Dreamscapes: Shattered Realms

Adrien's eyes widened, he received the package and placed it beside his keyboard, "Oh it's that time of year already, thank you Sarah. Really, for everything up to now". He scanned her beautiful face, the gentle smile on her lips warmed his broken heart.

Sarah's gaze flickered when he said that, tears threatened to flood her eyes. She spun on her heel so he wouldn't see her face, "now don't go sentimental on me, that'd be a scary sight"

She tried to keep her voice from trembling as she spoke. She grabbed her own cup of coffee and walked away, "You get a some sleep this morning, remember we are visiting your aunt's place for dinner today, and also take a bath later." she took a sip of her coffee and put it aside, the wide smile on her plump lips betraying her words. Sarah began tidying up the lab shortly afterwards.

"Okay I will." Adrien chugged down his coffee in a few minutes as he wrapped up his work for the day. He picked up the gift from Sarah and walked towards the elevator, and made his way towards to his bedroom. The room was a sanctuary of sorts, with soft lighting and the faint scent of lavender lingering in the air. He quickly removed his black jogger pants and T-shirt, tossing them onto the chair by his desk

He made his way to the bathroom, the home system detecting the routine actions, it automatically turned on the shower. Adrien stepped foot in the glass paned walls of the shower, the sound of running water already soothing his senses.

Stepping into the shower, he let the warm water cascade over him, washing away the grime and tension. The steam enveloped him, creating a cocoon of tranquillity. As the water flowed, he closed his eyes, allowing his mind to drift.

He began brooding on the state of his project, and the particle accelerator in the basement of his penthouse. 'Another day and I will be able to run tests on peering into the future, not exactly what I want to achieve, but it's a step in the right direction'. He shook his head a while after, 'I should take a break for today' he decided to put work aside for the day, realising he had been cut off from the world for longer than he had intended. 'Mel must have been worried'.

He felt a bit guilty for that part of his actions. He was so absorbed that the year was halfway through before he knew it. After taking a long, refreshing shower, Adrien wore his boxers and dived into the sheets, in a few seconds, he was sound asleep.

Sarah tidied the lab before going on to read through the changes to Adrien's notes.

"How fascinating, creating a high gravity chamber and an environment where you can accelerate particles and objects to reach and surpass the speed of light, inducing a co-dependent interaction between the two to incite a reaction process where a singularity point is reached, thereby allowing him to observe a certain amount of time into the future. No matter how many times I get to read through his ideas, he never fails to amaze me, and this not the first nor the second time, heck it's not even the third."

"The high gravity chamber would in theory allow us to interact with the space concept, the three dimensions length, width, height while the particle accelerator would allow us to interact with the time concept." The more she read, the more excited she got. "And his readings are almost at the equilibrium point, this part of the project is most certainly done! Does that mean we will be able to 'observe' the future, it can't be that simple, right?". She thought out loud mostly to herself.

Though she made a habit of reading and keeping track of the surface of Adrien's projects, understanding them was another matter entirely, it all just seemed so surreal, impossible even, but she had learnt not to doubt him from past experiences. At some point, when he was attempting to regrow missing limbs, she thought he had gone insane, but he did it at the end.

Unlike most groundbreaking, innovative companies on earth, Quantum labs did not release marketing material of their products before and during creation, after all to their employees and even Sarah herself, it looked like Adrien was creating inventions on a whim. Noone could predict what he would come up with next. Sarah had the privilege of reading his notes and knowing what he had come up with in advance, that was all.

'Sigh' "I guess we will see eventually, time to get to work, I'll check on him first" She put away the files she was reading and made her way to Adrein's bedroom. She got out of the elevator and got to the bedroom door, making sure to buzz the coms first, she opened and entered after a couple of seconds. She had learnt her lesson after walking in on a naked Adrien more than once and then bolting out of the room afterwards with a flushed face. Her gaze had lingered on his mid-section for longer than intended on a couple of those occasions.

She took note of the present she had given him earlier, "He hasn't opened it yet? He was really spent after all. Good, he's sleeping", making sure his clothes and items were in place, Sarah walked out of the room and took the elevator to the basement floor. The parting lot occupied most of the basement floor, her electric powered Porsche hover-mobile was parked right next to the elevator door, it was the latest model, with a self-driving intelligent AI. It scanned her palm as soon as she placed it on the door hinge and opened, hopping into the passenger seat on the right-hand side.

"Welcome back Ms. Sarah, I hope you had a great meeting with Mr Cortez, where would you like me to take you this morning?"

"Thank you, Alita, take me to Quantum Labs if you would please"

"It would be my pleasure" The car silently drove out of the building and drove towards her workplace, it was currently 9 am, the roads and air travel routes for automobiles were quite busy now. Nonetheless, she made it to the tallest building in Metropolis twenty minutes later.

The building was quite a marvel, the peak was not visible from the ground, especially since it was obscured by the clouds, it easily dwarfed every other building in sight. The car stopped just in front of the bottom front door of the building. Sarah stepped out, before the car drove off to park itself in the basement.

Her arrival drew the attention of many, her heels clinked on the floor as she confidently walked through the now open door into the building, her chin held high, the employees in the building in her vicinity made way for her and greeted her respectfully.

Everyone knew her well, even if you were new, given the continuous growth of the company and influx of new workers every day, there was only one extremely beautiful lady in metropolis, who wore an extravagant lady's suit and a white lab coat over it. After all, Sarah was on the media almost every day of every week. She was extremely popular.

Especially given Adrien's very rare visits and social appearances, the man was essentially a myth at this point. Noone had even seen him in public for months. Not that it was a first. They knew he was out there developing another creation for the world.

To be particularly clear, each time Adrien disappeared for months on end, the media hyped the people up, and the world and the people around the earth found themselves excited each time. That was a sign that something world changing was coming. To the employees of Quantum labs, Sarah was essentially their boss, at least she was approachable.

"Good morning, ma'am"

"Lovely morning miss Sarah"

"Good day madam"

"Hello miss"

"Good morning"

She gave subtle nods to the employees as she made her way to the reception desk. There a lady in her late twenties sat, she had blonde, shoulder length hair that hung loosely. She wore large, round framed glasses that look comical on her small face.

Sarah could never figure out why her secretary/ company receptionist wore those things when her eyes were perfectly fine. Given Adrien had solved eye sight problems ages ago. She probably wore them 'solely for the effect' There was an old stereotype on earth about people who wore glasses being studios and intelligent.

'That must be the idea she wants to give off. Too bad I know your secrets'. Sarah fought back the urge to give off an evil smirk.

Casandra was a big-time otaku; studious was the last thing to call her. Sarah had caught her streaming anime on her smart phone more times than she cared to count. She didn't mind though, Cassie worked hard and did her job well, that was enough for her.

It was quite odd that she was a secretary yet she had a secretary of her own at that. Well, she desperately needed one. Since she was the one actually running Quantum labs, while the CEO and owner was busy doing the handiwork.

"Hello, good morning, Miss Sarah"

"Morning Cassie, what do you have for me today? Important stuff first" 

Cassie handed Sarah her iPad as she spoke quickly, "1000hrs you have the routine site inspection, 1200hrs board meeting with the shareholders. Then there are another couple hundred requests to meet with Mr. Cortez that came in this morning. The most important ones came from the mayor, then twenty or so are from foreign presidents. Then the majority came from prospective investors, some of them are asking if Mr. Cortez is still MIA".

"You know the drill, just do the usual, send the amiable, polite emails declining requests to meet Adrien, for the presidents just say 'In the future as usual'. We are not particularly interested in new investors at the moment, but screen the list down to those willing to investing in the ten billion and above margins, send the screened list to my desktop, I will look at it later, reject the rest."

"Yes ma'am. Oh, and then there's the staff meeting you called at 1600hrs later today as well"

"Postpone that to tomorrow, I have something to take care of today."

"Okay. That's all for today ma'am "

"Alright, I'll start with site inspection in that particular order then, take care" Sarah handed the iPad back to Cassie and walked away.

Cassie gave her a light bow and continued with her work. The day flew by, and it was time for Sarah to pick up Adrien. They would be visiting Mel's place to celebrate his birthday. Her hover mobile stopped on the penthouse ground floor.

Sarah immediately noticed a lone figure stepping out of the elevator, Adrien was dressed in his usual attire, a pair of baggy bottoms and a loose fitting long sleeve tee. He started making his way towards the car as soon as he spotted it park in the building.

The door opened for him, and he got inside, "Good day at the office?" He asked as he took the empty seat next to Sarah. The vehicle drove off soon after.

"Please let's not go there..." She said, her voice almost pleading desperately. "The old fogeys in the board won't shut up for goodness's sake, they seem to have forgotten that their presence in the company is more of a convenience than a necessity, with you disappearing for months on end, they have grown arrogant..." Sigh...!

Adrien couldn't help but smile as he watched her grumble on about how stressful and tiring working for him was. Even though she looked tired, he knew she enjoyed working in these environments. She loved every second of it.

Sarah went on to mumble about useless talk and new business gossip, the whole journey ended up being a monologue for Sarah to spill forth her thoughts. And they soon arrived at their destination.

Mel and Daniel's place was more of an ordinary suburb house. However, that in itself was a sign of great wealth and status. With most buildings being demolished to make way for really tall skyscrapers, the few that managed to keep a hold of their land were the influential kind.

Sarah and Adrien pulled up in the driveway and stepped out onto the paved yard. A gorgeous middle-aged lady with chestnut hair opened the house's front door right afterwards. 

Mel's eyes glistened and literally sparkled as she spotted the familiar handsome black haired Adrien. She eagerly walked toward him and opened up her arms in a welcoming gesture.

"My baby! Come, give your aunty a big hug."

Adrien's face lit up with a genuine smile as he embraced Mel. "It's good to see you, Aunty Mel," he said warmly. Sarah stood by, watching the affectionate exchange with a soft smile.

Mel pulled back and looked at Adrien with a twinkle in her eye. "You've been away for too long, young man. Come inside, both of you. Daniel is already setting up the grill."