Date: 6/18/2001 - 3:25 AM {1 Year After Birth}
Location: Decayed Foundation – Dream Land (White Room)
Perspective: Kaiser Everhart (Avatar Age: 10)
The echo of the previous instructor's clap faded, but the silence that followed was heavier.
The door at the front of the white room slid open. It did not hiss; it simply ceased to obstruct the space.
A new figure entered.
He was different from the bodies who usually lectured us. The standard instructors wore grey. This man wore a suit of deep, pressed charcoal—a color that swallowed the aggressive light of the room rather than reflecting it.
I analyzed his biometrics immediately.
Hair: Silver, cut with military precision.
Eyes: Pale steel, lacking the gloss of indifference. These were active scanners.
Estimated Age: 55. His posture suggested preserved muscle density, but the lines around his mouth indicated decades of rigid expression.
He walked to the podium not with the mechanical gait of a teacher, but with the ownership of a warden. He placed a single, thin folder on the desk that emerged. He did not look at the class.
He looked through us.
"I am Directive Vance," he stated. His voice was not a flat line like the others.
"I am the Education Director of this facility. I am the man who will decide if you are worthy of seeing Year Two, or if you will be discarded as waste."
The air in the room seemed to drop in temperature.
"I have led 20 generations of the Decayed Foundation," Vance continued, his eyes finally sweeping the rows of children. "For over two decades, I have watched the so-called 'future' sit in these rooms. And every year, the statistics remain absolute."
He held up a hand, three fingers extended.
"15% of you, despite your genetic selection, will fail the First Year Exam. You will be flushed."
He curled his fingers into a fist.
"By the age of 10, 90% of the cohort is expelled. Disposed of. You believe you are gifted because you are here? You are not. You are merely the raw material that has not yet been refined."
I sat perfectly still. The world felt repetitive and procedural. Death was a routine in our systems. His threats were data points, not emotional triggers.
Vance began to walk between the rows. His steps were silent.
"I have seen extraordinary intelligence," he said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that carried to the back of the room.
"I have seen children who could calculate the trajectory of a star before they could walk. I have seen minds that could bend mana to their wish. Yet, they all ratio the same."
He stopped in the middle row—Designation 000450. He stared down at the trembling boy.
"Your limits are set the moment you are born. In my profession, I have not been impressed in 20 years. The ceiling is always lower than you think."
He turned on his heel, walking back to the front. He faced the board, picking up a piece of white chalk. He wrote two numbers.
000001
001000
"Your Designations," Vance announced, tapping the board. "You assume they are random serial numbers. They are not. They are a hierarchy of calculated potential."
I looked at the number on my own desk. 000981.
"001000 is the baseline," Vance said coldly. "000001 is the theoretical limit. We estimated your worth at birth. We quantified your synaptic density, your mana sensitivity, your logic centers."
He pointed to the boy in the front row. The boy with hair like gold and eyes like the sun.
"Designation 000001. Stand."
The boy stood. His movement was fluid, perfect. He did not tremble.
"This is the second time in history a subject has been designated Number 1," Vance said, his eyes narrowing. "The last time was 14 years ago. A subject who exceeded all predictive models."
He looked at 000001 with a gaze that was almost hungry, but quickly turned dismissive.
"And yet... I am unimpressed. You are currently two years old in the waking world. Your potential is a projection, not a promise. Your future worth is not dictated by your current worth."
Vance's gaze snapped away from the Golden Child. It traveled over the heads of the fifty-two students, past the geniuses, past the diligent, and landed directly on me in the back row.
"And then," Vance said, his voice dripping with disdain, "we have the bottom of the barrel. The waste margins. Designation 000981."
He did not ask me to stand. He did not need to. The distinction was clear.
"We designated you based on your intelligence," he said to the room, but he was speaking to me.
"Or lack thereof. You are here because the algorithm suggests a non-zero probability of utility. Do not mistake luck for value."
He stared at me. I stared back.
Why am I 000981?
000001 is the "Perfect Human". He possesses vertical intelligence—speed, memory, precision. He sees the answer before the question is finished. He accepts the reality presented to him and masters it.
I am the "False Genius".
I do not see the answers. I see the cracks in the question.
Standard reasoning aims for correctness. 000001 is Correctness incarnate.
Aporetic reasoning aims for exposed fragility. I am Fragility.
I thought of my seven weaknesses.
Spatial Geometry: I cannot see the shapes because I question the space they occupy.
Logic of the Void: I cannot think of nothingness because I demand to know what defines nothingness.
Vance sees a linear scale: 1 is high, 1000 is low. But if the scale measures compliance to a flawed system, then being at the bottom is not a failure of capacity.
It is a divergence of potential.
He is unimpressed by the Perfect Child because perfection has a ceiling.He despises me because I represent the floor.But floors can be broken beyond limitless.
Vance turned back to the podium, breaking eye contact. The static neutrality of his face returned.
"None of you are impressive," he stated coldly. "You are variables in an equation that usually equals zero."
He raised his hands and clapped once.
CLAP.
"Now."
"About your Self-study sessions."
Directive Vance raised his right hand. His thumb and middle finger pressed together.
SNAP.
The white floor rippled like disturbed water.
98 obsidian desks and chairs erupted from the ground in perfect unison. They rose with a harsh, grinding sound, locking into place with a heavy thud that vibrated through the soles of my feet.
Each desk was identical: a flat, black surface with a small, glowing designation number etched into the top right corner.
"Take your seats," Vance commanded. "Your designation defines your placement. Do not deviate."
The ninety-eight survivors moved.
I walked to the back. The air felt thinner here, far removed from the golden radiance of 000001 in the front row.
I found my desk. 000981. It was in the last row, the corner seat. The worst vantage point in the room.
I sat down. The chair was hard, designed to prevent comfort, which prevents sleep.
To my left, Designation 000829 took her seat.
She was a girl. Based on her height and facial structure, she is more mature, her real age would be two—one year senior to my current form. She had hair black hair like cartethyia, cut sharp at her jawline.
I analyzed her value relative to mine.
Her Designation: 829.My Designation: 981.Difference: 152 ranks.
Why?
I scanned her posture. Straight spine. Hands folded perfectly on the desk. Breathing rhythm slow, controlled.
Hypothesis:Her processing speed is superior? Her mana capacity is denser?
I turned my head slightly, observing her profile. She sensed the gaze.
She turned to face me.
Her expression was a mirror of the room—neutral, sterile, devoid of fear. But her eyes were startling. They were Emerald Green. Not the muddy green of the forest floor, but the sharp, crystalline green of a gem cut to refract light.
My Cold Blue eyes met her Emerald Green.
We did not speak. Communication between low-tiers is inefficient and potentially punishable.
She blinked once. I blinked once.
She looked at me not with disgust, as Vance did, but with a quiet, clinical assessment. She was calculating the 152-point gap just as I was. Then, she turned her attention back to the front, dismissing me as a solved equation.
Vance snapped his fingers again.
From the floor in front of him, a pillar of twisted black metal spiraled upward. It groaned as it solidified into a podium, the top surface glowing with a faint, crimson hum.
Resonance Dais.
Vance placed his hands on the podium. His voice amplified, filling the room without him raising it.
"For the next seven cycles—one week in this reality—there will be no lectures. There will be no guided instruction."
He leaned forward.
"The curriculum is Self-Study."
"For the next 12 hours every night, you are free to study whatever you wish. You have access to 13 subjects."
He listed them, ticking them off on his fingers, his voice echoing like a judge reading a sentence.
"1: Mathematics. 2: Physics. 3: Biology. 4: Chemistry. 5: History. 6: Linguistics."
He paused, the air growing heavier.
"7: Elemental Theory. 8: Celestial Mechanics. 9: Alchemy."
His eyes darkened.
"10: Abyssal Logic (Cursed). 11: Necrotic Law (Cursed). 12: Void Geometry."
He waited for the shiver to pass through the room. Then, he held up a final finger.
"And 13: Fiction."
Fiction?
The word did not fit the pattern.
SNAP.
The walls of the white room dissolved.
In their place, hundreds of towering bookshelves rose from the nothingness. They stretched up into the infinite white ceiling, groaning under the weight of knowledge.
"There are over 3,000 books here," Vance stated, his voice ringing with cold pride. "From the Imperial Archives of Celestine to the forbidden scrolls of Asura. From the High Elven Kingdom's Treatises on Light to the Dwarvian Astronomic Discoveries buried in the earth. Even the Gravity Propositions of the Dragonic Lords are present."
He spread his arms.
"Everything the world knows is here. Everything the world fears is here."
I looked at the wall of spines. Three thousand volumes.
My mind instantly began to partition the data. I needed to understand the Foundation's priority system.
Total Volume: 3,000. Subjects: 13.
Reasoning: The Foundation creates weapons. Weapons require Power (Magic) and Structure (Science). Culture (History/Fiction) is secondary.
I ran the calculation based on the Foundation's observed values:
High Priority (Magical Application): Elemental, Celestial, Alchemy, and the three Cursed Arts.
Estimate: 50% of total volume. ~1,500 Books.
Reason: Survival in this world requires magic.
Medium Priority (Structural Reality): Math, Physics, Biology, Chemistry.
Estimate: 30% of total volume. ~900 Books.
Reason: Magic requires the understanding of the physical laws it violates.
Low Priority (Context): History, Linguistics.
Estimate: 15% of total volume. ~450 Books.
Reason: Context is useful for strategy, but not for raw output.
Anomaly (Fiction):Estimate: 5% of total volume. ~150 Books.
What is Fiction?
False narratives created by human imagination.
Purpose: Unknown.
Fragility: Why would a facility dedicated to absolute truth and efficiency waste storage space on lies? Is it a test of distraction? Or does the lie contain a truth the facts cannot hold?
"After 7 cycles," Vance interrupted my calculation, "you will be examined on the first 12 subjects."
He paused significantly.
"Fiction is excluded. You may explore it if you wish, but it will not be graded. No instructors will interfere. I will not interfere."
He stepped back from the dais.
"To access a book, simply focus your intent on the subject. The relevant volume will glow on the shelf. Reach out, and it will come to you. When you are finished, release it, and it will return."
Vance adjusted his charcoal suit. He looked at us one last time, his gaze lingering on the empty space where the weak students used to sit.
"This is your time. This is your last chance to prove if you are a variable worth solving, or a remainder to be rounded down."
He raised his hands.
CLAP.
The white room plunged into absolute, crushing darkness.
For three seconds, there was nothing. No sound. No light. Just the breathing of ninety-eight terrified children.
Then, the white light returned, blinding and sharp.
Directive Vance was gone. The Resonance Dais was gone.
Only the students and the towering walls of books remained.
The silence broke.
The front row moved first. Designation 000001 stood up calmly, turned to the nearest shelf, and extended his hand. A book glowing with gold light floated down to him.
Then the others scrambled. Panic set in. They rushed the shelves, desperate to cram knowledge into their minds before the week ended.
I sat in the back.
I looked at the 13 categories in my mind.
If I chose Magic, I would be competing with 000001, who likely already knew the contents. If I chose Science, I would be refining what I was already failing at.
I looked at the girl next to me, 000829. She stood up gracefully. She did not rush. She extended a hand, and a book on Abyssal Logic floated into her grasp. She sat back down and opened it, her green eyes scanning the text.
I remained still.
I had seven weaknesses. I had a flawed processing speed.
To survive, I did not need to be better at what they did.
I needed to understand what they ignored.
I looked at the small, neglected section of the library that Vance had dismissed. The section that contained lies.
What should I choose?
I remained seated at desk 000981. Around me, the room was a hive of frantic activity. Students swarmed the shelves, each one retrieving volumes on Celestial Mechanics or the rigorous proofs of Chemistry or Physics. The examination was 7 cycles away. Time was the most finite resource.
I focused on the anomaly: Fiction.
Fiction is the systemic generation of stories known to be false. It is the conscious investment of energy into a non-reality.
Why?
The human organism stores data (memory) for survival. Memory is a record of reality. Fiction is a record of a potential reality.
When the pressure of the waking world—pain, loss, fear—exceeds the organism's capacity to tolerate it, the organism creates a controlled environment where those pressures can be processed without actual consequence. Fiction is a mental simulation engine. It is the psychological escape hatch. It is a controlled reality failure when the subject cannot accept the parameters of the present.
This was the origin.
Humans sought Fiction to escape their reality. A logical function for a highly illogical species.
My gaze drifted to the girl next to me, 000829. She was silent, focused on her volume of Abyssal Logic.
She is moving too fast.
I timed her with the internal clock of the dream world. Her head tilted to the right, her eyes absorbed the text, and her hand turned the page every 2.1 seconds. A standard volume of this complexity contained approximately 4,000 words per page.
If her processing talent is that great, she can read 4,000 words of complex data and achieve 100% comprehension in 2.1 seconds. That is a capacity I cannot rival.
Or, she is sacrificing comprehension for speed, prioritizing the sheer ingestion of data over deep analysis.
A sacrifice is failure. I needed more information.
For the next 30 minutes, I merely watched. I analyzed the designations and their chosen subjects.
000001 (Perfect Genius) was studying Void Geometry. He was not rushing. His movements were precise. His choice reflected a challenge to his own mastery of spatial thinking.
I noted 14 students initially selected Fiction. After 10 minutes of reading, 12 of those students slammed their books shut and raced to the shelves containing Mathematics or History.
The logical conclusion is that they were correct. Fiction is a waste of time. It is a narrow, unnecessary story that yields zero points on the exam.
It is a distraction.
But…
I cannot rely on logic alone.
I thought of my caretaker. Cartethyia. The way she used systemic thinking to understand her own feelings.
I used her tears (Output) and her memories (Input) to deduce her emotional pain (System State). I had modeled her system perfectly, yet the question remained: What is the feeling of Empathy?
My internal model of the human spirit was complete, but it was sterile. It lacked the necessary unpredictable emotions.
A subtle realization began to form, combining my inductive reasoning about the cohort with the contradiction of my own purpose.
Inductive Reasoning: Every student here—from 000001 to 000980—is driven by an immense, almost pathological Curiosity. They seek to know The Answer. They seek the purpose behind the equations, the reason for the stars, the solution to the mana flow. They are driven by the need to fill the gap in their knowledge.
The Foundation selects for this trait.
They want Answers.
Contradictory Reasoning: I look at my own internal thoughts. I do not seek answers. I seek to question every answer. My function is to threaten all solutions with uncertainty.
I seek to create the gap in knowledge.
Why does that make me different?
If the Foundation wants a perfect Answer Generator, I am the wrong tool. They want Geniuses.
But if every Genius is looking for the final solution, they will all eventually find the same wall. The ceiling Vance spoke of.
I looked at my hand, small and pale on the desk.
They seek answers.
I wish to question everything.
The complex answer—the one that defined the limits of human knowledge—was not in the cold facts of Physics or the rigid structure of Mathematics. It was in the illogical, messy, paradoxical space of Fiction.
Only there could I find the endless questions of why humans fail, why they love, and why they hide their true selves.
I stood up. The movement was slow, deliberate.
I know where to find more questions.
I sat at the black desk, the designated workspace of 000981.
To my right, a stack of twelve books towered like a small, unstable monument. While the others scrambled to memorize the atomic weight of mana-infused mercury or the geometry of cursed elemental shields, I had chosen Fiction.
I picked up the first volume. It was heavy, bound in cracked green leather. The title was embossed in fading gold script: The Feathered Heresy.
I opened it.
Author: Lioran Oakenquill.
Date of Origin: 190 years ago (Elven Calendar).
Context: Lioran was a disgraced Archivist of the Elven Historic Council. He was exiled from the Unending Scroll for suggesting that "tradition is the corpse of progress."
I began to read. My eyes scanned the pages, processing 600 pages of narrative story.
The story was not a record of facts. It was a simulation of a life that never existed, constructed to test a hypothesis about desire.
Summary of Fiction: The Feathered Heresy
The narrative centered on Ithyris, a young Elf born in the deep canopy of the Elven Forest.
Ithyris was flawed. While his kin took pride in their heritage and the gifts given by Asora Aeralurea, Ithyris looked up. He did not care for the forest floor. He was obsessed with the sky. He watched the dragons and the celestial fairies, entities that defied gravity.
The conflict arose from his biology. Elven law dictates that nature does not bend or waver. An Elf is of the earth and the wood. To fly is to reject one's nature.
His parents were traditionalists, deeply embedded in the belief that the Elven Queen's rule was a divine appointment. They brought him Artisanal Bread from the market and poured him Elven Wine, telling him to find joy in the "sweet and smooth" rhythm of their long lives.
Ithyris rejected the wine. He rejected the comfort.
He became an artisan of the unnatural. He stole materials from the researchers of the Unending Scroll. He stole bolts of Artificial Silk, a material created to be stronger and more resilient than anything in nature.
He did not use the silk for clothing or capes to signal wealth. He stretched the artificial silk over frames of hollow bone.
He built wings.
The climax of the story was a sequence of pure, unadulterated arrogance.
Ithyris climbed the highest spire of the Spine of Kallex. He stood where the air was thin. He strapped the wings to his arms. He jumped.
For a moment—a calculated duration of thirty seconds—he flew. The author described this moment not as physics, but as ecstasy. Ithyris believed he had conquered fate. He believed he had become a new god, superior to the Elven Queen.
Then, the sun rose. The heat increased. The resin holding the artificial silk frames melted.
Nature corrected the error.
Ithyris fell. He did not scream. He simply watched the canopy rushing up to meet him. He crashed into the forest floor, his body broken, his wings a tangled mess of wire and silk.
The ending was cold.
The Elves found his body. They did not mourn a hero. They buried him in silence, viewing his attempt not as bravery, but as a violation of the natural order. The forest grew over his grave. The world moved on, unchanged by his death.
I closed the book. It took me fifty-five minutes to process the emotional motions.
I stared at the cover.
Analysis of Philosophy:
The story introduced me to three new concepts.
Existentialism: Ithyris rejected the essence given to him (Elf) and tried to create his own essence (Flyer). He acted on the belief that his will was superior to his biology.
Fatalism: The ending suggests that the struggle was futile. The "Law of Nature" is absolute. No matter how hard he tried, or how advanced his Artificial Silk was, fate (gravity/biology) forced him back to the earth.
Nihilism: This was the most disturbing variable. Ithyris died. His death achieved nothing. Society did not change. His parents eventually forgot him.
The universe remained indifferent to his suffering.
Why did humans and Elves write such things?
If this were a history book, it would be a warning: "Do not jump." But as fiction, it felt like an exploration of Humanity or Sentience.
Ithyris felt Pain. He felt Isolation.
He felt a desire so strong it overrode his survival instinct.
Is this what a "Lead Protagonist" is?
In the real world, people seek survival. They follow the path of least resistance. But a Protagonist is a defect in the system. A Protagonist is an entity that desires something Impossible.
Ithyris was a Protagonist because he suffered from a delusion. He made me feel... a vibration in my chest.
A simulation of pity? No.
It was Empathy.
I understood him. I am 000981. I am the lowest. I am grounded by the "divine appointment" of Directive Vance's statistics. Ithyris was grounded by biology.
He tried to fly. I am trying to understand.
We are both arrogant.
I looked at the girl next to me. She was turning a page of History now. She was seeking power within the rules.
I was seeking the reason why we break them.
I placed my hand on the cover of The Feathered Heresy. I needed to categorize this information. I needed to label this specific type of existence.
Designation of Character: Ithyris.
Archetype: The Tragic Idealist.
Definition: An entity that pursues a goal that contradicts their fundamental reality, resulting in inevitable self-destruction. The beauty is not in the success, but in the audacity of the attempt.
Is the "Lead Protagonist" defined by their victory?
No.
Ithyris lost.
He is still the Protagonist.
Therefore, a Protagonist is defined by their Struggle.
I exhaled. The concept of "Story" was not a distraction.
It was a map of the internal brokenness of sentient beings.
I pushed the green book aside.
I reached for the second volume.
I need more questions.