Chapter 1:
∞ A Journey ∞
Infinity. It is an integral part of my life. Every day, everywhere I look, and everything I do, I meet this symbol: ∞. It is certain that I rendezvous with it several times a day. Why? Since I attend Riverside Academy. This is an elite, prestigious academy for the smartest kids in the world. I don’t want to seem like I’m conceited, but it’s true.
The deal with infinity has to do with our school motto, or rather our goal. We are told to chant it every day and think of it as our future goal. “One day, when I take the I.Q. test, my score should be infinity.” My father was the closest one to achieve this. He attained an I.Q. of googol. Now, everyone thinks that I will be the one to get the next highest score. The society doesn’t think that I will be the one to reach ∞, but that I will get to googolplex.
Wait, so who am I? As if I would share any information with you, human. But, you think, aren’t I human too? Am I really? Yes, but only 98% of me. The other two percent is pure evil. Just kidding. Honestly, all of the attendees of Riverside and other selected individuals have been injected with 1% of a sapphex and 1% of a nomei. These animals, combined, are the smartest creatures in the world. They are even smarter than us. Being infused with these two makes you a superhuman. Although it’s only 2%, sapphexes and nomeis are very powerful, strong, and intelligent creatures. Together, the force of their qualities is double. Not to say that there aren’t flaws in these animals.
You wonder, why not be vaccinated with more than 2% of this exotic animal? Don’t even try to deny it. I, of all people, know the extent of greed in this world. It’s because any more than two percent, and then unpredictable things happen and you begin to act rabid. These animals are exceedingly sporadic, despite being clever. In the other worlds, I’m content to say, the magnitude of selfish creatures (cause all of them aren’t human) is far less. The universe isn’t doomed after all.
I thought it was, after World War 8, I thought that the entire existence of an individual, creature, beast, or any remotely living thing was gone. Seriously. But then, that turned out to be the turning point of life. Even though this is completely coincidental, do you see that 8 sideways is the symbol ∞? After World War 8, the world became obsessed with infinity. We realized just how brilliant we were and decided to have a competition between ourselves on who could reach infinity. On an unrelated note, I have no idea what year you’re from, but there were 6 World Wars in less than 100 years! Perhaps that will give you an idea.
You see, the population of the world became so huge, vast, gigantic, immense, enormous, massive, colossal, (use whatever word you must) because of a certain pill that was guaranteed to make you thinner. It wasn’t just an ad for the creator to make money; it was actually the real deal! Naturally, we bought it for the relatively cheap price it was being sold for and guess what? America wasn’t known as OBESE anymore! We were all either average or underweight. The pill was invented in America itself, and then it spread over the continents.
But, there was a catch. Of course there was a catch. There ALWAYS is a catch. Nobody noticed at first, but gradually over a couple of years, the mothers that had consumed the pill (which was almost all of them) were giving birth to multiple children at once. Having a single child became rare and having quadruplets became the norm! Obviously, that increased the world population by A LOT. I mean, the world had an average of 2.45 children born to each woman. Increase that to about 6 and that’s that a huge deal! Huger than huge, actually.
The obvious consequence was that after a couple years, nobody could walk outside and find a place to easily stand comfortably without being trampled on. We went so low to even reside in Antarctica. Although we did use room for factories and other necessities, we managed to compress the space as much as possible and people started residing there as well. All the houses, restaurants, and other buildings were the same way. People paid the owners of the house if they could live there. But, money wasn’t what we needed. The inhabitants of Earth needed space. One of the basic needs of organisms is living space and we weren’t getting that.
