Chapter 17 Absorbing the Future Like Crazy
“I promise I’ll give it my all!” Chloe said cheerfully, waving her new employee badge. “You should head back now. My internship starts immediately.”
Nathan stood in the plaza, his hands in his pockets. “What time do you finish?”
“Six o’clock,” Chloe replied.
“I’ll pick you up tonight.”
Chloe opened her mouth to refuse, but ultimately closed it and nodded. She was still too unfamiliar with this new world to navigate the evening commute alone.
“Go inside,” Nathan said softly.
“Aren’t you leaving?”
“I’ll leave when you’re inside.”
“Alright.” Chloe gave him a bright smile, turned, and jogged up the steps toward the glass revolving doors.
Nathan stood completely still, watching her retreating figure until she stepped into the elevator and disappeared from sight. Only then did he lower his gaze and turn to leave.
He walked halfway to the car, stopped, and sighed.
He couldn’t do it.
Instead of getting into the Bentley to head back to the university lab, he turned around, walked back into the company lobby, and sat down on a leather sofa in the far corner. It was her first day working in a completely alien era. He simply couldn’t shake his unease. He would rather sit here all day than fret in his office.
A few minutes later, a man in a sharp suit strode into the lobby.
He was tall and imposing, with a stern face and an aggressive, distinguished bearing. He walked purposefully toward the elevators, not glancing left or right, loosening a tie that looked slightly too tight with a flicker of deep impatience.
On his way into the office, Michael Harris had already received a text from his subordinate: The big boss just personally assigned a new hire to our department. Said to ‘take good care’ of her.
Michael’s eyes had gone instantly cold.
He despised people who relied on connections. They were always the same: no real ability, terrified of hard work, and the first to go crying to the boss the second the pressure got too high.
When the elevator doors opened on the fourth floor and he saw a petite, wide-eyed woman standing awkwardly in the middle of his department, his brow furrowed in absolute distaste.
“Hello, Mr. Harris. I’m Chloe, the new intern,” she introduced herself brightly, stepping forward.
Michael didn’t even look at her. He walked straight past her to his glass-walled office, sat down, powered up his computer, and took a bottle of mineral water from his drawer. He cracked it open, took a sip, and immediately began typing, entirely ignoring her existence.
An agonizingly awkward silence settled over the open-plan office. Several junior employees peeked over their monitors, waiting for the carnage.
After standing awkwardly for a full two minutes, Chloe stepped into the doorway of his office. “Is there anything I can assist with?”
“Go ask HR,” Michael replied without looking up from his screen. “My department isn’t short-staffed.”
Chloe bit her lip, her cheeks flushing. “But Alex—Mr. Smith—sent me here.”
Michael finally stopped typing. He looked up, his gaze like freezing water. “Are you using the boss’s name to threaten me on your first day?”
“No! I wouldn’t dare!” Chloe instantly softened her tone, flashing a brilliant, entirely shameless smile. “Since the boss sent me, I thought you might as well exploit me. Even if you aren’t short-staffed, an extra pair of hands never hurts, right? Errands, photocopying, organizing files, fetching lunch—couldn’t you just dump all the annoying stuff on me? Wouldn’t that make your life easier?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. She smoothly stepped up to his desk, picked up his empty ceramic mug, and said, “Why are you only drinking cold water this early? I’ll make you a coffee.”
She spun around, practically jogging to the breakroom. Two minutes later, she was back, placing a steaming, perfectly brewed cup of black coffee on his desk.
With a sheepish but unyielding smile, she took a step back. “Just think of me as your personal errand runner.”
Michael leaned back in his expensive chair. He looked at the coffee, then up at her. A harsh, reluctant snort escaped his lips. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“Thank you,” Chloe beamed. “It’s my best quality.”
“Fine.” Michael waved a hand dismissively. Since she was practically begging to do the grunt work, he wasn’t going to waste energy fighting it. “Go shadow Joshua.”
“Thank you!”
Chloe happily trotted over to the desk of a young man wearing a graphic tee and thick headphones.
Joshua pulled one ear cup off and sighed. “Alright. Our department mainly shoots short-form video content for clients to push across various platforms. The higher the engagement, completion rate, and click-through metrics, the better the traffic. That translates directly to our performance bonuses.”
“Platforms?” Chloe frowned, trying to mentally translate. “Which platforms?”
“TikTok, Instagram, X, Pinterest—the usual,” Joshua said, clicking through his browser. He glanced at her completely blank expression. “You know… social media? Surely you have X?”
“X?” Chloe thought for a second. “You mean like a blog? Yes, I have a blog.”
“A blog?” Joshua stared at her.
“Is that not what you mean?” Chloe asked, feeling a cold sweat start to build.
“I meant Twitter. Well, X now,” Joshua laughed, shaking his head. “Who uses blogs anymore? That’s like, 2010 internet!”
“Oh.” Chloe pursed her lips, deeply embarrassed. “I haven’t used Twitter.”
“What about Instagram?” Joshua pressed. “You definitely know TikTok, right? Did you use Facebook? God, what about MySpace?”
Chloe just shook her head, feeling smaller and smaller by the second.
Joshua rubbed his forehead, looking like he was about to cry. “Okay. Well, you must play video games, right? To understand digital engagement?”
“Games!” Chloe’s eyes lit up. Finally, something she knew. “Yes! I play Dance Dance Revolution!”
“…What?”
“You know, the game in the arcade where you step on the arrows to the beat?” She mimed stepping on a plastic dance pad.
Joshua stared at her in utter horror. “I have literally never heard of that in my life. What else do you play?”
“Mario Kart 64! Warcraft III! Super Mario Bros!” she listed proudly.
“Huh?” Joshua looked completely lost. “Chloe, what year were you born? Those sound like games from the last century.”
“I was born in 1979,” Chloe replied honestly.
“You’re kidding, right? You look like you were born in 1998, max.” Joshua looked at her with a mix of exasperation and disbelief.
Chloe pulled her newly issued temporary state ID from her lanyard and held it out. “I really was born in 1979.”
Joshua squinted at the ID, then up at her smooth, unblemished face. “No way. This is a fake ID, isn’t it?”
“Why would I have a fake ID that makes me forty-six years old?” Chloe asked incredulously. “And forging federal documents is a felony!”
“Holy shit, it really is legit,” a female coworker gasped from the next cubicle, leaning over the partition. “Oh my god, you look amazing! How do you maintain that?”
Within seconds, half the department had abandoned their desks and swarmed her cubicle.
“What skincare do you use?”
“Is it La Mer?”
“La Mer doesn’t do that. I bet she gets hyaluronic acid and baby Botox!”
“Oh, absolutely. Which clinic do you go to? How much is a unit? You must have started preventative injections in your twenties to look like this.”
Chloe waved her hands frantically, overwhelmed by the sudden barrage of young women examining her face like a science exhibit. “No, no! I haven’t had any injections! I just use Neutrogena moisturizer. You can get a jar at CVS for ten dollars!”
“Liar!”
“Gatekeeper!”
“You definitely get Botox!”
“I really don’t—” Chloe tried to explain, but before she could finish, the heavy glass door of the manager’s office swung open.
“What is going on out here?” Michael’s sharp voice cut through the chatter like a whip. “Is there a sudden lack of client briefs I’m unaware of? Get back to work!”
The crowd scattered like terrified mice.
Michael walked over, snatched Chloe’s ID from her desk, and examined it. His expression darkened into a severe frown before he looked up at her.
“You’re really this old?” he asked bluntly. “Can you pull all-nighters? Can you handle overtime? Do you have a husband and kids at home waiting for you? This department isn’t a walk in the park. It’s a meat grinder. If you want a retirement home, leave now.”
“Don’t worry! I’m not afraid of hard work,” Chloe promised quickly, standing up straight. “And I don’t have a husband or kids. Nobody is going to interfere with my job.”
Michael stared at her for a long, heavy second. He hummed a noncommittal sound, tossed her ID back onto the desk, grabbed his laptop, and marched toward the conference room.
Once he was out of earshot, Joshua leaned over and whispered, “Michael is a beast. Whatever you do, do not cross him.”
Chloe nodded frantically. Internally, she wanted to die. Here I am, forty-six years old on paper, getting publicly lectured by a guy in his thirties. How humiliating.
She swore to herself she was going to work her way up to executive level just to spite him.
For the rest of the morning, Chloe was brutally bombarded with new media knowledge.
She created accounts on over a dozen platforms. She watched countless promotional videos the agency had produced. She absorbed the information as fast as her brain could process it, meticulously writing down the names of video editing software in her notebook so she could learn them at home.
By mid-afternoon, Joshua had helped her set up a Twitter account.
She scrolled through the app, deciding it was basically a hybrid of old message boards and text messaging, only terrifyingly fast.
As she aimlessly swiped through her fresh timeline, her thumb suddenly froze.
A photo of Nathan had just appeared in her trending feed.
Startled, she tapped the news article. It was a high-definition video report with a bold headline: Biologist Dr. Nathan Archer Leads Team in Developing Novel Therapy for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Awarded Prestigious Lasker Prize for Medical Breakthrough.
Chloe clicked play.
The video loaded. There stood Nathan, dressed in an immaculate, perfectly tailored tuxedo, accepting a heavy crystal trophy on a brightly lit stage. A massive crowd of distinguished scientists applauded him.
In his acceptance speech, his voice was deep, resonant, and effortlessly commanding. He thanked his university, his research team, and expressed a profound hope that their work would alleviate human suffering.
Chloe stared at the screen, entirely mesmerised.
Watching the brilliant, composed, globally respected man in the video, she felt a sudden, crushing wave of dissonance.
Was this really the Nathan she knew?
The shy boy who used to let her copy his math homework? The broke college student who used to hold her hand on the subway?
It was clearly him. His eyes were the same. The line of his jaw was the same.
But as she sat at a tiny intern desk, making fifteen hundred dollars a month, she suddenly realised just how impossibly high he had climbed while she was frozen in time.