Ten minutes later.
Timothy sat behind his massive desk, fingers tapping lightly as he skimd through the eting notes Reyes had sent him the night before. SMRs, neutron flux, passive safety systems—Reyes claid he developed sothing "ga-changing."
Timothy believed him; the guy lived and breathed nuclear engineering. Still... his mind wasn’t in technical mode yet.
He leaned back.
Too early. Too busy. Too many things on his plate already.
And after everything that happened this morning—from the employee address to his mother and sister’s surprise visit—he needed a reset. Sothing simple, sothing that didn’t involve supply chain logistics or governnt negotiations or billion-peso budgets.
His stomach grumbled softly.
Right. Breakfast part two.
He pressed a small desk button.
"Hana?" the intercom chid.
"Sir?" Hana replied.
"Have Pantry prepare sothing light. Maybe fish and chips, garlic aioli, the usual snacks. Deliver it here."
"Yes, sir. Anything else?"
"Nothing for now."
"Understood."
The line clicked off.
Timothy let out a long breath and rolled his shoulders. He rarely allowed himself monts of downti, but today felt... strange. The building was new, the atmosphere was new, and after years of grinding, maybe he could afford a few minutes of peace. Just ten. Or fifteen.
He turned toward the massive 120-inch transparent OLED screen embedded into the wall. Perfect for presentations. Also perfect for movies.
He tapped a control on his phone.
The screen lit up.
Scrolling, scrolling—
n in Black.
A classic. Clean, fun, simple. And, weirdly, relevant.
He selected it.
Just as the Columbia logo shimred into view, a knock sounded.
"Sir?" Hana opened the door slightly. "Your food."
She stepped inside carrying a tray cart—steaming fish and chips, buttered corn, a small bowl of nachos, cold lemon iced tea, and a cup of chocolate-covered almonds.
"You’re eating early," Hana noted, setting the cart beside his sofa.
"It’s not early," Timothy replied. "It’s stress managent."
She gave him a brief, amused look. "Enjoy, sir. I’ll be in my office if you need ."
The door closed.
Timothy moved to the sofa, settling down with the ease of soone who deserved a five-minute vacation. The sll of hot fish and crisp batter filled the office, mingling with the subtle scent of fresh coffee from the pantry down the hall.
He dipped a piece into the aioli and took a bite.
Perfect.
The movie began, and he let himself sink into it—aliens, secret agents in black suits, Will Smith being Will Smith. A universe where advanced tech existed casually, where no one questioned the impossible because soone else was in charge of keeping the world orderly.
A universe where the crazy stuff stayed secret.
And then—
He saw it.
Small, silver, sleek.
Agent K lifted the device.
Agent J squinted in confusion.
A bright white flash filled the screen.
Neuralyzer.
Timothy paused the movie.
The room fell silent.
His eyes narrowed slightly as he chewed the last piece of fish.
Of all the tech in the movie—the alien weapons, the hovering cars, the transformation gadgets—it was that simple flash that caught his attention.
A device that erased mories.
A device that could plant new ones.
A device that could remove inconvenient questions.
His head tilted.
"Huh."
He set down his fork.
If such a device existed...
If such a thing could be engineered...
Wouldn’t that solve at least fifty percent of his recurring problems?
People asking how his technologies ca out of nowhere.
People suspicious of breakthrough after breakthrough.
People trying to dig into things he couldn’t explain without exposing the Reconstruction System.
A neuralyzer would make all of that vanish in a literal flash.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"What if..." he muttered quietly.
—What if he could replicate the function using a different principle?
—What if he could reconstruct sothing similar?
—What if he could integrate it subtly into corporate protocol, public announcents, or security procedures?
Most importantly:
What if he never had to make an excuse again?
Instead of awkward lies like—
"It was years of research."
"My R&D team worked overti."
"It was a joint project."
"We got foreign assistance."
He could simply say it... and then wipe the mory of whoever didn’t need to know the truth.
It was the perfect technology for a reconstruction system!
He unpaused the movie and watched the next scene closely, analyzing the concept rather than the story.
Light flash → target mory disrupted.
Imdiate disorientation.
Cue for rewriting mory.
Group stun modes available.
Portable size.
He smirked.
Hollywood always dramatized things, but conceptually? It wasn’t impossible.
Not for soone like him.
Not for soone with a system that could reconstruct anything—from basic circuits to next-generation engines to weapons to entire industrial processes.
He took another sip of iced tea.
"Neuralyzer... or sothing like it," he mused, tapping his chin. "mory disruption."
Timothy pushed his empty plate aside and opened a new tab. He typed the word.
Neuralyzer.
The top results were predictably pop-culture: clips, listicles, then, almost exactly where he expected it, a link to the n in Black fandom page. He clicked.
The MIB entry wasn’t long, but it was dense with detail—exactly the sort of consolidated, paraphrased lore fans adored. Timothy read it line by line, not as trivia but as a datapoint to be mined.
The page described the Neuralyzer as a compact, handheld device used by MIB agents. Its primary, dramatized function: a blinding flash that temporarily wipes short-term mory, leaving no trace of whatever event had just occurred. Agents then spoke a standard, polished script to fill the mory gap—an innocuous alternate tiline, a fabricated explanation, an assigned "official" version of events. The fandom write-up emphasized a few practical constraints the films implied: the flash needed to be seen (line of sight mattered), multiple people could be affected at once if within range, and the device’s effect was ti-limited and selective—agents could choose the breadth of the erasure and whether to seed replacent mories.
"This is it," Timothy said as sothing bubbled inside of him. This is what he was looking for. Though he wasn’t thinking about it, it did co across!
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