Natasha next led Nigel into the Grand Ballroom, where twenty other students, age sixteen to twenty, were chatting, seated in chairs. Nigel scanned the room for an empty seat, but there were none left. Natasha took a seat near the front of the room facing the gathered students and waved him over. Nigel reluctantly took the seat next to hers.
“Shouldn't I be seated with the students?” Nigel whispered.
“No!” Natasha replied.
The room was silent for several moments. A six-foot-tall man entered the room dressed in a casual suit that looked quite expensive. The students immediately got up and applauded. Nigel started to stand, but Natasha made a motion to sit. The man in the suit addressed the crowd.
“Hello, my name is Alexei Breven. I'm the founder and CEO of Collective Systems.”
The crowd cheered.
“Welcome to Orientation Weekend. You will spend two days of intense training on the processes and procedures of Collective Systems.”
Nigel was alarmed. He left a note to his mother that he was attending a study group, not a weekend retreat.
“My mom thinks I'm gone for the day, not the weekend!” Nigel whispered.
“Calm down. It's taken care of,” Natasha said.
Nigel didn't really hear what Alexei was saying and was totally unprepared for his next statement.
“Now, without further ado, let me introduce a young man who has scored the highest on any Collective Systems exam. Please welcome Nigel Watson, our newest Senior Student Researcher at Collective Systems!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The students applauded and cheered simultaneously. Nigel was incredulous. He stood and turned toward Alexei, who was waving him over to the podium. Nigel felt like he was walking through mud.
“Say a few words, Nigel,” Alexei said.
“Hello.”
“Tell us how you prepared for the exam?” Alexei asked, smiling at Nigel.
“I treated each module like a game and played until I finished the level.”
“The exam is not a game!” Alexei said, giving Nigel a knowing look.
Nigel immediately felt uncomfortable; he took a deep breath before speaking again.
“I mean, I broke down each module and treated it like a puzzle as I solved it. I just visualized it as a game. I know it wasn’t really,” Nigel said.
The group of students seemed to hang on his every word. No one spoke for several seconds.
“Nigel used his skills as a problem-solver to guide him to the solution. Excellent work!” Alexei praised.
Nigel looked over at Natasha. She gestured for him to return to his seat. Nigel said nothing else as Alexei droned on. He knew he should be listening to perhaps gain a clue as to why he was up here in the first place, but he only heard the quickness of his own breath.
After the assembly, Natasha led Nigel to several other rooms within the manor. In one room, a group of students were working on machine-learning workflow on a whiteboard. Nigel was invited to try and solve their problem. The diagram listed several groups of information. One group was labeled “Filter”; another group of document-looking shapes was labeled “Classifier.” Nigel asked if anyone in the group has considered a Naïve Bayes Classifier Algorithm.
“We have not,” said one of the students. After a few minutes of intense discussion and computer searching, the group said that Nigel solved their problem. Natasha smiled as she led Nigel into another room and another. Each room had a similar group of students trying to solve a problem that Nigel had already solved in school.
“You are a genius,” one student said to Nigel.
“Far from it.”
The rest of the students laughed at his modest response.
At the end of the day, Nigel was led to his private quarters and given back his belongings. In all the commotion, he barely remembered handing them to Rocky. He checked his phone.
“Enjoy the weekend activities,” and “I’m so proud of you,” were the latest messages from his mother.
Nigel was clueless as to why, until he noticed a note left on the desk in his suite.