In my previous life, if you asked anyone what was the invention or discovery that transformed human civilization the most, nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand would say the Neuro-plasticity Training. And the one person who didn't would be wrong.

  Thanks to the Neuro-plasticity Training, the average IQ of the entire human race rose to a new level.

  Even without completing the training, a person's intelligence, memory, and other mental abilities could rise by at least half—well, for the parts that could be measured at least, such as memory.

  And if you completed it? The few who completed the Neuroplasticity Training each generation fell into three categories. All of us received a boost of at least two times to our mental abilities, but the differences in the three categories came from our specializations.

  The first category, that includes 90% of those who completed the Neuroplasticity Training and to which I belong, is those who get perfect memory. Most of this category actually didn't enter scientific fields, as a perfect memory didn't give as much of an advantage when every other person could remember things very well—perhaps not to the point of counting cracks in a wall they glanced at years ago, but enough. My case is different though, as my research into space required perfect memory.

  The second category, that is the other ten percent, are people with perfect—or as close to perfect as you can get—pattern recognition. These people were actually the ones to shape the backbone of most research groups. The appearance of this group was also the thing that eventually silenced the pro-AI rights group. AI models had made a lot of progress since the AI bubble burst in the mid–twenty-first century, and it had reached a point where many had started questioning what the actual difference between artificial and natural intelligence was. But with the appearance of this group, it became clear. When humans could hold the same level of—or maybe a higher level of—pattern recognition with advanced memory, the difference between humans and AIs, which were ultimately exceedingly advanced pattern-recognition software, became very glaring.

  The third category were those who were blessed—or cursed, depending on whom you're asking—with supreme intelligence.

  Ever since the invention of the Neuro-plasticity Training method in the twenty-fifth century, almost three hundred years before my death, only two cases of people with supreme intelligence had been documented.

  The first one was a woman born more than two hundred years before my time, Solana Michaels, who later went on to create A.R.K., humanity's co-governing AI, a neutral overseer of the United Terran Federation, and also the one and only ever recorded true AI.

  The second one was born five years my senior, Adam, who happened to operate from CUE. A colleague, so to speak.

  This is more of a legend or a story that I heard from more senior scientists of CUE rather than something I had seen myself, but apparently a few years back, due to the sheer difference in intelligence between him and the others in the university, huge misunderstandings formed because the two sides had a lot of miscommunications and things that each side felt they had implied but were not received by the other side, in some of the preliminary researches into FTL travel before I came along.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The resulting disaster that happened was perhaps not as bad as the explosion that killed me, but it still resulted in a lot of loss.

  After the incident, Adam apparently became even more of an introvert than he already was. He created a new language that was inspired by many others and yet simultaneously vastly different from any other language. He called it the Eldritch Language—he was also kind of a nerd—a language in which double meanings or misunderstandings were impossible. Basically, regardless of context, any single phrase or sentence from this language represented a complete and unique thought, making misunderstandings or differences in interpretation impossible between two people who both understood the language.

  From the day he created the language, he refused to talk with others without it.

  Even before this, no one was exactly thrilled about talking or working with him, but afterwards it got even worse.

  After I graduated from CUE and became a researcher, as a junior and someone with perfect memory who could learn the impossible Eldritch Language, the unpopular job of communicating with Adam fell to me.

  Before meeting him, I'd never really understood why no one wanted to talk to him, but after meeting him?

  Adam was terrifying. I had never considered how intimidating it was to communicate with someone who outclassed me in intelligence by so much. It was like any decision or thing that I did or made was never my choice but his plan. For me, if I wanted to describe Adam in one sentence—aside from extremely smart or things like that—it would be: a complete violation of free will.

  I'm not sure if others suspected it too, but I'm more than a hundred percent sure the accident that led to the creation of the Eldritch Language was also not entirely an accident. Though what purpose it had, I don't know.

  So with all that in mind, dealing with a millennia-old fae wasn't that different—or actually comparatively easier. Standing in my workshop, looking at the small vial full of luminescent light-red liquid on the desk, I thought back to the events of the day before.

  When I stood there less than a dozen steps away from a fae vastly more powerful than myself, held prisoner by a shoddy ritual that I couldn't really analyze as I'm not that familiar with rituals…

  He tried to engage me in conversation a few times, but I had no false hopes of escaping the manipulation of someone who's been doing this for their entire life, with my meager amounts of experience, if I'd started talking normally.

  But…

  There's a hypothesis that due to the relationship between the fae's innate magic and languages, the fae also have the magical ability to learn and speak all languages they hear for even a moment. It's a rather more potent form of divination compared to normal translation charms, as it lets them actually learn other languages rather than the magic just directly translating for them. Well, the hypothesis says that anyway, but there's only one way to check. If it didn't work, I'd leave and get the blood elsewhere.

  [{I}{Me}{Morgan}, {Want}{Wish}{Demand}, {bargain}{deal}{contract}, {You}{Fae}{Shadow cast upon the moon}]

  By this point, his mocking smile had already faded, and he was looking at me with… I turned my eyes at that moment, deciding not to try making sense of his expressions. If he had any.

  Thankfully, the hypothesis was true, and the fae, as far as I've read, always answer in the same language with which they've been spoken to. Not sure if it's a rule for them or something, but it was followed here as well.

  In the end, realizing he couldn't scam me into any contract I didn't want, we managed to strike a deal in which he gave me a vial of blood. In exchange, I sent him back to Fairy instead of just warding this place and trapping him here for the foreseeable future.