My Only Familiar Is Me[A Late-Blooming Evolution Story]

”Does anyone have questions about the portals?” Professor Langstrom swept the room with a patient, expectant gaze.

A forest of hands shot up instantly. Curiosity was the only antidote to the sticky fear the footage had planted in us.

”I’m glad you’ve kept your ability to think critically,” Selina said with a soft smile, gesturing toward Louisa. ”Let’s start with you, cadet.”

”Why are the portals so narrow?” Louisa squinted, carefully choosing her English words. ”In all the recordings, maybe a motorcycle could get through. A car would just get stuck.”

”The standard size of any recorded rift’s exactly three by three meters,” the professor said, clicking the remote and bringing up a portal diagram overlaid with a precise measurement grid. ”We still don’t understand the physical nature of this limit, but leading theorists think it’s a restriction of GP output power. The bandwidth of the connection channel between worlds isn’t infinite.”

Nick shook his hand so violently as if his life depended on the answer. Selina noticed the impulse and could not suppress an approving nod.

”Yeah, Cadet Thompson?”

”What about their side? Same size?” he blurted out.

”Based on testimony from the few surviving prisoners, yeah. The portal geometry’s constant for both sides.”

Nick did not lower his hand. Instead, he leaned forward, nearly lying across the desk.

”Go ahead,” Selina allowed, her interest clearly growing.

”If the channel’s that narrow, then they can’t move full modules or heavy equipment, right? They’ve gotta haul everything in pieces and assemble it on site, like a construction set? How much time do they have before we show up?”

”Ninety days,” Selina said, clearly enjoying his momentum. ”The enemy’s got a three-month head start to establish a fortified foothold. Any more questions?”

”A lot!” Nick’s glasses flashed with excitement while the other cadets slowly began lowering their hands. ”You said our entry point’s hidden. But how exactly?”

”A camouflage field based on S-Power,” the professor explained. ”To any external observer who isn’t native to Earth, the exit point looks like an impassable landscape feature. For example, a sheer cliff. Physically, the enemy can’t pass through it while the protection’s active.”

”Got it...” Nick froze for a second. ”Purely hypothetical: if an alien’s got tech or abilities to break that protection, could they push through early and ignore the ninety-day timer?”

Selina’s smile tightened slightly. ”Very perceptive, cadet. Hypothetically, yeah, that possibility exists. And if it happens before we deploy defensive forces, the entire planet would face catastrophic consequences.”

”And what counts as our victory then? Total wipe?”

”Absolutely. Down to the last living organism on that side.”

”But the neutral zone’s huge!” Nick spread his hands. ”What if a single enemy’s got invisibility or can merge with stone? On a cosmic scale, there could be thousands of abilities like that. They could just hide in a hole and wait out the timer!”

”This situation’s one of the most common,” Selina said, clearly pleased with his reasoning. ”For exactly such cases, when the invaders’ base has already been dismantled and resources extracted but the enemy counter hasn’t reached zero, we apply extreme measures.”

She brought up the image of those same futuristic capsules again. A molecular disintegrator. A weapon that left no chance even at the cellular level.

”If we win,” Nick continued, ”does GP send some kind of notification? How much time do we have to evacuate before the door shuts?”

”In case of success, the boundaries of the portal begin to pulse. Exactly one hundred forty minutes later, the passage closes permanently. This timeframe is confirmed by hundreds of successful missions.”

”Hmf...” Nick fell silent, sinking into thought. ”I’m not a scientist, just a geek, but this all feels like a carefully designed tabletop game where the Game Master’s clearly favoring one side.”

Professor Langstrom slowly approached his desk, folding her arms across her chest. ”Go on, Cadet Thompson. That’s an interesting thought.”

”Just look at it. There’s artificial balance everywhere. The small portal size prevents the invader from crushing us immediately with mass and tech, so they’ve gotta fiddle with parts in the middle of nowhere. They get more time to prepare, set traps, run patrols. We, the defenders, don’t get that time. But we get reconnaissance rights: we go in, assess the threat, come back to Earth, gear up, and return with a counterstrike. The invaders don’t have that privilege. They build a base while preparing for an enemy they’ve never seen.”

”By your logic, the chances are equal,” Selina noted. ”They’ve got time, we’ve got information. One to one.”

”It only looks that way at first,” Nick adjusted his glasses, and something disturbingly calculating appeared in his gaze. ”If the invader’s weak, we just take their resources. If they’re too strong, we collapse the board with a disintegrator. We’re given the right to choose the opponent. The invader doesn’t have that choice.”

”So you think the creator of GP’s on Earth’s side from the start?”

”Well... it makes sense,” Nick shifted under her gaze. ”If the portal’s searching for a habitable planet, why ours? There should be billions of empty worlds with suitable atmospheres. If the portal opened on an uninhabited sphere, there’d be no one to fight. But it opens here. It’s like we’re being deliberately pitted against each other, and we, the defenders, are being handed trump cards.”

”So, in your view, a good Samaritan’s giving us free resources?” Selina thoughtfully bit the arm of her glasses. ”Then why not simplify the algorithm? Why not just transfer the resources of a dying planet directly to us? Why this bloody gladiatorial stage?”

”Uh... I don’t know,” Nick muttered, chewing his lip, his confidence wavering. ”Maybe he’s just a bad programmer? Or it’s a beta version full of bugs?”

Ted and Louisa snorted with laughter, but Selina remained completely serious.

”As a possibility,” she said with a slow nod. ”A similar theory has already been discussed in the Corps scientific community, but I’ll still pass your reasoning to the analytical department. Keep it up, Cadet Thompson. A fresh perspective won’t hurt us.”

Nick nodded awkwardly, clearly pleased that his geeky analogies had been taken seriously.

”Next question?” Selina swept her gaze over the quieted audience again. ”Sergeant Summers, I noticed you haven’t raised your hand this whole time. Aren’t you worried about anything at all?”

”Negative,” Mary replied without changing her posture, her eyes fixed somewhere through the professor. Her voice was laced with icy calm. ”Everything’s perfectly clear to me.”

”I see...” A trace of disappointment slipped into Selina’s voice. She had clearly hoped for a more lively reaction. ”Alright then. Cadet Drake?”

”When do we get to go wreck those bastards?!” Ted practically bounced in his seat. ”I wanna score my first frag before I turn sixteen!”

Mary rolled her eyes theatrically. Nick buried his face in his hands, and Louisa only let out a heavy sigh. I kept a stone expression, although irritation boiled inside me. The kid had clearly watched too many action movies and treated the upcoming slaughter like a new level in a shooter.

”As soon as you pass all qualification exams with a satisfactory score,” the professor cut him off.

”Wait, exams?!” Ted threw his hands up in outrage. ”I thought you’d teach us how to break alien spines, not make us grind boring tests!”

”SILENCE!” The sergeant’s thunderous roar forced Ted to shrink into his chair. ”If you’re told to study, you’ll study till your eyes spark!”

”Thank you,” Selina nodded to the sergeant and turned back to us. ”Cadet Drake, there’s no school curriculum here. Every subject in the Awakened Corps is aimed at one goal: your survival. We teach tactics, enemy biology, and field aid. I’ll personally administer the bestiary exam. Any further questions?”

”Uh... yeah...” Ted scrambled to recover his standing in the group. ”Right! How often do they even open? Those portals?”

”On average, four times a month. Locations are selected randomly across the planet,” Selina replied in a matter-of-fact tone, as if reading from a textbook. ”However, there’s a strange pattern: the rift always occurs in densely populated areas, at ground level. It’s like the Game Master Nick mentioned really wants to make sure we don’t miss them.”

She glanced meaningfully at Thompson, giving him a chance to expand his theory, but he was too busy writing something down.

”We have equipment that detects spatial disturbances eight minutes before a stable rift forms,” the professor continued. ”That is enough time to cordon off the area. Officially, all incidents are disguised as unscheduled construction work or gas leaks. If a civilian finds out about a portal, it is a failure of the security services. It is in everyone’s interest that there is no crowd of onlookers with smartphones at the operation site.”

Finally, her gaze settled on my raised hand. It seemed she had saved the adult for last.

”Yeah, Staff Sergeant Ross?”

”What’s the price of the question?” I asked bluntly. ”What exactly does an Awakened get for successfully closing a portal?”

”That depends on your status in the group and your contribution to the operation,” Selina adjusted her glasses, shifting into a businesslike tone. ”The base payment’s fifty thousand dollars for participation alone, regardless of the outcome. Then come bonuses: for reconnaissance, for eliminating enemy officers, for capturing technology. In addition, as in the regular army, there are medals. And those who close ten portals receive a personal invitation to dinner with the president at the White House.”

I barely held back a grimace. Dinner with the president? Seriously? Did they really think a grown man would walk into alien gunfire for the chance to eat government steaks in a politician’s company? Fifty grand per run was interesting. But dinner... that was just ridiculous.

”Sign me up!” Ted shouted excitedly. ”I’m gonna be the first to shake the president’s hand!”

Right. Kids. For them, that was the ultimate dream. I ran the numbers in my head: no breaks, and if every portal in the world suddenly started opening in the United States and Latin America, the kid would need at least three months of nonstop fighting to earn his dessert in Washington. Assuming he did not get killed in the first portal.

”SILENCE!” the sergeant barked again, cutting off the teenagers who had already started arguing about what suit to wear for a visit to the president.

”Staff Sergeant Ross, did you have another question?” Selina could see that my enthusiasm for the dinner was approaching zero.

”Yeah. What’s the minimum participation threshold? Is there a mandatory quota for the number of closed portals per year?”

The kids fell silent and stared at me. They saw an adventure, I saw a contract. One dreamed of glory, another played at being a ninja, a third hunted for conspiracies. Only I seemed to understand that we were highly paid, but still expendable cannon fodder.

”There’s no fixed quota,” Selina answered after a brief pause. ”The Corps operates on a different principle. Profiles of all Awakened are loaded into a supercomputer. When a portal opens, the algorithm analyzes your abilities and selects those whose chances of survival in that specific zone are the highest. You simply receive a text message with an order to report to the assembly point within twenty-four hours. Failure to appear without a critically valid reason results in a penalty. Three penalties, and your status changes to Deserter, with all the consequences, including imprisonment.”

A chill ran through me. It was a perfect trap. If you were a top specialist with a high survival rate, the system would keep pulling you in until the statistics broke. I should not have boasted about my certifications and skills. I had painted a target on myself as a universal soldier.

”However,” Selina said, as if reading my thoughts, ”there’s a hard limitation in the code: one Awakened can’t be deployed more than three times per calendar year. We take care of our soldiers.”

I exhaled mentally. Three times a year was acceptable. That left room for a life.

”And now,” Selina turned to the board and drew a large letter S in the center with a sweeping motion. ”Let us talk about what makes you unique. Where your powers come from, what their true potential is, and what role the S-Power metric plays in all of it.”