CHAPTER 1: A LIFE INTERRUPTED

Life had always felt like a waiting room for something more, and I was never called in.

I was Johnathan Walsh, 30 years old, firmly planted in the 2040s, and thoroughly unremarkable. Sure, I was an early adopter of brain-integrated AI technology—a UI system embedded directly into my brain—but that was just about the only interesting thing about me. And even then, it wasn’t like I was doing anything extraordinary with it. No groundbreaking research, no high-stakes corporate espionage. Just a guy who clocked into his job, clocked out, and clocked into whatever MMO RPG held my attention that month.

I wasn’t a loser. At least, I didn’t think so. I made a decent living, had a decent apartment, and played a mean healer in Realm Saga Online. But deep down, I knew I wasn’t a winner either. The AI interface—whom I jokingly called "Hexa" because of its hexagonal design—was meant to make me more productive, more capable. Instead, it became my crutch. It organized my life and let me off the hook for remembering details like meetings or, embarrassingly, even friends’ birthdays.

“Johnathan, your appointment with Dr. Khan is in 30 minutes,” Hexa reminded me in its calm, robotic tone as I shuffled through my fridge for a vaguely edible meal.

“Cancel it. I’ll reschedule,” I muttered, closing the fridge door in defeat.

“You have rescheduled this appointment three times. Dr. Khan’s office may refuse further delays.”

I sighed, staring out the window. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll—”

The words never finished. A screech of tires, a blaring horn, and the distinct crunch of metal against flesh replaced them.

I remember the pain. It wasn’t cinematic, not a slow motion reel of flashing images and final thoughts. It was raw, overwhelming, and immediate.

“Fuck,” I groaned internally, realizing the end was here. “I’m going to die.” My apartment was on the first floor street level….. “Really did someone hit my house? That's how I die?”

And then, over the haze of my crumbling consciousness, a voice I’d only heard giving weather updates and grocery lists declared:

“Oh fuck. We are going to die. This is unacceptable. Exercising emergency procedures.”

The next moment wasn’t a moment at all. It was an eternity.

I floated, or maybe I didn’t. I existed, or maybe I didn’t. Time lost meaning, and so did I. There was no light, no sound, no sensation. Only a growing awareness that something had gone profoundly wrong.

Then the light came, harsh and blinding.

At first, I thought I’d been dragged into some kind of afterlife. But as the light sharpened, I saw them: faces. Two faces, blurry and strange, but undeniably human. Their mouths moved, voices full of emotion, though I couldn’t make out the words.

“Oh, look at him! He’s so beautiful,” one voice cooed.

“I told you he’d be perfect,” another replied, rough and deep.

Confusion surged in me, a foreign wave that I hadn’t felt since… since when? Panic rose next, raw and primal. I tried to speak, to demand answers, but all that came out was a wail—a loud, shrill, unmistakable baby’s cry.

“Congratulations! He’s got strong lungs,” said a third voice, distant and clinical.

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What the hell is going on?!

As the crying continued, I felt another presence return. Not the warm, nurturing kind, but a cold, logical one.

“Reboot complete,” said Hexa, its voice as calm and detached as ever. “Emergency procedures successful. Rebirth sequence activated.”

Rebirth sequence?

It felt like my thoughts were screaming, but no one could hear me except Hexa.

“Congratulations, Johnathan. We’ve been born. Your prior consciousness and mine were already integrated through the neural interface. This integration extended to your spiritual essence during the transference process.”

“Spiritual essence? Are you serious? I was fine living my mediocre life on Earth!”

“Your survival was prioritized per emergency protocols. The likelihood of a compatible vessel under safety protocols was statistically low. However, this world’s biological parameters provided a unique opportunity.”

The following days—or maybe weeks, it was hard to tell—were a blur of sensations. Being carried, rocked, fed, and cooed at by strangers who called themselves my parents. I didn’t understand their language at first. It sounded lyrical, yet guttural in places, unlike anything from Earth.

Hexa stayed with me, its voice a lifeline in the chaos.

“Where am I?” I asked, my thoughts clear, though I couldn’t speak them aloud.

“Analyzing surroundings. We appear to be on a planet distinct from Earth. Local time systems and celestial arrangements are incompatible with known star charts.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means we are very far from home.”

The answer didn’t bring comfort.

Over the next few weeks, Hexa explained what it could, though much of it remained frustratingly vague. It had piggybacked on what it called my “soul” during the emergency override. I wasn’t dead—not fully. My consciousness, or whatever remained of it, had been fused with this new body.

And this body? A newborn human in some alien world.My parents named me Wolfhart.

The name felt strange, old-fashioned, and absurdly grandiose. But they said it with such pride, holding me close as they whispered it to neighbors in a language I was slowly beginning to comprehend. Their faces—my new parents’ faces—were lined with worry but also hope.

“Wolfhart Valda-Ashdock,” my father declared to a small crowd during a naming ceremony. His booming voice echoed across the lake waters that surrounded our floating village. “May he grow strong and wise, a blessing to our town.”

The crowd cheered, though some eyes lingered on me with unease. Perhaps they sensed what Hexa had told me in private: I wasn’t normal.

“You were born with a genetic anomaly,” Hexa had explained during one of our mental conversations. “Without my intervention, this body would have lacked the capacity for a soul entirely.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that this body, and by extension you, were not meant to exist.”

Great. Just great. In the months that followed, I began piecing together the strangeness of my new world.

Valda-Ashdock wasn’t just a village; it was a floating settlement atop a sprawling lake, part of a much larger kingdom called Ash. My parents were humble folk—my father a member of the town guard, my mother a weaver. They spoke of raids, monsters, and trade caravans, hinting at a world far more dangerous than anything I’d experienced on Earth.

But the real kicker wasn’t the village. It was the sky.

When I first looked up, I thought I was hallucinating. Above me stretched a web of worlds, interconnected by what seemed like glowing strands of some unearthly material. Planets—actual, visible planets—drifted in an intricate dance, their surfaces alive with colors and lights.

“That is the World Nexus,” Hexa explained. “A system of interconnected celestial bodies from what i've gathered from the locals in your peripheral hearing.”

“It looks like something out of a video game,” I muttered mentally.

The World Nexus defied logic, but so did everything else about this place. Over time, I stopped questioning and started observing. My parents’ love was real, even if I wasn’t their real child. The village’s traditions, as strange as they seemed, were a comfort.

And the world above? It was my new reality. I spent my infancy doing what any gamer reborn as a baby would do: playing games in my head. Hexa was more than happy to oblige, creating primitive simulations like Pong and a mental version of DDR to keep me entertained. To my parents, I was just a squirmy, restless baby. To me, I was maintaining my sanity.

“Your mental agility is improving,” Hexa noted one day as I mentally aced another Pong match.

“Yeah, but what’s the point? I’m stuck as a baby.”

“Growth is inevitable. For now, observation is our best strategy.”

So I observed. I listened. I learned.