Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model Read Online Free Page B

work. By that time he already knew what he wanted in life.
    The next seven years he didn’t like to remember: years merged into one long day. Day after day, without holidays or weekends, working from dawn to dusk, and then hiding in his room to work on lessons. He learned in absentia, making every possible effort to become truly educated. It was hard, but he knew what he was working towards and was eventually rewarded – he got the opportunity to learn at the Faculty of Mathematics in a polytechnic university. He had to work even harder than before while he was there, but he enjoyed the study, and he knew that his efforts would be rewarded.
    In the middle of the first semester, he joined the Physics Faculty as well, much to the surprise of his teachers, who believed that no one could get a diploma in physics and mathematics at the same time. With the current volume of knowledge, the era of the great scientists, genius’ in several subjects, remained in the distant past.
    But Walt continued his studies, passing final exams in both subjects, and received a personal scholarship at the beginning of the second course, which freed him from his job in a restaurant. In the third year Walt had a customized training program developed for him, because the usual training program was too simple, and didn’t give him the opportunity to reveal all his talents.
    By the fourth year recruiters from leading technical corporations were lining up to tell him about the brilliant prospects that awaited him in their firms. He listened carefully and politely, knowing it was in vain, because another customer had given him an offer as well, one who was waiting for Walt.
    Working for the government in those early years didn’t bring him the highest possible income; working for a private office, he could have earned ten or even a hundred times more by selling his development to large capitalists. But such work couldn’t give Walt what he needed the most, which had burned in his mind since the days of miserable childhood living in a dirty trailer – this work couldn’t give him greatness. He wanted greatness, true greatness, and he got it.
    He hadn’t had any popular computer programs named after him, his face didn’t look out from glossy magazines, famous directors didn’t shoot movies about his life, and hordes of teenagers around the world didn’t know anything about Walt. But he wasn’t concerned about this. Walt always considered such glory false and temporary, a cheap imitation of reality, like rhinestones which unsuccessfully try to copy diamonds.
    He didn’t need fake greatness, his glory and status are real, the proof of which is his circle of acquaintances. Why did he need glossy magazines, films and teenagers, when the most influential and powerful men in the world knew about him? When the presidents, general secretaries and heads of major financial institutions were asking for his opinions? Making the most powerful and influential men in the business world hang on his words, making them depend on him – that was force, that was power!
    In recent years, Walt hadn’t had a specific area of work; his previous achievements and the reputation preceding allowed him considerable freedom of action, and so he had tasks that really challenged his genius. He and his carefully chosen team were involved only in the most severe cases, where others had failed.
    If today was the end of the thirties or the early forties of the last century, Walt would have worked in Los Alamos on the creation of the first nuclear bomb, trying not to be late with his invention so that he could help end the war. In the fifties and sixties he would have been in intense correspondence duel with Soviet designers of rockets and spacecraft in the space race. But it was present day, and he was busy instead with a project that should be the greatest scientific breakthrough of the century. Perhaps not just this century, but of all time.

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