So you’re probably wondering how I became CEO of Mizem. I hadn’t even heard of the company before I was offered the job, neither of my parents worked there. It all started when I was still in school.

Years ago after the decision was made that kids would replace adults in high-level jobs, an ableYoung screening exam was created that all students had to take. I was eleven at the time, and it seemed like yet another state-mandated test that wasn’t going to affect our grade, so none of us took it very seriously. I remember some of the questions being pretty strange, like ‘You’re in a room with a hundred other people. The room has no windows or doors. What do you do?’ and ‘If you were on a lifeboat with five other people in the middle of the ocean, would you throw one or more of your fellow passengers out if their disruptiveness was threatening the safety of the others?’

Apparently I scored well on the test because a week later I was transferred to a special ‘management and leadership’ prep school. The first few months were pretty rough—the program was grueling and none of my friends were there for support. After the first year I grew to like it though. Instead of traditional classes we mostly did multi-week immersion programs where us kids would run a sales division or work in a mayor’s office. I liked working on actual projects, and feeling like I was in the real world instead of just learning about it.

Near to the end of my time at the school I started to push back against all the teachers’ demands and expectations. I guess I was the cliché ‘rebellious teen,’ plus my hormones were kicking in fully by then. I would go out to nightclubs almost every night and stay out really late. One evening I bumped into a girl I found really attractive. She had a wide mohawk cut into a Y shape and wore bondage gear as accessories. She was everything my proper, upstanding school wasn’t, and I found that incredibly sexy.

That night at her place was the first time I had sex with someone who wasn’t weirded out in the slightest by my interstitial genitalia. Rox (as she liked to be called) and I were rarely ever apart after that. We moved in together way sooner than we should have, and my school work suffered, but I didn’t care. I was sixteen, in love and having too much fun. Rox taught me a lot about sex—I wanted to try everything. She was especially into oral, both giving and receiving, and I was happy to oblige.

I just barely graduated. I was immediately offered the CEO gig at Mizem, and I remember at the time being really bummed. A company that makes chemicals and pharmaceuticals? How boring. But in talking with my parents they convinced me I could really make a difference at a company like that, so I took the job.

At the same time things were getting messy with Rox. Her recklessness and crazy energy that were so thrilling to me at first were now just annoying. So I broke up with her, which was hard but necessary. By that point I had become good friends with Laik, and the second he mentioned that he and his two ‘friends’ were looking for a shared apartment, I knew it would be the change I needed.