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A part of Terry wondered if maybe he should have spent some money to buy himself a suit, because, while heÆd left his jacket in his car, it didnÆt change the fact that he was still dressed a bit oddly for this time period. Not enough to really startle people, but enough to draw attention.
On the other hand, perhaps that was for the best.
Attention was what he was trying to get, today.
Terry had spent some time debating on what he should do first. He knew from the beginning that he couldnÆt break out the flying cars, even if he had the money to afford to. Something like that would immediately garner a huge amount of questions and both the manufacturers and the scientific community would go over both his designs and his background with a fine tooth comb, picking out every little inconsistency. At the same time, his design would probably get picked up pretty quickly by a company and others would want to get their hands on the designs, too, which would get complicated very, very fast. One way or another, heÆd make a quick rise to fame and a lot of enemies.
And yet, he was going to get that result eventually, no matter what he did. There was a reason Bruce had told him to not let anyone find out about his plans and intentions, rather than about him periodùthe latter simply wasnÆt going to be possible. If he went around producing futuristic inventions, people were going to notice and questions were going to arise; there was really no way around that.
It didnÆt mean he couldnÆt hide anything, thoughùboth Bruce and Derek Powers had proven you could have secrets, even when all the eyes in the world were on youùbut it did mean he would have to hide them well.
For his first two weeks in this world, Terry ran around, meticulously piecing together his background in this world. People would start looking at it closely soon and he had to make sure they didnÆt find anything that couldnÆt be explained away. He had to use both his suit and Mother Box to slide into a variety of databases and physical records, filling out forms and information without anyone noticing. He had to get the specific type of birth certificate used in New Jersey and detail how his parents died, leaving him alone at a legal age to keep from making any inconsistencies in the details of orphanages and foster homes and decrease the number of people whoÆd recognize him, take another driving test to get his license after modifying the records to say that, yes, heÆd gotten a permit, waited the correct amount of time, and done the required hours of driving. He had to fill out medical records, dental records, grades, insurance files, alter taxes to reflect his existence, and fill out the dozen other links in the paper trail every one left simply by being alive, and fill out his school records as being Home Schooled to minimize the numbers of people whoÆd be suspicious if they didnÆt recognize him.
For the same reason, he didnÆt have any sports teams, extra-curricular clubs, jobs, or awards in his backgroundùand he also didnÆt create any flying cars after appearing out of nowhere.
Such an inventionùand one that would be fairly easy to make widespread once the proper infrastructure was in placeùwould raise too many questions. Where did the technology come from? How did he come up with it? How did he test it? Where did he learn enough to make them, as a teenager?
Lex Luthor could get away with a lot of outlandish breakthroughs and inventions on credit alone, but Terry couldnÆt. Not yet, at least. People would question it too much and it would take time to make absolutely sure the background heÆd crafted for himself would really hold up under scrutiny. If he was going to do this, he was going to have to do it right, which meant starting slowly and making a name for himself. It had taken him a while to decide what to do, but at the beginning of the second week, heÆd written a report based of one that had been written years ago in his reality, clearly recounting exact details and results, making notes and detailing side-effects, filling it out as he was expected to and then sending it to a carefully selected business as Bruce had instructed.
He knew theyÆd be interested, but it wasnÆt until a week later that he received a response. And so after two weeks without sleep, doing menial labor from before the sun rose until long after it set and working hard to create a paper trail according to BruceÆs specifications during every other moment he had, Terry was about ready to check himself into an insane asylumà
He finally managed to get a meeting with a Medical Company.
Standing in front of the doctors with a small case in his hands, Terry suddenly wasnÆt sure what to say. He was sure that heÆd written a speech for this at some point, but after over three hundred hours without sleep he was struggling to remember what it was. It occurred to him that this was the first time heÆd ever done something like this before; act like a businessman without Bruce anywhere nearby, telling him what to do when he wasnÆt sure.
He realized he was going to have to get used to that feeling, too.
At his side, Mother Box gave a quiet but reassuring beep, urging him to speak. Unwilling to let his nerves get the better of him over something as stupid as public speaking, Terry licked his lips once and swallowed before putting his best smile.
ôThank you all for seeing me,ö He said. ôYou all probably know why I asked to meet with you, since I sent you my findings and, well, you let me through the door, so letÆs get straight to the point.ö
He opened the case, letting them all see the vials.
ôYou saw the details in the reports I sent you, but here they are. The cure for CreutzfeldtûJakob Disease.ö
Clinical testing would take a long time. Documenting everything and proving his findings would take longer. TheyÆd need to run Kaplan-Meier estimators, expectation-maximization algorithms, and a bunch of other things he didnÆt understand. And then theyÆd have to navigate the paperwork to make the drug legal, produce it, ensure everyone it was safe, produce it, and distribute it.
It might be years before this investment started paying back and the success of the drug went public.
But he could tell by the gleams in the eyes of the doctors and businessmen in front of him that they were interested in the kid that had walked through their door, and for now that was all that mattered. He had plenty of faster ways to make moneyùfor now, all he needed to do was get the faith and interest of this company. He needed a place he could use to build himself up in this reality and he had it or would before too long.
He looked around him once, at the modest, for Metropolis, building he was in, the headquarters of this company, and new with a quiet certainty that it was going to be his someday soon.
Nervousness fading quickly, Terry continued to speak, the words heÆd planned earlier coming back to him alongside his confidence.
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