Chapter 38: High School — The Final Review
Time Passes
Graduation was close enough to feel real.
Adam took the SAT and scored well. With his recommendation letters secured, he moved into the formal application process.
The American college application system ran on a two-way selection model with no cap on the number of schools a student could apply to. Casting a wide net was standard practice, not a sign of uncertainty.
His first application went to Harvard.
Harvard University — private, Ivy League, consistently top three globally. Harvard Medical School, ranked first in the world for medicine essentially every year it had been evaluated. For someone planning to become a surgeon in the shortest possible time, there was no more direct route. American universities didn't offer undergraduate medical degrees, which meant the path ran through a strong undergraduate program first, ideally in biological sciences or a related field, followed by medical school application.
Harvard Biological Sciences was the obvious first choice. Being admitted as an undergrad improved the odds of staying within the same institution for medical school, which wasn't a guarantee but was a meaningful advantage.
Adam didn't put all of his confidence in Harvard. The better the school, the more opaque the selection process. SAT scores and strong recommendation letters were necessary but not sufficient. At a certain level, the selection involved variables nobody fully controlled. He applied and moved on.
His second application went to Columbia University in New York City.
Also Ivy League, consistently top twenty globally. Adam had a secondary reason for New York beyond the academic reputation — the city itself was the setting for half the television he'd absorbed in his previous life. Friends, How I Met Your Mother, 2 Broke Girls, Law & Order — the entire ecosystem of American network television was built around Manhattan. Being there, in that specific environment, felt strategically useful in ways he couldn't entirely articulate.
His third application went to the University of Texas at Austin as his safety school.
Strong public university, top hundred globally, and Dr. Campbell's recommendation letter carried genuine institutional weight there. Adam didn't particularly want to attend — the ranking felt like a step back from his goals, and Sheldon was already enrolled there, which would create a dynamic Adam preferred to manage from a distance — but it was a reliable fallback.
He also applied to Cornell, NYU, and the University of Rochester. All New York, all for the same reasons as Columbia.
The responses came back in stages.
Harvard declined him, which was expected and still stung slightly.
Columbia offered him an interview. So did several others.
Adam turned down his father's offer to drive him and took Bob's pickup truck himself, heading northeast toward New York City — approximately 1,600 miles from Galveston, a drive he planned to stretch across three days with stops along the way.
The road trip was a senior year tradition — crossing the country, seeing what was between here and there, arriving somewhere new under your own power. Adam had been looking forward to the open road and the thinking time it would give him.
Juno, as it turned out, had also been invited to interview at Harvard for biological sciences. She'd applied to nearly the same list of schools as Adam, which she explained by saying she'd mentioned years ago that they might both end up as doctors.
Adam noted that she'd used "copy" loosely to describe what had essentially been independent convergence on the same strategy, and also that Juno going to Harvard while he hadn't been invited to interview there was information he was going to sit with quietly for a while.
He was also, if he was being honest, somewhat relieved to be making the Columbia trip alone rather than with Juno as a travel companion. The relief significantly outweighed the convenience of having someone to split the driving.
He kept to the main roads. Stopped at reasonable hours. Avoided anything that looked like it was setting up an interesting situation. American horror movies had a clear taxonomy of mistakes, and he had no intention of making any of them. His physical stats were improved but not superhuman, and he had too much to lose.
Somewhere in Tennessee, he pulled over and checked his stat panel properly for the first time in months.
Intelligence: 138.25 (Average: 100 | Above Average: 120 | Gifted: 140 | Genius: 180)
He ran the breakdown in his head.
Starting value: 108.
Juno's contribution over four years: initial +1, plus 0.005 daily for roughly 1,460 days — approximately 8.3 points total.
Sheldon's contribution over four years: initial +5, plus 0.005 daily — approximately 12.3 points total.
Paige's contribution over two years: initial +6, plus 0.005 daily — approximately 9.65 points total.
Total gain: roughly 30 points. Current position: 138.25.
The genius threshold was 140. He was less than two points away.
At current rates from the three of them, he'd cross that line in approximately 117 days.
117 days felt like an eternity when the finish line was this close.
He had an idea about how to accelerate it, and he was going to test that idea at the Columbia interview.
He set the thought aside and kept driving.
Other Stats:
Strength: 180 — Essentially unchanged since freshman year. The early jump from settling into the Duncan family and building real friendships had been real, but nothing since had moved it.
Endurance: 400 — Still climbing mysteriously, still without a clear pattern he could identify. Whatever was driving it was consistent but opaque.
Speed: 160 — Similar to strength. Small changes, no clear pattern.
Lifespan: 35.06 — Unchanged.
The lifespan number was the one that focused him. He hadn't been doing his regular community service with the same consistency since junior year — the academic workload had crowded it out — and the number reflected that. No acts of direct service meant no movement.
35 years and approximately three weeks, if nothing changed.
He wasn't going to let nothing change.
He put the truck back in gear and drove toward New York.
End of Chapter 38
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