Numbness. Or was it that he was relaxed? Adrian couldn’t really tell anymore. All of his muscles were in this constant flux of destruction and regeneration. Nowadays, he had a hard time understanding whether he was just too sore to move, or so tired that his muscles refused to move. Small differences. He just sat there staring blankly at his algorithms professor who was going on about an old favorite in industrial robotics applications.

A greying Indian man stepped up to a blackboard and quickly wrote out an equation, barely referencing the legal pad he kept clutched in his left hand.

“Alright. Now…” He said in a heavy accent. “Today, we’re going to be going over a mechanism that you’ll see pop up all the time in industrial control systems, and that is a Proportional-integral-derivative controller or the more preferred, PID Controller. It’s named, as you might imagine, for the three correcting terms that are then summed to find the final manipulated variable or controller output which is defined as u(t). These…”

Adrian promptly zoned him out.

He was tired, cranky, and totally uninterested in relearning something he’d already been over two years ago when he was compiling feedback mechanisms and researching control theory to impart to Raide’s bank of engineering knowledge. Watching the professor go over it brought a little nostalgia, sure, but it was utterly useless to him now. Hell, part of the reason he created that damnable A.I. was so that it would be able to perform all sorts of analysis on its own. This was encompassed neatly in the file titled Engineering Suite.

Adrian wanted to be able to focus more on the creative side of things, and that wouldn’t be possible if he was constantly getting bogged down in the legwork involved in every little thing. He didn’t have a team of engineers at his disposal, nor did he even have interns for that matter. He was alone, and that was by design. Raide and his plans had to be kept secret, at least for now. He frowned in consternation and then shrugged. Luckily, he had a work horse designed to handle the heavy load.

Jostling a little in his seat, he felt the subtle tearing and ripping of his muscles which elicited a barely suppressed groan. For the past three weeks, Raide had kept him teetering on the edge of injury, using all of his free time for either exercise or mental and social training. Just yesterday, the A.I. had moved him up to three hour-at-a-time workouts. These time slots were arranged randomly and Adrian would receive notifications of the next one via the calendar app on his phone. The rationale was that these bursts would drive his metabolism and muscular growth into a frenzy.

Well, it was working.

The downside was that his hunger was driving him nuts. Adrian actually had to hand over all of the food acquisition to Raide in an attempt to avoid going to the grocery store. He knew himself better than anyone else. The second he walked inside those pearly-gated automatic doors, he’d be done for. From previous attempts at diet and exercise, he was confident that he could ruin three weeks of work easily. If he didn’t completely tank, he’d at least slow his progress down by a week. And that he could not have happen.

The progress was the only thing keeping him motivated. Well, that wasn’t completely true. He also had an incredibly annoying A.I. that he couldn’t get rid of as well as the occasional run-in with Nova. Funny how just having a beautiful person show up in your life every once in awhile can serve as a huge motivation to lose weight.

He was down 15 lbs. or 6.8 kg and could already feel himself starting to accumulate muscle under the layer of fat that was stubbornly clinging on to its life. It would be eradicated in time. Every day that he woke up with it rolling about on his body now only served to deepen his hatred for it. Raide had him on a hardcore protein, vegetable, grains, and fruits diet. It was a far cry from the gloriously tasty junk food that he had supplied himself up until then.

The training made him feel like he was constantly being melted down into some malleable alloy that Raide was going to go mad scientist on. He often pictured, usually in the shower, that he was going to one day be strapped to a metal gurney while a newly created android Raide laughed wildly as lightning struck a steel rod overhead. He shivered. Anything but that.

The thing that confused him was what Raide had said about the goal at the end of his personal advancement training being “different than other gym goers.” While it was certainly true that he had to be in the right condition to undergo the upgrade enhancement whenever/if they found one, the types of exercises combined with the fact that the A.I. was suggesting that he take martial arts classes was piquing his curiosity. What kind of possible futures were so likely to happen that he wanted him to be fit for combat?

Absentmindedly, he fished into his pocket and whipped out his phone. Raide had coded an interfacing app for himself so that he could communicate more easily with Adrian as well as the sensors on the phone and other wifi networks in his surroundings. On top of that, he had another tab where he kept all of the testing data as well as the stat chart that reflected his latest checkup. Adrian looked at it again for the 5th time today.

Adrian PierceCurrentPotentialVitality50 (+16)100Agility47 (+12)100Strength46 (+14)100Intelligence85 (+5)100Charisma65 (+10)100Perception64 (+7)100

Solid gains for a little less than a month spent under Raide’s tutelage. He had barely creased the halfway mark in vitality and a bit more for a few others, but despite the numb pain radiating through his tired muscles, Adrian was already starting to feel the energizing effect brought on by the increases. Raide told him that it would take around 5-6 months to fully max him out in all of the stat categories, so he was firmly in a “survivalist” type of mindset right now.

Leaning back in his chair to stretch, he yawned and gazed towards the equation still on the board. The professor had already listed out the major components and was in the process of fleshing out their constituents. Seeing him drone on about the PID Controller equation reminded him of another aspect he had yet to address since Raide’s creation - finances.

Standing up abruptly, Adrian made a show of checking his phone in a hurry like he’d just received an important notification and quickly fled the tedium. Walking down down those immaculately maintained halls, he mused over his situation.

Just like the vast majority of American students in college, he was broke and encumbered in debt.

He’d had no choice, really. His parents had been gracious enough to help him out the first time around, but when he went back for a second bachelor’s degree they’d told him he’d have to find his own way. Adrian couldn’t blame them. They’d had to sacrifice just to help him to the level they had already. These past four years had been completely built upon loans and the small independent contracting work he’d take up every once in awhile when he just couldn’t stand to code Raide that day.

If he was ballparking it correctly, because really, who remembers exactly how much their student loans are, he’d taken out around $70,000 to date. He’d have to check with Raide for an exact figure, but he knew that it had easily soared to above 100K by now. Compounded interest was a bitch and whoever thought it up must have been Satan himself. Normally, he’d work his ass off after he found a good job, settle down, maybe find a girl to date and marry and then buy a house with enough rooms for future kids, but Adrian didn’t want that. He felt that it all rang hollow when he stared down the barrel of the next forty years.

In any case, if he didn’t do something soon, he’d end up well educated and destitute with enough financial debt to make anyone else from a less affluent country quail in fright. This absolutely had to be taken care of and they also had to start building capital. Cutting edge projects require funds, and he knew he’d have a lot of them in the future.

Taking out a small, minimalist bluetooth earpiece, Adrian slotted it in his ear and turned it on. In a matter of seconds, an automated connection was established with Raide. Technically, he was always present as he had hijacked all the core functions of the phone in order to monitor Adrian’s surroundings, but his attention was usually delegated towards other projects his creator had been dreaming up for the last three weeks. All of the data was categorically analyzed passively and Raide would shed whatever wasn’t useful while fleshing the ideas out with specifics and potential improvements.

Hearing the call connect, Adrian asked, “How knowledgeable are you on the NYSE?”

He felt a hum reverberate through the speaker before a smooth voice responded. “Hmm, probably about equivalent to a hedge fund analyst. I have spent a sizable amount of time going over the business sector news, so I’ve been able to establish some patterns and baseline knowledge. I’ve also torrented a few textbooks on the subject.”

“That’s good, but I doubt it’ll be enough for what I’m thinking,” Adrian admitted. “If I were to temporarily halt your other tasks besides my training and the upgrade search, how long would it take you to formulate a prediction algorithm for the Stock Market?”

The A.I. mused, “Probably around a month. I’d have to dedicate a vast majority of my processing power towards monitoring the correlation between major news stories, business movements, and their respective stock shifts. I could do it in less, but my confidence in its accuracy will likewise decrease. 50% is the most I can divert though if you leave my passive functions like information control, training, and the search for an upgrade up and in the background.”

“Well, you said training could take anywhere from 5 to 6 months, so that’s fine. Go ahead and reallocate your processing power. After that...wait just a sec-” He abruptly cut off.

Adrian’s eyes swept over the crowd and noticed three people walking toward him. An average looking freckled girl with strawberry blonde hair came bouncing over as soon as she saw who he was. “Adrian!” She stopped in front of him and forced a high five. Though, it wasn’t like he was complaining - who doesn’t like high fives?

Her name was Lilly O’Kelley and just so happened to be the unicorn of the software engineering department. Women were rare, and decently cute ones even rarer. On top of that, she had this friendliness to her that was infectious, and a lot of the female-starved males had mistakenly taken that as interest in the few years he’d known her. Her dress and a light jacket combo only served to exacerbate this effect. He had a good relationship with her beyond the norm because he carried her to an A in an elective Robotics course a year ago.

He grinned at her and said, “Lily! And I see you have Dick and Harry in tow today. Two-timing in broad daylight and in front of each other? They must be whipped. Bad.”

Lily snorted and jerked her head at the two guys. “Like I’d ever date either of these dweebs.” Adrian saw a look of hurt float across both of their eyes and suppressed a laugh. At least he’d revealed her feelings about them out loud. Who knows how long they’d been in the friendzone without knowing for sure.

He actually couldn’t even remember their names. He liked to assign something random to them whenever he saw them, much to their ire. He felt a little bad about it, they were group members after all, but the guys happily skated along on the code he wrote, so he felt like he’d earned the right to call them whatever he wanted. Plus, they were allowing themselves to be strung along, which was negative points in his book.

“What are you doing out and about? I thought you were the “man-cave or bust” type.” She sent an appraising gaze at him. “Haven’t seen you since we turned in our midterm project - if that even counts since it was just an email detailing out the largest portion of the code that got us a 100.”

Adrian smiled and hung his head in mock shame. He looked back up at her. “You know I’m practically graduated already, right?”

“Spoken like a true senior.” She smiled, her eyes twinkling right back at him.

God, where does she get this energy? Adrian thought.

She continued, “You do know we have an attendance policy too, right? 15% ring any bells? At this rate, you’ll lose out on your prized 4.0 gpa if you keep skipping classes.” The look on her face was the very definition of satisfaction even though she tried to keep it masked.

“Are you sure you aren’t happy about such a possibility? In any case, you don’t have to worry.” He thumped her on the forehead, eliciting an angry yelp as he danced out of reach from her retaliation. “I actually had a running bet with the professor on one of his research problems. If I helped him figure it out, I’d be able to skip class and also secure an automatic 100 in attendance,” he added smugly.

She gaped at him and then exclaimed, “When was this!?”

“At the beginning of the semester. I knew I’d have other stuff to do later on that might interfere with class so I went and made the deal. I finished his problem in two weeks and then made him sign a slip guaranteeing that I’d get a 100% attendance. Boom,” he finished.

She shook her head confused. “I don’t understand. Who was it? What was his research problem?”

“Oh, that?” Adrian looked up thoughtfully then replied, “It was Dr. Matthews. He was having difficulties with the functions pertaining to his swarm’s movement.” He saw that she still wasn’t getting it so he added, “He’s researching robotic swarms, specifically how they can use biomimicry to monitor natural habitats without disrupting the wildlife. His is a swarm of fish - I can’t remember the type - meant to patrol and collect environmental data in the ocean.”

“Let me get this straight. You helped out a professor, who possesses three doctorates mind you, in programming his biomimetic fishies? In other words, graduate level work?”

Adrian pursed his lips and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

Lily groaned and sarcastically swept her hand towards him as she spoke to Chip and Dale, “Peter Parker, everyone.” She sent another gaze at him and then ran over and grabbed one of his wrists. “Now we just have determine which version of Peter Parker you are.”

She felt his wrist, ignoring the crazy look he was giving her. “Nope, no slits to allow for biological web shooting. You must be the pre-transformation Peter Parker where he engineers the web shooters.”

Adrian shook off her hand, rubbing it as he laughed at her dryly. “Very funny, Lily.” He then looked over at the two guys who somehow still hadn’t left yet. “You guys going somewhere?”

“Oh! Yeah, we were heading to a new pub that just opened up down the street. Wanna join?” Crabbe asked.

Lily sent a plaintive look towards him, but he had to shake his head in the end. He smiled apologetically towards her, saying, “Sorry guys, I’ve got to meet with a client who contracted me to develop some software for him. Next time, okay?”

The bubbly girl groaned before waving and bidding him goodbye in the end, leaving with Mike and Ike still following along like lost puppies. They all knew that he had a side job as a developer - hell, his ability in programming had resulted in a near-mythic level reputation. Sadly, this time he’d had to use it as an excuse. Adrian watched them go and felt bad for lying to them, but he simply couldn’t have any deviations from his schedule. A grimace scrunched up his face as he sunk into his thoughts.

Exhaling slowly, Adrian crossed the road and let his eyes wander upwards to the skyscrapers that dotted his peripherals. He did still have one of his three training sessions to attend today along with his mind palace and etiquette lessons, but…

Just then, Raide muttered in his earbuds, “I know you naturally want to spend time with and make friends, Adrian, but remember your goals dwarf theirs. Don’t sweat it.”

Chuckling, Adrian said, “That is incredibly creepy, you know. Two weeks and you can already predict what path my thoughts are going down.”

“Simple thought association based on situational impetus.” The A.I. responded in a bored voice. “I have a few probability formulas I designed that help with the prediction. Truthfully, I have a rough idea of what’s going through your mind most of the day except for when you get in one of your creative moods - that aspect of humanity I haven’t been able to predict yet.”

“Seriously, what you just said would freak out any other human on the planet.” Observing a mother picking up her toddler and hailing a cab, Adrian continued, “I think we’ll have to make advancements in quantum computing before you get to experience that side of humanity, Raide. The code required to properly emulate real creativity would be monstrous, even compared to what you're already running. Anyway, what’s next in training for today? I’m too lazy to look at the calendar.”

Raide sighed into his ear and responded, “Agility training, sir. You should hit the gym at 8:00 pm so head back for now and work on your mind palace training for an hour, and then there’s also the homework the algorithm professor handed out.”

Adrian perked up in confusion when the A.I. mentioned homework. Noticing the pause, the A.I. patiently explained, “The class you left just now? He assigned homework after you walked out. Probably trying to get you back for leaving early without giving him reason or warning.”

Adrian groaned. “Why does everyone have to be so prideful and vindictive in this world? Shouldn’t he be jaded and more blase towards the students by now?”

“Maybe towards normal students, sure.” Raide snorted. “But remember, you’re the student who helped Dr. Matthews complete his multirobot system and smooth over the collective behavior feedback he was getting. I know you wouldn’t know, but I’ve been watching the college’s staff emails. There’s been a great deal of talk about you recently so it’s not too much of a surprise that your Algorithms professor feels the desire to put you back in your place.”

Adrian sighed. “It’s a shame there are teachers like that in the profession. I didn’t leave his class out of arrogance - it was boredom!”

A disgusted voice came back, “Aren’t those two basically the same thing here? You left a class early because you felt that the content was useless to you. That carries along with it a certain level of arrogance.”

“Ehh, maybe you’re right,” Adrian smiled to no one in particular. “Anyways, what’s the progress with the homework?”

“Progress? You mean you want me to do it for you?”

A grin crossed Adrian’s face. “Of course. Why rehash a subject I’ve already learned? It’ll subtract from the time I have to train.”

A period of silence passed as he walked down the sidewalk. Passing pairs here and there, the expanse of concrete was actually fairly empty for a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of October. Perhaps everybody was already starting to feel lethargic with the cooling weather rolling in early this year.

After warring over his obedience to his creator and his desire to make sure Adrian didn’t get lazy, Raide inevitably caved in favor of obedience, Adrian noted. A tired voice rang out in his ear, “Fine. It’s done. Want me to email it to him?”

Adrian’s eyebrows raised before he shook his head. “Yes, please. I’m sure that’ll freak him out.”

Arriving back at his apartment, he started on his mind palace meditation. To all those fictions that claimed constructing things inwardly by meditating was easy, a resounding ‘fuck you’ echoed out in his mind.

He had barely created a single room in his palace and just started the process of filing and pulling various tidbits of information. It was like renovating a dilapidated shack that had been thrown together piece by piece over 24 years. All of the passive organization in his mind built around memories, places, and facts had to be unravelled and resorted. It was going to take a while.

Two hours later, Adrian was in the middle of ladder running at the school’s gym when his music suddenly faded out from his earbuds. Half a beat after, Raide spoke into his ears, “We’ve got a bead on an upgrade opportunity.”

Finishing the set, Adrian sat down on a nearby weight bench and pulled out his phone while heaving a labored breath, “For you or for me?”

The screen displayed mapping data with a triangulated signal centered on a city in upstate New York. Raide began his briefing with thinly concealed excitement, “This is for you. It’s come to my attention that a company called Biolink has been testing an experimental gene therapy. Their goal appears to be centered around telomere research and the Hayflick limit, which is the number of times a normal human cell population will divide until cell division stops.

“Over time, any cell that gets older is continuously attacked by free-radicals and oxides in the environment and body. This causes necrosis and also degradation in the cells, resulting in a need to replenish the stock of cells with new ones. The DNA replication process is where this all fails after many years. Telomeres are worn down after being copied over and over, and eventually pieces of code are lost in the process, thus signaling a human’s eventual decline towards old age and death since your body loses the ability to replace cells properly.

“By the time stamps on the data I’ve captured between researchers, they’ve been operating for the past 3 years. They slipped up when they got excited and started texting one another about possibly completing the first iteration of the serum in 6-10 months’ time. If they could successfully reinforce a person’s telomeres or even give them the ability to regenerate, then it could drastically prolong a human’s lifespan.”

“Searching for the fountain of youth are we?” Adrian chuckled but then looked at the screen suspiciously. “While certainly world-changing, you sound even more excited than that could warrant… what more is there to this that you haven’t mentioned yet?”

“So impatient. Alright. While looking at a few computer models of their attempts to affect the replication process, I noticed that they were missing a huge opportunity to modify the entire DNA sequence in one fell swoop… meaning, if I could get my hands on their research, I could not only complete their work but also add enhancements to your DNA in the process. Muscles and bone structure, your synaptic brain connections, optical nerves, etc. I could theoretically add a plethora of adjustments. You would be both human and extra-human.” Raide smirked on the screen. “What do you say? Care to become the first of your kind as well?”

“When you describe it like that, I don’t have any other choice than to say yes. Holy shit,” He swore happily. “What’s your confidence level for successfully reworking the serum? I won’t do it if it’s under 50%.”

“Heh! I knew you’d be like this. As for your chances, I’d put them at 85%. Technically, I’m 96% sure that I’ll be able to modify your genes the way I want, but I’m not all-knowing. There may be consequences and slight variations that I can’t predict. Thus, my 85% represents the chance that you take the changes and nothing else... messes up.

“Time frame-wise, it’s hard to say. We’ll need their facilities though for the final synthesis, so I’d recommend as soon as you’re done with the 5 months of basic training you’re on now, make a move. Six months will be plenty of time for me to play around with your DNA models and it’ll also serve for you to fulfill the prerequisite training so your body can handle the accelerated replication process.”

Adrian grew cautious. “Wait, what do you mean by that last bit?”

“Well, think about it. Once I rewrite your DNA to specification, I’m going to have to trigger a programmed cell death, or apoptosis, to ‘refresh’ them to the current version of the code. I’ll go as slow as possible, but too slow and you’ll be in the bed for weeks. I figure you’d rather be down and out for just a few miserable days rather than a month.”

“No rest for the wicked, huh. You’re right there. What’s the situation on their security?”

“I count 5 perimeter guards currently, but I don’t know about inside. They have a closed loop system to ward against corporate espionage. What I can do is map day-to-day data to compare their shifts. We’ll need to set up cameras at three regions surrounding the facility in order for us to cover all possible entrances and exits. Then it’s a small matter of tagging their arrival each day and cross referencing their facial data against known researchers and staff for the company. The remainder of the overall flow should give us an accurate enough number of guards. Once we’re all ready, it’ll be easy to sneak in and steal it.”

“Pretty clandestine activities you’re talking about here. You do remember that I’m a college student right?”

“Yeah, and I’ve also been monitoring your heartbeat through your wristband the entirety of this conversation. You were excited back at the beginning when I told you about the upgrade opportunity, now you’re back down to 65 bpm like you’re strolling through the park - not talking about planning a break-in to a lab. Care to elaborate?”

Adrian laughed out loud in the gym, drawing a few looks from the guys admiring themselves in the wall mirror.

Dropping his voice back down, he looked back at Raide’s face while pondering. “I don’t know, it’s weird. I used to always question myself over what I’d do in certain situations. Maybe my mind has been conditioned through that? I naturally don’t want to kill anybody, but when I start thinking about about how close we are, I feel this overwhelming sense of peace, like my purpose in life has been revealed.

“Not to mention, if I don’t have the balls to be committed enough and able to take those kinds of actions, I may as well hand you off to the government and go back to my mediocre life and job prospects. Because I certainly wouldn’t deserve the future that I’m dreaming of then.”

Releasing the grip that he had steadily strengthened on the phone, he saw Raide face-swapped with a psychiatrist in a high back leather chair on the screen. Tapping the side of his clipboard, Raide coughed and took out a pipe. A light flared as he struck a match. “Hmm hmm, yes, but how does that really make you feel, Adrian? Come on boy, flesh it out, don’t be shy. I am here to help you heal.”

Massaging his temples, Adrian got up from his bench and headed over to the indoor track. Losing himself to the painful rhythm of his pace, he alternated a quarter mile sprint for every 3/4ths of a mile he ran slowly. Losing his mind to the repetition, he thought about all the things that he needed to do before this raid.

A raid on a genetics lab. If you had asked him two months ago about his future plans, this definitely wouldn’t have been among his guesses. All he could do now though was stick to the schedule Raide had hammered out for him and trust that he would be ready. Thinking of all he had to do, he sighed in exhaustion… there simply weren’t enough hours in the day anymore.

Grabbing his towel and water bottle, Adrian dragged himself to the exit and began the short walk back to his apartment, cutting a lonely figure in the shadows of that metropolitan world.