CHAPTER 1 — THE PERFECT ALGORITHM
At sixteen, Aurelian Voss had turned adolescence into a laboratory for human behavior.
He was exactly what adults expected: he smiled when required, nodded on cue, asked only what was necessary. Teachers adored him. Students admired him. No one saw that, in any deep and functional sense, there was nothing authentic behind it.
For months, he had studied human reactions the way a scientist studies volatile elements: the way a friend slapped a shoulder in greeting, the exaggerated laughter of confidants, the way a girl lowered her gaze when she was nervous.
He memorized them. Classified them. Reproduced them.
First rule: when you imitate, introduce a minimal flaw. Absolute perfection raises suspicion.
One day, his classmate Evan hugged him after seeing his final exam grade.
"Bro, you crushed it!"
Aurelian smiled. He forced a blush into his face, calibrated his gaze toward the floor, let his hand adopt a clumsy gesture. Calculated humility. Evan believed every detail.
"Your help with the formulas made the difference," Aurelian said, knowing it was a lie. He had studied alone.
Evan grew genuinely emotional. Aurelian memorized his expression like a reference photograph. The hug lasted exactly three seconds. He counted them.
But behind the perfect mask, a single word echoed constantly in his mind: noise.
The smell of sweat and cheap perfume. The screech of metal lockers. The chaotic overlap of hysterical laughter and unnecessary shouting. He didn't feel hatred. It was a simple aversion to inefficiency. He saw them as poorly calibrated machines—systems that consumed energy without purpose.
Imperfect. Disposable.
---
One night, his mother cried in her room, believing he was asleep.
"I don't know what's wrong with him," she said through tears. "He's so good, so kind, so perfect… but sometimes I feel like he's not really there. Like he looks at me without seeing me. As if I were… transparent."
Awake in the next room, Aurelian pressed his forehead against the cold wall.
Almost.
She almost saw him.
But his father held her, spoke about teenage stress, hormonal changes, fleeting nonsense. No one wants to believe their perfect child is a carefully constructed mirage.
---
Adolescence also taught him his most valuable skill: manipulation without direct consequences.
One day, he decided to test something simple—almost experimental.
"I think Professor Harlan is going to quit," he let the sentence drift in front of two students in the library, with the exact tone of someone sharing a half-secret.
Three days later, half the school was talking about it as if it were confirmed fact. Within a week, the professor had to publicly deny it before the principal.
Aurelian watched without emotion. It didn't benefit him in any way. He only wanted to confirm the pattern: a spark can set a forest on fire if it's thrown at the right point of friction.
---
One night, he looked at himself in the institute's bathroom mirror. The fluorescent lights cast harsh shadows over his face. Behind him, the reflection showed what everyone wanted to see: a kind, brilliant, perfect young man.
But he stared at the absence behind his own eyes. The functional void he had learned to disguise with appropriate gestures.
He understood something that would follow him for the rest of his life: he was not like them. Normality was only a survival algorithm. A useful disguise for moving through a world that punished difference.
"Silence is the only real order," he whispered to his reflection.
He knew it then: he was perfecting himself. Every interaction was a test. Every believed lie, a confirmation of his control.
And the world—though it did not yet know it—was beginning to be shaped to the measure of his will.