Chapter 6: The Illusion of Genius

Everyone always thought I was a genius. Since eighth grade, I’d been labeled the brainiac—always first in my class, mature beyond my years.

I heard the whispers in the halls: “Carter’s the brain,” “He’s probably already got his Harvard letter.” But none of them knew what it really took.

On the high school entrance exam, I was the state’s top scorer with a 1590 on the SAT, more than 50 points ahead of the runner-up.

Guidance counselors used my name as an example, teachers smiled at my parents during conferences. There was talk of scholarships, interviews, a golden path laid out in front of me.

But only I knew:

I’m just an ordinary kid.

Without the loop, I might not have even cracked the top 50.

Every score, every so-called “genius” performance, wasn’t talent—it was paid for with countless loops.

Behind every perfect answer was a mountain of invisible failures. Each win cost me hundreds of resets, hundreds of erased mistakes.

That cage that imprisoned me.

Some nights, I’d lie awake, ceiling fan spinning, thinking of all the wasted days I’d traded for a single perfect grade.

Sometimes, I sink into endless fatigue. The loop makes all effort feel meaningless, because you already know the ending.

I’d stare at my textbooks, words swimming, wondering if any of it mattered anymore.

I once tried giving up, tried doing crazy things—skipping class to play games at the arcade, openly provoking teachers, even making wild predictions about the future in class.

Once, I skipped town, caught a Greyhound to Milwaukee just to see if anything would change. Another time, I started a blog predicting the next week’s headlines. The result was always the same—a reset, a rerun, back to square one.

But those experiments only made me feel more exhausted.

Even rebellion loses its edge when there are no consequences. After a while, even the wildest choices become another flavor of boredom.

A life without consequences is truly suffocating.

The world felt smaller every time I woke up. Like I was breathing recycled air, growing more tired with each loop.

So I went back to the textbooks, continuing to tackle those difficult problems that gave me headaches.

There was a strange comfort in routine, in the slow climb toward mastery. Even if I was stuck, at least there was something to push against.

The loop didn’t make me a genius; it made me an ordinary person tormented by knowledge. I had to repeat everything, over and over, until every concept was burned into my mind.

The cost of perfection was everything else—time, hope, the thrill of not knowing what’s next.