The lengths a person can go to get what they want can be truly shocking. But is it really? How surprised can you be if someone does things to himself that border on insanity? If he pushes himself beyond human capacity, if he punishes himself for not just meeting, but exceeding the expectations he set for himself, which are nothing short of perfection, how stunned would you be if you witness such a man? A man who had to reach manhood before he knew what boyhood meant. A man who will not stop clawing towards the top of the metaphorical mountain of power. When he gets there, he's going to erect another damn mountain, steeper and more deadly than the last, and climb it again because it's not enough to just achieve greatness but to surpass it is a hundred percent vital. A man who has set himself on a course to collide with the rest of the world. A man who will either win, or die trying.
I am such a man. I fight SOSRAC, they practically control the world, so if I go against them, I go against the world. This isn't easy, but the first and most important battle is the battle of the mind. And my mind has been conditioned over the past decade to be sharp and unyielding. To do that, I've had to put myself through so much, any normal person would blanch at the thought of undergoing my rigorous training, but it's all in the day's work for me. Everyday brings some new pain, some new unforgiving mechanism, some new opportunity for growth, no matter how excruciating it may be.
I sit cross legged at the bottom of a solid, half-inch thick, glass tank with a small circular opening at the top for air, I should enjoy it while it lasts, oxygen will be a luxury I cannot afford during the training exercise I'm about to start. The tank itself is in a corner of my spacious underground laboratory and training room. I built it myself when I was six.
Started to build may be more accurate; Considering the fact that my mother eventually found out about the construction — there's not much a six year old can hide from his mom — and helped me build. I was a physics genius in elementary school and biology was more her shtick, so we were about equally inexperienced.
The room is underneath our basement, no one would expect a structure this large this deep. It's roughly the size of a high school auditorium. Its walls and floors in a slick metallic silver, the roof is a canary yellow: my mother suggested I have at least one bright colour here. Lining one of the walls is an array of computer and television screens blank at the moment, but ready to be used for my training at a moment's notice. In front of the screens is a black swivel chair — for mobility, not for any other, possibly childish reason.
The tank is fitted with a four tubes at the top, three of which where connected to the wall where they extend to the house's water supply. The fourth connected to a black box, I don't know what's in it, but it can't be anything lovely, whatever is in that box is certainly going to give people nightmares.
I continue sitting as my eyes roam over the room I helped build, my gaze briefly lingers on the box. The thought of summoning it to see for myself what it conceals is fleeting and quickly dismissed. All I know is that whatever it contains is A and D: Alive and Dangerous.
Without warning, an ethereal figure materializes before my tank. Its translucent, electric blue body levitates a foot off the ground. It wears a plain black jumpsuit that looks more like an extension of its skin than clothing. No pupil is seen in its eyes, they are just the midnight black of a starry night, they even seem to glimmer like the distant balls of gas.
Most peculiar about this being cannot be seen on the surface though, like everything in this lab, it was created by me.
It is a fully sentient AI, meaning, unlike everything else in this lab, it can leave me in the deep end to see if I sink or swim, not forgetting to attach weights to my legs. This quality, and the fact that it possesses the cold logic of a computer coupled with the compassion of a friendly drill sergeant, makes it the perfect trainer.
"Are you ready?" The being asks, its voice deep with an English accent because, why not?
"Even if I weren't, you'd start anyway. Can we skip the formalities and get this over with?" I request in a bored tone.
"Someone's in a rush. I'll start the test now. Your objective is simple: survive." The being I have dubbed PITAN says.
The hole above me closes in an instant as I expected. Water starts rushing into the tank through the pipes as I also expected. The surprise being when electric eels came in with the water, immediately discharging current through the water. As the first shock courses through my veins, I realize with a start, exactly what my test is. I'm supposed to withstand the torrent of electricity for as long as inhumanely possible. This is made harder by the fact that I'm fully submerged in water, so my oxygen and energy are limited.
I blot out all the pain receptors in my body telling me that electricity is bad for the skin — like I don't know that already. If I don't, I would convulse violently and expend my remaining energy making my death quicker.
I'm also focusing on the oxygen supply I have, but only subconsciously. I've trained for years to hold my breath, precisely for something like this. I sit in the water with my eyes closed, thinking, focusing on the image of the tank I have imprinted on my mind. A bonus of eidetic memory is that after only seconds of looking at it, I can vividly remember the entire tank. I think about the water, if it boils, then the eels don't have anything to conduct electricity through. But boiling the water would only quickly diminish my oxygen supply. Unless I don't use fire.
In my head, I visualize the water I'm suspended in, I see it gaining more and more kinetic energy, increasing its temperature. The water begins to boil the fish, and me, but again I ignore it. My throaty screams will be blood curdling if I don't. The shocks come less often and the strain of ignoring them reduces.
Just when I think it's over, I spot an abrupt drop in the temperature of the water, very odd for something I just heated. The water continues to fall in temperature, trying to encase me in a block of ice. I heat it as fast as it freezes but soon enough, it freezes faster than I can melt it. The ice starts on my chest, spreads to my throat, making it more difficult to continue blocking of the need for oxygen in my lungs.
The eels that survive continue their barrage of electricity, this time I can't blot out the pain, I convulse involuntarily, or I try to, the ice continues to restrict me and kill me slowly. If this were SOSRAC would I be defeated this easily? By a Super freezing chamber and some electric eels? No. I'd get out, not because I want to or because it's not the most comfortable experience. But because I cannot die unless they do first.
The ice makes me heavier and takes me to the bottom of the tank. Through my frosty enclosure, I hear a thud when it hits the floor, this gives me an idea.
With the willpower I have left, I reduce the temperature of the water all the water surrounding me. Inside the tank becomes one huge ice cube. Then, I increase the gravitational force acting on the ice, making the earth pull at it and shatter it from the bottom up. With each crack of the ice, I take the sound energy and push outwards against the ice, cracking it even more and renewing my ammo.
In mere seconds, the tank starts to break as well since I also reduced its temperature to make it more brittle. A few seconds later, after one last burst of sound energy and gravity, the tank and icy confinement shatter under the might of physics. I instantly collapse to the floor, no longer upheld by the training setup and take great, heaving breaths of air.
The world around me melts away, vanishes before my eyes like a dying flame, flickering in desperation to remain in reality. I stay in darkness for a moment, then I feel myself slipping away from this reality, because it's not where I should be. I belong in a world where the heads of the Heads Of SOSRAC lay at my feet. Sadly, no such world exists. On the bright side, I can make it exist.
I open my eyes for the third time today and am not surprised to see myself lying in a plain bed so white it's blinding, like the ones seen in hospitals. On my head is a mechanical headband wirelessly connected to a computer on the wall that was empty in the simulation I just came out of.
Without looking down, I know a black vest covers my chest, also wirelessly connected to the computer. Oh, and PITAN is also here, next to the hospital bed, smiling like a creep — or a proud parent, I can't tell which sometimes. He is blue after all — at me.
"How was it?" He asks.
"I should be asking you that. Was it good or bad?"
"If I say bad, you might never leave, so I'll just say good." He answers.
I fix him with a blank stare, not amused in the slightest.
"What? I'm serious. You were actually very decent in this test." PITAN repeated.
"Decent is one letter away from me worsening. I'll train again when I get back." I say, already removing the vest and headband.
"Your strategy was very unique. Freezing the entire tank was a surefire way to black out fast." PITAN remarks as I make my way to an elevator door leading upstairs.
"It was a calculated risk and I took it." I stated, pausing in my strides only to push the button to open the door. Elevators still work as they did in the past, A lot changed when SOSRAC was formed, but somethings didn't change, elevators included.
"It was calculated insanity and you indulged in it. You have to stop putting yourself at unnecessary risk, there's no shame in not being able to complete a test."
"I passed it didn't I? No lasting damage done. I'm fine." I emphasize.
"I just don't want to see you get hurt, neither does your mother and probably even your fa-"
I cut him off, knowing wht he was going to say next. "You didn't know him, you don't have the right to tell me how he would feel."
PITAN comes closer to me and places a hand on my shoulder. The elevator door had already opened and closed ages ago. "You don't know him anymore than I do. I was made to think as much as feel and so were you. Don't act like you locked your emotions away in a box, especially in front of me, cause I can see a person behind the mask of Albert Henderson."
"Alright PITAN. Can you not bring this up again, please?"
"No problem." PITAN smiles. "Now get out of here, you don't want to miss your first day of high school.
"I'm a junior PITAN. I'll see you later today." I say before pushing the elevator button again and stepping inside.
Before the door closes shut, PITAN smirks at me and says, "You'll be hearing from me a bit earlier."
I ignore that vague comment and rise to the first floor of my house, specifically, my bedroom. A ceramic tile next to the toilet slides out of the way to allow my head to poke through the floor of my otherwise white bathroom. Once my hands follow, I pull myself the rest of the way up and the tile automatically reverts to its original position.
"Seal the entrance, not even an insect is permitted to slip through." I command to the room. The click made by the latch getting locked is the only response I receive. Good enough for me.
I walk out to my bedroom. It's not your typical teenage boy's room, not even what you'd expect a bedroom of the future to look like. It is devoid of any decoration whatsoever. It is dreadfully sparse and without evidence that it is slept in, because it isn't.
It is not my little private paradise where I can seclude myself from the rest of society, especially the Society. The Society Of Scientific Research And Culmination, SOSRAC. To me, that place of solitude is under my basement. My room is just a walkway between the rest of the world and my world. The wallpaper is black, the bed cover is black, the reading desk and chair are, you guessed it, black.
Everything is untouched, the room is still impeccable. Though there is no evident change in the room, I can tell that my mother has been here. Like clockwork, she comes into my room every morning with her fingers crossed that for once, I actually spent the night in my bed. And every morning, she leaves without seeing me, goes downstairs to make breakfast for two.
After my eyes sweep across the room one more time, I leave for breakfast with my mother.
One flight of stairs later, and I am confronted with the smell of pancakes, courtesy of my mother, who comes into view shortly.
"Something burning?" I ask
Alarm flashes across her youthful features for a brief moment before she flips the pancake in the pan and sees the proper, golden brown colour.
"Very funny Albert, I think I'd know if I burnt your breakfast." My mother replies. Her voice has a trace of amusement as she speaks.
"I can see it happening. I'll come downstairs one day and see the noxious fumes that spawn from what you call cooking, I probably won't eat it and you'll go to work as usual." I say.
"I suspect you got hit on the head today." She says, taking the food out of the pan and placing it in a plate which I promptly take off her hands.
My mother sits down across from me with three pancakes of her own. The distance between us is the width of the dinner table which is not a lot. This close, I can see her warm brown eyes, I see love and I also see concern, A question burns in her eyes and probably at the tip of her tongue.
"So, did you sleep well?" She asks instead of what she truly wants answered.
I could reply with a 'you know very well that I didn't, seeing as you were in my room this morning' or a 'really Vanessa, I only sleep on Tuesdays at two A.M for seven minutes, you know this'.
Instead of saying that many words I answer with "it's not Tuesday."
"Can you blame me for hoping my son is normal at least once." She says.
"Honest answer? Yes. You can go ahead and ask." I consent.
"How was training?" She immediately questions.
"Decent." Is all I offer.
Her features rapidly morph from concern to confusion and back to concern. "I don't like that look, you're going to push yourself again, and you'll push too far."
"I don't know what you're talking about." That was a lie, I keep emotions off my face. Everyone who knows me — namely, my mother and PITAN— knows my tendency to redefine human limitations when I'm anything less than better than perfect.
"What did PITAN make you do today?" She asks.
I'm more than willing to throw PITAN under the bus, I appreciate his training but putting him under my mother's scrutiny can be a reminder to him who's boss.
"He tried to drown me in a tank of electric eels. He failed, clearly." I say.
She blinked in surprise. It's the natural response to hearing something like that, even if you're a genius.
"Really. Would you summon him for me?" She requests in an oddly calm manner.
"With pleasure." I say. Internally I think, 'Alright PITAN, you heard her, show yourself.'
His blue body materializes next to me abruptly.
He fixes me with a stare and says, "this is earlier than I thought"
"That makes one of us." I say.
"PITAN, could you point to a part of my son's body that you haven't at least tried to damage permanently in those simulations of yours." My mother asks, still calm.
"Well, no . . ." He starts.
"There was that one time you left him in a forest, naked." She says, her voice getting higher.
"That was a-" PITAN tries to explain but is again interrupted.
"Another time, you threw him out of a plane, into a war zone, without any supplies. My boy had to fight in the World War II!" My mother yells the last part. Thank goodness the house is soundproof.
PITAN stops trying to defend himself, instead he gulps in fearful anticipation. I don't know what he's gulping. He doesn't have a throat or saliva. He's been around people, us, for so long he's adopted human mannerisms.
"And now, you've left his outsides alone, and want to damage his insides. Do you know what could have happened to his lungs!" She scolds. It's not really a question. He knows biology about as well as her, and that's saying something, considering the fact that my mother is currently the smartest biologist on the planet.
I watch the spectacle while eating my pancakes, which are not as bad as I thought. Finishing, I take my plate to the kitchen counter and after throwing out a quick thank you to my mother, rush out the door.
The sun barely peeks over the horizon as I run the way to school. I'm not overly enthusiastic about high school, I've already been in it for two years. But this school is special. Any one who knows war knows that you have to get into the heart of your enemies before you defeat them. Enrolling in this school is the way to do it.
Stopping in front of the entrance, my eyes move up to read the name of the school boldly spelt out on a sign. It is a name I know all too well, after all, I read it enough times while researching about the school.
I step across the threshold and push open the doors to the building where I would have to pretend to learn for some time, the building that has given me my first chance to accomplish my mission. This building, this institution called Xanderidge High, is also known as SOSRAC Academy. Owned and controlled by Howard Xanderidge, A head of SOSRAC, this building has given me a chance to beat the world.