The fire alarm sounded, blaring loudly on the building's old speaker system. I ran quickly towards the room's exit when I was grabbed from behind. I spun around and twisted my pursuer's arm tightly, causing him to drop to the ground, writhing in pain. As I turned to the door, something shimmered in my peripheral vision. I looked over and saw a small bag that had been dropped on the floor. I went over and quickly picked it up and hid it in a small pocket in my jeans. As I ran back to the main room, the party had turned to chaos, and people were running frantically toward the exit. I ran quickly and found the guys I came with, grabbed them and told them we needed to leave now. We left quickly and got in my car.
Are you confused? You should be. That entire paragraph was completely out of context. I did that on purpose. I am Connor Jacobsen, and this is my story. I've never been very socially connected, my parents worked almost all day every day, I was an only child and we moved quite often. My family wasn't by any means poor, but my parents worked almost all day every day. They only took breaks for a part of the day, on Saturday and Sunday. As an only child, I didn't have any siblings to be friends with, and moving almost once every year, I never made any real friends.
I spent most of my free time playing video games, learning programming, hacking, learning computer hardware engineering, and messing with broken computers. I was raised in a house where you found what you did well, and put almost all your time into it. You spent as little time as possible relaxing, and my parents, were very focused people. They were team leads at a large computer manufacturing company. My mom was the Marketing VP, and my father was the CTO. As my parents worked at a tech company, we always had the latest computer hardware and tech gadgets. Even though my parents bought me a computer and some other stuff, such as a nice smartphone, I had to pay for the rest. My parents believed that I should find my own ways of making money, so I would learn how to work. They may not have been there for me much, but they definitely taught me how to work.
Now, you're probably wondering about what was going on in that first part. It all started when a couple of my "friends" asked me if I could drive them to a party at an old building in Portland. I'd been living in the Portland area for almost two years now, and turned 17 just recently. I had been working as a freelance programmer and web designer for a while, and made quite a lucrative amount of money for a teenager, so I was one of the only people in my small group of "friends" (mostly gamers and nerds who I could ask about programming stuff and play games with) who owned a car. (Definitely the nicest car as well.) It was common for them to ask me to take them to parties or other events.
We went to this party and it seemed pretty normal. It was in this somewhat old, unused basement. I wasn't really too interested in being social and having fun, so I just left them in the main room and decided to wander the basement's hallways and rooms, most of which were locked. I was a bit of an investigative type, always reading the room, finding exits, noticing details others usually missed. As I walked past one of the rooms, I noticed there were three people inside talking with each other. I pressed my ear against the door quietly, and listened.
"We're gonna' get caught if we keep doing this!" One of the voices in room quietly exclaimed.
"No, we're not, I've got something new this time. With these, we can make sure nobody finds out about any of it!" Another voice excitedly answered.
"I don't know guys, I've heard this stuff can do some bad shit to you if you take too much," The third guy in the group chimed in. "I don't want people to know we've been doin' this."
Engrossed in their conversation, I lost focus on my balance and slipped, making an audible thump as I hit the ground with my hand to stop the fall.
"Shhhh! Somebody's spying on us!" The first guy shouted at the others.
Immediately after, the largest of the three men got up and went to the door. As he opened it I tried to hide, but there wasn't anywhere to do so.
"What are you watching us for?" He loudly asked.
"I don't really know what you were talking about, I'm not going to tell anyone," I quickly replied. "I was just curious."
"Well you'd better watch yourself, curiosity killed the cat." He said, trying to intimidate me.
"If you just tell me a bit about what's going on, I promise I won't tell anyone." I replied.
"It's just another deal, I'm sure you've seen 'em before." He said trying to get me to back off.
"What you got? Can I see?" I asked manipulatively.
"Sure." He replied.
I walked in and looked around. The other two guys were tense, but not threatening.
"If anyone asks, you were never here." The big guy said.
"Got it." I replied quickly.
They had a small table with some of the usual stuff you could expect, and some rudimentary lab equipment.
"Got anything special?" I asked.
"N..No." The first guy answered nervously.
I didn't really believe him, but I knew they wouldn't tell me anything. I messed a little bit with some of the equipment quietly without letting them see and turned around.
"Nothing I'm really interested in. Thanks anyway." I said in a disappointed voice.
"You won't tell anyone?" The second guy asked.
"Nope," I answered. "no one will know you were here."
The big guy went over to the stuff to make sure I didn't take anything, but as he checked through some of the lab equipment, a small piece broke and caught on fire. The entire table lit on fire and smoke started pouring out. The fire alarm started blaring on the old speaker system. The second guy came towards me and tried to grab me, but I twisted his arm sending him onto the ground, writhing in pain. The big guy, with the aid of the first guy, tried to put out the fire, but they weren't making much progress. As I went to leave the room, I noticed a small plastic bag on the ground with three pills in it I had never seen before. I grabbed it and stuck it in a small pocket in my jeans. I quickly made my way into the main room, which was complete chaos at this point, and found the people I had come with.
"We need to leave, now." I sternly told them. They nodded and followed me through the mass of people out of the building. We got in my car and drove away.
"What was that about?" One of them asked me.
"I have no idea." I lied.
"Pretty crazy. That'll be a fun story to tell people." The other guy said.
"Yeah, Yeah. Probably just some stupid teenagers lighting cigarettes in a bad room." I added.
I drove the other guys home and headed to my house. Once I got home I locked my car and went to my room. My parents had already gone to sleep and I was pretty tired myself. I went over to my bed and crashed without even thinking about anything that had just happened.
I woke with a start early the next morning, I'd realized what I'd forgotten unconsciously and dreamt about the events of the night before. Once I was up, I reached into my jeans and pulled out the small bag. There were three, circular, clear pills in the bag. I didn't recognise them one bit and wanted to know what these guys had been talking about when they said it would "make it so nobody would find out about what they were doing". I did some research and came up with jack squat, so I decided to make a post on a Reddit forum. Even days after the post, nobody knew what they were.
But, less than a week after the event, the news started blowing up about something that was happening in New York. These pills were everywhere, and I had three of them. The news made it seem like the New York City area was the only main area they were being distributed, but how did I get a hold of three of them? I started digging into hospital and police reports, news articles, and studies on the drug known on the streets as, "Apocryphon".
Within a day I pulled out a few main details of the drug. It gave you inhuman pattern recognition, memory recall, and physical consciousness, for an estimated 12 hours. It also seemed to have some serious side effects if taken for more than one or two doses. Extreme withdrawal and mental problems had been reported left and right.
I then realized that I had a pill that could allow me to do anything that is physically possible in 12 hours. I needed to make it count. What should I do? Money, I would need money to be able to research fighting the drug's side effects on my own, and to protect myself from anyone looking for it. If I got something started now, and rode it for a year until I was 18, then I could take a second pill and finish off any of the problems with fighting the side effects. I would also need to get the research started now, if I wanted to be able to take more later.
But wait, what do I do next? Just hope something bad doesn't happen? I need a plan, and not just one plan, many plans. I'm not a genius, but if I can be, I need to know what my priorities are. Number one, myself, if I go down, there was no point in doing any of this. Second, my family, I don't want them to get wrapped up in this. And third, other people, helping others with my abilities would be a nice perk. Well, I've thought this through, why the heck not.
I took the pill and waited for a few minutes, nothing had happened yet. Was that not Apocryphon? Did I get something else? Then, everything changed. I could see, hear, imagine, smell, and feel everything that was around me. No thought could escape my mind, no noise could get past my ears. I could see everything going on as if I was focused on everything at once. I knew my neighbor downstairs was on his computer right below me. A lady was talking to her husband on the phone just below the building outside my window.
This, was pretty awesome. I first needed a method of legal, and mass income, that I could keep collecting off of the drug, then I needed to do research on the drug, then negating the side effects. The first was easy, develop a game. I had the necessary skills anyway, I could just make it perfect on the drug. I remembered a cool idea I'd come up with years ago and never used, and made a quick proof of concept sketch. This would work just fine.
I spent the next few hours writing the code and creating some visual representations of items and objects. After I had everything I needed to work with, I polished some of it up and saved my work. I also did a little research on marketing video games and wrote out a quick business plan and marketing plan. The game was looking good so far and I decided to start working on my next project, the drug. I started digging, but found little more than I already knew. The first thing I found, was the actual name of the drug, NZT-48. After that I had to do a little light hacking to get new information.
I found some information about some experiments with the drugs, which also had
Accounts of its side effects. They didn't look very good, and all seemed to revolve around the need for the drug increasing the more you take it. I decided to look into chemical engineering and found that reverse engineering the drug wouldn't be too difficult. I left the house to get a few things, and realized it would be harder than expected.
NZT made everything interesting. It was difficult not to get distracted. I kept moving towards my destination, but I was only bombarded heavier. Once I finally collected the things I needed, I moved towards home. That was when I noticed it, somebody had been following me. They had always been in the stores I went to, and walking at a safe distance in the street. I got a few good looks at them and instantly memorized their face.
After getting home, I locked myself in my room and closed the blinds. I started working on figuring out the drugs chemical compound. I was eventually able to do it and made a list of everything needed to make it, as well as some notes of the side effects. I eventually found some chemicals that worked in your brain, and were used to treat certain mental disorders, as well as some drugs that the chemicals in NZT were used to make.
After some time, I found a list of drugs and chemicals to do research on, and side effects that would be the hardest to combat. After working for 8 hours, I was exhausted, but I still needed to do a couple of things. I had learned that fighting the side effects would require some sort of change to your own system, not just a drug like NZT, as well as who the person following me was. Emily Harsen, a chemical researcher and engineer, who works with experimental drugs and genetic therapies.
The interesting thing was, she worked at a private company, so finding any information on what the company was working on was minimal. I decided I should confront her, so why not now? I opened the blinds a bit to see if she was still around and saw her hanging around a coffee shop down the street. I put some presentable clothes on and left my apartment. I walked down to the shop. She was acting normal, but definitely watching him. Once he got there he got a drink and sat at a table in a corner. She approached him and sat down opposite him at the table.
"Are you Connor Jacobsen?" She asked him.
"Yeah, who's asking?" He replied.
"I am, I work for a company that works with genetic therapies, and I think we may be able to make a deal." She told him a little monotonously.
"A deal? What kind of deal" He asked her.
"We have been doing private research on a drug called NZT-48, and we noticed that some pills from New York had been circulating around the area," She explained, "We hope to be able to keep things under control, and get some samples of the drug to work on. We tracked the drugs activity, and found those guys, then you seem to have taken them from them, and kept them."
"Why should I trust you? How do I know you're not just trying to get me arrested to take it for yourself?" He asked her a little aggressively.
"Because we are trying to keep our dealings private and keep the drug away from the government. We understand its importance in changing the world, and the government getting a hold of it may be a negative occurrence." She told him.
Still being on the drug, he could tell she wasn't lying. Was she on it? She seemed somewhat articulate, but not exactly extraordinary. He decided to see what kind of deal she was getting at.
"So what exactly do you want from me?" He asked.
"Samples, from you, and the drug. As well as possibly some testing of a gene therapy we've been working on to alleviate the side effects." She replied.
Well that did sound good, but he still wanted proof of this.
"If I agree to give you some samples, will you give me proof of all this?" He asked her.
"We can arrange that." She answered.
"Well, then I will help you with this, but for now, I want some sort of guarantee of compensation, not just money." He said sternly.
"We can arrange that." She answered him.
"Here's a number when you're ready. We expect to be ready in a few days, so if you could call in three days, we'll give you the address. Tell no one, take no one with you, and bring the drug." She told him.
"See you then." He said as he got up and offered to help her up. She looked a little surprised by the gesture, but accepted. They left and parted ways. That was a little surprising. He didn't think anyone would have been tracking the drug around the city, but now he knew at least one person was, he would need to be careful and avoid doing anything risky. For now he went home, he was exhausted, and needed to sleep. It was only 6:00, but that felt like 1:00 in the morning to him. He fell on his bed without even changing and crashed.