The Probability Shift

Live with it

Kevin's first weeks working under Blake's aegis proved an unsettling whirlwind of activity. He found himself whisked away to a sprawling, state-of-the-art research compound nestled in the Swiss Alps—one of Blake's many shadowy holdings scattered across the globe.

From the moment the armored convoy arrived at the discreet entrance gate, the sheer scale of the operation struck Kevin. Ringed by soaring peaks and dense pine forests, the fortified complex exuded an air of impregnable seclusion. Yet the facilities within the reinforced walls put even the most advanced university labs to shame.

Everywhere he turned, Kevin was confronted with staggering technological marvels—quantum computing clusters, high-energy particle accelerators, even an antimatter production and containment unit. Legions of white-coated scientists and technicians bustled about, engaged in esoteric research that boggled the mind.

It was into this hothouse environment of cutting-edge innovation that Kevin was unceremoniously thrust. A dedicated team was assembled and given the sole directive of providing him with whatever resources and expertise he required to further his work.

At first, Kevin felt like a deep-sea diver suddenly finding himself in the vacuum of space—utterly out of his depth and fighting just to maintain equilibrium. But he quickly adapted, his singular obsession anchoring him amid the dizzying flurry of new data and theories swirling all around.

Blake himself remained a looming, shadowy presence in the background. The magnate's iron grip on the operation towered omnipresent, yet he avoided direct involvement in the day-to-day research. For that, Kevin was profoundly grateful. Any reminders of his Faustian bargain with this amoral man tasted like bitter ashes in his mouth.

Instead, Blake satisfied himself in having his minions monitor Kevin's every move while showering him with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of the latest equipment and computing power. It was almost as if the billionaire viewed him as some exotic creature—fascinating to observe but too unpredictable to handle directly.

For his part, Kevin remained laser-focused on cracking the nut of temporal displacement and consciousness projection. The resources at his disposal proved indeed invaluable, empowering him to iterate through original theories and run complex simulations at a blistering pace.

Yet for every incremental advance, he encountered two new roadblocks. Stabilizing the quantum state necessary to achieve projection turned out maddeningly elusive, like trying to build an architectural wonder on quicksand. More than once, Kevin found himself beating his head against the seemingly impenetrable barriers of physical law.

In those dark moments of despair, flashes of Vanessa's radiant smile would blaze across his mind's eye, restoring his resolve. He had sacrificed everything—his career, his reputation, his very soul—to reach this point. Failure was quite simply not an option, no matter how lofty the odds appeared.

With a renewed sense of grim determination, Kevin would pour over the latest data, searching for that elusive insight—the one tiny crack that would allow him to split the immutable edifice of reality wide open.

The mercurial dance between theoretical breakthrough and soul-crushing setback continued in an endless cycle, while the compound's scientists looked on with a mixture of awe and wariness. Few could fathom the true depths of Kevin's work, nor the unfathomable implications should he somehow succeed.

As for Blake, he remained resolutely inscrutable. The old man's motives behind money still an enigma wrapped in layers of obfuscating plots and false fronts. Yet Kevin knew that the true extent of Blake's greed and lust for power was almost certainly darker and more twisted than anything he could conceive.

Perhaps that revealed simply the nature of genius and madness—two sides of the same blade, each incomprehensible to the other. All Kevin could do was forge onward, gambling everything on his ability to rewrite the fundamental rules of existence itself.

To turn back thetides of time and reclaim what was lost, while fooling everyone around him thatall those calculations and research were "just" to provide perfect simulations,now focused on predicting the markets with eerie accuracy.