Snippet #2545492

Eleven years before present day, somewhere underneath the royal palace.

Age: 14 years old.

Scrutinizing her creation, The Maker blew a stray piece of hair out of her face. She adjusted the levitating magnifying glass in front of her, then resumed toying with the chip in front of her. The small tool in her left hand snagged on one of the ridges in the dime-sized chip, moving it oh-so-slightly out of place.

"Shit!" Nymeris slammed her head into her palms, taking a deep breath. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the task in front of her, calming down her ever-busy mind.

A crash from the other side of the room caused her to groan and peek through her fingers at the workshop around her. All seemed well, nothing out of place in the meticulously organized area. Wait...

The magnifying glass that she had been using was in a twisted jumble of metal and glass, embedded in one of the shelves across the space.

"What the hell..." As The Maker cautiously made her way over to the slightly smoking piece of equipment, she noticed that the metal had crumpled in on itself, as if some fist of gigantic strength had taken hold and decided to squeeze. Her gaze fell back to the table where she had been working, eyes landing on the supposedly ruined chip.

The chip was about two feet to the left of where she had left it - It mist have been moved when she shook the table in frustration. The gears in her mind turning, she looked back and forth at the heap of junk that had once been her favorite magnifying glass, and the chip that she thought was ruined.

She used a pair of tweezers to nudge one of the ridges again, and one of her screwdrivers flew off the table an - That's not the whole screwdriver. Only the metal part had moved, had been wrenched from the translucent handle.

A slightly diabolical grin spread across Nymeris's face, and she quickly got back to work.

One year later - ten years before present day

One year, countless trials, and several scars on her scalp and head later, The Maker had competed her biggest project ever. She had successfully implanted the very same chip, the very first chip, into her own brain.

Sitting up gingerly, Nymeris moved to the edge of the operation table and felt around her scalp carefully. Her fingers grazed old scars, each a reminder - and a tally mark - of trials past and failed. The very first time, she had only just discovered what the chip could do. The long scar running across her cheek was a constant reminder of the fact that , back then, she had had no idea what she was doing.

"Ow!" Nymeris hissed, running over something that was definitely not an old scar. It was about an inch long, and was on the very top of her head, dead center. Once her hair grew back, no one would ever know it was there.

She held her hand out, palm up, and concentrated as hard as she could. The screwdriver tip floated from it's honorary place on a shelf into her hand.

Grasping the tool in her hand, she allowed herself to smile for the first time in a year. "Happy 15th birthday to me."