dark branch that had never been well explored or marked.  This was March 2040.  Their families went looking for them, but it was Bailey, the drone, who finally sniffed out the boys inside the caverns and brought them out, leading them through dark, wet, caverns by following his winking red safety light up and up toward fresh air and freedom.

Bailey the drone was also one of JW’s constant companions, sort of a flying robotic pet.  Unknown to his parents, JW often opened his second-floor bedroom window and by remote control tele-operated Bailey right into his room.  Bailey spent many a night in JW’s bedroom, either hovering gently in the corner, or whirring in sleep mode on the trunk at the end of JW’s bed.

Throughout his high school years at Pueblo High, JW’s only real crush was on Katie Gomez, an e-learning assistant who worked with Johnny over the Pueblo WorldNet local school grid as a sort of long-distance tutor/learning coach.  Katie was the best ‘wizard’ Johnny ever had and he fell in love with her over the screen.

They met several times a semester at Pueblo High’s learning lab; JW often dreamed for weeks about each meeting.  Katie was very young herself and partially Mexican.  It was a one-way love affair that could never amount to anything, but JW lusted after her nonetheless.  But it did ultimately lead to another love-interest at Pueblo: one Linda Lamont.

Linda was actually Katie’s niece.  A brunette stunner, she wound up on a class history project with JW in ninth-level World Cultures class.  They had to team up with others to build a Greek theater, to scale, then put on a play by Sophocles or Aeschylus.  Linda had dreams of playing Helen of Troy and even spent time being self-tutored via (neuro) patch in rudimentary Greek.  Her old man spent a fortune on patches and lessons for Linda.

JW was attracted to Linda because she also loved outdoors activities, especially horses.  She was a top- caliber rider.  She even taught JW some basics until the day her gray Arabian mare Misty threw JW for a few loops at the Lamont ranch about ten miles away from the North Bar Pass Ranch.  Johnny decided he wasn’t cut out for riding as well as Linda.  But the two of them did love to spend time on horses, climbing the high passes around Pueblo and stopping for quick lunches and furtive gropings in windy intermountain meadows.  This was 2042 to 2045.

Johnny Winger graduated from Pueblo in 2047, a year earlier than normal, owing to his excellent work for WorldNet wizard Katie Gomez.

Two days later, his mother Ellen was killed in an auto accident driving back from Colorado Springs.

 

I’ll detail what happened to Johnny after this horrific accident that shattered the Winger family in my next post to the Word Shed.  Suffice it to say, that Johnny Winger’s life was turned upside down and from that point on, took an unexpected direction.

The Word Shed will take a week off for Thanksgiving. I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday.  Look for the next post, continuing basic details of Johnny Winger’s life prior to joining Quantum Corps on 7 December, 2015.

See you then.

Phil B.