Epsilon

Lydia sits in a corner of the cafeteria, sipping her coffee and observing the people around her. She has all the qualities a twenty-two-year-old girl needs to be called beautiful, but still, no one has ever considered her beautiful.

Even if no one else knows the reason, Lydia knows it. The reason is a bit peculiar: a person's inner beauty has to be beautiful for their outer beauty to truly shine. Lydia's inner self is ugly and hideous. She is an incredibly intelligent girl, but inside she has no conscience. If psychologists had the chance to study her, they would have definitely labeled her a psychopath. Lydia has never gone to a psychologist, nor has she needed to.

She was born into a very ordinary family and grew up in a normal environment. At a very young age, her mother first noticed the abnormality in Lydia. She did not tell anyone about it. When she grew up a little, Lydia abandoned her family and grew up alone. When a person has no love, compassion, ethics, or conscience, it is very easy for her to survive. Lydia has grown up very successfully with her extraordinary intelligence. She has completed her studies at the university. She has no feelings about university life. 

At that moment, she was sitting at a table in a corner of her university cafeteria, sipping her coffee and watching the students around her with a kind of amused curiosity. To her, their exuberance, interest, and enthusiasm seemed childish and immature. Lydia took a sip of her coffee and looked up to see a middle-aged man approaching with a food tray. No one had told her, but she immediately understood he was coming her way. Lydia deliberately looked away and, without looking directly, could tell the man had come over and was standing in front of her table. The next moment she heard his voice, “May I sit at your table?”

Lydia turned to look at him this time. He had the look of a corporate manager, wearing an expensive suit and a fine tie. People dressed like this don't eat in the university cafeteria.

Lydia looked at the man and said, "There are plenty of empty tables. You don't need to sit here. But since you want to sit at this table, then it mean you must have come for me?"

"Lydia?"

"Yes."

"Then I came to you. Pictures don't do people justice. You look different in your pictures."

Lydia had heard that many times before. She knew what it really meant: in the picture, you look like a beautiful girl. In reality, you're not beautiful at all.

The man placed the food tray on the table and extended his hand to Lydia. “My name is Ricardo.”

With some reluctance, Lydia touched the man's hand. It was just as she had guessed: damp and soft. Lydia hated shaking the hand of someone with a damp hand.

"Why have you come to me?"

The man, without answering her question, asked her in return, “Have you submitted your thesis?”

Lydia nodded. Ricardo sprinkled pepper on a piece of roast beef on his plate and said, “Why didn't you write the thesis yourself? You could have written a much better one if you had.”

Lydia was horrified, but she didn't let it show. A flash of realization struck her. She had pretended to be intimate with a brilliant boy to get him to write the thesis for her. It was true she could have written it better herself, but she had no interest in such formal work. She had abandoned the brilliant boy with utter cruelty after her work was done. He was mentally unstable and had disappeared. But she had thought no one knew about this; apparently, that wasn't true.

This man was not connected to that boy. Lydia knows the boy has no one. The man is not from the university administration, and the university administration has no power to do anything about this matter anyway. The man could be from the police or a detective agency; that would happen if the mentally unstable genius boy did something foolish and committed suicide, leaving this incident written down as the reason for his death. 

The boy was timid by nature; it didn't seem possible for him to do something as brave as committing suicide. Whatever had happened, Lydia had to stay alert. For the first time in her life, she felt a kind of fear within herself. Putting a piece of roast beef in his mouth, the man suddenly burst out laughing.

Laughing, he pointed at Lydia and said, “There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm not from the police.”

Lydia said, “I'm not afraid.” As Lydia said that, she felt a kind of insult at the remark.

In her life, she has always controlled others; others have never controlled her. Lydia has shielded her life with an impenetrable wall. She never thought anyone could breach that impenetrable wall and peek into her life. It seems someone has peeked into her life. If that person knows about having her thesis written, then they probably know a lot more. There are many things in Lydia's life that, if they were to come to light, would land her in prison for a long time.

Ricardo looked into Lydia's eyes and said, “We've been waiting for you for a long time. You've submitted your thesis, so you can start work now. I've come to offer you a job.”

Lydia looked at Ricardo, a little surprised. The man chewed a piece of roast beef with great satisfaction and said, “We didn't want to interfere with your studies, so we didn't come before. Now we have.”

Lydia put her coffee mug on the table and said, “Who are you?”

"I'll tell you. First, let me tell you why I've come to you."

Lydia stared calmly at Ricardo.

Ricardo said, “About three years ago, there was a famine in a country in Africa. The cause of the famine was overpopulation. You wrote an essay proposing a solution to the problem back then, remember?”

Lydia said nothing. It was true that she had offered a very simple solution to the problem of population and famine. No one was supposed to know she had written that essay. The world wasn't ready to accept the truth that humans could be considered a food source, like cattle. 

Population is the problem; by using it as food, that population could be reduced—Lydia could never understand why no one saw that. The people of the world did not accept Lydia's solution, but it caused a tremendous uproar worldwide. No one ever found out who wrote the article—at least that's what Lydia thought. Now it seems that, even if no one else knows, this person does.

Ricardo said, "The way you kept your identity hidden was extraordinary. But as you can see, we know. I can even tell you how we knew—we had to use our artificial intelligence. We have the world's most powerful supercomputer, and we used it to parameterize your writing style, vocabulary, and sentence structure. Then we compared it against every published work in the world. From there, we shortlisted them, scrutinized them, and isolated you. You don't know, we've saved you twice. A moment of carelessness, and you could have gotten into legal trouble both times."

“Why are you telling me this?”

“To recruit you!”

“What's in it for you?”

“We built our empire with people like you.”

Lydia frowned. “Like us?”

Ricardo popped another large piece of roast beef into his mouth and, chewing it with great satisfaction, lowered his voice. “Yes. People like you. People with extraordinary intelligence, who are incredibly creative, whose ambitions know no bounds. But people without any humanity can't be stopped. Because they have no conscience. They can commit any kind of wrongdoing without a shred of guilt! You are one such person.”

Lydia stared at Ricardo with unwavering eyes; no one had ever said those words to her so directly before. Ricardo gave a mocking smile and said, “If you join Epsilon's core team, you might survive, because we'll protect you. If you don't, sooner or later you'll make a mistake, get caught, and spend the rest of your life in prison.”

Lydia still said nothing. Ricardo wiped his mouth with a napkin and said in a low voice, “What does an ordinary person want in life? A good job, a good salary, a family, their children's education, a house, a car, things like that. But what do some people want? Fame. To be a big actor, singer, football player, writer, or artist. And what do some people want? Leadership. To be the one other people look up to."

Ricardo was silent for a moment, then looked straight into Lydia's eyes and said, “And what do you or people like you want?”

"That will depend on you. If you enjoy politics, you can topple governments in African and Asian countries. If you enjoy business, you can buy and sell the world's largest companies. If you enjoy science, you can create something new and bring it to market. It's entirely up to you. I can only say that whatever your interest is, you will find it here."

"Yes. As much as you want. If you don't believe me, you can go out of here, go to a BMW showroom, and buy a car."

“Besides what?”

Ricardo raised his hand to stop Lydia. “You don't have to say it out loud,” he said. “Ordinary people speak out loud. People like you and me don't have to. We can exchange information without speaking.”