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Through the glass of the Maglev train, Kai took in the dramatic arches of his new home for the next four years:
Lumina.
It was more spectacular than he had ever imagined.
The campus stretched out before him, a labyrinth of towering spires and sleek, modern buildings intertwining with ancient stone structures covered in ivy. Each building seemed to tell a story—of groundbreaking discoveries, of interplanetary history, of students who had gone on to invent products, build companies, and change the world.
The central courtyard was a hive of activity. Students hurried between classes, their paths illuminated by floating orbs of light that danced above them, changing colors to indicate different quadrants of the school—blue for Scholar’s Square, light orange for the Timewarp Atrium, and so on. Kai could see a group of engineering students swirling and tapping their fingers in the air, manipulating a hologram of digital blueprints while nearby, an elder storyteller captivated an audience of wide-eyed freshmen sitting cross-legged in the gardens, chins in their hands.
And the girls, oh God…
But Kai’s gaze was drawn to the most iconic building in Lumina: the Celestial Tower, a massive structure that housed the city's most advanced research facilities. It was a masterpiece of design, its crystalline surface reflecting the azure sky, almost shimmering with energy. Inside that tower, Kai knew, was the revered Hall of Innovators. Where portraits of Lumina’s most esteemed Empyreans hung in honor.
He hoped one day to join them.
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“Last stop! Lumina!” a crunchy voice rang out from the Maglev train’s loudspeaker.
A hissing sound. The doors burst open, and all of a sudden, Kai joined Nova ONE’s elite. Only the best and brightest attended Lumina—or in his case, someone with a little luck.
He wasn’t like most of the kids here: rich families, gene-boosted chromosomes, all in competition with each other. Then there were the indifferent ones. For example, Kai had overheard a group of First-Years talking on the train about how their parents were going to fund their ideas regardless, and how they were planning on “digi-dosing” their way through all their classes. Kai wasn’t sure what that meant. The only thing he knew for sure was that he wasn’t in The Outskirts anymore.
Despite being smart enough, talented enough, and overflowing with ideas of his own, Kai never thought he’d attend Lumina. He imagined it. He daydreamed about it. But he knew his dad couldn’t afford it, and opportunities for kids in The Outskirts were rare. Instead, from the time he was a young kid, Kai worked in the mines of Pyronia with his dad doing flarecore assessments, recently getting promoted to Junior Emberstone Extractor. To be honest, Kai enjoyed his life, and didn’t take for granted working with his dad (even if he could be a little “old-fashioned” at times). Still, in Kai’s spare time, he kept a drawing pad in his backpack, pages full of innovative ideas—Laser Lanterns (for miners working deep underground, with a directional light to aim into dark crevices), Flarecore Garments (threaded with Emberstone shards to protect workers from extreme heat), an AquaEmber Purifier (a device to purify and cool water from local rivers and streams on-the-go), the list goes on.
Kai loved coming up with little solutions to real-world problems.
But his biggest fear was that, without the proper resources, none of his ideas would ever come to life.
And what would his life amount to, then?
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Well, one night, his dad came home with a refurbished LumaScreen—pushing open the front door with his foot carrying the big box while singing, “Happy Born-Day… to my son!”
It was an older terminal model, but it came with access to some of Lumina’s educational resources, something almost no one in The Outskirts had. Everyone here just learned through doing: apprenticeships, family businesses, or stories passed along during long days working in the mines. An educational terminal, not just a terminal that shouted the news, was a window of opportunity for Kai.
Then, about a week later, as Kai sat down with his dinner (emberoot stew) to continue watching an old recording of a Pyrotechnics & Ethics lecture, a gorgeous shot of Lumina flashed on his screen. Then, the school faded into the background and a man started talking.
It was an ad:
“Hi, I’m Carmichael Stone, founder of Stone Industries. Are you full of ideas? Do you find yourself daydreaming of a better future? Well, it’s time to turn your dream… into a company. We are always looking to attract the best and brightest talent to Lumina—and this year is no exception. I am excited to announce that the winners of the Stone Scholarship generously granting five students a full-ride to Lumina for all four years of training will be announced next week. Which means if you still haven’t filled out an application, you only have a few more days to take action. That’s right! Only a few more days to bring your ideas to life and maybe… change the world. To apply, please visit Terminal 88: Stone Scholarship dot startup. That’s Terminal 88: Stone Scholarship dot startup. Lumina looks forward to reviewing your application, and I, Carmichael Stone, look forward to funding YOUR big idea.”
While chewing on a meaty emberoot, Kai raced to fill out his application.
The chance to be his own boss? Soup dribbles slid down his chin onto his keyboard. He hated his manager in the mines!
And while Kai had always been a tinkerer, an aspiring engineer and hobbyist product designer, the idea of being something more had planted itself firmly in his mind. For the first time in his life, he imagined himself as a leader. Getting accepted into Lumina was his escape hatch out of The Outskirts.
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The application asked Kai, in essay format, some pie-in-the-sky idea that he had. Something so big, and wide-reaching, that its success would impact every single person on Nova ONE—the goal not just being profitability, but monopoly over an industry or sector.
But Kai didn’t have any of those. All his ideas were… practical.
They didn’t start out with a vision. They started out with a problem. And then, best he could, he’d cobble together a solution.
So, as he’d always done with their little resources in The Outskirts, he made the best of what he had. He articulated his idea to develop a PyroPulse Extractor to mine emberstones by using microscopic explosives insulated by astroglass—rather than the giant Ember Extractor rigs they had been using for decades causing all sorts of collateral damage to the quarries (not to mention the health and safety hazards). It wasn’t a vision to reinvent the mining industry, but the solution to a problem he experienced every day working in the mines. And drunk with excitement, he even included pictures of the invention from his design pad.
Two weeks later, a golden envelope appeared under his door.
Kai had been granted one of the five Stone Scholarships—for the writing quality of his essay? For his invention? What made Lumina, even Carmichael Stone himself, choose Kai, he wasn’t sure. The letter didn’t say. But he didn’t give it much thought. He had been given the opportunity of a lifetime and was ecstatic.
His dad, on the other hand, was not.
He loved Kai, loved seeing him every day, but when Kai shared the news, his father went into one of his winding monologues:
“Did you even read the highlights this morning? Emberstones are in short supply! If we run out of those, we’re toast. Bye bye, Nova ONE. See, if you picked up a newspaper every now and again… Can’t you see we’ve got more important things to focus on? You know, your generation is always looking for the quick fix… That’s not how we learned to put food on the table, I’ll tell you that… And what’s that big fancy school gonna teach you that you don’t already know? Work hard. Be dependable. These kids with all their degrees… Bet they couldn’t last an hour in the quarry heat! Heh-heh-heh. Get it? Degrees. Quarry heat. OK. Listen Kai.”
And then his dad said what most dads say once they remember the past isn’t the future.
He told Kai he had all the potential in the world. That if anyone deserved this opportunity, it was him. And that if he was going to leave The Outskirts, try to get his ideas funded and play this startup game…
“Don’t do it for the money. That’s a rat’s race. Do it to make our world a better place.”
Those words played on a loop in Kai’s head as he got off the Maglev train and took his first steps onto Lumina’s campus, taking in all its grandeur and wealth.
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All of a sudden, an orb soared over and started bouncing above Kai’s head, glowing neon green. Its inner-circuitry whirred as it maintained a few feet of distance. Kai tried to swat it away, but it was just slightly out of reach.
“Don’t bother,” said another student walking up beside him, a neon green orb hovering above his head too. “Attendance Orb. It’s tracking your Identity Band,” he said, and pointed to Kai’s left wrist.
Kai looked down at his very outdated, first-generation Identity Band glowing a faint neon green through its cracked screen. Then he looked at the other student’s Identity Band, the newest model, Kai could tell, made from cobalt, carbon fiber, and magemetal (extremely rare, durable, and capable of processing codes and bits at lightning speed).
As more students got off the Maglev train and entered the grandiose gardens of Lumina, more green orbs appeared—herding them into a group. Until eventually, when all First-Year students had been accounted for (and had been waiting around for some time), a disheveled boy with a smartpack bouncing on his back came running over shouting and panting:
“Sahrry! Sahrry I’m late! I’m late. OK, whoooooook, sorry, my last group had a little too much fun in The Arcane Courtyard. But I'm here. Welcome! Gah, hang on, let me catch my breath. Welcome! To Lumina!”
He threw his arms out to both sides, while a rehearsed but still excited and genuine smile took over his face. A couple nearby students snickered, while the rest stood silently, bored.
“My name is Garth. Third-Year. I’ll be your Welcome Guide. We have a lot of ground to cover before we get you all logged in, so let’s begin the tour. Shall we?”
All together, their group of easily two hundred students, maybe more, followed Garth and moved as one. Lumina was huge, and the tour took almost three hours to complete. There was Scholar’s Square, filled with grand lecture halls and virtual classrooms; Timewarp Atrium, dedicated to the study of Nova ONE’s history with archives and interactive exhibits of the other planets in The Thundercloud System; The Pitch Arena, an electrifying venue where once per year the highest-ranked students presented their startup ideas to a panel of judges in competition for funding; The Administrative Quarter, tucked in the back of the campus; Serenity Center, where students had access to state-of-the-art technology to promote health and wellness (like Bicep Bikes, Detox Pods, and a giant Hydrotherapy Pool); The Arcane Courtyard, enclosed by protective magical barriers, where students could safely experiment with new gadgets and innovations without fear of accident or injury; Nexus Commons, a spacious indoor area with high ceilings and large windows equipped with a food court, study nooks, and an open-air terrace where students could relax between or after classes; and lastly…
“Here we are! The end of our tour, but the beginning of your adventure here at Lumina. Welcome to The Gaming Center!”
Garth pushed open the massive double doors and unveiled a completely white hall the size of an electroball field filled with rows and rows, thousands of them, of charcoal grey silky-plush zonechairs and jet-black terminals. The room was almost completely silent, except for a soft whirring sound humming from each station—all together creating what can only be described as a technological windstorm. Out of thousands of terminal stations, about half were already filled with students—spaced apart in no particular order. Some looked like they’d been there for hours, while others blinked their eyes, color returning, before getting up and walking out of the room to head to their next class.
Garth addressed the group of First-Year students and said, “Find an empty zonechair and take a seat. Don’t be shy. There’s plenty of terminals for everyone.”
Kai made his way up one of the rows and took a seat. The zonechair felt light as a feather. Then it started to acclimate to his body temperature, the curvature of his spine, the shape of his head, adjusting itself until Kai’s body and his zonechair felt like one cohesive entity. Slowly, sensory depravation started to kick in, and he could feel himself drifting into an altered state of awareness—still awake, still “here,” but his mind beginning to entertain the idea of also being somewhere else.
Walking over to the Gaming Center’s control panel, Garth tapped the microphone and said, “Alright, once you’ve found yourself a terminal—comfy, isn’t it?—place your Identity Band on your left armrest so it’s touching the zonepad and just try to relax. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Kai positioned his cracked Identity Band on his armrest. He was nervous, unsure of what to expect.
Looking for a friend, someone he might find some confidence in, he turned to his right. Sitting next to him was the kid from when they’d first arrived to Lumina—he recognized his cobalt Identity Band.
“This should be fun?” said Kai, unsure of himself.
But the kid, with spiky black hair and a gold necklace didn’t even turn to respond. Just closed his eyes as his zonechair curved to his body and said, “I’m not here to have fun. I’m here to win.”
And then their eyes went white.