With all the mental exhaustion and emotional baggage he had to deal with for the whole day, it didn't take Joe long before he fell dead asleep on his bed. The mattress was so comfy that he felt his body sink into a peaceful dreamland. He didn't have to wallow in despair in his sleep since he dreamt of Ranni, the witch, giving him a hand job.
8 a.m.
Joe slowly woke from his sleep, his eyes gradually opening. The tired expression that had initially been there before he slept was nowhere to be seen. Now, Joe looked normal after a good night's rest. Climbing off his bed, Joe felt unusually motivated for the day even though he had yet to take a single pill of the nootropic drug.
He quickly made his bed before entering the bathroom. The previous night, he didn't have the energy to inspect it, but now, he could see everything more vividly. The bathroom was spacious and equipped with a bathtub, standalone shower, and toilet.
Above the sink was a huge mirror plastered on the wall, and Joe walked over to look at himself.
"Hmm, not bad, but why? Why do I look so skinny?" Joe's eyes reflected an image of an 189 cm beautiful young man with a slender figure mixed with subtle muscle tone. His hunter's eyes were unrealistically blue. His jaws were perfectly chiseled, and his lips were thin and luscious. Even while sporting a set of Calvin Klein boxers, he still looked hot in the morning.
"Is this form I had to take as a model for some famous fashion designers? No, it seems modeling will have to be my past."
"This isn't my final form," Joe smirked while pinching the bony aspects of his arms.
He then turned on the tap water before splattering a handful on his face. With small streams of water droplets rolling down his face and unruly hair, Joe intensely gazed at his image.
"Hello... You..." He muttered.
"You are Joe Petersen, and from today on, the world will be in awe of your existence."
"May Chaos take the world." With a satisfied smile, Joe stopped monologuing and stepped into the shower.
"This coolness and refreshing morning shower heralds the advent of a bountiful day." Joe closed his eyes and enjoyed the cold shower. Before long, he found himself whistling Kill Bill's legendary sound notes.
***
Dressed in casual grey sweatpants and a plain white shirt, Joe opened the door and moved out of his bedroom. He was met with an unusual silence in the two ladies' room and the hallway.
"Gwen, are you guys awake?" With a raised brow, Joe asked in a moderate voice.
Unlucky for him, he didn't get any reply.
"Could they have already gone and, while not wanting to disturb my beauty sleep, chose to leave without waking me up?" Joe wondered aloud as he headed to the kitchen.
He found a yellow sticky note on the kitchen fridge. Joe observed the handwriting and quickly recognized it as Gwen's.
"Oh well, and this is why I always tell her to improve her handwriting." Joe removed the yellow sticky note from the fridge and hovered it close to his eyes.
It reads like this: Hi Joe, still enjoying that sleep? Keep on sleeping, then *giggling hand-drawn emoticons.* We didn't want to disturb you, and I know how hard it has been for you. You needed that rest. Anyway, I have left some bacon, fried eggs, and toast for your breakfast. Those three are in the microwave. Top it off with a glass of milk in the freezer. BTW today, we are having Dr. Connor's lessons as the first session of the day *evil smirk emoticon*
"What a sweet but evil friend you have there, Joe." He said in an ironic tone before crunching the paper and throwing it into the bin. However, he missed the three-pointer pathetically. It was horrible.
Joe glanced at his hands and then did the same for the crunched-up yellow note on the floor.
"I suck." He wore a self-deprecating smile and picked up the rubbish before gently dropping it in the opened bin.
Twenty minutes later, Joe finished eating his breakfast. He then closed all the locks on his apartment's main door before he did anything else.
'An extra layer of security won't hurt.' That was what he had told himself.
In his room, Joe powered on his Gaming PC, and the beautiful RGB lights from the fans and cooler came to life. Joe took a second to admire the mesmerizing lights before his eyes settled on the OLED screen.
"Wait a minute..." Joe suddenly had an epiphany as he sat on the gaming chair.
"I don't have a...phone." He recalled some memories about the reason behind his lack of a phone. Three days before the death of his mother, the former Joe Petersen had been mugged clean by street thugs when he had been returning home from a late evening gig.
"That's awful, but at least he didn't try to act like a hero in front of two robbers armed with knives and, possibly, hidden guns. Now that's New York for you." Joe analyzed.
"If it had been Gotham, then it would have been an entirely different story." He absentmindedly tapped on the desk's smooth wooden surface.
"Anyway, I have important matters of life and death to deal with." Closing his eyes, Joe willed for the USB drive to materialize in his hand. Feeling the cold but smooth texture on his palm, Joe exhaled in relief.
The enigmatic creation from an advanced civilization had not left him, and his current transmigration status was not a ruse. The USB was the gateway to far too many possibilities. His existence had been mired in torment and despair, but his life endured; he was given a second chance.
With a thought, he unsummoned the USB. Looking at the black coat resting on the arm of his chair, Joe took it and urgently searched the inner pockets. When his fingers felt the familiar rough texture of the aluminum bag, his tensed body slowly relaxed.
The NZT-48 was intact.
"I have never done drugs in my entire life," Joe nervously spoke as the fingers holding onto the bag of NZT-48 trembled.
"There are two options to take NZT: Either via oral intake or injection through the veins(Intravenous injection)." Joe scoured some information about NZT intake that he could remember from the movie.
"Since there is no way I will start playing with syringes and needles anytime soon, the better option is..." He rose from his seat and rushed out of his room. Moments later, he returned with a mug of hot milk and carefully locked the door behind him.
Joe gently set the mug on the table and took a seat. With his fingers shaking and his heart thrumming against his ears, Joe secured the pill between his fingers. It was a transparent pill, nearly translucent.
The atmosphere inside the room was heavy, almost viscous, as Joe intensely eyed the NZT-48 pill that was going to forever change his life from a simply handsome simpleton to a more complex and intelligent handsome man. NZT-48 was a game changer. It was a miracle. It could transform even a stupid person into someone decently knowledgeable. The effects were more pronounced on an individual with a good head already on their shoulder. Joe thought himself to be the latter. He was smart, as seen by his pursuit of a biochemistry major at Empire State University. How else could Dr Curtis Connors be his lecturer?
While not valedictorian, Joe ranked third in his graduating class at Midtown Science High, a feat even more impressive considering he had Gwen and Peter as classmates. This achievement, coupled with his model-like appearance, made him a hot topic among cheerleaders and other students.
"Back to the present, phew~" Joe exhaled heavily and clenched his hand around the mug to steel his nerves.
He eyed the NZT-48 pill once again and awkwardly laughed at his dorky hesitance. A memory of an iconic badass from The Boys franchise came to his mind.
"Remember, real heroes don't use drugs..." Joe defiantly placed the pill on his tongue, and then, he raised the mug to meet his lips. In one swift movement, he chugged down the milk to wash down the pill.
Returning the mug to its initial position, Joe took in an exaggerated breath and let it all out as he awaited the neurological enhancement to come into effect.
"If taking drugs is uncool, then I'm the most uncool motherfucker on the planet!" Joe quoted.
Not less than a minute had passed, and something incredible began occurring inside Joe's brain.
His pupils dilated, not due to light but to being awakened into a whole new domain of clarity. He felt his mind sharpen.
"I had once been blind, a mere man with no vision, obscured from the truth around me..." Joe slowly spoke out in an enchanted fashion.
"I-I can now see. I am no longer blind."
"I have a vision."
At the physiological level, Joe could feel the interplay between his billions of neurons constantly firing up; their biochemical activities further increased, improved, and upgraded. Lost memories, various scenes of his forgotten childhood, his gentle kindergarten teacher, and the faces of the strangers he had passed by the street.
Joe remembered his High School Physics, a subject he had not been a major fan of.
He accurately recalled the voice of Mr Maxwell, the Physics Teacher, when he had been yapping about sound waves.
"How does the string cause sound to be transmitted through the air?"
"The compressions and rarefactions produced set air masses into vibrations, thus producing sound." His lips widened into an incredulous smile as he answered that he had once failed Mr. Maxwell's class.
Joe then turned his attention to his hands. They were no longer trembling. A sense of calmness and serenity had begun to invade every fiber of his being, both physiologically and psychologically.
He noticed the chipped parts of the mug, which he had never cared to inspect or failed to acknowledge. His hearing also improved as he could now count every beat of his heart without losing concentration.
Abruptly, he fluidly moved his neck at an instantaneous speed, and his eyes glanced at the ceiling. With perfect clarity, he saw a tiny spider secreting almost invisible threads as it slowly hung some inches from the ceiling. Joe could hear its eight legs moving down the web, which was highly contrasted with the barely audible sound of the gaming machine.
"Hahaha!" He heard a distant burst of laughter coming from the street. Joe whipped his head in the window's direction. The window was closed, heavily shielded by a thick, well-designed black curtain.
Joe moved from his chair and walked to the window adjacent to his bedrest. In a calculated and perfect movement, he parted the blinds, and sunlight greedily rushed into the once-dark room. Surprisingly, Joe didn't try to shield his eyes from the sudden influx of blinding light.
He quickly opened the window and gazed down at the street below. He found a group of younglings, of high school students, merrily talking with each other. The group had four boys and three girls.
Even though he didn't want to, Joe heard snippets of their conversation and suddenly wished he hadn't.
"How uncouth," he muttered under his breath, recoiling from the window as if on autopilot. He hesitated, then left the blinds open, inviting the crisp breeze and the faint scent of nature to fill his room.
Joe scanned the clothes he had worn last night, sprawled underneath his bed. He immediately sent them into the laundry bin. In a few minutes, he removed all the mess from his room, making it more organized.
But he didn't consume NZT just to take care of household chores, right?
Joe sat on his gaming chair, entered his login password, and began searching for educational programming materials.
The NZT-48 advantages lasted for 12 hours straight before the drawbacks manifested. A syringe injection could increase that time by an hour, but Joe felt it was not worth it.
Within 12 hours, he could be limitless. Apart from learning many programming languages currently in the World of Marvel, he could also write famous works from his previous world, like Harry Potter or some series he had read from Stephen King.
Fortunately, cyber knowledge came first on his to-do list. Online technology covered a considerable portion of the world's operations. The digital realm was both an opportune place and a place that could equally compromise one's path.
With the presence of SHIELD, Hydra, and other influential organizations out there, Joe didn't feel safe if he couldn't protect his digital information. After watching Ex Machina in his previous life and witnessing Nathan's manipulation of the world's search engine, Joe's decision to dabble with codes and algorithms became firmer.
Before creating an AI assistant, he had to build his foundation from the ground up.
***
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