Chapter 133. The Corps Has Plans

Coming out of hyperfocus always felt the same: like being violently yanked out of a deep sleep and dumped onto a hardwood floor. My brain needed time to reboot its systems and assess the situation. This time, the adjustment took a full minute. For my upgraded processor, that was an eternity.

The back of my head burned as though hot coals had been pressed against the inside of my skull, while a deep, throbbing migraine pulsed behind my eyes. The usual price for pushing myself to the limit. Twelve hours of nonstop studying at ten times normal speed did not come without consequences.

I sat at the desk in my room, staring down at the tabletop. Every thought was a struggle, each one bringing almost physical pain. The mass of information inside me was overloaded, my working memory straining at the seams and demanding an immediate reboot. My brain felt like an overclocked graphics chip that had been running all night at maximum capacity without cooling. A little longer, and the board would simply melt.

Still, I had to give the results their due. I looked at the stack in front of me, and the thought brought a surge of professional satisfaction. Ten hefty chemistry textbooks and workbooks lay on the desk, ranging from basic high school material to specialized university texts. Overnight, I had completely absorbed and worked through seven of them, cover to cover. With that kind of knowledge under my belt, I could walk into the R&D department of a major pharmaceutical company tomorrow or send my résumé to a department at Harvard.

All it took was a second of concentration, and structural formulas, reaction chains, and laboratory equipment specifications flashed through my mind. My hands remembered, almost mechanically, how to calibrate reagents and synthesize acids of any complexity.

A sharp stab of pain in my temples quickly killed that enthusiasm.

I turned my heavy gaze toward the monitor. Eight in the morning. Ten unread messages from the ministry were waiting in my inbox. Ten emails was serious. But I did not open them yet. Sorting through bureaucratic fine print and looking for hidden meanings in government directives required a clear head, not one with a white-hot poker where my brain should have been. They could wait. Even if the appointment order had already been signed, the law guaranteed me exactly one week to settle my family affairs. Rules were rules.

I got up from the desk, fighting through the heaviness in my muscles. Before I shut down, there was one more important thing to take care of.

Maggie was still drilling combinations in the living room. Her eyes remained completely blank, her movements flawless, precise, and eerily mechanical. Twenty-one hours of nonstop training. I had no idea what her new limits were. She might be able to keep going for another twelve hours, or she might drop out of hyperfocus in ten minutes and end up with a migraine just as bad as mine. Except in her case, there would be no one around to bring her back to her senses.

Pragmatism demanded that I eliminate the risk. Prevention was always cheaper than repair.

[Special Command: Maggie, stop training. Go back to your bed. Fall asleep immediately and rest until you are fully recovered.]

The signal hit its target cleanly. Maggie froze halfway through a step, her high side kick left unfinished. Obeying the mental command, she lowered her leg, turned, and walked steadily toward her bedroom. She lay down on the made bed without even pulling back the covers, folded her hands over her chest, and immediately closed her eyes. From the outside, it looked as though a robot had simply docked at its charging station.

People sometimes called me emotionally detached. Hardly. Evolution had made me this way, and now that same system was turning my mother into a perfect machine.

I pulled a new notebook from the drawer of the bedside table. We had started it specifically for exchanging information like this. If I went into deep hibernation, waking me up for questions was strictly forbidden. I quickly scribbled a couple of lines, explaining that I had been forced to terminate her session and that I had gone into reboot mode.

Now everything was taken care of. I could power down.

I lowered my head onto the cool pillow, feeling the tension drain from the back of my skull. The only thing ruining the moment was the sharp, insistent ache in my stomach. My body had burned through a colossal number of calories processing that accelerated flood of knowledge. My stomach demanded fuel, and it wanted it now. Spend half an hour in the kitchen with my head pounding just to make a couple of sandwiches? Out of the question. The body was subject to the mind, not the other way around.

[Special Command: Fall asleep immediately and rest until you are fully recovered.]

Darkness swallowed me instantly, cutting off the noise and dull pain. My empty stomach remained somewhere at the edge of my awareness, a minor problem I would deal with later.

I woke up with my stomach practically stuck to my spine. At least the migraine was completely gone, leaving behind my familiar clarity. I groped for the bottle of water on the nightstand and took several thirsty swallows. The dehydration faded, and my focus returned.

Without getting out of bed, I glanced at the lower corner of the monitor. My enhanced vision easily picked out the tiny numbers on the digital clock: exactly seven hours asleep. A normal night's sleep for an ordinary adult. Funny. I was already starting to forget what a luxury it was to sleep that long.

And I still had an enormous amount of work ahead of me. Wasting time on something as basic as physiology was an unacceptable waste. I needed to design and assemble a personal training room tailored to my new physical capabilities as quickly as possible, push my physical performance to its absolute limit, and achieve full evolution through the biomass of the awakened Loza'n. In theory, that should reduce my need for sleep even further. Time was ticking, and the workload was not getting any smaller. A classic systemic bottleneck, and one I would have to solve first.

The ten messages were still sitting unread on the monitor. If the officials' messages had waited seven hours for me, they could wait another thirty minutes while I dealt with the much more basic problem of hunger.

The smell of maple syrup and toasted batter hit me before I even reached the kitchen. My mouth watered instantly. Maggie, wearing a neat kitchen apron, was working at the stove, lifting pancakes from the hot skillet. They were perfectly cooked, golden brown all over.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," she said, turning around with a warm, familiar smile.

I froze for a second. Maggie was wearing glasses, not modern designer frames, but an old vintage oval pair she had bought years ago at the pharmacy down the street. Platinum hair, those glasses, the apron... There she was, the mother I knew and remembered.

"Tom, what is it?" She turned off the burner and studied my face with concern. "You've been staring at me without blinking for like thirty seconds."

"Just getting used to it." I gave her a restrained smile and pulled out a chair. "After seeing you dressed like a teenage punk, it's nice to see the real you again."

"Oh, look at you, Mr. Charming." She snorted, though her cheeks turned slightly pink as she generously poured thick syrup over the stack on my plate. "What, should I dig out my knitting needles, start clipping coupons from the newspaper, and knit you sweaters again?"

"Only if you enjoy it." I popped the first piece into my mouth. Perfect balance. "When did you wake up?"

"About three hours ago." Maggie sat across from me, setting down a portion exactly half the size of mine. "I had just enough time to take delivery of the glasses and run through those hand-to-hand combat training videos you sent me."

The numbers were interesting. Maggie had spent almost twice as long in hyperfocus as I had, yet her body had needed only an extra hour beyond the standard recovery period. The conclusion was simple: repetitive physical practice of movement mechanics put far less strain on the processor than an intensive analytical assault and the absorption of abstract information.

"Can I get another serving?" I held out my empty plate, feeling my stomach still demanding fuel.

"Good Lord, where do you put all that?" She shook her head and transferred the rest of the pancakes from the skillet onto my plate. Her own portion had barely been touched. "Eat, eat. I made plenty."

And her energy consumption was lower. That meant the system's resource expenditure correlated directly not with the duration of hyperfocus, but with the type and depth of the brain's computational load. A useful metric for the future.

The second plate disappeared just as quickly as the first. If there had been another half-dozen pancakes on the table, I would have polished those off without a second thought.

"Got any specific plans for today?" I asked, wiping my fingers with a napkin.

"Tom, I swear I get nervous every time you ask me that with such a calm look on your face." Maggie leaned back in her chair with an exaggerated sigh. "It always ends with you suggesting we go to the gym."

"You know me too well." I spread my hands slightly, conceding the point. "I want you to finish building your foundation in martial arts. And one more thing... How do you feel about cooking when I'm around?"

"You mean that state where my fingers chop vegetables with millimeter precision and everything comes out perfectly cooked?" She waited for my brief nod. "Tom, that's every homemaker's dream. I feel like a top-of-the-line food processor. Even the best restaurant chefs make mistakes sometimes. Everything I make comes out perfect."

"If the benefits are clear, then here's the plan: once you finish with hand-to-hand combat, switch straight over to a professional culinary knowledge base. The workload is trivial. First, you've already got the foundation, which will speed up the compilation. Second, even at full-fledged culinary academies, you can earn a professional certification in three months, while people spend years working toward a black belt."

"I'm ready. Turn me into a robot," she replied evenly.

I activated [Special Command]. Maggie's gaze immediately went unfocused, the animation drained from her face, and she walked back into the living room, measuring out each step as she resumed drilling her attack angles. Unless something unexpected came up, I would keep her in that state until the entire program was complete.

Fed and with my mind completely clear, I returned to my desk and finally opened my inbox.

The letters all followed the same bureaucratic template. Only the department headers, branch addresses, and reporting dates changed.

Department of Awakened Homeland Security. Report in eight days for orientation. Administrative position. Accepted.

Portal Evaluation and Assessment Regiment. Report in nine days. I could already picture Leon's face when he saw these papers. He had been counting on pulling me into field intelligence command, and instead I was showing up as an ordinary gofer.

Federal Bureau of Awakening. Ten days. Special Agent. Mom was going to love the badge and the official sunglasses.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. There were two appointments here: an interview in the engineering division in the morning, followed by one in the biological sciences division after lunch.

So far, everything was going great. Four jobs. What next?

Federal Emergency Management Agency - Portal. Twelve days. This was a slight departure from my expectations. I had assumed their disaster-response technician positions were already filled to capacity. Could my résumé really have been that impressive?

Federal Emergency Management Agency Awakened. Thirteen days. I would be dealing with natural disasters, though I had no idea how yet. There was no indication that this was my primary assignment. Another side job? Apparently, I was going to have to do makeup for local superheroes so they would look better on camera.

National S-Power Assessment Agency. Fourteen days. Another part-time position, this time among the analysts. Did they even know how to send rejection letters? I had no objection. I had plenty of time, but this was getting suspicious.

Awakened Training Officers Corps. Fifteen days. I would be teaching recruits. Easy enough work, but that made eight additional contracts. The total workload was starting to exceed any reasonable limit.

I let out a slow breath and clicked on the ninth email.

The Border Wardens. Sixteen days...

What the hell? I had never applied to a foreign intelligence agency. I opened my Sent folder and checked the logs for the entire previous week. Nothing. No applications.

My fingers settled on the mouse. I opened the tenth and final email, already knowing what it would say.

Portal Special Weapons and Tactics. Reporting deadline: seven days. Status: Primary Assignment.

First-echelon assault teams. The guys who went into virtually every portal and had the highest personnel mortality rate of any unit. The exact position I had spent all this time systematically avoiding.

Looks like the Corps had plans of its own for me.