Tempest: The Champion

Phase 1, part 2

I take a look around. Well, my house can use a little cleaning. It's exactly what would you expect from a twenty-five year old bachelor - a basic furniture bought in sales, dust clinging on everything, and averagely two empty chocolate packets for a square meter. It's true I don't invest into household items as much as I should. I'm a technology and science geek, so my funds usually flow that way.

My old TV has two metres diagonal, which is kinda big, but it still uses LCD technology while majority of people already have holochromatic ones with simulated depth perception and definition so perfect it can't be distinguished from reality.

Well, it seems that I'm in a financial crisis right now. I try placing bets on Neoclash, but I usually lose, like I did just now, and if I win, I receive only some chicken feed that's gone after a single supermarket visit.

It's infuriating since I know I'm just one step away from fame and fortune.

"AVIA, tell me the time and date of the next Neoclash championship," I say to an empty room.

A small white box on the table comes alive. The automatic, voice-activated assistant answers me: "The next Second-league Neoclash championship takes place in Denmark, tenth of February at eight PM. The remaining time is six days, one hour and thirty-six minutes."

Okay, it seems that I'll have to spend a week watching boring Third and Fourth League fights. Great.

...

"AVIA, send HooverPal to clean the house and unlock the laboratory," I command.

"Sending HooverPal and unlocking the laboratory, Mr. Bridger," AVIA replies with the soft girl voice I programmed her to have. It's sad it is probably my closest encounter with anything even remotely female.

My HooverPal comes alive and leaves its charging slot. It's a household toy that looks like a flying saucer hovering low above the floor using a small Counter-Gravity engine and works like a vacuum cleaner. It starts to systematically scavenge the room and suck the dust and empty chocolate packets inside.

I let the robot do its job and enter the door AVIA unlocked. It leads downstairs, to the basement. And yes, it has to be locked so well only my own voice, a fingerprint and a retina scan can open it. If someone broke there and stole what's inside, my hopes for a better life would be gone within minutes.

As I said earlier, the upper part of the house is a typical bachelor dwelling. Well, the basement is a different story. It is the place where my heart and soul belong.

I descend the stairs. "AVIA, turn on the lights," I call and the artifical intelligence obeys. Installing the AVIA system was expensive, but worth every royal since it speeds up my work at least three times. However, installing AVIA was nowhere as expensive as THIS.

I step into my personal science lab. Not to brag, I have two PhD degrees hanging on the wall and IQ over 150. I specialize in medicine and biotechnologies and I already helped some researchers in DIANA in developing some brand new proths for Champions.

Those were the times when I could consider myself successful.

It's not that I'm not anymore. Nobody is just willing to appreciate my work even though I made the most groundbreaking discovery of the past years... possibly.

I walk past sterile tables with professional lab equipment I bought after returning from DIANA. Even the most elite scientists wouldn't have to be ashamed of it. Microscopes so powerful they're able to see the very core of quarks, a supercomputer linked to a squadron of nanobots, wonderful synthesization machines and 3D printers able to create everything out of anything.