Chapter 53:

Ace picked up the phone, it was his grandmother calling, surprising, not because it was on a Sunday morning, but because it was her calling him, not the other way around.

"Hello Samantha, good morning"

"Good morning to you too, how are things going around there?", 'Ah, she wants to know how the meetings went', Ace thought, thinking of the best way to respond

"Well, for the most part, I made a deal with Lucrum, and as you know, they asked for a meeting. However, as you are probably aware, things with Epsilon did not go as well, she thought I was just a vulnerable kid and tried to blackmail me."

"How did it go?", there was myrrh in her voice, she obviously knew how it went, but she wanted him to tell her, to judge him on what emotions he would display during his response.

"Well, I destroyed her life, and Epsilon knows it, they will now have to try harder, and of course, I will drive an even harder bargain, they will not be happy."

"Good. I am proud of you.", and she hung up

Ace let out a sigh of relief, he knew he had passed her test, he would not even be surprised if she was the one that leaked the info, just as a way to see whether he would comply to her demands, and buckle under pressure.

What Ace did not know, however, was that on the other side of the line, Samantha and Veronica were smiling, happy with how fast and well he had grown.

Ace had a pretty busy day ahead of him, he would have to sort through all his notifications, but luckily, he had a plan to deal with it. There was a reason other than hacking as to why he had wanted to learn how to write programs and code in general. He had another project, this one of great importance, that he had wanted to begin working on since forever. He was going to build his own A.I.

He did not want a stupid one, though, he was going to build a self-learning A.I. A monster that only he would be able to control. He would feed it all the information he could find, on anything, and then have it create a schedule for his life, one that would help him optimise his time to the maximum, without becoming boring or repetitive.

He had built it himself, truthfully, the premise of it was simple, the problem was that it required expensive technology for it to truly shine, it would have to be hooked to a high-speed connection that would allow it to download vast quantities of data in a short time. He had, of course, asked for help from a few of his grandmother's employees. He had promised them that he would share the source code with them. Of course, only before asking his grandmother.

She was fine with it, they would remain loyal to her no matter what, and having one for the whole group would increase their capabilities by a large margin. Of course, she also knew they would not share the source code themselves since it would create security threats if they did so.

And it was in this way that Ace built Alfred. Ace had not actually chosen the name, the A.I. had, it had for some reason developed an admiration for the resourceful butler, and it seemed that it inspired to be the same. He had fed it all types of information, he had begun with defence protocols it could put in place to protect itself, Ace had put some of his own, but the A.I. would be able to build its own, and update them as it was needed. He had then made it learn all about video games, streaming and social media. It had, for some reason, also learnt about pop-culture, and in one night, had learnt all the internet culture had to offer.

The A.I. that was now hooked all over the house, connected by speakers that lined all over the room to the supercomputer Ace had built in a room adjacent to his. He asked it to sort through all messages on his accounts, and once it had done so, give the correct and appropriate responses. It knew that if anything interesting came up, it - well he, would have to inform Ace.

In this way, his work for the day was sorted, and he could go relax and do his own thing. He caught up on a few novels, his enhanced brain could now read at extreme speeds, and looked through some advanced etiquette guides Samantha had sent him. He memorised all the information, as he always did, and sent a message to his grandmother that he had finished. She seemed to find it important that he learnt all about various topics, so she sent him guides, books and videos on all sorts of things. Ace, wanting to oblige, ensured he committed them to memory.

It was in this way that he had learnt all sorts of interesting things, he had no idea whether they would ever be of any use to his grandmother, they probably would. To his surprise, his grandmother answered fast, however, it was only a one-word reply: [Languages]. Ace laughed, his grandmother had realised that his brain seemed to have no limit, so she decided to challenge Ace as much as she could. There was a link to a file in another message. As Ace clicked on it, he groaned, his free time would be cut in half. His grandmother wanted him to dominate all the languages she considered 'important', meaning, the ones that would open the most doors for him. This included German, Spanish, French, Arabic, Mandarin, Korean and Japanese. She told him that if needed, she would send a tutor to teach him, to which he replied: [No.]. If anyone else found out about his learning speed, there would be a problem.

In true Goldsign fashion, she wanted him to learn them all. Ace was of course already on it, he had always thought it would be wonderful to travel to various places and enjoy them to their fullest, so in his downtime (downtime = lesson time), he had begun learning various languages. He could speak, French, Italian and Spanish, and was finishing up with German. Finishing up meant that he now had the level of a Native, and all he had to do was learn the slang that was more commonly used. However, he would have no problem conducting a deal.

As with all languages, he had minimized the accent by listening to genuine natives speak the language and simply working to learn how to mimic their accent. This allowed him to have a seamless accent, which would not separate him from any native. After he finished up with German, he would move on to Mandarin, then to Japanese and Korean. He would finish with Arabic. Once he did that, he wanted to keep learning languages, but whatever else caught his fancy would take precedence.

This way, he could maximise his ability to learn, while also motivating himself with something that would be truly fun. Especially considering his trip to Vienna, his German would be useful there, and meeting people from around the world would mean he could 'practise' speaking the languages he had learnt.

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After getting dressed, Ace got in the car that took him to Sophie's house, she had said to meet him at 10, which had left him a lot of time to do his own thing, considering he had woken up at 5 in the morning, and she lived only 10 minutes away. When he got there, it was 9:55, and he was led through the main house to a 'small' one in the garden, it was an expanse where it seemed that the family met their guests, it was a massive open space, with decor tastefully placed around the room. It did not give out a sense of opulence, but you knew the people that owned it were rich nevertheless. How rich, depended on how much you looked, one could spot the luxurious billiards table or the massive 8k televisions displayed around the room. Ace, however, noticed the book stand, It was not as big or noticeable as the other pieces, but was sure as hell worth a lot more. Every book there, seemed to be expensive, Ace assumed that none of them had actually been read, but the rare collection caught his eye nevertheless.

"Like them?", Sophie came up from behind him, giving him a hug which he turned around and reciprocated. She was dressed in a yellow flowery dress that suited her quite well.

"Yeah. These are amazing, some of these are worth more than what people make in a lifetime.", Ace heard the tinge of admiration in his own voice, but did not mind it. If anything, it would only give Sophie the false impression that she could use these books as a bargaining chip. She could of course, but if Ace wanted, he could get his Grandmother to gift him an even greater collection than this. Money was not a problem, and as of right now, connections were not either.

"Hmmm, well, the others are not here yet, but I can give you a tour if you want", 'fashionably' late, of course, Ace detested such a construct, but he understood that it was merely a way for someone to feel wanted.

"Sure let's go."