BANG!!!
That was the last sound Gene heard before his life—and possibly his sanity—did a perfect backflip off the metaphorical diving board. A wave of searing whiteness washed over him like an aggressive PowerPoint transition, and his body—now resembling something between burnt toast and yesterday's leftovers—had officially given up. On the bright side, at least he wouldn't need to worry about pesky things like feeling, moving, or the urge to pee ever again. His mind, however, was still clinging to life like an unpaid intern, though how long that would last was anyone's guess.
"Genius," a word he'd heard so often it might as well have been tattooed across his forehead, came back to haunt him now with all the smugness of a self-satisfied "I told you so." If the people who called me the 'Mind of the Century' could see me now, Gene thought bitterly, they'd probably laugh themselves into a coma. So, this is how I die. Burnt to a crisp by my own brilliance. Fitting, really.
And then came the memories—the whole "life flashing before your eyes" cliché that no one asked for. It was like a Netflix binge session of The Gene Show, except no one thought to include a skip button. Great, he thought, at least I get to rewatch my greatest hits before I kick the bucket.
Gene was born to an ambitious neuroscientist mother, Irma, and her husband—an elusive figure whose main talent was being absent. Irma, meanwhile, treated Gene less like a child and more like her personal science experiment. From day one, she hurled knowledge at him like a frantic contestant on a game show: biology, physics, chemistry, computer science, and even the fine art of balancing equations. To her delight—and Gene's eventual regret—he absorbed it all like a sponge on steroids.
"Genius," people called him. Little did they know that was just another word for "free labor."
Irma had been a rising star in her field until, as Gene would later describe it, she hit the career equivalent of a brick wall. But then along came Gene, her prodigal child, the apple of her eye, and—let's be honest—her ticket to scientific glory. If she couldn't win a Nobel Prize herself, by God, she'd raise someone who could.
For Gene, childhood consisted of a lot of bonding time in the lab. Most kids got bedtime stories and ice cream; Gene got periodic tables and safety goggles. His mother delighted in pushing his mental limits, while Gene, ever the overachiever, pushed right back.
As for his dad? Well, Gene had nothing to say about him. Literally. The man was a ghost. No, not the cool Casper kind—the frustrating kind that didn't leave behind any forwarding address. Gene couldn't remember his face, let alone his voice. "I guess I'll die without knowing what my father looks like," he thought grimly. Maybe I'll meet him in the afterlife. If he even bothers to show up there.
Gene's meteoric dive into the sciences led him to the realization that specialization was key. After much deliberation, he zeroed in on technology. Why? Because why settle for being a generic genius when you could be a tech genius? Cue his greatest creation: LIZA, an AI so advanced it could probably beat him at chess and insult him at the same time.
Eventually, the time came to leave the nest and rub elbows with other overachieving weirdos. Enter SATEG—the Schools of Science, Art, Technology, and Engineering for the Gifted. Admission required a practical project, which Gene aced, of course, because losing wasn't part of his vocabulary.
At SATEG, he started with technology but soon circled back to his first love: physics. Because nothing screams "fun" like the mysteries of the universe and the potential to accidentally destroy it.
Gene became fixated on a theory of quantum physics so convoluted, it made Inception look like a nursery rhyme. Dimensional travel! The holy grail of mad science! Naturally, no one wanted to fund it.
"Your work sounds like bad science fiction," critics sneered.
"Well, at least it's better than bad science fact," Gene shot back, though sarcasm didn't seem to loosen their purse strings.
Ridiculed by his peers and dismissed as a wannabe H.G. Wells, Gene became a cautionary tale. But just when he was ready to give up, salvation arrived in the form of a mysterious backer. Sure, the guy was probably shady and might have been laundering money for all Gene knew, but beggars can't be choosers.
With funding secured, Gene roped Lenna into his madness. Together, they built QUFREDIS, a machine so complicated it made rocket science look like assembling IKEA furniture. Months of blood, sweat, and caffeine later, it was ready for testing. Well, sort of.
Day one of testing was... anticlimactic. The machine powered up, then promptly powered down. "Back to the drawing board," Gene muttered, feeling less like a genius and more like a guy who just broke his toaster.
After countless sleepless nights troubleshooting everything from quantum fluctuations to bad vibes, the machine finally worked. When Gene saw the Void Halo distort space, he cried actual tears. Eat your heart out, Einstein.
"Lenna, we did it!" he exclaimed, grabbing his sister in a bear hug. "All those nights of instant noodles and existential dread finally paid off!"
In the coming days, they tested the machine with small objects: cameras, sensors, even a stuffed animal Gene had brought from home. The results were… inconclusive. Every time they sent something through the gateway, it came back scrambled beyond recognition. Data was corrupted, physical objects were warped, and LIZA's analysis provided no useful insights."Great. Now, what's next?" Lenna asked cautiously.
"Human trials!" Gene declared with the enthusiasm of someone who had clearly lost touch with reality.
"You're joking, right?" Lenna deadpanned. Spoiler alert: he wasn't.
Gene prepared a suit to account for "every possible anomaly." Lenna, ever the voice of reason, wasn't convinced. "You see, sister, I'm not throwing my life away," Gene said with a confidence only a mad scientist could muster. At least not intentionally, he added silently.
On the big day, everything seemed fine. Gene suited up, ignoring Lenna's increasingly panicked micromanaging. "Relax, sis. What could possibly go wrong?" he said, clearly tempting fate.
The machine roared to life, the gate opened, and distorted space danced like a fever dream. Gene was ready to step through when…
"GENE!!! Something's wrong!" Lenna screamed.
But it was too late. Gene, being Gene, ran toward the malfunctioning machine instead of away from it, because apparently self-preservation wasn't part of his genius repertoire.
And that brings us back to the present: Gene, fried like Sunday breakfast, reflecting on his choices.
"Maybe I'm not much of a genius after all," he thought as the whiteness consumed him. His last thought, naturally, was, Well, at least I won't have to pay back my debts.