Planning would be my quality since I entered college. Calculating, cunning, and foreseeing futures would be my real resume. Meanwhile, in front of the public, I was Viego Voraz, a simple poor boy who was too dumb to pass the subjects. That was just a role I knew how to play very well. I knew what would come in the exams, I knew how to project a glimpse of the future, I knew the different branches of the decisions of my actions or that of the people close to me.
That happened when I crossed the threshold of the university. I had decided to study medicine, but when I shook hands with the janitor of the medical school I saw his future or the calculations of his life. Because everything appeared by random numbers that formed a glimpse of possibilities. The most likely would be to die in 2 years of diabetes, crippled by not being able to control his impulses.
Of course, I didn't know this immediately. I only know that I saw a lot of numbers and calculations that would not leave me alone. I had to spend five nights in my dorm, locked up solving mathematical exercises that were only in my head. I was already very good at it, my father was a math teacher, an obsessive who made me solve calculations since I was a child.
Finally, when I got the results I didn't know what to think. No result made sense to me until I started to connect things.
Some numbers had to do with the years left to live for Bob the janitor, another his glycemic index, other numbers I guessed would be the times his limbs would be amputated. A year was enough time for me to figure it out, while each time I had premonitions.
It was difficult, but it allowed me to create the veil of numbness. In the beginning, every time I met a person, there came those difficult differential equations, or triple integrals that I had to solve. It took me two years of medical school, which I had to drop out of to make sense of the results I was getting.
Finding the relationships of result three with the number of times Fidel would be unfaithful to his girlfriend Valentina, or the number 1,234,390 with the money Roberto would steal from some students in a well-planned scam.
Of course, I realized it when it happened. I witnessed the death of Bob the janitor, the fights of Fidel and his girlfriend, and seeing in the papers how one of my classmates was wanted for swindling half the university.
It was hard to see where it was leading me. I had no idea what the results meant. I felt lost in this urge to solve inexplicable math problems. As a skill to work on, I began to see probabilities everywhere I went.
I discovered in my second year of college life that I could address what I wanted to find out. So the problems solved unknowns of things I wanted to know. If I wanted to know the probability of success in stock, the mortality rate of a person, the amount of money to be gained by making an investment decision, and the more specific the question, the easier I could solve the problem.
The most difficult was the general questions. The country, people, a company, among other conglomerates. I had to be specific.
I was a Meta, I couldn't tell anyone. I didn't know that I had any family members who had been involved in that event two decades ago. People thought that the Metas would populate the world, but strangely most of them could not conceive children, so gradually, the second generations of Metas disappeared and their replacement was a minority.
I kept quiet about that discovery. It was not something that everyone should know. The Metas were an accident of space, cosmic rays. I didn't care, I didn't research the history of how my abilities were born, I just wanted something. To believe in my powers.
And so it was, my confidence in my abilities grew. It took me five years.
While my parents were disappointed in my poor performance in my life. However, this Christmas they will change that opinion of me.
“So, young man, are you sure about buying these shares?” The broker was not very sure about my bet on Space T. “You know as well as I do, those private space companies do not have much return due to the prohibitions towards space” He had already told me that three times with this one. “They don't want the Metas incident to happen again, so the government has banned space travel. Only a few have been granted licenses....”
“I am aware of the implications. I know the government approved them, but they haven't approved them very much. However, Space T has had good returns these last two years” I sounded confident because I had practiced my script. “I don't want to lose a few yen just because of some limitations.”
“That's fine, but, as well as the highs have had very dangerous lows for the investor. And you want to buy 500 shares. Do you have 5,000 yen for that management?”
Of course, I had it, I had made money doing tests for this moment. Discreet money in low-caliber bets.
“Yes, of course, don't keep wasting my time. I'll transfer the money to you” I hung up.
I immediately transferred the money with my Mindchips. In five days I would see the return on my investment. I had been looking for the most promising company and Space T was the winner of my studies. I briefly researched their projects. They were looking to lead an expedition to Mars to terraform. As the broker said the government was constantly sabotaging them, however, the family running the situation were the few recognized Metas in the world with money. Those stocks, whatever they were, would make me money.
Brokers were cumbersome. They were robots run by the government to prevent massive losses for traders like me. However, many times they were a nuisance. They only served to enforce the investor's law, they did not know how to anticipate the fluctuations of a company. That would mean the collapse of the economy.
I could only believe that my plans would follow the course I wanted them to.
“80% chance of realization, a 100% percent in upside performance, a thousand billion yen in revenue in hours” I enumerated, reveling in the numbers I had calculated. “Believe by Christmas, what a coincidence, I should have calculated that this would happen.”
I dreamed of the money I would make.
