Chapter 1 – Something Changed
Troy was a college senior at the Wilmington Academia of Technological Training, (Try saying that three times fast) or WATT for short. He was tall, light skinned, medium build, with green eyes, and short curly brown hair.
Hints of his muscles could be seen behind his shirt, as he walked by.
When women passed him in the hallway, he noticed something different about the way they looked at him, something more than just a look.
Some of the women had this look of curiosity, which innocently started at his eyes, then worked their way down his body, before looking away. It was as if those women knew they weren’t supposed to look, but did anyways, so their heads fought to turn away.
Other women had more of an animalistic look, some even biting their lower lip, as if trying to taste him. Their look of intensity was far from innocent, more like the look of a hungry animal, which started at his eyes, and stayed there, before going straight for his bulge.
He felt like those women were trying to signal to him, “Hey you, I want that, inside of me, right now.”
That’s weird, he thought, women never looked at me like that before?
As he walked the hallways, he finally understood how the eyes were the windows to our souls, but looking into them, felt more like a game of who looked away first.
Sometimes he lost, looking away from those deep penetrating eyes, and sometimes he won, looking back into the eyes of the not so innocent, the ones hiding a deep, dark, secret desire, inside of them.
He decided to walk to the vending machines first, to get something to drink, so he took another route to class.
He noticed two college sophomores walking in front of him, as they looked back at him, and whispered to each other, “Hey, look.”
“Yeah, he normally doesn’t go this way.”
These girls know which way I walk to class.
When he arrived to his last computer class, Plus Sequel, he wasn’t surprised to see that his favorite teacher was absent again, leaving another substitute in his place.
Troy felt really bad for him, remembering the multiple times Mr. Stint spent alone in his office, trying to hold back his tears of sadness from the class, as his wife laid ill on her death bed.
Mr. Stint’s wife was really sick, and he clearly wanted to spend as much time with her, as she had left, but he came to work instead.
He was a good teacher, who somehow managed to balance being with his sick wife, and being with his students, well at first anyways, then he struggled in the end, as he tried to hold on to every moment she had left.
Troy understood why he was absent for so long, because the people we love are so important to us, and when their gone, their gone forever.
Troy sat in front of his computer screen, logged in, and began where he left off, “Chapter 3: The Third Layer of the OSI Reference Model.” Learning how a computer communicates, using the 7 layers of the OSI reference model, was like watching the grass grow, so his mind often wandered.
Seeing the substitute teacher walking by, made him think about the first time he met Mr. Stint, in Freshman year.
Mr. Stint wore a red flannel shirt, with his reading glasses on, and maintained a stern face, as he stood in front of the class, introduced himself, then talked about his life’s work, and experiences.
“When I was younger, I did my time in the space force, traveling the stars, and I was even stationed in places, like underground bunkers, nine floors deep, on multiple planets and moons.”
Troy was captivated by his stories and hung onto every word.
“When I was discharged from the military, I continued my career in electronics, and I kept learning, as time went on.”
“Now I’m working on the Advanced Computer Networking Plus, and Plus Sequel.”
Troy knew he had picked the right teacher to learn from, and somehow, this class was going to change his life forever.
He listened and admired how intelligent Mr. Stint was, and hoped that one day, he’d be just as smart as him.
Troy was determined to do his best, and studied all of the class materials every day, trying his best to memorize them.
WATT was one of the toughest colleges to get into to, because it was designed to teach students skill-of-craft trades, as well as normal academics.
What made WATT so special, was that each student got to choose three trade skills that they wanted to learn, then they attended one skill each semester. After the students completed three semesters, they then prioritized the skills they wanted to master, in the order of 1, 2, and 3.
Another unique part about WATT, was that the teachers also got to prioritize each student that they wanted to accept into their class, because space was limited, and demand was high.
If the student’s priority matched the teacher’s priority, then the students get accepted into the program. If none of the teachers accepted a student into their class, then the student automatically got placed into a class with availability, or just dropped out completely.
Halfway through the first semester, the class was taught about basic electronics, and soldering.
Troy was sitting, listening, and taking notes during Mr. Stints lecture, when he heard an announcement on the classroom speaker, that sounded muffled, and distorted.
When the announcement was done, Troy looked at Mr. Stint, raised his hand, and when he was acknowledged, he said, “Mr. Stint, this is an electronics class right, shouldn’t we be able to fix that speaker?”
The whole class laughed, as if it were some kind of joke, and when their laughs started to die down, Mr. Stint said, “Yes,” which shut them up immediately, “How would you fix that?”
The whole class looked at Troy, as he looked at the speaker, then back to Mr. Stint, and said, “The first thing I would do is open it up, and look inside.”
“Okay, there’s a ladder in the closet,” as Mr. Stint pointed to the door.
The whole class looked at Troy, as if he were dared to do something he wasn’t supposed to.
He stood up, opened the closet door, grabbed the ladder, and positioned himself underneath the speaker.
Mr. Stint was caught off guard, because he didn’t think a first-year student would ever call his bluff like that, then said, “Troy, hold on for one second.”
He picked up the phone, called the administrative office, and said, “I’m doing a test of the announcement system, please don’t let anyone use it,” then hung up the phone, looked around the room, and said, “John, hold the ladder.”
Mr. Stint didn’t want to let a first year student accidentally electrocute himself by someone making a random announcement.
John got up, walked over to Troy, and held the ladder, as Troy climbed up.
Troy lifted the ceiling tile, looked at the back of the speaker, and realized that he needed some tools, in order to remove it. He climbed back down the ladder, retrieved what he needed, climbed up, and disconnected the speaker.
When he got off the ladder, the class was in a state of disbelief, that Mr. Stint would allow a student to disconnect a classroom speaker.
Troy took the speaker to his work bench, and started taking it apart, as some of the classmates stood behind him.
When he opened it up, Troy immediately saw a potential problem, looked up at Mr. Stint, and said, “Would a small piece of metal, directly touching the positive and negative terminals, cause the speaker to sound like that?”
The class looked at Mr. Stint, who looked down at the speaker, and said, “It’s possible, why do you think that is?”
Troy looked at the piece of metal, lifted it off the speaker, and felt the speakers magnetic pull.
As he held the piece of metal, he looked at it, looked at the terminals, and said, “Because a piece of metal has very little resistance, and current follows the path of least resistance, so instead of current flowing through the speaker, it’s flowing across this piece of metal.”
Mr. Stint said, “That’s right, it creates a short.”
Troy didn’t see any other problems with the speaker, so he put it together, climbed up the ladder, reattached the speaker, climbed back down, and put the ladder away.
He walked back to his desk, and pretended to listen to Mr. Stint talk about what a short is, as he patiently waited for another announcement.
“A short is when any conductive material, that doesn’t belong on an energized circuit, causes electrons to flow across it. This changes how the electrical equipment is designed to work and may even damage sensitive components.”
He picked up the phone, and said, “Can you do a test of the announcement system please. Thank you,” then hung up the phone.
A few seconds later the students heard, “Attention all personnel, Attention all personnel, this is a test of the announcement system, test complete, thank you.”
Troy noticed that the sound quality was better, but it was still not loud enough.
After class, Troy walked up to Mr. Stint and said, “The speaker sounds better, but the volume is still too low.”
Mr. Stint looked up at Troy and said, “There may be more than one problem that we’re not aware of, like the building is old, which means the wires are old, and this class is at the back of the campus, so the signal has to travel the furthest. Current follows the path of least resistance, so there’s a good chance that the volume may never be loud.”
Troy didn’t know how to take that information, was it good or bad?
“You did a good job, see you tomorrow.”
He finished that semester confident that he worked hard, which was confirmed after the other two semesters were completed, and he received an email notification, that said he was accepted into the Electronics program.
“YESSSS,” as he looked awkwardly at the people staring at him in the hallway, before walking away.
Sophomore year, Troy found himself easily distracted, especially when it came to the opposite sex.
He tried his best to ignore them, and focus on his studies, but all he could focus on, was fighting the urge to look at these beautiful ladies.
He couldn’t help notice how the men around them, also struggled to ignore them as well, because the women walked around wearing tight yoga pants, with their cleavage hanging out.
“TROY,” Mr. Stint yelled, after he noticed Troy daydreaming again on his desk.
“Yes Mr. Stint,” sitting back up on his desk.
“What’s ohms law?”
“Huh, oh, Voltage equals current times resistances.”
“Rearrange it to solve for current.”
“Current equals voltage divided by resistance.”
“What are the colors on a resistor.”
Getting a little annoyed, Troy said, “Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Grey, White, Gold, Silver, None.”
Slowly nodding his head yes, Mr. Stint said, “and what are the units of power?”
“A Watt.”
“Good,” then Mr. Stint looked back at the class, and said, “The founders of this campus named it after the unit of power, because they felt that knowledge is power,” then he continued on with the lecture.
Troy got fed up with Mr. Stint calling on him all of the time, especially more than any other student.
He waited until the class was over, and when every other student left the classroom, he stood up, and said, “Mr. Stint, what’s your problem, why are you always picking me to answer questions?”
Mr. Stint turned to Troy, looked him in the eyes, and said, “Troy, I’m not picking on you, I just see that you have a lot more to offer me, than what you’re showing. You’re being lazy, and not challenging yourself.”
Troy was speechless and he couldn’t believe that his favorite teacher said that to him, and at that moment, all he could do, was turn around, and walk out.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Mr. Stint was right. Troy was being lazy and holding back, holding back because he was afraid of what other people would think or say about him. Would he be labeled a teacher’s pet? Or would he get into a fight? Just because he was smart.
From that moment on, he was a completely different student, answering questions, and putting in 100% of his effort.
When the class was about to learn how to fix a damaged source code, that crashed a computer system, Mr. Stint picked Troy to find a way to destroy each computers source code.
Mr. Stint told the rest of the students to leave the classroom, and gave Troy complete access to their computer consoles.
When he opened up the source code on the first computer, he thought about finding a sneaky way to destroy it, that wasn’t so obvious to them. He knew that the students would be looking for missing lines of code, or a missing word, so he searched the code, and found the only period, that when turned into a comma, destroyed the whole startup process, success.
The students spent hours trying to find what was wrong with the source code, and they gave Troy the dirtiest of looks, just for making them try so hard.
It was extremely difficult for Troy to hold back his smile, so he focused on keeping a straight face, as the frustrated students worked on.
When the class finally gave up, he told them what he’d done, and the look on their faces were priceless.
Mr. Stint asked the class to leave again, and let Troy do it one more time.
Troy new they would be looking for the same type of failure, so he looked for a different way to destroy the code, and changed a word that was supposed to be a lowercase, into an uppercase, which three students caught that time.
The next week, Mr. Stint surprised the class, by using his military connections to give them a tour of a nearby military weapons facility. Since their cars were not allowed, they had to be bussed there instead.
When they pulled up to the fence, Troy couldn’t believe they were going to be allowed to go in there.
The facility was amazing, surrounded by barbed wire fence, security posts, and armed guards. The main building was the same shape as the top of a Space Force Carrier.
An escort met them in the front lobby, explained the security protocols, and provided each student with guess badges.
“If everyone is ready, you can now follow me,” as the escort turned, and walked them through the security screens.
A few of the students needed to be checked again, because their belts set the machine off, then down the hall they went.
As they passed the elevators, Troy saw the up and down buttons, then wondered, *how far down does this facility go.*
The guide made a left, and stopped to introduce them to the Directors, and other bosses. None of them were in uniform, just nice business suits. The next room was a planning room, with schematics, computer screens, and scheduled timelines for production.
The guide explained how administrative decisions are made, work is tracked, and other boring stuff.
At the end of their circle around the first floor of the facility, they were permitted to go down one floor, so the guide unlocked a door with his badge, and took them down stairs.
*Only one flight of steps, hmmm*
When the guide opened the other door, Troy’s jaw dropped.
The floor seemed to be one huge room, separated by walls, and open doors.
From where he stood, he saw robotic arms, glass laboratory’s, with people walking around in white lab coats, and a virtual reality station.
The guide walked up to the virtual reality station and said, “This is probably the best job for anyone to have. It’s how we simulate conditions in the battle field, and observe predicted results.”
The class was amazed that they did all that with virtual technology.
Troy raised his hand, and when he was acknowledged by the guide, he said, “Can I try it?”
The guide thought about it, and said, “Sure, I don’t see why not.”
The class watched, as Troy walked up to the device, and the guide helped set him up.
“This is our simulation on the facility simulation, it’s how we design the buildings decoration. Use this glove on your left hand to turn left, the right to turn right, and move both to go forward, or backwards. You’ll be able to move things around with your hands. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” as his heart pounded, when the device went over his head.
It was dark at first, then he was instantly in a large room, just like the room he was currently in. He used the gloves to move forward, backwards, left, right, then traveled around the room, looking at pictures, and moving the furniture around.
*I bet this has the whole facility mapped, not just this floor, let’s see how far they’ll let me go.*
Troy moved a piece of furniture by the door, turned, and moved into the hallways, looking at the names on all of the door frames.
He saw the Elevator coming up on his left, so he stood next it, and pretended to look at another painting, while using his left hand to push the down button.
He then turned, so his back was towards the elevator, and pretended to look at another door frame.
When he heard the DING behind him, and the sounds of the elevator doors opening, Troy moved backwards into the elevator, then looked down at the pushbutton, and thought, *nine underground floors,* then the device went dark, and was removed from his head.
Troy smiled at the guide and said, “That was awesome, thank you.”
The guide looked at him, as if he had just jeopardized his job, and said, “Sure,” then looked around the room to make sure no one important saw that.
“Can I try next,” said another student.
He looked at the student and said, “That’s all that we have time for today,” as the guide put the device away.
Troy spent the rest of the tour pretending to be interested in the rest of the unclassified electronics, while imagining what kind of secrets lies beneath his feet, like a secret missile guiding system, or a new space weapon.
School was going good for Troy, until a few weeks later, when Mr. Stint introduced the class to their new Electronics teacher, Mr. Frazer.
Turned out Mr. Stint was asked to create a new college program, and he could no longer be their teacher.
Mr. Frazer was a nice guy, quiet, helpful, and complementing Troy on his work, but he wasn’t Mr. Stint.
Then a week before class ended, Mr. Stint entered the classroom, approached Troy, and said, “Can I speak to you for a moment?”
Nodding, Troy walked with him to the back of the class room.
“The reason why I was absent for so long, is because I started a new program, called Advanced Computer Networking and Sequel Plus. The success of these two programs mean a lot to the college, and I would like you to be one of my first students.”
Troy was honored, and immediately said, “Yes, I would love too.”
When he walked back to his seat, with the look of shock on his face, Mr. Frazer slowly walked up to him.
At first, Mr. Frazer didn’t look so happy, but then he cracked a smile and said, “So Mr. Stint is stealing my star pupil, you’ll do great.”
“Thank you,” which was all Troy could say, as his mind exploded with the excitement of the unknown.
In Junior year, the program started off great, with everyone learning about complex computer Networking, and fiber optic cables. Unfortunately, after the first three months of the program, Mr. Stint’s wife fell ill, and he was increasingly absent, from the program that he created.
All of the students studied as best as they could, but unfortunately, they all got lazy, and took advantage of the situation, and played video games instead.
Troy frequently looked over at Mr. Stints empty office, and wondered why he was gone for so long.
When Troy realized that there were only a few more weeks left before the big ACN certification, Troy put away the games, and went back into study mode. He focused on the material, wrote down every definition, and continued to rewrite everything, until it was completely memorized.
On the day of the ACN certification, Troy’s heart raced, as he patiently waited with the rest of the class, to find out, that him and two other students were the only ones that passed the test.
Troy held back his excitement, feeling sorry for the students that didn’t pass, and just shook the hands of the other two students that did, “Congratulations…… Congratulations.”
One of the other male students, immediately blurted out crying, then stormed away. Troy looked at the faces of the other students, and understood why they were so upset. The certification meant more to them, then they initially let on, and there was no one else to blame, but themselves.
That’s when Troy learned the value of working harder than those around you.
Troy woke up from that flashback in front of the computer screen, to a female voice that whispered, “Hey Troy, want some?”
It was his friend Althea, the most petite and peppiest person he has ever met. She was always in a good mood, most likely from the alcohol and Gatorade she was sipping.
“No, I can’t, it’s the first day of wrestling practice.”
He couldn’t believe she was the class president when they were younger, and when she first got her
license, she would randomly throw him the keys, and say, “You drive.”
If it wasn’t for her, he probably wouldn’t have gotten his license.
She was so much fun to be around, loved by all, and now, she was trying to get him drunk in class.
“Okay, just a sip,” holding back his alcohol face, “Thanks.”
“No problem, do you think Mr. Stint will ever come back.”
“I don’t think so, last I heard his wife could die at any moment.”
“Here’s to her,” as she took another sip.
“I’ll drink to that,” taking another swig himself.
The first day of wrestling practice started like every other year, with everyone sitting on the mat, as Coach Carter made his speech.
“Welcome back everyone, as you know, each year I pick two captains to lead us for the season. This year I’ve decided to make Jeremy the captain, because he spent the last two years in the wrestling training program.”
The wrestlers clapped, and hooted.
“The other captain will be decided in a few weeks, after the two wrestling tournaments are over. The wrestler with the best performance will be the other captain.”
The wrestlers looked at each other, up and down, and tried to determine who it would be.
“Good luck, and let’s begin.”
Jeremy led the team through the normal exercises, drills, and routines. They practiced their single leg take downs, escaping from the bottom of their opponent, and pinning from the top.
When the first tournament started, Troy wasn’t nervous at all, instead, he felt strong, stronger than he’s ever felt before.
His coached watched, as Troy wrestled three matches, pinning every single one of them in the first round, and for the first time ever, winning a gold medal for his weight class.
Coach Carter couldn’t believe that he was the same wrestler from last year, and said, “Good job Troy, let’s do that again next tournament.”
“You got it coach.”
The next tournament was like a repeat, as he pinned his way to another gold medal victory.
At practice, Coach Carter had them all sit on the mat, as he made his announcement.
“Alright everyone, the first two tournaments our over, and it’s probably no surprise, but the other captain of the wrestling team will be, Troy.”
The other wrestlers clapped and hooted.
Troy looked at his teammates, and realized that now was his chance to learn how to be a leader.
Source: reddit.com/r/Erotica/comments/phk639/the_hyperphantasian_book_series_book_1_forever