Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (best time to read books txt) 📕

“You haven’t met him and you’re already starting to talk like him.”

“Give him a chance. There’s still plenty of time for him to convert you – or us him.”

“I’m telling you, he’ll whine every step of the way. Worse, he’s gonna wag his tongue in front of the press the first chance he gets. You and Athena are planning to invite a safety inspector inside a castle made of cards. Worse, you’re about to give him your seal of approval to troll us.”

Mr. Chase reached forward to enlarge the hologram of another candidate.

“OK, but what do you think about this Nigerian chic? I think she’s really cute.”

“She’s a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen – in and out of SKYE. And what’s this thing about her being a medical student? Do people still get off on that?”

“Veterinary medicine. Apparently Athena does. Maybe she’s not as straight as we thought we programmed her to be. But you should relax because all this is just fodder to web chatter. In our position, we can’t even pee without making any waves. She and all the other test participants will become insta-famous, so what? Maybe she’ll even get a merch of her own like a line of Barbie dolls in nurse uniform. I’d totally buy that.”   

“So what?” Mr. Spaulding was already raising his voice. “I don’t know if your head is screwed on really different or you just refuse to listen to any ideas not hatched either by your big brain or Athena’s. You’re planning to lead a building safety and a public health inspector through our front door and you’re all gung-ho about it. What’s next? An actual thief?”   

“Nope. As a matter of fact, it’s a streamer.”

“Oh, please!” Mr. Spaulding groaned. “Is this parade of clichés ever going to end?”

“What? I seriously thought you’d be pleased with him.”

“All right, which part of him do you think is so great?”

“Well, the part that he’s as healthy as a horse. He’s a fitness motivator for crying out loud.”

“Oh yeah? Have you seen his psych evaluation?”

“Uh… no. Athena prepared those as well?”

“Of course. And this Korean pro gamer you think is such a great catch, he didn’t score so well on account of he’s a narcissist, a chauvinist and doesn’t play well with others.”

“Hmm. Athena might’ve dug deeper than she should have.”   

“And what is it about their ages? Is this some idol group audition?”

“Well, the lottery was open to all ages but it turned out that really is the age bracket where people A. have the most fertile imagination and B. are of legal age. I thought you’d be pleased. It’s the same age group we target for our Omni Reality escape room titles.”   

“Do you know what the average age of NASA astronaut candidates are?”

Mr. Chase shook his head.

“Thirty-four.”

“Okaaay...”

Mr. Spaulding kept glowering at the young inventor.

“Be that as it may,” Mr. Chase said, “they’re two completely different ballgames. Plus, you can’t judge people’s potential based solely on their age. That would be discrimination.”

“I can if they’re immature and a hazard to themselves and this company. This so-called fitness instructor…”

Mr. Spaulding highlighted the hologram of the Brazilian candidate while making the others shrink. The tiny hologram started doing some Zumba.

“… takes unnecessary risks. His Instagram is full of pics of him doing extreme sports. I dare say he’s even an adrenalin junkie. He’s gonna get himself killed or, worse, everybody.”

“Well, the role assignments would take some of the edge off. He could land the role of a coward and then he’d be as mellow as the Lion in Wizard of Oz. I guess Athena’s risk-and-reward calculations may have been a bit off…”

“A bit?”

“I take it you’re not a fan of the Brittle Bone Girl either.”

****

Though James Spaulding had his misgivings, Athena’s hermetically-sealed logic triumphed over his “mother-hen proclivities”, to quote Athena herself.

Athena’s most ironclad argument was the ImQ, a scale or test that measured a person’s improvisation, mental vision, divergent thinking, artistic potential, self-awareness, thinness of cerebral cortex and so on. Like Alex Chase said in The Sofa interview, ImQ was the freshest catchword in corporate recruitment. Company executives had only recently realized that school achievers were not work achievers at all. Individuals who had the potential to develop qualities that could affect the future had become the new holy grail of HR pooling.

Now everybody was scrambling to get their hands on the most imaginative people on the planet, and Athena managed to beat all of them to the draw because she was the only one who could add two other values to the equation: nature and nurture. All five candidates reported an astounding score of 85 above while, still according to Athena, Mr. Spaulding himself only got 12.