A/N: Hey there! So, I have another personal novel, apart from 'Hidden Figure'. I accidentally published it on another site. I'm curious to know which one you prefer - this novel or 'Hidden Figure'? Let know your thoughts!
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"Bzzzt… D-Dorian… seventy-eight point three percent probability of… tardiness…"
The voice was a distorted buzz, swimming in the drowsy fog of a half-sleep. It was warm and safe in the dark. He didn't want to leave.
*Nudge, nudge.
"Mmmph… five more minutes…" Dorian mumbled, rolling over and pulling the thin blanket over his head.
*Nudge. Nudge. NUDGE.
"Dorian! Wake up! At this precise mont, my projections indicate a ninety-two percent probability of you missing your transport, a one hundred percent probability of Lyra being grumpy, and a, oh dear, a sixty-seven percent chance that Marcus will attempt to wear his trousers as a hat again! It is imperative that you arise!"
The voice, now sharp and clear with anxious precision, finally pierced through the haze. Dorian groaned, peeling open his eyes. Hovering directly in front of his face was a spherical, white companion unit, its articulated panels shifting in a pattern of mild panic. The once-pristine shell was yellowed with age, covered in a network of fine scratches and one prominent dent above its primary optical sensor.
Dorian sat up, stretching with a grunt that made his back pop. He rubbed his eyes and caught his reflection in the cheap, mirrored surface of his closet door. The face staring back was sharp and sleep-rumpled, frad by a ssy mop of black hair. On the left side, a distinct section of pure white hair fell across his forehead, a strange birthmark he'd carried for as long as he could rember. He brushed the unruly strands back with a practiced swipe of his hand.
"Okay, okay, I'm up, Leo," he chuckled, his voice still rough with sleep. He reached out and patted the top of the Compadre's smooth, spherical head. Leo's panels shifted into a calr, sky-blue hue. "Go wake the others. I'll start making breakfast."
"But my chronoter indicates that it is your designated morning to awaken the younger units," Leo stated, bobbing slightly in the air.
"Is it?" Dorian said, swinging his legs out of bed. "Well, I'm already halfway to the kitchen, so it might as well be you."
"Your logic is fundantally flawed," Leo retorted, its blue optical light narrowing. "That is the equivalent of saying 'I am already halfway to the ground, so I might as well jump.' It is a fallacious argunt, Dorian."
Dorian paused at his bedroom door and looked back at the hovering sphere as it zipped towards his siblings' room. "Since when did you get so sassy?" he muttered to himself with a smile.
No sunlight pierced the windows of their small apartnt; down here in the sunless depths of Nexus Pri's lower levels, the only light was the perpetual, artificial glow of the city. After a quick breakfast of nutrient paste flavored to resemble oatal, Dorian knelt to help Marcus get dressed.
"Arms up," he instructed, guiding his eight-year-old brother's arms through his school tunic. As he fastened the clasps, he called out, "Lyra, you need any help in there?"
A muffled shout ca from the other room. "I don't! I'm a big girl now!"
Dorian laughed, a genuine, warm sound that filled the small space. Hearing him, Marcus giggled, perfectly mimicking his older brother's laugh.
The starliner station was a chaotic hive of activity. The air slled of ozone, recycled air, and the faint scent of street vendor synth-noodles. Dorian navigated the crowd with practiced ease, carrying a chattering Marcus on one hip while holding twelve-year-old Lyra's hand with his other. Leo hovered dutifully behind them, a silent, spherical guardian.
Inside the rattling public transport, Dorian finally had a mont to himself. He let Marcus down and the ever-curious eight-year-old imdiately pressed his face against the grimy window, trying to read the flickering neon signs that flashed by in the gloom. After dropping a surprisingly solemn Lyra at her middle school block, Dorian handed Marcus over to Leo. The Compadre would ensure he got to his own elentary school safely.
Dorian jogged back to the station. His next transport was different. Its destination wasn't another sector of Nexus Pri, but another world entirely: Aethelgard. As he boarded the interstellar vessel, he paused in the open doorway, the ship's internal lights casting a long shadow behind him. This was his favorite part.
He looked down, seeing the endless, shadowed canyons of his ho, a world of permanent twilight. As the transport began its powerful ascent, he stretched a hand out into the open air. The ship climbed higher and higher, rising through the smog and the oppressive layers of the city. Suddenly, they broke through.
Sunlight, real, brilliant, unfiltered sunlight, hit his outstretched hand, warming his skin. For a mont, he was bathed in light as they soared past the gleaming, privileged spires of the upper levels. A genuine smile touched Dorian's lips. He stepped fully inside as the heavy doors hissed shut, sealing him in. In monts, the transport cleared the atmosphere, and Nexus Pri beca just another marble in the blackness of space.
The transport shuddered as it synchronized with the invisible hyperspace lane, a tightly regulated corridor of spaceti governed by the Accord. Ahead, a queue of vessels, hulking freighters, sleek military patrols, and other civilian transports like his, waited for their designated entry slot. Space travel was routine, but it was never fast.
Dorian found an empty seat by a viewport and sat down. Most of the other students heading to Aethelgard were already absorbed in their heliopads, holographic screens shimring with lecture notes or the latest Stellarcast streams.
Dorian had one, a mandatory piece of academy equipnt, but he rarely used it for leisure. He rummaged through his worn satchel and pulled out a physical, paper-bound sketchbook and a graphite pencil.
It was a rare sight, an anachronism in an age of digital everything. The heliopad's creation suite was powerful, but its predictive algorithms and auto-smoothing features felt intrusive, a sleek, sterile assistant that tried to perfect every line he drew. It couldn't replicate the satisfying, raw friction of graphite on paper, a feeling his hands rembered with a certainty that defied this new reality.
And that was the crux of it all. He rembered. He wasn't sure if he was reincarnated or transmigrated. He couldn't recall a na from his past life, nor could he rember how he died. Maybe he never did die. There was no grand cinematic flashback, no single mont of revelation.
The mories had always just been there, a parallel stream of consciousness running alongside his fifteen years in this world. A Mnemonic Echo, he called it. The ability to perfectly recall not just facts, but the full sensory experience of a life that wasn't his.
His pencil began to move, the strokes confident and practiced. As he sketched, he idly flipped through the previous pages. A sleek chanical figure with a distinctive V-shaped antenna, the RX-78 Gundam. A rotund, fuzzy forest spirit with a gentle smile, Totoro. A figure in tactical gear with a gas mask, one hand raised to his temple, Psycho Mantis. A silver-haired ninja ntor, Kakashi Hatake. Each drawing was a ghost, a fragnt of a world that, as far as he could tell, had never existed here.
He wasn't sure what world this was. At first, he'd suspected it was a far-flung future of the Earth he rembered. But when he was nine, he'd spent weeks scouring the school's digital library, searching for any ntion of his ho. The records were gone, wiped clean. The official history spoke of a cataclysmic "War of Many Races" centuries ago, an era of chaos that supposedly ended when the Stellar Accord rose to power.
Now, everyone lived in a peaceful era. Or at least, as peaceful as it gets.
Dorian knew better. The war had never ended. One side had simply developed a weapon so overwhelming it forced a stalemate. That weapon was the Accord itself, a coalition of races that had pooled their resources to create the Heliocore. With it, they beca the undisputed center of the known universe, the sole arbiters of power and technology.
Their enemies, those who resisted their iron-fisted vision of order, hadn't been defeated. They had been scattered, pushed into the lawless Outer Rims, where they presumably still lurked. The peace was a lie. It was a cold war, held in place by the threat of absolute annihilation.
…
Dorian continued to sketch, his mind a quiet oasis amidst the low hum of the transport's life support. He finished the page with a final drawing: the unmistakable silhouette of a Mandalorian helt and armor, complete with a dented cuirass and a jetpack. Boba Fett. A relic of a story that no one here would ever know. He closed the book just as the transport chid, announcing its final approach.
The academy was not on the planet below, but was the planet's moon. Aethelgard. It hung in space like a perfectly polished pearl, its entire surface terraford and sculpted into a sprawling campus of white towers, manicured gardens, and holographic lecture halls. It orbited the Accord's central academic world, a planet reserved for the galaxy's most brilliant minds and their top-secret research. Each of the planet's other moons was a similar, competing academy, each with its own specialty. Aethelgard, widely known as the Ivory Tower, was the most prestigious.
Dorian chuckled to himself. It always reminded him of the "Ivy League" colleges from his past life. A system designed to stratify the elite from the masses. It didn't matter. He was here on a full scholarship; he just had to play the ga long enough to get what he needed.
He walked through the pristine, open-air corridors of his wing, the architecture a stark, clean contrast to the gri and chaos of his ho on Nexus Pri. He glanced at the black band on his wrist, and a simple hologram of his class schedule flickered to life above it.
"Hmmm, let's see," he muttered, tracing a line on the hologram with his finger. "Compadres Introductory is in... Gamma-7..."
"DORIAN!"
A sudden weight slamd onto his back, and arms wrapped around his neck, nearly sending him stumbling.
"Oh god, Juno, what are you doing?" he yelped, struggling to keep his balance.
A girl a year older than him, with vibrant platinum-blonde hair tied back in a practical but stylish ponytail, hopped off his back, landing gracefully. Her violet eyes, a popular and expensive genetic modification, sparkled with mischief. "Hehe, caught you! What're you up to?"
"I'm about to go to class," Dorian said, straightening his tunic. "What are you doing here? I thought your engineering courses were in the Delta wing."
Juno triumphantly held up her own wristband. An identical holographic schedule shimred above it. "Tadaa! I'm in your class. Took it as an elective. Soone's got to make sure you don't get into trouble."
They walked together towards the classroom, falling into an easy rhythm born of years of friendship. As they found two seats side-by-side in the tiered lecture hall, Dorian looked around at the other students. "So, who's the professor for this?"
Juno shrugged, her carefree deanor a perfect foil to his own focused intensity. "I don't know. The schedule still hasn't updated the info."
"Did you ask the faculty?"
"Why? We're about to see them anyway," she said with a grin. Dorian just shook his head and chuckled.
Just then, the main door slid open. A thin, disheveled man with dark, sunken rings around his eyes shuffled in, clutching a heliopad like a lifeline. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Trailing behind him was his Compadre, a sleek, chro model that looked far more put-together than its owner. The man shambled to the front of the class, stared out at the students with a blank expression, and spoke in a monotone, listless voice.
"Good evening."
His Compadre's optical sensor flashed red. "It's morning, Hendrick."
The professor paused, blinked slowly, and looked at his heliopad as if to confirm. "Oh. Good morning. Today, we will... do our first class of introductory for Compadres."
Dorian and Juno slowly turned to look at each other, their faces a perfect mirror of bewildered disbelief. Their shared expression silently scread the sa question: Are we sure we're in Aethelgard right now?
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