Chereads / Galactic Megacorp Advertiser / Chapter 2 - The Lighthouse

Chapter 2 - The Lighthouse

It was 9am when the not so loud alarm rang. It was not loud to make Gordon not affected. After rubbing his eyes, Nikolai went to the toilet to wash his face before Selia preapared the breakfast. He was excited, excited for the first time in years to do something.

His days were normally spended in his room reading and studying without any spare time to make himself the best he possible could be. This was a heavy burden and most often he was in a gloomy and bored state because of this. But he did not let his emotions control him, he had a mission of learning good!

Until breakfast he prepared himself for the day. Maybe the action he would do in the afternoon would change his life? Probably not. How could uploading a video to youtube can change ones life? Unless he became a trend because of a amateur video by a nobody.... Yea.. It was near impossible.

His room consisted of a little study table, a trite bed that had a neatly clean bedsheet and pillow thanks to Selia. The room was 14m^2, give or take. And everything in the room fitted almost perfectly. He and his table had a special connection. Almost all his free time would be spended there.. If he were to count the hours he sat on the old chair next to that table it would exceed 15000 hours.

He was sitting on that chair now too. Thinking about how he should shoot the video, the speech he would do and the way he opened the box.

"Breakfast is ready!" Shouted Selia from the kitchen. Gordon's grumpy way of walking and while doing so murmuring some swear words could be heard. The look he gave to Nikolai while he was passing by his door was scary. It was evident that he had not slept well.

'Oh boy we are going in for a treat...' Thought Nikolai, standing from the chair then going to the kitchen next. They all sat down to the kitchen table and began eating. Nikolai was fast on eating, he knew that the longer he was at the table, higher the probability of Gordon getting angry over something. At least he was not drunk last night or the hangover effect would be devastating. So he finished his food very fast.

"Why are you in such a hurry?!" asked Gordon with a piercing gaze in his eyes. He wasn't liking Nikolai's fast way of eating. It gave him the idea of Nikolai getting excited for something. Something that he couldn't wait for.

"I was very hungry.." Said Nikolai with a stern expression. Gordon did not like that look on Nikolai's face too. It was like saying "I am not afraid of you." to his face. The great truth was like that also. Nikolai was not afraid of him. Whenever Gordon was beating either him or Selia, he was sloppish as hell. If nikolai was in a dire situation he would be at least get away from him. Nikolai was very annoyed by Gordon's presense and stupid self. How a moron like Gordon was able to produce Nikolai, he really didn't know. And Gordon didn't even had half of the looks Nikolai had. So naturally Nikolai had his suspicions. Was he adopted?

"Gordon, do you want more of the pancakes?" Selia intervened. The 5 second long silence was broken by that. When Gordon turned to her, with swift moves, Nikolai got out of the kitchen. He always sat at the closest chair to the door to have a two second gap if need be, you never knew when the situation would arise. So taking precaution was important.

With that he went to his room to wait for the couple to leave the house. While waiting he was again, working. This time it was maths, he was looking at a geometry question. It was an easy question that required no effort from him. Nikolai only did it to ease his mind. He already knew 12th grade math subjects too. His spare times were never empty. He always tried to carry his knowledge a little further. That was the only way to success.

So solving no brainer (only for him) questions, the time passed and the awaited line was said by Selia:

"We are leaving, be safe."

Then the door shut. It was action time.

Taking everything away from the table, Nikolai got ready for the video. He was wearing a dark tshirt and he was looking good. After inspecting himself at the toilet mirror, it was time. He took out his phone which was a gphone 5s and put it onto a stack of book he prepared as the camera holder. In 5 seconds the shootage started and Nikolai started to speak to the camera.

"Hello everyone, Today i will be unboxing..."

His way of speaking was very advanced for a person who was only getting average grades at language. The reason being it was mostly techincal speech which he loved. The terms he was talking about was not even on the box of the product. He knew and told EVERY single detail about the headset. A demonstration was also done in the laptop about the quality of the mic. It was really a good video, it was up to the standards of big unboxing channels like jukebox teraphy. Of course it was a highly less budgeted version...

It was a hobby of his. If he was going to use something then before buying/downloading it he would learn everything he could learn about the product. To learn how the games worked that he was playing he learned soreal and proximity engines with coding in C#. Computer knowledge was his favorite. It always amazed him how much humanity had progressed till today, 2020. A thing called gpt3, an AI model with fricking 175 BILLION PARAMETERS; capable of learning and speaking like a human, maybe better than a human was released just that year. Watching this magic like things demonstrations on youtube Nikolai wanted to be working in this sector in later years.

The video was finished. The editing took 30 mins, mostly because of the laptops unavailability of doing demanding tasks. The rendering took 4 hours, for a 30 min video which was hilarious. So uploading was the only thing left. For the love of god, at least their internet speed was good. This was because Gordon loved Jetflix. For watching and downloading stuff on the internet he bought AS&S fiber internet which had 200mbps download and upload. So it took him 5 mins to upload the video. Immediately, Nikolai published it. His mission was complete. So relief came down on him and he threw himself onto the bed to relax a little. He was scared that before he could finish the process Gordon and Selia would come and ruin his first act that came from himself.

The clock was showing 7:25pm..

The door opened after the click of the lock. They were back, or rather Gordon was back. When Nikolai looked from his door to the corridor,

H̵̥͛e̴͍̒l̷̼͒l̵̟̓ ̷͍̄ḥ̸̍ą̵͂p̴̱̂p̴̣̐e̷̠͠n̶̺͝ẻ̷ͅd̷̘́

Gordon's clothes were soaked in blood. And the smell of booze and piss were oozing from him. Nikolai was in disorder, he didn't know what happened but in an instant he thought of the worst case scenario. And this broke his self control. Mourning was not an option at that point in time. Killing intent gushed out of Nikolai. It was evident on his silvery eyes. He made up his mind in an instant. Killing Gordon was the only choice.

Nikolai walked to the Gordon after taking his last resort knife from under the tile in his room and hid it up to his sleeve, holding it so thight that the point of the knife was poking his wrist. It was bleeding lightly. There was no humanity in Nikolai's eyes.

"What..

have..

you..

done?"

asked Nikolai. Looking straight into the eyes of Gordon.

"wHY ThE fUCK Do YoU cARe?!" Said Gordon, swinging while speaking because of the drunkenness.

This was the tip of Nikolai's patience.

Hearing this, Nikolai slowly walked to the Gordon. Only when there was 2 or so meters were left between them, Gordon tried to jump onto Nikolai. This was a bad move on his part. The only thing Nikolai did was to flip the knife on his right hand to the other side and point it at the Gordon who was on his way INTO the knife in air. The time slowed down for both of them.

When Gordon saw the knife was on his falling path, he instantly paled. He had nothing to do. He needed to alter his path or push the knife away in order to not get stabbed into his chest. But being in midair with only his thoughts getting faster he only could try to push the knife. Nikolai was holding the knife with one hand in the direction of Gordon's chest and he was crouching with his other hand waiting to intercept Gordon if he tried to push the knife. It was a death sentence.

Just as the knife would pierce Gordon he tried to push the knife with his left hand, for the left hand of Nikolai struggle a little in the event of trying to stop Gordon from doing so. But Nikolai calculated that this would happen. He jumped from his position of crouching, head on to Gordon's face. Nikolai's head slammed Gordon's face, and Gordon's upper body went backward a little and the rest of the ended when his knee touched the floor.

Not giving pain any heed, Nikolai put his left leg front to keep his balance. And with a swift move he stabbed the knife to the right upper part of Gordon's chest, where the heart would be. Gordon couldnt give attention to the impending danger because he was surprised when Nikolai jumped and head tossed his nose. So when this happened he unknowingly closed his eyes and put his hands onto his nose which was bleeding crazily. When the sensation of something entering to his chest came a sudden realization dawned upon him.

He was beaten by a bloody teenager. But this time he had no energy to get angry. In the end Nikolai was the end of his.

Not knowing what to do Nikolai sat on Gordon. His life was in a mess. The future he was trying to get into would no longer be an option. These thoughts were on his mind when his phone rang suddenly.