The system took a moment to process. Then a new screen appeared:
Multiple Path Configuration
Distribute 100 skill points among the three disciplines.
The number was smaller than I expected. One hundred points. I couldn't be excellent at everything; I had to prioritize.
I thought about Alex. The way her eyes lit up when we talked about science. How she relaxed when we discussed equations, as if she were finally speaking her native language. I thought about how I could be for her what others hadn't been: an equal, not an admirer or a competitor.
But I also thought about myself. The long hours I had spent in my previous life, locked away in front of screens, with a body falling apart and a mind consumed by a single idea. I didn't want to be that again. I wanted to move, to create, to be someone who could do, not just think.
The distribution formed on its own, as if it had always been waiting.
Science: 50 points.
The foundation. The language I shared with Alex. The understanding that connected us.
Art: 30 points.
Expression. The way of seeing the world that goes beyond data. What I could build with my hands.
Athletics: 20 points.
The body. Health. The promise of not being the fragile ghost I once was again.
The system processed the selection for a moment. Everything hung in suspense.
Configuration confirmed.
Paths activated: Scientist (Level 2), Artist (Level 1), Athlete (Level 1).
Base skills unlocked.
Note: Further development will depend on user's actions and choices.
The interface reconfigured one last time. The counters disappeared. The warnings dissolved. In their place remained something simpler, cleaner.
Personal Evolution System - Active.
Objective: Integral development.
Fundamental restriction: Do not manipulate A.D.'s feelings.
That was the only line left in red. The only rule the system was unwilling to let go of.
I couldn't make Alex feel something for me. I couldn't use my knowledge of the future, my enhanced skills, my privileged position to force a connection that wasn't genuine. And for the first time, that restriction didn't feel like a limitation.
It felt fair.
That afternoon, I met Alex at the bus stop. I was carrying a new book, one I had started reading that morning, after making my decision. It wasn't about science. It was about art: perspective in Renaissance painting.
"What's that?" Alex asked, pointing at the book with her chin. Her tone wasn't disapproving, just curious.
"A change of pace," I replied.
She flipped through it for a moment, her eyes scanning Brunelleschi's diagrams and Masaccio's reproductions.
"Linear perspective," she said, and in her voice there was recognition, an unexpected connection. "It's mathematics. Just applied to visual representation."
"Exactly," I said, and smiled. "Art and science aren't so separate."
She looked at me, and in her eyes I saw something I hadn't seen before. It wasn't just intellectual interest. It was a silent question, an evaluation of who I was starting to become.
"No," she said finally, returning the book to me. "They aren't."
We got on the bus. We sat together, as always. But that afternoon, when we talked, it wasn't only about science. We talked about how colors blended in the sunset sky, why certain shapes were more pleasing than others, the geometry hidden in the leaves of trees.
We talked about beauty, not just truth.
And as we did, I felt the system, somewhere deep in my consciousness, register something.
Not points.
Not progress.
Just a silent acknowledgment that I was beginning to become something more than an observer.
I was beginning to live.
April 2009
The following weeks were strange.
The system no longer told me what to do. There were no daily objectives, no warnings about premature contact or canonical interference. It was just me, with my newly unlocked skills and the freedom to use them as I wished.
Freedom was more terrifying than I expected. Without the system as a guide, I started noticing things I had ignored before: the way my hand trembled slightly when I tried to draw a straight line, the way I ran out of breath after jogging a block, and the ease with which my mind drifted back to old patterns: watching Alex, analyzing her expressions, calculating the next canonical event.
I hadn't changed as much as I wanted to believe.
One April afternoon, after a week of intermittent rain, I found myself in my backyard with a sketchbook I had bought at an art store near the school. I had tried to draw the Dunphy house from my window, but my strokes were clumsy, childish. The lines didn't meet where they should; the proportions were a disaster.
The system, somewhere, registered my frustration. It offered no solutions; it only observed.
"What are you doing?"
I startled. Alex was on the other side of the fence separating our yards, her head peeking over the edge. She was wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt, probably Phil's, and her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail.
"Nothing," I said, closing the sketchbook too quickly. "Trying to draw."
"Draw," she repeated, as if the word were a scientific specimen needing examination. "Since when do you draw?"
"Since... recently."
Alex rested her arms on the fence, resting her chin on them. Her expression was one of genuine curiosity, not mockery.
"Can I see?"
I hesitated, but then I opened the sketchbook.
She studied my drawings in silence. The crooked lines of her house, the trees that looked like blobs, my attempt to capture the evening light, which had turned into a yellow smear.
"They're bad," she said finally.
"I know."
"The perspective is wrong. The horizon line should be lower. And the light..." She paused, tilting her head. "You're trying to draw the light, not the shapes. That's harder."
I didn't respond. She was right about everything.
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Leo distributed his points like he was creating a video game character: 50 in science, 30 in art, 20 in athletics. The next day, Alex saw him reading an art book and, instead of making fun of him, said: "That's applied mathematics." Because of course, only Alex can turn beauty into an equation.
Do you think Leo is doing the right thing by diversifying, or should he specialize in just one thing? 🎮📊
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