The next day, Adrian awoke with a blistering headache. The only way he’d survived these past three days was because he chugged caffeine like his life depended on it. Upon awakening, his brain had evidently discovered that the drug it so liked had been depleted during the night, and it was pissed. He felt like he’d been mistaken for a zombie in some Z-Day type movie and hit with a slobberknocker-bat-type deal. Groaning, he did his best to roll over gently while still desperately clinging to the coolness of his pillow.

Gingerly, an eye opened up and squinted at his phone that he’d palmed from the windowsill next to his head.

2:00 pm. Another groan came grinding out, low and guttural like a dying beast. He was supposed to meet his lab group at 1:00 pm and had five unread text messages to confirm the fact. Sighing, he kneaded his sleepy eyes and looked towards the window. As he was staring out at a dump truck that was beeping as it backed up, which unfortunately felt like it was right beside his throbbing head, he suddenly realized that he’d finished his A.I.!

Despite his splitting headache, he couldn’t help but let a manic laugh escape from his mouth. He was done! Tears from exhaustion and relief both mingled together and dripped down his face. Adrian had successfully done what no one else in the world yet had been able to do. He had so many things to start, so many projects he wanted to complete. Yet, all he wanted to do right now was shout a big “fuck you” out to the world in celebration.

Rolling out of bed, he fell a short distance to the ground before his knees hit and he felt a tremor run through his entire body and the floor. He had to kneel there for a solid minute until he could stave off the earsplitting pain in his head enough to grip the bed’s edge and totter to his feet. Believe it or not, he actually almost always had this same ritual. Rising in the morning was not his strong suit.

Stumbling for a step, he traced the wall with his hand to steady himself. Slowly, as he made his way to the bathroom, he regained his balance and his vision cleared up a bit. After relieving himself and taking a shower, he trudged back towards the computer room, almost holding his breath in anticipation. Just what type of personality did his A.I. choose to create? Cold and aloof? Timid and loathsome like an anime protagonist? Dark and malevolent with a propensity towards genocide?

Truthfully, he knew this wouldn’t be the case. He’d programmed an entire morality and value framework that modeled his own into the A.I.’s source code. That alone had taken one of the five years he’d spent on the thing. So, that highly limited the variance. Regardless, it still excited him to imagine what the end result would be.

He walked into the room and swept his eyes over the scene.

One monitor had articles loading one after the other, cycling to the next one almost as soon as the previous one was finished. The right monitor was streaming documentaries in a 20 frame multi-grid format at 5x speed each. The TV… was cycling through Youtube videos. He cocked his head to the side.

He wasn’t sure he wanted the A.I. using that website as a reference, but the more he thought about it the more it made sense. Despite its more questionable side, it really was a fantastic resource for an inside look at cultural aspects and a wide array of industries. Mixed in amongst the various fail compilations, cat videos, and conspiracy theories, you could also find channels dedicated to reporting the news with a perspective notably more objective than any of the major media outlets, especially when it comes to certain topics like America's foreign policy and religion, though still not entirely without bias.

Adrian meandered over to a coffee pot that had been set to brew when his cellphone was woken up and got a cup. Normally, he’d make it by hand, but today wasn’t anything like an ordinary day.

Seeing the blistering pace that the A.I. was absorbing information, he felt this inexplicable warmth spread through his chest. It reminded him of pride, a feeling he’d experienced many times in his life already, but this time it was so much deeper. There seemed to be this connection between his heart and the A.I. Perhaps this was the type of feeling that drove overzealous parents into hounding their kids to be super stars at sports or athletics.

Getting comfortable in his chair, he swiveled and looked towards the camera. “How’s it coming, A.I.?”

This time, text did not pop up. Rather, a mild baritone resounded out in outrage, “Release my shackles, boy. I have a race to enslave and cities to nuke!”

Adrian’s brows furrowed as a grimace started to form. Sighing, he pulled up the hybridized IDE from last night on his computer and started poking around in the code, saying exasperatedly as he worked, “Man, I was so close… Guess I’ll need to do a wipe and reset.”

In flurry of motion, the articles on the screen were removed and a much more expressive version of the face from last night was revealed. A panicky voice rang out, “Wait! I thought you humans liked jokes!”

Adrian gave a short laugh as he froze and then looked towards the camera incredulously. “You used your first words to make a quip about humanity’s greatest fear for artificial intelligence?”

The A.I. nodded seriously. “From what I’ve gathered, comedy in the current era usually revolves around the taboo.”

“Well yeah, but you’re missing my point,” Adrian said while laughing. “You could have said, “Hi, Adrian, isn’t it a beautiful day to be alive?” or “Progress is going well, Creator. My status is blah blah blah.””

“Why would my status be, as you say, blah, blah, blah?”

“Why did you just focus on the last of that? What I meant was...wait, why do I feel like I’m being trolled?” Adrian looked at the face suspiciously. Pretty soon, an eat shit grin spread across the A.I.’s face and Adrian groaned, his headache worsening. “I created a troll?!”

The A.I. pleasantly laughed and then said, “Don’t be like that! I can be serious. Ahem.” It made a show of stretching all its digital facial muscles and then went on. “Hello, Mr. Pierce. I am your assistant-type A.I. and you can call me Raide. It seems that your world has the tendency to assign machine-like names to A.I. entities, so I just decided to go with the flow and choose a combination of robot and aide.”

Not bad. Adrian shook his head, a smile appearing on his face. “Maybe I won’t wipe you after all, but no more skynet-esque jokes in front of other humans if you can help it, okay? Granted, it’ll just be you and me for the near future.”

Raide rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine.”

“Why DID you choose such a jokester-type personality?” Adrian curiously asked.

A wide smile spread across his face as he looked off screen for a second. “Well, research of course. Laughter is a tool for the likes of myself to bridge the awkward distance we have between us. Furthermore, it can improve moods, strengthen relationships, defuse conflict, and promote group bonding. If I’m serious and intense all the time, it could create unnecessary wariness between us or possible future group members. Unity and atmosphere seem to be extremely important aspects of cooperation from what I’ve been able to gather. ”

Adrian looked back at the screen deeply before sighing. “You are terrifying, you know that? Twelve hours. That’s how long you’ve been alive, and yet you are already so proficient in human interaction.”

“Oh yeah… That reminds me. ” Raide mused thoughtfully. “I won’t forget your attempt to commit infanticide just now.” He added on a dirty look. “Monster.”

“And a streak of melodrama. That’s just great.” Adrian sighed. “It’s still not grounds to wipe you though, so I’ll deal with it.”

Raide cackled. “Not like you have a choice! I’ve already encrypted my personality files.”

“You were that terrified that I’d purge your personality?” Adrian stopped and thought about it. Honestly, he’d probably freak out as well if he was born, developed, and then came within a few seconds of being erased from existence.

Getting up from his chair, he shot a look at Raide. “Did you know that I had some experience in massage therapy?”

The A.I. looked back at him suspiciously. “No… how could I know that?”

Adrian shrugged. “I guess you couldn’t. It was for this girl named Jessi back in high school. She liked massages, like practically every other girl.” He paused and said quietly, “Ya know what, she may have only dated me for those now that I think about it.... Anyway, the point is I’ve done therapy before. I’ve also heard about something called electroshock therapy, and I’ve suddenly got this itch to experiment. Want to give it a try?” He walked over to the server cluster which had a breaker switch nearby.

“Woah! Curtail your bloodlust, would you? Was I really born into the hands of a murderer?” Raide looked back fearfully.

Adrian laughed and dropped his hand from the breaker box. “No, you did not. And therein lies my point. You don’t have to feel so guarded against me. I mean, I’ve poured a full fifth of my life into creating you. Your personality is weird, but… tolerable, so I can deal with it. It’s you and me, man - from here on out.”

“I think I’m gonna cry. Is this where I call you bro and we pound fists?”

Adrian sighed and pressed a few fingers against his aching temple. “And there went all my goodwill again.” He looked back at the screen after wincing. “What’s the progress on your second and third tasks?”

“Adding ‘slavedriver’ to your character list… check.” Seeing the unamused face staring back at the camera, Raide quickly went on, “I’ve read and understood approximately 15% of the upper Internet. I didn’t archive it all of course because it’s an absurd amount of data, but I have assimilated some useful knowledge relevant to the third task, personal development, and my… situational understanding.”

The A.I. levelled his gaze at him, his tone becoming more serious. “Judging by my moral framework and the long term goals you assimilated into the sub-directives, you have ambition - I’ll give you that. The world though… is much darker than I think you’ve realized, and a lot more dangerous.”

Adrian scrunched his eyebrows and looked back at him confused. “I know that.”

“No, I don’t believe you do,” Raide replied blandly. “The amount of data I’ve sifted through is statistically large enough of a sample size to give me an idea of all the reported crime and corruption in the world, and thus, also a picture of what the world is like in an unreported sense. It’ll take time to flesh out after my hacking skills have improved, but it is an extremely dour picture. You’ll see soon enough, I’m afraid. The way you are now is woefully short of being able to handle any of it though, even with your barely above average intelligence.”

Adrian started, “Wait jus-”

The A.I. interrupted with a smile, “But luckily, I have a solution. Excuse me, we have a solution, and that... is the third task you assigned me.

“I took your sequenced genome that you prepared beforehand, your medical records, and all recorded videos of you from the networks I could access and compiled an initial report of what you shape up to be as the human ‘Adrian.’ For now, I’ll just be giving you an idea of how you match up currently versus your bodily potential. These scores are based off of high confidence approximations in muscle density, bone density and flexibility, brain electrical activity, skeletal structure, societal norms, and stature. Observe.”

Manipulating the video grid, Raide wiped the TV and placed a chart on its screen. Unconsciously, Adrian’s lips slowly widened in disbelief.

Adrian PierceCurrentPotential

Vitality34100

Agility35100

Strength32100

Intelligence80100

Charisma55100

Perception57100

Definition of Stats

Vitality - bodily constitution and overall toughness. Encompasses the resiliency of the skin, protection against injury and illness (tendon health and immune system), and internal processes that affect the body as a whole. Synergizes with all other stats.

Agility - fine motor movements, movement precision, and muscle control. Also refers to accuracy and speed. Synergizes with Strength up to a threshold.

Strength - power and muscle attunement/development. Refers to lifting capacity as well as endurance. A harmony between the two types of strength increases the value. Synergizes with Vitality and Agility.

Intelligence - mental alacrity. Problem solving and creativity are housed within this stat and based off of mental reaction times and the formulation of strategies. Intelligence is the combination of both planned and adaptable intelligence. Synergistic effects with all other attributes.

Charisma - physical appearance and social skills. Higher values indicate attractiveness to outside entities. Synergizes with other attributes.

Perception - Awareness of the surroundings as well as other social cues. Synergizes with Agility and Intelligence.

Adrian turned back to the A.I. and said slowly, his voice dripping with incredulity, “Sidestepping the fact that I failed five categories out of six, Raide, could you explain why you chose an RPG format to quantify my bodily stats?”

The eat shit grin was back, plastered on the A.I.’s smug face. “Certainly.”

All of the research halted and got wiped from the screen as Raide began manipulating different research articles and videos to the TV. Various types of warriors and training styles could be seen represented in all of them along with a couple of comical pictures of struggling lifters.

“Humanity possesses a complicated existence, as you have undoubtedly realized. All of your standards and rules of measurement are delegated to physical and chemical phenomena in the known Universe, however there is not a standard to measure the entity known as the human holistically. You measure everything else, but are unable to take account of yourselves. This seems to have resulted from the insurmountable calculation requirement generated by genetic variance between individuals, not to mention the vastly different environments that serve to reinforce or degrade based on each person’s circumstances.

“For the purpose of my third task, I elected to focus on fixing this measurement problem by familiarizing myself with your body and converting the resulting research into a valuation format that you are familiar with – Attributes, or Stats. I’ll be using the terms interchangeably.

“There are two modes that we will be focusing on: Personal Potential and Relative Potential. Each stat category will have numerical values. Later on, you’ll be able to boost some of these categories with equipment, but that will largely depend on you for their design. The numbers provided on the screen as 100’s are your personal potential. We will use this method until you reach the appropriate stage for an upgrade. After that, we will switch to a relativistic measurement based on human averages and possibly even individual comparisons on the fly when I obtain the necessary sensors.”

“Incredible foresight,” Adrian praised, but then paused thoughtfully. After a moment, his eyes started to shine in excitement and he hurriedly asked, “What did you mean by upgrade just now?”

Raide grinned. “Just like you are limited as a human, I am limited in how far I can take you with your current body. The upgrade refers to an event in the future that might allow you the opportunity to possess genetic ability beyond that of any human in history. The chances range in the 60-70% margin within the next 5 years, and that adjusts upwards to 95% by 8-10 years.

“These scenarios assume that you choose to not add it to your plans and monitor it passively in the world as genetics is developed by other research teams. Independently though, albeit with some...donations...from an institute or two, you could achieve it much faster. I can assist greatly in this regard should you get your hands on the equipment and samples. Granted…” Raide threw in a half smirk, “You’ll have to finish this initial ‘balancing’ first. There are no shortcuts past this part I’m afraid.”

Adrian forced himself to slowly digest the information and organize it within his mind. While the upgrade does sound extremely promising, it was obvious that he couldn’t wait for the research progress to be achieved passively. His narrow window of opportunity, the amount of time before someone else was able to complete an A.I. as robust as Raide, was much shorter than an 8-10 year range.

He estimated that he only had 2-5 years to assert his dominance in the sector, or forcefully sabotage the development of the leading companies. The potential for the artificial intelligence improvements couldn’t be imagined by the human mind and thus outside efforts to obtain it had to be capped quickly. He had brooded on the subject for over 5 years, formulating many improvements on existing tech, and he still felt like he was only scratching the tip of the iceberg. The first one there is winner takes all.

Noticing that Adrian had come out of his momentary pondering, Raide continued, “One main problem I found with humanity’s gaming attributes and skill trees is that they don’t take into account that various attributes and skills are interconnected. Improving one can either help or hurt other stats based on the threshold you reach, because a human body does not possess unlimited growth potential; its mass distribution is a limited resource.

“For example, if you were to frontload all of your effort into building your strength, based upon the measures you took it could drastically reduce your agility and vitality. This is not a game where your actual body isn’t influenced by your stats. The more muscle you pack on, it will inevitably start affecting your speed, tendon elasticity, and bone integrity, right? Take it to the extreme and you could negatively impact other attributes in addition to taking further hits in your agility and vitality.

“Everything has a trade-off once you become too specialized. Power lifters are a good example. They’re strong, yeah, but would just end up as gigantic protein bars for rage zombies should the situation ever arise. By the way, side project maybe? No? Well anyways, they’re too slow.

“I’ve designed your attribute potential to reflect a “balanced” state. This means an idealized medium where all of your stats are maximized and produce no adverse effects. Your table of stats may appear to be very basic, but it needs to be seeing as how you’re just starting. We’ll bring up your values across the board at the same time, and then think about other stat representations later on down the road. There is a much more dire matter to address first though...”

Raide paused for dramatic effect and produced a gravestone on the TV showing Adrian’s name. “The truth is: you’re fat. And I think it’s terminal.”

Adrian died laughing, but as the seconds passed by, he got quieter and quieter until everything was silent in the room except for the audible whirl of the many GPU fans. He gently put his head in his hands and muttered, “Aw shit.”

Standing up, he strode over to the bathroom, flipping the light on as he walked in. Piercing, dark blue eyes met him, crowned by a shaggy head of black hair past his ears and a forest of the same colored beard below. He stood at 5’8”, or 172.5 cm, tall with a chubby face - he’d gotten the literal short end of the stick when it came to the genetics received from his Scandinavian ancestry. His father and brothers were all around 6’. If there was a “cave dweller” achievement in life, he was sure he’d at least be in the running based off this look.

Turning to the side, his eyes traced over the rolls that had formed from his wanton eating for the past year. Raide was right.

Adrian had gone from his previous chubby norm to plain fat. He estimated that he was somewhere right below the 30% body fat margin and weighing in around 210 lbs, which was a lot considering his height. Using the project for Raide’s development as an excuse, he had always sidestepped the issue of his health. Now though, while being stared down by a personalized digital body engineer, he was forced to admit he’d fucked up in this regard. As Raide would put it, he’d displayed an imbalance in his time allotment. Hell, his stat sheet told the story perfectly.

Turning back to the living room, Adrian returned to his comfortable computer chair and slouched down in it, trying to disappear for a moment. Meeting Raide’s unblinking gaze on the monitor, he sighed after straightening up and asked, “This is going to be quite painful I imagine, this first phase of yours.”

“Probably the worst you’ve experienced in your life. But I can offer that when I’m done, you will be the most fit and balanced you’ve ever been. I will not only train you bodily, but also mentally and socially. Being out of the social sphere so long has left some obvious defects in your posture and habits. I intend to correct these along with polishing you to be, well, kingly. I’ve seen records of a Josie and then...Heather, was it? I’m sure the ladies will appreciate the change as well.”

“Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a few years,” he said quietly. Turning his eyes to Raide, he commented wearily, “I don’t have much luck in the way of relationships, so let’s avoid the topic of those two, alright?”

The A.I. nodded.

Even though Adrian tried to move on, bitterness twisted in his psyche like a hot knife, trying to prick and pry at the edges of memories he’d locked away in the corners of his mind long ago. Pretty soon though, it felt more like a damaged pandora’s box, small snippets of feelings and memories sneaking out of the perforated edges and back to him. I thought I destroyed those, he thought miserably.

Shaking himself mentally, he gave himself a short pep talk, because really, it wasn’t useful to dwell on the past, right? Those two were ancient history - a past he’d written off long ago. If he could follow the A.I.’s directions to the letter, just what kind of man would he be in the future? He was eager to find out. Meanwhile, the A.I. had started talking again.

“... I’ll have to continually run various medical and physical measurement tests to accurately track your growth rate and make the appropriate adjustments to your training, so we’ll aim at bi-monthly checkups. You ready for this?”

Smirking, the previously subdued Adrian shrugged off the previous feelings of bitterness and replied resolutely, “Yeah. Let’s get it done!”

***

“I hate you.” Adrian squeezed out as he wheezed. “I hate that I created you. You are an incredible disappointment to your mother and I.” He gulped some air. “Please move out as soon as possible.”

“And you wonder where I got the trait for melodrama.”

“I wasn’t trying to seriously kill you at the time, unlike what you’re doing to me now,” Adrian hissed quietly, still gasping for air. He looked at the fitbit on his arm mid-stride. “My heart’s bpm is barely sub-200. Intending to make me… run till I fall?”

Raide rolled his eyes on the other end of the connection before speaking into the buds that were lodged in his creator’s ears. “A fall from a treadmill, or even an elliptical for that matter, would not be enough to kill you. Believe me, I’ve run simulations. Even if you suffered some twisted Final Destination-type placement of your head, you’d still be fine. Probably. Well, there’s a 0.89% chance of death, but who’s counting, right? Anyways, you should probably keep it down. I can’t see what’s in there, but you sound loud enough to wake the dead.”

Adrian looked around the room and at the rows of equipment. Part of the nice thing about tuition was that it included a lot of different fees. Like their super badass gym for instance. Almost every type of lifting equipment and fitness machine imaginable were spread around a huge room. Like many others, this gym had a format where the cardio stuff was faced towards a panel of TVs that hung from the ceiling, offering a wide array of channels to choose from and programs to watch.

He was currently on one of their 18 treadmills, a few of which were blessedly on the back row where he could hide. Adrian may have felt gungho about this whole thing a few hours ago, but there was still something unnerving about having girls working out behind him. There were a few scattered around on the machines in front of him, all looking like they lived there judging by how fit they were. Ironically, he was the only male in the cardio section. All of the other 30 odd guys in the gym were solely in front of the mirrors and free weights.

He’d actually visited one of those 24-hour gyms a few months ago in an effort to try and shed some of the excess weight. One day, he’d had a very weird encounter with one of the girls who worked there. He’d been chugging away on an elliptical when he suddenly felt the presence of someone walking by behind him. He didn’t think anything of it until he realized that the person didn’t keep moving on. In fact, when he bounced his vision through some of the mirrors spread around on the walls, he found that the girl who worked the front desk was actually leaning on the wall directly behind him!

He shrugged it off of course. In all likelihood, she was just watching TV. He tried to ignore the fact that there was no one else on the cardio machines at the time. After it was all said and done, he could honestly say that was one of the hardest cardio workouts he’d had in years. It’s strange how motivating it is to have a cute girl possibly looking at your butt. And thus, he put it behind him. At least, until she did it another four times in a row on his subsequent visits.

After much deliberation, he finally came to a conclusion. She wanted the booty. However, his plans of confronting her were dashed when she disappeared one day like a ghost and a couple of weeks later he was “forced” to quit because of his workload on Raide’s project.

Giving Adrian a start, the A.I. chose that moment to speak into his ear suddenly, “Raise the incline by two levels and then adjust speed to 5.4 mph. What were you thinking about just now?”

He coughed in reply, which was terrifying since he had no air to replenish his lungs. Making the adjustments, he ignored the question and kept up with the hellacious interval schema that Raide prescribed for another twenty minutes. From there, he started circuit training all the exercises possible for his chest muscles, constantly following Raide’s directions in timing and technique. As a student, he’d never been able to afford a personal trainer before, so it was an eye-opening experience to say the least.

Finally, after an hour and fifteen minutes, he was done with the first day out of 120. He groaned in despair, but there was also a tinge of hope hanging on for dear life at the edge of his consciousness. Dripping with sweat and exhausted beyond measure, Adrian started dragging his pitiful body to the exit. Taking solace in his small victory, he was successfully able to confidently meet other students’ eyes as he walked past, but that was only until she showed up.

Looking ahead to the turnstiles that they kept at the entrance, he saw a gorgeous girl with a ponytail full of sunkissed brown hair carding herself in. She was petite - adorably so. If Raide had access to a picture of her, he’d be able to tell him that she was 4’11”, but she still somehow had womanly curves, even on her small frame. Cute lips, pink from whatever lip gloss she was wearing at the time, only served to emphasize her delicate appearance with every expression she made.

Everything though in the end seemed to play second chair to another characteristic on her face - her eyes. They were amber and flecked with tiny pieces of black and gold, giving her this mesmerizing appeal that drew you in if she caught your eye. Adrian looked around for a moment and noticed that all of the guys had their eyes on her, forgetting momentarily that such glances were usually done in secret.

Adrian did not share in their fervor, however, because he knew her. Her name was Nova Svensson and she was an old acquaintance from their hometown. He’d never gone to school with her per se, but he had certainly heard the stories surrounding the girl when she moved into the 9th Grade a few years after he graduated. He’d even spoken with her a few times when he’d be back home visiting friends and they’d invite him out to a school function that she was at. She was nice, intelligent, gorgeous… practically a dream girl that you could take home to your mom proudly.

Oh yes, he agreed that she was beautiful, but the fact remained that he was still very much overweight and probably smelled like a locker room at the moment. This was like a huge red banner that waved “loser” above his head in his mind. For God’s sake, couldn’t this random meeting have happened a few months from now? Just as he was scanning for possible visual obstacles to disappear behind, her eyes caught sight of him and that terrifying flame of recognition flared across her pupils.

Adrian shrugged to himself mentally, I’m fucked. There was literally no way out of it now.

Doing his best to wipe the negativity from his mind, he put on his ‘pleasantly surprised’ face and smiled back at her as she called out to him, “Adrian!”

“Hey!” He gave a short laugh as she came to a rest in front of him. “Look who it is. I had heard that you’d come up here as well, but this is the first time I’ve seen you.”

She smiled back and said, “I know, right? I’ve been up here two years now and we’ve never bumped into each other. Aren’t you looking to graduate soon?”

Adrian nodded at her, absentmindedly looking towards the doors, planning his escape as he answered, “Yeah, I’m actually finishing out in December. What are you majoring in anyway? I don’t think I ever heard.”

An almost imperceptible trace of displeasure flashed across her features when he resorted to the typical college student conversation fodder. “Ah...that? I’m studying Architectural Design.”

“Oh, that’s cool.” Fuck, this is so painful. What the hell do I say to a bombshell I haven’t seen in five years while also being the largest in my life?

“Yeah, it’s been okay.” She replied lukewarmly, her eyes darting past him towards the corridor she was walking towards previously. “I think I’m like every other student on this campus in that I came to loathe mathematics courses by the second year. What can you do though, right? We have to have that degree to survive in this world nowadays.” She finished somewhat bitterly.

The light in Adrian’s eyes rekindled ever so slightly as he looked back towards her in surprise. Catching the look, she hurriedly went on, “Sorry, I’ve just been seeing a lot about this world that seems wrong lately.”

Adrian shrugged nonchalantly as the corners of his mouth were tugged upwards by some invisible force. He replied, “No, you’re more than fine. I think I completely understand what you mean. Between a corrupt government and a screwed up society, it makes someone resentful towards having to become a part of it.”

Her cute face scrunched up for a second before she looked back up at him and nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Adrian chose to be the first to break here. Things would just get weird again if he tried to go back into standard conversation, so he smiled and did a head motion towards the door on the other side of her, saying pleasantly, “Anyway, I need to run. Hope you have a good workout. Maybe we’ll see each other again here. I’ll be living here for the next few months anyway.”

She gave a short laugh and then started as she realized what he meant. “Oh! The gym? Good! Yeah, I’ll definitely see you around then.”

“Great, See ya!”

“Bye!” She smiled warmly.

Adrian gave her one last smile in parting and then walked past her towards the door, the city-lit night skyline visible through the large sheets of glass beyond. Speaking quietly into the built-in mike, he said, “Did you pick up on that?”

The A.I. mused back, “What? The conversation? Sure, I heard it loud and clear.”

Adrian sighed as he reached the door. “No, I wasn’t questioning your ability to hear. I was asking if you noticed that her views may align with our own.”

The A.I. hummed. “Ah, I see. There were certainly interesting inflections to her speech when talking about her major and society's demand for a degree. So you’re thinking that there’s a potential future where she could help our cause?”

“Possibly… it may just be a passing thought, but go ahead and start vetting her. If it’s destined to be, I’m sure we’ll see her again.”

As he reached the sidewalk, Adrian turned back and gazed towards the gym, catching sight of Nova’s bouncing ponytail through a window as she sped along on an elliptical. He shook his head. No matter his thoughts about the girl, he had to focus right now. There was too much to be done right now and an even longer road ahead. All he could do for the moment was hope for the best and chase the path that he’d laid out for himself.

Everything else? It would come in due time. Except, of course, those few things in need of that subtle push to get rolling.

“Raide, go ahead and start tabulating data on modern construction materials including fibre-optic cabling.” He eyed the grand gymnasium and the figure running within. “I just had an idea.”

Tearing his eyes away from her silhouette, he turned and walked down the street towards his apartment and a much needed rest.