During his next visit to his parents' house, Darion started a new project. The idea came to him and solidified while he was updating the programs of his spider bots. He was simply not impressed with the laptop's capability to compress and uncompressed the relevant data as he uploaded one algorithm after another into the core program itself that gave him the idea to try.

The entire processing speed of his computer was so slow that he decided to create a new network from the down up. A computer, he can work with and enjoy.

He could probably just buy one of the most powerful computer systems like multicray hardware and incorporate it into the garage. His main problem was the fact that it will take a sizable space in the garage, and that, in turn, will make his dad annoyed with him. Besides that, he also realized that these kinds of machines needed specialized maintenance that he didn't have at the moment. First, it needed a sizable power to operate and of course, a cooling system to make sure that the machine is working at peak efficiency.

Nope, he needed to think outside of the box for this problem.

The heart of every machine with electronic components is the transistors. It is very important because it can do two primary things: one is to amplify the energy that it receives from one end and releases it on the other end with much more substantial power. Second, it controls and regulates the electricity that moves through it by acting as a switch. Basically, transistors can turn currents on and off billions of times per second. Digital computers use transistors as a fundamental mechanism for storing and moving data. At its core, the more transistors you can shove into the microchip, the better and faster it is.

Companies create a template platform called silicon wafer as the basis of storing these transistors into a processing chip. Throughout the years, engineers were able to make transistors smaller and smaller and, through a creative way of arranging them within the wafer, made the computer industry able to follow the theoretical law created by one of the best encoders out there in the industry.

Moore's law stated that the principle capability and speed of computers will double every two years as a result of the increased number of transistors a microchip can contain. This has been true for a long time but is now ultimately being challenged by the fact that the miniaturization of the transistors and space available in a silicon wafer, which ultimately housed the electronics are getting to be too crowded.

Of course, the latest computer researchers are doing their best to counter this by either using multilayered chips or by looking for a better transistor design to jumpstart the stalled computer speed.

Of course, there are dedicated supercomputers out there with radical or specialized designs that are currently working now in multiple industries, like the ZEN 2 system by AMD, with almost 40 billion transistors connected to it using multilayered and cross circuitry design.

But What Darrion was thinking about is changing the platform altogether. The first thing he needed to do is to study the transistors commercially available. So he bought the latest PC processor on Amazon plus a high-end microscope.

He disassembled the processor with the tools available in the garage as best as he can, and then simply observe the part in a microscope. Sometimes, he needed to peel off a section to see what's inside, and if it damages the transistor too much, he just checks on another one.

The tedious task took him a few hours. When he was ready, he rebuilt the transistors using his memory.

Normally you needed specialized tools to actually build the transistor from scratch, but he didn't need to. By using a free Autocad 3d modeling software download from a torrent site, he recreated the transistor by merely remembering the parts and design of the product. He started upgrading it on his own. The 3D rendering on the computer created the parts one by one, change what he can on the fly, and then updating the rest of the modified design as they become available.

At first, his only goal is to make sure no one can accuse him of copying the product through reverse engineering, but as he placed the new design, he realized that he learned a significant amount about the product itself and how it works. When he finished his design, the end product was nowhere near the original one, and it is almost 820 percent more efficient.

He added a few basic subroutines in the software so he could test the design matrix, and as far as he can tell, it is working properly.

At this point, Darion's mind was just responding to new questions that come to him and how he can make his life easier with better tools. He started writing them on post-its so he wouldn't forget about them and a way to focus his thoughts.

As an encoder, he is what others would call a pantser, basically someone who writes by the seat of their pants. He begins with a seed of an idea and then wrote it out as a process of discovery. The opposite of that is an outliner, someone who planned everything then outlined them before writing everything else.

For most of his basics programs, being a pantser is enough to do the job, but for a megaproject like this, he needed to become an outliner.

So two days after he built his upgraded transistors using a commercial 3D printer, and then customized it using his enhanced metal shop, he is now staring at his whiteboard once again. But this time, it is filled to the brim with post-it papers in 3-4 different colors.

"What the hell is that?" Janiya asked him that day. She is dressed for school and Darion idly thought about what it would feel like to go back to school. He remembered someone mentioning that your high school years are the most interesting time in a teenager's life.

"It's uhmm... my scrum," Darion said, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

Janiya rolled her eyes. "Wow, thank you for that brilliant explanation. I am so enlightened by your marvelous explanation."

The edge of Darion's lips rose in a shadow of a smile. "It a management method. A framework of how to break down a heavy workload into smaller ones so that you will not be overwhelmed, and you can see your progress better."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

His sister nodded slowly. "So your planning to do some kind of heavy work," she concluded. Darion nodded. No one said his sister was dumb.

"Yep."

"What kind of work?"

"Encoding a program?" Darion said uncertainly. "Well, mostly."

This time, Janiya raised her eyebrow, impressed. "I didn't know you do programming."

"Just recently, there are lots of free tutorials on the web. Hell, you can practically learn anything out there." Darion didn't need to explain to his sister that he just mastered several programming languages just a few days ago.

His sister leaned over the whiteboard and read one of the post-its, "Integrate SQL compatibility to the main OS."

"So you plan to do what? A game?"

"Your friends are here," Darion pointed out, nudging his chin outside where Janiya's friends are waiting for her in their silver convertible. "You're going to be late for school."

"Oh my, you’re absolutely right," She said in an exaggerated voice, complete with a feign wide eyes. "I'll just have to run now and pretend you just didn't evade my question."

"Still late," Darion pointed out.

Then unexpectedly, Janiya stepped closer and hugged her brother. "Seriously, whatever you are doing, please don't neglect your health. You may be a superhero, but your powers are still lame, and if you don’t go careful with yourself, you could still get sick. Easily."

"Yes, Mom," Darion said. "Now, go!"

They both waved goodbye to each other, and she left with her friends. Darion's eyes noticed the cute blonde driver, and for a second, he went, "whoah!" in his mind. And then he remembered the girl is Janiya's age group and he is already 17, although he still felt 14.

This is all confusing, he thought to himself. He shook his head in confusion. Just go back to work. And he did just that.

8 hours later, Janiya walked back to the front gate. She just got off the bus a few streets away and walked the rest back home. She was thinking of a quick snack when she noticed her brother still doing whatever he is doing in the garage. So, she turned and walked towards him instead.

Darion just grabbed another post-it on his whiteboard as he absentmindedly sat back to his table and started typing away on his laptop. She just stood behind him for a minute with her arms on her hips in a great imitation of their mom's angry mode. Her annoyance grew when she realized that her brother did not even notice her. She also noted in passing that the board fewer post-its compared to several hours ago.

"Did you even eat anything?" She said as a way of announcement. Darion's glazed eyes slowly focused on her and then he blankly nodded at her almost as an afterthought.

"Hey!" Darion said, greeting her.

"I said, did you eat anything the last time you saw me?" Janiya repeated. Darion just pointed to an empty plate of chips, and again, Janiya rolled her eyes.

"I'll come back here once Mom announced dinner, and I'll drag you to the table if I have to!" she said, glaring at his older brother. She leaned over and sniffed. She regretted that instantly. "And take a shower! It might be a surprise to you, but it's a daily task for most people!"

"Oh come on, it's not that bad," he said with a laugh. "Now, come here and hug your big brother!" He stood up with his arms open, threatening to hug Janiya. His sister wisely retreated away.

"Get away from me, you Hobo!" shouted Janiya, taking several steps away from him just to be sure. Then she stopped. A thoughtful expression on her face. "I think that is a good hero name for you: Hoboman!"

In response, Darion undressed his sweaty shirt, made sure that Janiya sees that he wipes his underarm with it, and then smiled evilly at her.

Ever the intelligent woman, she ran screaming away from him, even before Darion can raise his shirt to throw it at her. He cursed to himself. His evil grin gave him away, and thus, his quick-thinking sister got away from him. He smirked and returned to his work.

After dinner, Janiya returned to the living room to study for an hour or two, then retreated back to her room. She undressed and took a quick shower before doing her quick beauty ritual in front of her drawer. While she did that, she dropped her old clothes at the laundry and helped mom prepare a few vegetables for tomorrow's meal. Mom asked her how is her day, and she smugly reported that she just topped the last history quiz given unexpectedly by Mr. Houllen. When her chores were done, she told her parents she is going upstairs.

She received a few calls and text messages from friends and she replied happily. She surfed YouTube and Facebook for a while and then checked on Amazon to see if she can buy anything cheap.

A call from Brian disrupted her surfing half an hour later. "Hey, what's up?" She said. She tolerated the call just enough since the guy was kinda cute, and a bit of flirting was just that, but when he came to the actual reason why he called asking if they could hang out together tomorrow, Janiya refused.

She turned him down gently and promise a vague, "maybe next time" speech. The senior dude didn't seem to be offended that much since his voice is still very upbeat, so she shrugged and said goodbye before hanging up.

She surfed the net an hour more before she felt sleepy. So she wore her prepared pajamas before going to bed and hugging her oversize teddy bear, Maximillian Cutifuss.

She woke up in the middle of the night because her bladder demanded relief. She forgot the air-conditioning unit was continuously on because she did not activate the timer, and her room was cold.

After going to the bathroom, a noise caught her attention downstairs. Some sixth sense intuition made her go down the stairs. The first floor was dark, but she went down anyway, then she noticed the light outside, and she realized what it was.

Like an adorable angry bobcat, she marched outside and into the adjoining garage, only to noticed Darion still at his project, as he whistled a toneless tune.

She noted that the whiteboard is almost empty of post-its but still a significant number when she left him last time.

"Seriously?!" She said angrily. "I just told you this morning to take care of yourself!"

Darion already noticed his sister as she marched towards him so he wasn’t surprised when she talked to him. He flexed his biceps and showed them to his sister. "And you keep forgetting your brother is a superhero."

"It's 3 in the fucking morning!"

Darion nodded in agreement. "I'll probably be finished by 5 then."

Darion was feeling great actually. The post-its were problems that are becoming easier and easier to solve. The very first module took him about 5 minutes to complete, and then the second took a whopping 12 minutes. But after that, everything seems to just come into place, and his coding just flowed out of him naturally. Some are repeated redundancy anyway, and the speed where Darion coded them in seemed like he was just copy-pasting the info on his programs. And technically, he had memorized so many of the algorithms that he was actually encoding them without thinking about them while he multitasks and thought about the next assignment to incorporate.

It was repetitive and boring work but Darion did it almost mechanically and everything was being written like an art form to others. Either way, he knew the next code so easily that it is taking him 2-3 minutes in introducing new features in his operating system. What Janiya only knows is the 12 hundred post-its she saw that morning, but Darion thought about other new ideas as he encoded the necessary programs. He actually added another 2 thousand or so new post-its on the board.

Even so, Darion was able to complete more than 85 percent of the small program modules and algorithms (post-its) in his work, making it ever closer and closer to completing his work.

Eventually, Janiya is able to force Darion to stop what he is doing for the day and go take some rest. Her little sister can do this only because her voice is starting to get louder and sheerer by the minute as she becomes more and more upset. Darion is afraid that their argument might wake up their parents, and then he will be in real trouble if that happens.

So grumpily, Darion allowed himself to be marched into his own room while Janiya, his little prison guard, hovered just behind him. His little sister moved inside his room, looked around suspiciously for anything computer-related, then seeing nothing, she left him without saying another word.

Darion closed the door as he sighed. He let himself fell on his bed and frowned, still thinking about all the things he needed to do with his project.

That was when he noticed a prompt just below his peripheral vision, and when he concentrated on it, he received another popup message.

Ding!

Congratulations! Due to your diligence, you are able to increase your skill "Focus Mind" by 1

Requirements: MIND 1

Current level: 2

He smiled weakly, seeing the popup, and then his mind returned quickly to his project. He kept thinking about it until he unconsciously let his eyes closed, and then he fell asleep.

His eyes blinked open, and he was sitting upright the following day. He turned his eyes to the wall and noticed that it is already 6 in the morning. So he slept maybe 2-3 hours. Perhaps it is because of his newfound abilities or that his constitution had warped, but whatever the reason, 2 hours were more than enough rest for him. The moment he stood from his bed, he felt great and energized.

He went to the bathroom and did his business. He showered, and then get dressed for the day. Which for Darion means sneakers, jeans, a shirt under a hoodie, and a backpack.

He walked down the kitchen to smell the mouth-watering aroma of the freshly made pancakes in the morning.

Just another quiet day in the Libinski household.