An Average Day at Laminax

Chapter 1

I have been working for Laminax for about three years now. Nothing has seemed to change, and all the days seem the same. I have a basic schedule. Wake up, have my breakfast, have a shower, get dressed, start my car, drive to work, do everything that I need to do there, drive back home, have dinner, take another shower, go to bed, and repeat. I work as a Senior Researcher at Laminax's Houston branch, one of Laminax's more major and successful of Laminax's America branches, with Los Angeles, Phoenix, Honolulu, Atlanta, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Miami, Anchorage and New York City branches being close behind, with all of them having headquarters established by Laminax, with the main one being in New York City, given the fact that Laminax was founded there. At first glance, many would expect the job title 'Senior Researcher' to be something major or somewhere within the upper echelons of Laminax, but no. My occupation as a Senior Researcher seems to be the same work as a Junior Researcher, but with an extra layer of expectation from others regarding experience and work output. While I handle some tasks that involve more complexity that a Junior Researcher's tasks, I often find myself doing the same repetitive tasks that have become all too familiar. I wrote down notes, analyzed and wrote down information from tests and experiments, update the Bestiary files whenever I could, complete routine data entries, compile research findings into reports, attend obligatory morning meetings that seem to go longer each week, and pray to God that nothing bad happens to me. I was born and raised in a small, typical Midwestern town named Cambridge City, Indiana, an hour's drive away from the capital of Indianapolis. Growing up, I was a child prodigy of sorts, and was known as the 'smart kid in town,' and nothing else, not my full name, Oliver Henry Davidson, just 'smart kid' or 'smartie' to the other residents of the town, who had their own fixed perceptions of who I was. The label followed me throughout my childhood, where I excelled in academics, but  was also shy, quiet and had no friends, preferring to spend time by myself in the towns public library, burying myself in classical literature and science, chemistry, math, and biology books to pass the afternoon by. My parents were happy with each other at one point of their lives, where my mother was working as an office receptionist in a nearby town, and my father was a truck driver, often going on long haul routes for days at a time. When me and my brother, James, were 10 years old, my mother divorced my father.

After the divorce, she took a flight to Atlanta, Georgia to pursue a certain career to satisfy her desires, leaving my father to raise me and my twin brother, James, on his own. As my father was regularly out on long haul routes across the Midwest, I never really had the chance to spend time with him, or even see him. He often hired babysitters to look after us while he was away until me and James turned 12 years old. James is the polar opposite of me; extroverted, outgoing, popular, and a bit egotistical. While I focused on my high school studies, finding a great interest in biology and animals, James was less focused on his academics and more on sports and socializing. He was the one who had a wide circle of friends and was often in the spotlight, whether it be a good or bad reason. During a school project in the 8th grade, during a lesson focusing on heritage and ancestry, we were assigned to find out as much as we could about our families history and where they came from. I asked my dad about it, and he bought me to his dad, my grandfather, named Henry, who had an ancient looking book containing wrinkled documentation papers and various black and white photos of long-deceased relatives. I found out that had a mix of English, Irish, German, Danish, Scottish and Jewish heritage on my father's side, though I had little information from my mother's side. My father told me about how my mothers grandmother was a Greek immigrant who moved to Chicago with her also Greek husband, and ended up having a daughter named Anna, who would marry a Hungarian-American man, and Anna then had my mother, and they both raised her as an only child in a small house in Terre Haute. My father had relatives living close to us, in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Kentucky, where he was raised. Before my parents divorce, we regularly attended the towns Catholic church potluck, which my mother would bring souvlaki and pita bread to the event, made using a recipe passed down to her from her grandparents, and she regularly made it at home too, After my mothers move to Atlanta, we stopped going to church altogether.