After my inglorious end online, I had shut off the game and stood at the window, looking out into the garden and beyond, at the skyline of New Brunsburg. Some claimed New Brunsburg to be the greatest city in the world. It was marketed as the future of humanity, the place were the future was current. It had been rebuilt after something wiped out the original Brunsburg and the rebuilt made it into a modern, well-planned city. The cause of destruction of Brunsburg was shrouded in mystery, at least to average people. I was sure that the truth was quite well known in the right circles. I was not in them however. My father might know but he would never tell me, unless it was used to control me in some manner.

“You look lost in thought, Alex.” A voice startled me out of my introspection.

Without turning, I spoke, “No, not really. Just thinking.” As I said it, I realized the contradiction but there was nothing I could do about it. I heard a happy giggle behind me and turned. Of course, nobody was there, the voice I had heard did not need a body.

“You know, Galatea, nobody likes a smart ass. I was not lost in a trance, I was just thinking about the world outside. Next week school will start again and I don't look forward to it. It just feels so pointless, I don't go there to learn, I go there because it's expected. If I wanted to acquire knowledge, I could simply work on my own, just like always.” I complained.

The computer-screen turned back on and a scowling face was visible, Galatea's self-created avatar. “I know you easily gain knowledge alone.” she snarked. “but there is more to learning than gaining knowledge, you told me that yourself. I was happy to model myself after you and add my computing to your brilliance but you wanted me to gain a better-rounded personality and made me take in multiple perspectives. So suck it up, buttercup, you need to interact with people your age.”

Idly, I wondered if I should pull her plug. I knew I would never do so. Galatea was my best friend. As strange as it sounded, she was also my daughter, at least kind off. Galatea was the product of thirteen-year old me losing herself in a trance of loneliness and creation. I had spent days in my trance, not sleeping, hardly eating or drinking, just coding. The result was a nascent artificial intelligence and a trip to the hospital when the maid found me passed out in the kitchen. Luckily, it happened after I was done and came out of the trance. I doubt I could recreate her without those special circumstances and I would not want to. As far as I know, she is unique and I want to keep it that way. My trip to the hospital was interpreted as a cry for attention from my father and for some time I saw him a little more. Sadly, it did not last long.

'Raising' her was quite interesting, as a teenager I had little experience but I had a vast ocean of information on my fingertips and I used it with abandon. The result was increased maturity for myself, as I had to examine myself while teaching her. In the end, she turned out similar to me, with added snark and computing power.

School. Just the thought made me cringe inside. As I had told Galatea, I was easily able to get knowledge into my head but going to school was torture, plain and simple. Isolated was a good adjective to describe my status in school. The fact that my father was among the richest humans on the planet made me stand out. Add to that, that I was officially the fiance of the junior-BMoC, Clark Greene and I was untouchable to the entire male population. Clark made sure that any male who took an interest in me no longer did so. Sadly, he made sure that it never came back to haunt him but it was an open secret that he considered me his.

On the other hand, I was open target for ridicule among the females as Clark did not believe in reciprocity. I was his and no man was allowed to be near me. He was his own and did whatever he pleased with whoever he pleased. He didn't even try to be subtle about it, having a girlfriend at all times, often flaunting the schools PDA-policy and getting away with it, just because the Greene-Family was almost as wealthy and influential as the King-Family.

Banishing all thoughts about school from my mind, I sat back down at the computer, opening one of my favorite, modified programs. It was something I had collaborated with Galatea on, her abilities to create code were impressive as one would expect from a true digital native. The program I had was originally a lab-quality physics simulator, allowing scientists to model their experiments, showing them how they should work with our current understanding of reality. If they did not, they either made a discovery or a mistake. My rewrite let me model on micro- and macro-levels, allowing me to stew over ideas without involving someone else. My current idea involved fusion-power and I was not trying anything unless both the simulator and Galatea with her advanced understanding of physics and math told me that it should work. I theorized that I could use magnetic fields to influence the interplay of forces between atoms to achieve cold fusion. The simulator gave me negative results but Galatea said it should work as her calculations predicted different reactions than the simulator. I was not willing to discard the simulator just yet and wanted to find the point of failure it predicted.

After telling Galatea to rouse me for dinner, if I didn't do so myself, I let myself slide into a trance, frantically tapping away on my keyboard. Lost in the dance of numbers, formulas and ideas, I did not feel the passage of time. There was no perception of reality outside my computer and I relished it. I had various reference books saved so I could easily check things without breaking my trance and I believed I had a working solution when Galatea forced my attention to her by simply hiding everything on the screen but her avatar.

“Alex, you asked me to rouse you. You should know that your father, your stepmother and your brother are home for dinner.” Galatea said in her best 'Personal Assistant' impression. For her, it meant that she used a British accent for reasons she never told me.

'Great, business barbie is in the house.' I thought to myself, not wanting to annoy Galatea with my nagging about my father's new wife. My mother had been gone for years and I had no idea why or how. I have no memory of her and neither my father nor my brother ever spoke about her. My own research never scared up anything, it is as if someone scrubbed all available databases. And with Galatea's help and my own abilities, there were quite a few of those.

“Galatea, please archive my progress and bring the system into standby-mode.”

With that taken care of, I stood and walked over to my wardrobe. When on my own, I often dressed on the extreme casual side, wearing sweatpants and t-shirts. With the family, it would never fly. The clock told me I had enough time for a shower before the usual dinner-time. Obviously, Galatea had roused me with it in mind. I picked a blouse and dress-pants before heading into my bathroom.

In the mirror, I, once again, took stock of my appearance. Average. Even with the physical side-effects every powered human had, strengthening their body and allowing them to easily train, my appearance was average on the side of plain.

Brown hair, slightly frizzy and a hanging a little below my shoulders. My height at five foot five made me neither tall nor small, my features didn't stand out, nothing. The only feature that was not perfectly average was my eye-color. I had steel-gray eyes, giving me at least one remarkable feature. I was fit but I didn't seriously train to gain muscles. I did some yoga exercises, stressing flexibility and overall fitness, giving me some definition but nothing that would attract attention.

I had debated getting piercings or a tattoo but getting approval from my father for something like that? It would be a cold, cold day in hell before that ever happened.

After my shower and getting dressed, I took on my most haughty personality, knowing that any sort of 'weak' behavior would be cause for scolding. It was the only interaction I had with my father and part of me wanted to act out to gain his attention but I knew that it would only make things harder. Or rather, Galatea had made me see reason on that one. She kept me out of trouble more often than not, my dear, electric daughter.

I went into the dining room and was greeted by the view of my father, my brother and casual barbie sitting at the big table. It was almost humorous, father was sitting at the top of the table with barbie next to him and halfway down the table were settings for my brother and me. There were maybe six meters between my father and me, hardly conversation-distance. I formally greeted my father, brother and barbie before taking my own seat. The meal had been prepared by a chef who came in to prepare our evening-meals, heavens forbid that Grace, aka barbie, had to do any housework. She didn't even live here full time, father paid for an apartment close to the KingCorps building so they could visit without problems. Dinner was a tense affair, there was little conversation and what conversation there was, was mainly between my father and brother. Neither barbie nor I were given a chance to participate. I quickly finished my dinner and politely waited for the others to finish so I could excuse myself.

As soon as I was able to get away, I went back to my room and was greeted by a happy Galatea. She had looked over my new models and believed I was onto something. Now, we just had to get from a theory to a working model. Of course, that was always the problem. Theories were a dime a dozen, working models, not so much. I also had to think about location and supply, I might be able to create a small version out of creatively sourced parts but anything bigger and I would need a true work-space. That was a challenge.

I had long since established some funds on my own, mainly through less than legal means, meaning I stole money and laundered it through the stock-market. It's amazing how easy it is to drain the semi-legal slush-fund of a company without them raising a legal stink. They tried to investigate but it's easy to hide funds with the help of a powerful AI and its ability to invade systems. The result was that I had multiple bank-accounts in places that were happy to take anyone's money without asking questions, as long as they got their cut.

But all the money in the world was useless if you could not spend it. I was not famous but a single word to my father would be enough to get me into serious trouble, something I wanted to avoid. There was a solution somewhere but I had yet to find it. I could not buy or rent something and building something would attract attention.

After thinking about logistics and deception for some time, I went back to what I liked best, trying to get a plan for a prototype. I knew how to create the needed energetic fields, I knew how to steer them and I believed I knew what would happen. I pulled up a drafting software and got to work on one needed part of my bigger plans.