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

All the applications were in the system, leaving a rare stretch of completely free time in my schedule. How long the recruiters would spend going over my paperwork was still anyone’s guess, but I definitely had at least a full day to myself.

I got up from the desk and walked through the living room into the kitchen. Maggie was still drilling techniques and combinations. Two straight hours of flawless, uninterrupted work without a single complaint or even a glance to the side. She was a true autonomous machine, running exactly according to its programming as long as the fuel held out. Too bad the [Trainer] effect could not be extended to other people, even in a limited capacity. With a training method like this, the Corps could clear any portal with surgical precision.

The sight of the refrigerator threw me for a second. The pink princess on a skateboard painted across the door was jarring. Too flashy, too childish, and completely in keeping with Stephanie’s style. The contents, however, were a pleasant surprise. All that sickeningly pink confectionery junk packed with ridiculous amounts of sugar was finally gone. In its place, fresh vegetables and fruit sat in neat rows, while a plate of huge, generously stuffed tacos occupied the middle shelf. Mom had taken care of it ahead of time. All I had to do was heat them up in the microwave.

I watched through the glass as the plate slowly turned in the orange glow of the heating element. The smell of meat, spices, and fresh herbs instantly filled the kitchen. Every detail of the meal had been prepared with mathematical precision. The diced tomatoes and shredded cheese looked as though they had been cut under a microscope. Apparently, having me around was enough to make her use the [Trainer]’s mental influence to its full potential.

I made a mental note to talk to her about refining her cooking skills until they became completely automatic. I had no need to build those reflexes into my own muscle memory. I could pull any set of instructions from the ”server” in a fraction of a second. For her, though, given her background as a cook, it could come in handy if she ever decided to return to her old profession.

With a plate of hot tacos and a glass of juice, I went back to my room. In the two minutes I had been gone, Maggie’s expression had not changed in the slightest. Watching someone spend hours performing punishing acrobatic combinations with a completely frozen expression was a peculiar kind of entertainment. Pure uncanny valley.

Back at the desk, I worked through lunch. A full day of waiting was no reason to slack off. I had described my skills on my résumé with such generous creative license that I now had to turn that fiction into actual knowledge, and fast.

I decided to start with the area where any gap in my knowledge would be exposed within seconds: the hard sciences. Math had never been a problem for me. Accounting had taught me to calculate quickly and accurately. Chemistry, on the other hand, was a complete disaster.

I logged onto an educational site, skimmed the reviews, and ordered a set of foundational textbooks, ranging from high-school basics to university-level tomes intended for advanced students and professors. The total came to eight hundred dollars. Compared with that, the extra twenty bucks for two-hour express delivery seemed like a perfectly reasonable investment.

The payment went through. While the courier made his way through Los Angeles traffic, I pulled up a free ten-hour intensive course taught by an academic instructor. My accelerated learning ability needed at least a basic framework to build on. Relying solely on scraps of high-school knowledge, even with my current perfect memory, would have been reckless.

An hour passed. The tacos were gone, and my accelerated metabolism responded with a pleasant, steady warmth spreading through my body as it processed the calories. At the same time, the periodic table of elements had been permanently etched into my memory, while the major types of chemical bonds and basic formulas had fallen neatly into place.

My smartphone buzzed on the desk. The screen showed a name: Selina.

I paused the lecture, took a deep, steady breath, and mentally prepared myself for someone to crack open my skull without anesthesia.

”Go ahead, Selina...”

”Ross!” Her sharp, grating voice immediately steamrolled right over me. ”What brilliant piece of stupidity do you think you’ve managed to pull this time?!”

”Let’s skip the theatrics. Get to the point,” I said calmly, keeping my voice level and matter-of-fact.

”Oh, God, don’t tell me you managed to rack up an entire list of disasters in one morning!” Her voice took on an unmistakably theatrical lilt, as though we were talking about the collapse of civilization. ”I’m talking about your completely irrational move. Why on earth would you send an application not just to our scientific division, but to both me and those vivisectionists over in the biological wing?”

”You have direct access to my personnel applications?” I kept my voice as dry as possible, hiding a flicker of irritation.

”I don’t exactly need to hack the Corps’ main server to find out something that basic,” she scoffed. I could practically hear her rolling her eyes on the other end of the line. ”Tom, use some common sense. Engineers and biologists may act like they’re on opposite sides of the barricades, but they’re working toward the same goal: advancing science around here. Besides, we play golf together at the country club on weekends. So the second my biotech colleague got your résumé in his inbox, I knew about it three minutes later.”

I gave a slight tilt of my chin, suppressing a grin. Judging by her snap judgment, Selina still had no idea that the documents had also gone out to six other departments. Still, given how the Corps operated, with HR staff and department heads constantly crossing paths, that would be common knowledge by tomorrow.

”Tom, just explain something to me. Why?” The change in her tone was striking. The theatrical flair and exaggerated drama were gone, replaced by plain, dry businesslike precision. ”We had a clear understanding that you were joining my department.”

”Selina, let’s put the emotions aside and look at this rationally. Why do you need me in your department full-time?”

”Ross, are you out of your mind?” she breathed, genuinely astonished. ”With my methods, your potential could push applied science forward by centuries!”

”That’s purely hypothetical for now,” I said, flatly cutting through her enthusiasm. ”And even if we assume the calculations are correct, the total workload in your department would take me four or five hours a day at most. My upgraded metabolism only needs three hours of sleep to recover. What am I supposed to do with the rest of my day? Sit around an empty apartment and find ways to kill time? I’d rather put those hours toward actual service with the biologists and get a tangible return in the form of faster career advancement.”

”Ambitious,” she concluded without a trace of irritation, more with the cool respect of a fellow professional. ”Fine. Go to the biologists if you’re that eager to rack up the hours.”

”Technically, the decision isn’t entirely up to me,” I pointed out. ”The paperwork still has to go through the approval process.”

”Don’t worry about that. If you sent the biologists even half of what you sent me, they’ll be fighting over you,” she said, irony creeping back into her voice. ”When I read your résumé, I honestly got the impression that at least a Nobel laureate was applying to join us. And I know perfectly well what you’re actually capable of, yet there was technically nothing I could challenge in your wording. It was edited with surgical precision.”

”So the engineering center approved me?”

”You really didn’t need to ask something that obvious,” she purred with soft, almost feline amusement. ”Could I possibly reject the father of my future children? I was planning to list you as my personal assistant and keep you under my thumb, but now the rules of the game have changed.”

”How?”

”The Corps’ automated system will determine the priority. Since you’ve been approved by several divisions at once, the central server will assign you a primary position and your main department, while the rest will be classified as secondary appointments. Nobody’s going to let you hold top administrative positions in every department simultaneously.”

That settled the matter, and the conversation ended. Hopefully, my primary workplace would not be Selina’s department. If I became her personal assistant, I would probably end up as her masseur and personal chef.

I set the phone down and returned to the monitor. The instructor in the video course claimed his ten-hour intensive covered the entire basic curriculum. It was obviously a marketing claim, but as a framework for organizing the terminology, it was ideal.

About thirty minutes passed. My smartphone vibrated again. The screen showed the caller: Megan.

”Tom, I seriously can’t believe it! You actually applied to our department?!” Her voice blasted through the speaker in an almost ultrasonic squeal of pure joy.

I had only seen Megan react like that once before, when we were ten and our mothers managed to get us spots at the same summer camp.

”How’d you find out?” I deliberately kept my voice as casual as ever, the way she was used to hearing it. ”Have they already made you department head?”

”Yeah, they made me Supreme Marshal on the spot,” she laughed. ”No, I’m just acting deputy head, and I have direct access to incoming correspondence. You should’ve seen my face when your file popped up in the database. You’ve always avoided the spotlight like the plague. Why would you want to join a rescue service that operates under the eyes of the press?”

At that moment, an incoming call from Leon covered the screen. I quickly declined it.

”If we’re skipping the diplomacy, Megan, it’s for the career multiplier. The more productive hours get logged in the system, the faster your status and clearance levels advance.”

”So you really did send your application everywhere...” For a second, a dry, adult disappointment crept into her voice. ”So you’re only planning to pass through our organization?”

”Is that a problem?” I asked calmly. ”Should I prepare myself for the personnel committee to turn me down?”

Leon called again. I swiped the call away once more.

”Reject a résumé like that? The HR people wouldn’t have the heart to do it!” she giggled. ”Your paperwork’s already been approved, so don’t worry. By the way, where else did you send copies?”

The screen lit up for the third time. Leon was coming through with the persistence of a battering ram.

”Sorry, Megan. I’ve got some woodpecker-like character aggressively trying to break through over here. I’ll call you back later.”

”I’ll hold you to that,” she said with a chuckle before hanging up.

I immediately switched to the incoming line.

”Ross, you elite asshole!” Leon barked straight into the speaker. From his slurred speech and the background noise, it was obvious he’d already had a substantial amount to drink. ”But you made the right choice. I’ll turn you into a real man in Intelligence. Come by headquarters and drinks are on you!”

Before I could get a word in, the line went dead. He’d called me three times that insistently just to spend ten seconds drunkenly rambling? Yeah. Real productive.

I wondered how pissed he’d be if I failed to make the main team and instead ended up in some minor position monitoring equipment integrity.

Still, the bottom line was encouraging: three out of eight departments had already approved my candidacy. More than respectable conversion.

I spent the rest of the evening without interruption, running the video lesson at accelerated speed. Then I met the courier, took the heavy box of academic tomes, and locked myself in my room. Using [Special Command], I started the learning process and focused on chemistry for the rest of the night.

At exactly eight in the morning, an official notification from the Ministry arrived in my inbox.