My head feels groggy, tainted by a breath of pain that sears at against my cognitive abilities, I don't understand what's going on, my vision is blanketed by pure unadulterated darkness, impenetrable darkness.
The last thing I remember was leaving the campus of my university for what would hopefully be the last time, armed with a single flimsy dreg of paper alleged to determine my future, marking me as a graduate of king's arm university.
King's arm university, colloquially known as 'gods hand' was told to only admit the best and only graduate the better among them, I 'proudly' placed last among the graduators, gaining scorn from the absolute best and envy from the worst.
To the top, the Sions of massive wealth or Supergenius's with advantage after advantage I was the anomaly who bodily dragged themselves through the fridged cold snow and arid dessert's endless dunes, only to gain what they had from the beginning, they saw me with contempt, however, adversely I was in the eyes of my fellows, the lowly scholars, someone to envy and hate.
Those who hailed from the same accused fate as me, scorned me, for nothing but my effort, they who never tried so hard as me and thus failed, they investigated the cold and decided it better for them to hide in a cocoon of doubt. When they saw me slowly ebbing my way through that, they thought not that they could follow my footsteps and grow, only attributing my success to talent, that neither I nor they possessed, not compared to those at the very pinnacle.
The memory irked me slightly, and while I may not hate them, I never got on all too well with either side, I treated them neutrally, they were insignificant, akin to air, invisible, their accusatory gazes pinned on me didn't affect me. After all, I always held something else in the forefront of my heart, the reason I didn't turn to hate.
It was the admiration I held towards my enigmatic professor; he was like me he suffered through my pain, never relenting always accepting hate with open arms.
He was like a beacon lighting up the darkness in my world, to me he wasn't an almighty educator to be feared nor was he the annoying man who gave me assignment after assignment.
He was a friend who taught me and guided me through my education, I would meet him after hours to work on his lifelong project, the creation of a supercomputer capable of fitting into someone's brain.
I wasn't the only one in his care and tutelage, there were others, at one point there where upper-class men, I was the junior they cherished and guided, they were brothers and sisters to me. Kinder than my biological family, which left me estranged after an unfortunate event.
It was an argument between me and my ever-lazy sister who was at that time complaining to my parents, begging them to pay her tuition to enter the sister school of the 'god hand,' a distant school focused on the development of English literature named the Empire Guiding Crown. A pretentious name rivaling any other, the empire named every institution of learning with such grandeur, evidently hoping it would spur some will to enroll.
My sister was pursuing the diametrically opposite of what I was researching, English compared to my quantum mechanics and computer science, my sister who was relatively smart, around my level, campaigned for her tuition to be paid by our parents and failed to convince father and mother of her ability to attend such a prestigious university. So, they told her to follow my example and get a student loan.
To cut things short she refused and fought them and me, since then things have never been the same, despite my playing no part in the instigation, I was, like my sister left to fend on my own with little contact from my dear father and mother.
Family matters aside, something happened at the 'god hand' a month before my graduation. During my arduous studies, I found myself with less and less time available to attend to my professor's project, I was informed at this time that our efforts where near completion, so I promptly decided to take a day off from my studies to help.
It was on that day that everything changed for the worse, it was a bittersweet day, I came in early to find the professor working huddled in the corner staring intently into a comically large magnifying glass suspended over the eighteenth design model for the supercomputer.
The model was only an inch long, with a width of a third inch and a thickness of an eighteenth of an inch, aside from the occasional part jutting out, such as the micro cooling unit used to keep the device at optimum temperature. Besides the main components was the thermodynamic casing, which would be placed onto them to stop the cold temperature from damaging the brain and vice versa.
When the professor was done, he turned around eagerly joy apparent on his wrinkled brow and glistening hazel eyes, when he saw me leaning over his shoulder, he recoiled in surprise.
after regaining his usual calm bearing, he warmly smiled speaking in an admonishing tone "Cole why didn't you knock, you've been coming here for years, please at least knock, if not only for the fragility of my old bones." I remember staring at him blankly, needing his glare to bring me back to attention.
I replied to him hesitantly "I'm sorry professor Xander, but did knock, three times to be precise, you were just too engrossed to notice." for a split second he smiled wryly before snapping back haughtily "Cole Pierce did we not discuss this last time not to barge in with such recklessness, you're supposed to wait at the door in this situation, do you not remember the verdict we all came to, all transgressors are to be punished. Hmm what should I punish you with"
he mused before grinning ominously at me, his bony pointing to the 3D printer adjacent to us in the open laboratory "go impute this sequence into the printer" he handed me a sprawling coil of paper covered in a vail in code, I left his side to complete the menial task, I remember thinking that such a braindead task might prove relaxing, in some capacity. "And don't forget to refill the printer, it's low in titanium and copper" he shouted at my departing back.