The smell of burnt circuitry mixed with his mother's synthetic curry filled their cramped living pod. Theo sat cross-legged on his bed, fingers dancing through the air as he tweaked his personal system interface. 

"You're doing it again," his younger sister Mai said from the doorway, her dark hair tied in messy knots. She was wearing his old jacket, the one with too many pockets that their mother had mended countless times.

"Doing what?" Theo didn't look up.

"That thing where you're here but not here," Mai said, flopping onto his bed and sending several components clattering to the floor. "Mom says dinner's getting cold. Real food today, not the printed stuff." 

Theo nodded, making one final adjustment. In his mind, the patterns were shifting, forming connections that probably didn't exist. That was his problem—seeing possibilities in everything but never quite grasping them fully. His teachers called it attention deficit. The career counselor had suggested practical trades, things that didn't require the focus he supposedly lacked. He had been appalled, vowing never to visit them again. 

Through their pod's only window, the eternal twilight of Karaakh painted everything in shades of amber and grey. Somewhere up there, beyond the perpetual smog layer, the Nexus Planet floated among the clouds, its crystalline spires reaching toward actual sunlight. He'd seen it once, in a bootlegged feed—the place where Systemweavers turned possibilities into reality.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"Earth to Theo," Mai waved her hand in front of his face. "You're thinking about that school again, aren't you? The one where rich kids learn to bend reality?"

"They don't bend reality," he corrected automatically, finally looking up. "They just... see it differently. The systems are already there, Mai. In everything. Everyone uses them, but nobody really looks at them. There's a deeper layer to it, hidden from everyone's eyes. I can feel it."

Mai rolled her eyes, but there was affection in her gesture. "You're weird, you know that? But the good kind of weird." She tugged at his arm. "Come on, before mom starts her 'family time is sacred' speech again."

As he stood up, a notification popped inside his head—rejection from the local apprenticeship program. Too unfocused, probably. Too dreamy. Too everything that didn't fit into their neat little boxes. Theo smiled, surprising himself. Somehow, each rejection felt less like a door closing and more like a sign pointing him toward a different path. He just hadn't figured out what that path was yet. The smell of real spices grew stronger as they headed toward their tiny kitchen unit. Their mother had probably traded extra shifts at the atmospheric processing plant for actual ingredients again. She did that sometimes, on days when the weight of their circumstances felt particularly heavy.

"Race you," Mai suddenly declared, darting ahead.

Theo watched her go, his hand absently dismissing the rejection notice with a gentle swipe. Below it, in an unusually soft lavender-blue, appeared a gentle message: "Keep building your path ✨" Through his modified interface, even that simple gesture felt more meaningful, more connected to the deeper workings of the system. If others saw him now, they'd be surprised to know he'd made the usually rigid, cold interface just a little more personal, a little more alive. Nothing special, by any standard measure. But then again, he thought, maybe that was exactly the point.