"I know this is all just a story,"
Solus muttered as he twisted another screw into the drone he was building. The machine was almost the same size as his toddler body, with hundreds of wires scattered under the half-open cover. He sat there on the cold floor, attaching parts with his tiny hands that shouldn't have been able to handle such precise work.
"I am quite sure this is a story because everything feels wrong...I just know this is not real."
"There you are," a woman called from the doorway. She was tall and elegant, wearing a black gown that matched her braided black hair perfectly.
"Sweetie, you can't keep skipping meals. You didn't eat anything last night either."
She walked toward Solus, then knelt down beside him and held the plate closer to his mouth. The smell of warm food filled the air between them.
"Mama, look!" Solus pointed at his creation. "I remade the whole drone and fixed the portal connection port. Everyone else makes it 12.24F, but they're all wrong. It's supposed to be 22.24F."
His mother sighed deeply before asking, "Do you really enjoy building those things so much? Other children your age can't even read properly yet, let alone build machines."
"...are you mad?"
His mother's stern smile softened slightly. "No, sweetie. Do whatever makes you happy. Now here - I brought your food. Your hands are dirty from working, so I'll feed you. Say ahhh..."
Solus sighed with a disappointed look on his small face. He hated that human bodies needed food to survive. Not only was eating a waste of time, but it was such a hassle compared to cybernetic bodies. Those only needed a small fusion reaction inside to keep going for thousands of years without stopping.
Solus was too small, not even two years old yet. The stupid laws said he couldn't get a cybernetic body until he was older.
"I hate those laws. If they did not exist, I would have built one myself already."
He opened his mouth each time his mother brought the spoon close, chewing while his eyes stayed fixed on the drone. His mind was already working on the next improvements.
When his mother finally left after feeding him, Solus rose to his feet and walked over to the pile of books in the corner of the room. He climbed onto the stack until he could look outside through the window. The artificial sky was its usual pale white, with the same fake star shining down as always.
"I am sure that this is a story. Everything here is fake. Does that mean my mother is fake too? Maybe she is fake. Why should I care?"
He jumped down from the books, landing lightly on his small feet. The drone he was building was too simple for him since he had already built better ones before. This one was just to hide what he was really working on.
He turned on the tablet lying on the floor and immediately resumed the bachelor's-level science lessons where he had left off. If anyone found out, they would either laugh it off or report it to the authorities, which would cause problems. He needed to learn everything he could as fast as possible if he wanted to do something about this world he was sure wasn't real.
Right now, he didn't have any real proof that everything was fake. It was just a hypothesis with nothing to back it up yet.
"I do not care. If this is a simulation, I will corrupt it. If this is a story, I will rewrite it. No one can stop me."
He hammered every single character, every equation, every diagram into his head with brutal efficiency. His mother occasionally peeked through the half-open door, smiling to herself as she assumed he was watching simple children's videos. After hours of consuming knowledge like a starved animal, he finally collapsed onto his back, his eyes burning red from the strain. The urgency wasn't just about learning; there was another reason for his desperate rush.
"3...2...1..."
Right on cue, his mother's voice called out, "Sweetie! It's time to eat!"
She appeared in the doorway, her smile softening as she saw him sprawled on the floor. "Aww, look at my little boy, are you tired from playing?"
Solus ignored her and kept his grim stare fixed on the ceiling. It wasn't that he hated her cooking; he just hated the waste of time that eating required. The chewing, the swallowing, the sitting still - all of it stolen from his precious study time.
But the bigger problem was after that because his time was almost up. After forcing down the meal, he watched his mother disappear downstairs to wash the dishes. Now the real countdown began. He had mere minutes left before he would hit his daily deadline: sleep.
He rushed to his tablet and his eyes hovered across quantum mechanics notes, cramming as many formulas as possible into his memory. An internal timer ticked away in his mind, and at the very last second, he switched off the tablet and flopped onto his back. He closed his eyes just as the door opened.
His mother's soft voice whispered, "He's already fallen asleep... poor tired boy."
She lifted his small body carefully, making sure not to wake him up as she carried him across the room to the double bed. After gently settling him under the soft covers, she walked slowly around to the other side of the bed and lay down beside him. The large house stood silent around them as it was only the two of them.
She was so close now that Solus could feel each warm breath hitting his hair. Eight full hours of sleep would be an unacceptable waste of precious time which he could be using to learn and plan and think. But his developing brain required at least six if he wanted to keep absorbing hundreds of pages of information every single day without burning out completely.
His sharp mental calculations left him with exactly two potentially useful hours between when she fell asleep and when his own body would finally force him to shut down. He couldn't even move from his spot, not with his mother's arm draped heavily across his small frame, and she always woke at even the slightest movement no matter how careful he tried to be. But Solus had already planned for this exact situation. As her breathing deepened into steady, he began silently working through the quantum mechanics problems he had memorized earlier in the day, solving each complex equation step by step in the perfect dark theater of his mind where no one could watch or interrupt.
Two hours later, exhaustion finally dragged him into proper sleep.
After a peaceful night of sleep, he woke up as bright daylight hit his eyes. When he looked around, the bed was empty.
"Someone is here."
He knew immediately because his mother usually slept a few hours longer than him. If she was already awake, it meant an officer had arrived.
"That's not my problem."
He climbed out of bed and sat on the floor in front of his tablet, immediately resuming his quantum mechanics lessons. The equations he had learned before sleeping came in handy because he was able to easily understand the lessons. His mother's voice mingled with someone else's downstairs, their voices muffled but growing louder. Finally, footsteps came up the stairs and came to a halt at his door.
Solus swiftly changed the screen to a silly children's video without drawing attention to himself. The officer, dressed in the standard black and neon red-striped uniform, stepped inside while his mother returned downstairs.
It was not uncommon for different officers to pay him a visit. This one sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Solus, looking at the childish video playing on the tablet.
"So, you're Sir Vernen's kid," the officer said. It's the first time we've met."
Solus did not even look up at him, his gaze fixed on the meaningless animation.
"Miss Evara said you could talk...can you?"
Solus raised his head and gave the officer an expressionless look. "Googoo ga ga."
"Hmm, interesting. So how long are you going to act like that?"