My microbot swarm was currently hovering in the corner of the ceiling, compressed into a dense, unassuming black cube that looked like a modern art speaker.
I took a shower in a bathroom that had been completely overhauled overnight. The water pressure was heavy and perfect, the temperature adjusting instantly to my body heat via the swarm's localized sensors.
By the time I walked downstairs to the kitchen, I felt like a new man.
I opened the refrigerator—which I had Atlas order and have delivered yesterday afternoon—and pulled out eggs, butter, and some thick-cut bacon. Cooking had always been a coping mechanism in my past life, a way to ground myself when the spreadsheets blurred together. In this life, it was purely for pleasure.
I moved around the pristine kitchen, the neural lace allowing me to casually direct a few thousand microbots to act as an invisible sous-chef. A whisk stirred the eggs in a glass bowl on its own, suspended in a localized magnetic field generated by the bots, while I focused on perfectly searing the bacon.
Ten minutes later, I was sitting at the kitchen island, eating a flawless, fluffy French omelet and drinking pour-over coffee that tasted like heaven.
I glanced out the kitchen window, looking across the sunny suburban street.
Phil Dunphy was currently tangled in the hose in his front yard, holding a foam rocket launcher while his son, Luke, stared blankly at the roof of my house. Claire was standing on her porch, her hands on her hips, looking incredibly stressed as she yelled something at Phil.
'Sitcom logic dictates that the rocket is either in my yard or in my gutters,' I mused, taking a sip of coffee.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, I saw Claire marching across the street, dragging Luke by the elbow.
I set my mug down, wiped my mouth with a napkin, and walked to the front door just as she raised her hand to knock.
I opened it before she could, offering a polite, relaxed smile.
Claire blinked, startled by the sudden opening. She was wearing neat suburban clothes, her blonde hair perfectly styled, but the tension in her shoulders was visible from a mile away. Luke stood next to her, looking at a bug on the porch railing.
"Oh! Hi," Claire said, quickly recovering her composure. "You must be the new neighbor. Arthur, right? Phil mentioned you. I'm Claire Dunphy, from right across the street."
"Arthur Hastings," I nodded smoothly. "Nice to meet you, Claire. And this must be Luke."
"Yeah. Say hi, Luke," Claire nudged him.
"Hi," Luke said, not looking up from the bug. "Did you know that if a spider loses a leg, it just grows back? Like a lizard. But smaller."
"I did know that, actually," I replied, my tone perfectly serious. "It's an incredibly efficient biological failsafe."
Claire looked between us, slightly taken aback by my earnest response to her son's weirdness, before clearing her throat. "Right. Well. We're actually over here to apologize. Luke was playing with his new rocket launcher, and it sort of... ended up on your roof. Phil was supposed to be watching him, but, well..." She trailed off with a tight, exasperated sigh. "I can go get a ladder."
"No need," I said warmly.
I sent a brief, wordless impulse through the neural lace. On the roof, a small cluster of microbots scooped up the bright orange foam rocket, carried it to the edge of the gutter, and gently dropped it.
I casually reached my left hand out the doorframe and caught the rocket without even looking, handing it down to Luke.
Claire stared at the foam rocket in my hand, then looked up at my roof, her mouth slightly open. "How did you... did it just fall?"
"Just lucky timing," I smiled, leaning comfortably against the doorframe.
"Well," Claire blinked, shaking her head as if to clear it. She looked past me, catching a glimpse of the entryway. Her eyes widened slightly. "Wow. You... you unpacked fast. And your floors are beautiful. I thought the old owner let this place completely go to rot."
"I had a very efficient renovation crew come through last night," I replied smoothly. "I like to have my workspace settled as quickly as possible."
"Workspace? You work from home?" Claire asked, a hint of genuine curiosity cutting through her frazzled suburban mom persona.
"Tech development and software architecture," I said. "It keeps me indoors mostly, but it's quiet."
"Quiet is nice," Claire sighed, looking back across the street where Phil had somehow managed to trip over the hose and was currently on the grass. "Quiet is very nice. Well, welcome to the neighborhood, Arthur. If you need anything, we're right across the street. Even if Phil is... Phil."
"I'll keep that in mind. Have a good day, Claire. See you, Luke."
"Bye, rocket-catcher," Luke mumbled, already turning around to examine the foam tip of the toy.
I closed the door, the heavy, soundproofed wood shutting out the noise of the Dunphy yard with a satisfying, airtight thud. The contrast between their chaotic, deeply human drama and my absolute, engineered serenity was the perfect balance. They were the anchor of normalcy I needed to stay grounded.
As I walked back to the kitchen to finish my coffee, Atlas's voice chimed softly from my phone, seamlessly connecting to the house's newly integrated microbot speakers.
"Sir, regarding your request for corporate legal representation," Atlas reported. "I have analyzed the top firms in the country capable of structuring the shell entities we require for industrial acquisitions."
"And?" I asked, picking up my mug.
"There is a firm in New York. Pearson Hardman. They specialize in high-stakes corporate structuring and aggressive nondisclosure enforcement. One of their senior partners, Harvey Specter, has a ninety-eight percent success rate in sealing proprietary tech patents."
I paused, the rim of the mug resting against my lip.
'Pearson Hardman. So, Suits is in this universe too,' I thought, a quiet hum of anticipation building in my chest.
In a world filled with cutthroat lawyers, chaotic sitcom families, and God only knew what else, I had a fourteen-million-dollar war chest, an alien-tier AI, and a swarm of reality-bending nanobots.
"Atlas," I said, a genuine, sharp smile forming on my face. "Draft a retainer agreement. Let's introduce Mr. Specter to his newest client."