Throughout the Milky Way, the idea of the Universal Law of Pronoia was widely known. It was something very different from what people understood as luck or fortune.
For the citizens of the Way, luck was not always seen as a good omen. Besides being uncertain, it rarely appeared when it was most needed. Its unpredictability made it unreliable and, over time, culturally unviable.
The fact that it was almost impossible to demand its presence or provoke its manifestation pushed the concept of luck into irrelevance across much of the Milky Way. But it had not always been so.
Long ago, the idea of luck began to spread through the galactic collective unconscious, quickly becoming popular among peoples and cultures. At first, it seemed positive. Soon, however, it revealed itself to be a catalyst for chaos.
Fear, insecurity, dependence, and paralysis began to emerge in entire societies. Distant civilizations whose only common variable was an obsession with the idea of luck. These were the symptoms detected by the Solar Phoenixes, the ancestral beings responsible for the founding of the humanoid races of the galaxy, including humanity itself.
The sages said that luck only manifested in territories dominated by chaos. And when chaos reigns, neither luck nor fortune is capable of saving anyone.
Thus, the idea of luck became obsolete in the Milky Way. Defending its validity began to sound as absurd as trying to convince someone that the Earth was flat.
Pronoia, on the other hand, pointed to something beyond chance. It represented the existence of a path completely opposed to darkness and self destruction. A path of guidance, not of guarantee.
This path came to be called Pronoia.
The Universal Law of Pronoia states:
The universe, people, and circumstances conspire in my favor when I conspire in favor of the universe.
Everything conspires for my growth when I use this truth as my compass.
The Aquaphoenixes, therefore, were not creatures of luck, but of pronoia. Their power of resolution and elevation promoted the release and renewal of everything that had remained stagnant, without escape, causing massive positive transformations. This unlocking represented by the Aquaphoenixes was responsible for the pleasant feeling of luck that many associated with their birth.
Every Aquaphoenix that had once been a Solar Phoenix possessed something known as a mirror soul — a parallel manifestation in the humanoid world, responsible for guiding resolutions and understandings that once seemed impossible for humanoid consciousness.
And somewhere on the surface of Earth, far beyond Oblivion, the societies of the Milky Way, and any awareness of pronoia, there existed Equador.
The boy who believed himself to be the unluckiest in the world.
Much is said about luck in our world. Some people seem to be born full of it, as if they carried an invisible amulet in their pocket from their very first cry. Others are born with so little that they seem to have been forgotten in the distribution.
But even the most fortunate have felt unlucky at some point. It is impossible to pass through life without stumbling upon that feeling.
For Equador, however, the idea of bad luck was never small.
He did not feel unlucky from time to time.
He felt like the unluckiest boy in the world.
It had all begun in childhood, when an ordinary day dawned differently. Equador woke up feverish — and never fully recovered. He became a sickly child. While his peers expanded their horizons, he struggled simply to meet the minimum required to survive each day.
Equador was born in the city of Atlas, a vast metropolis built on Marajó Island, in northern Brazil. A city born of the Amazon rainforest, the mountains, the beach, and the river. The second largest metropolis in the Southern Hemisphere, second only to São Paulo.
The son of Graça and Josefino, Equador was the second child and the only boy in the family. He had just one sister — very different from him, by the way. He also lived with his grandfather, with whom he grew up more closely than with anyone else in the house.
Equador's bad luck seemed to begin with his father.
Unlike many men, Josefino was not drawn to stability or consistency, but to the thrill of sudden success and the allure of a lucky break. He was obsessed with gambling and would do anything to achieve his dream of winning a major prize.
As a result, the household lived in cycles. There were days of loud enthusiasm, hastily written plans, long phone calls, and promises thrown into the air as if they had already been fulfilled. And there were days of silence, overdue bills, and the constant sound of the television left on, trying to fill the emptiness until the next hope appeared.
Josefino believed in the lucky break. He woke up thinking about it. He went to sleep thinking about it. He claimed that stability was for people without imagination, that the world belonged to those brave enough to bet big.
From a distance, Equador learned that luck was never constant. And that when it did arrive, it rarely appeared at the right moment — even though it sometimes brought fortune and proved necessary.
When Equador was eight years old, his father arrived home later than usual, out of breath, smiling too much. He spoke loudly, repeated phrases, hugged whoever was nearby.
"I did it!" he said. "Finally! This time it's real."
Josefino had won a multimillion dollar prize in the lottery.
That night, the house slept differently. There was expectation in the hallways, as if everything were about to arrange itself. Equador went to bed believing he would wake up in a better place.
Equador woke up in an empty house.
His father's shoes were no longer by the door. And the wardrobe felt far too light. When he entered the bedroom, he did not smell the strong cologne that usually lingered after his father left. But on his bed, he found a folded piece of paper, with few words and hurried handwriting:
Dad loves you. I'll be back soon.
But Josefino never came back.
Graça did not speak much about it. The next day, she woke up early, opened the boarding house, and made coffee for the guests. The world continued to demand practical solutions far more urgently than long explanations.
After her husband's departure, Graça transformed the old house into a boarding house: Sol e Mar Boarding House. Day after day, year after year, the place grew. What began as something small expanded floor by floor until it became a complex: Sol e Mar Convenience Store, Sol e Mar Bakery, Sol e Mar Aesthetics, Sol e Mar Mini Spa, Sol e Mar Garments.
The house no longer felt like a house.
Equador began living in the basement alongside his mother and grandfather. His older sister studied in the city center and rarely appeared.
Despite his bad luck, the world always seemed large enough for there to be people in far worse situations.
Still, it was impossible to deny it: from a distance, Equador was a successful boy. Unlike his classmates and even relatives of the same age, he seemed to move at a different rhythm, across a different ocean, toward a destiny he had not yet learned to name.
And despite everything, he still had a devoted mother. And despite his father's absence, he still had his grandfather. Perhaps this was not a matter of luck or misfortune. Perhaps it was pronoia.
From an early age, when people asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Equador always gave the same answer.
"An adult man."
Not a soccer player.
Not a famous singer.
He simply wanted to grow up.
People laughed. Corrected him. Asked again. He repeated himself.
"A grown man."
Because Equador could hardly wait to do everything adult men did. To be strong. To travel the world. To be president, an astronaut, anything big and important. Everything was harder to reach when you were a child. And everything could hurt you when you were not strong enough to defend yourself.
When puberty began arriving for the others, Equador started counting the years until his turn would come. He waited eagerly for his thirteenth birthday, believing that it would mark the beginning of becoming the adult man he had always dreamed of being.
And indeed, everything changed.
At thirteen, Equador began suffering frequent headaches, followed by fevers and seizures. Much of the bad luck he had always felt seemed to stem from this sickly nature, whose cause or permanent solution no doctor had ever managed to discover.
An excess of energy stored in the brain that short circuited. That was the only explanation.
Sometimes he woke up feeling fine, but halfway through the day he had to sit down because his body failed him. That was the beginning of the reasons why Equador started missing school. He hated going to class and being mocked for not being able to do even half of what others could. Or having to face his greatest fear of all: having a seizure in front of everyone.
Presenting work in front of the class was the last thing he wanted. He felt mortified just imagining making new friends, because the thought of fainting while trying to talk to someone made his face burn with shame. For that reason, he preferred not to risk it.
At school, he had only one friend: Júlio César, another small boy like him, who was not very popular either. When Equador left school, they still met occasionally to watch movies. But they saw each other less and less as time passed, as Júlio made more friends and grew.
While his classmates grew taller, their voices deepened, and their bodies grew stronger, Equador remained much the same. Average height. Slim build. Little strength.
At school, he always sat at the back of the classroom. In physical education, he ran half a lap and stopped near the water fountain. No matter how much he wanted to run more, the teacher always ordered him to sit down, afraid the boy might have a seizure, as had once happened during exercise.
After that incident, Equador stopped playing altogether and spent recess alone, watching the others play. Or lost in his imagination.
In addition, almost no one invited him to anything. And when they did, out of pity, he feared that it might happen again. So he said no. After months of begging his mother, she finally agreed that he could study online. Equador promised he would help more at the boarding house and stay with his grandfather all day. That was what finally convinced her.
For Equador, being the youngest meant enduring a lot of teasing, especially within his own family. After his father's sudden departure, Equador became responsible for part of the work at the boarding house and for helping care for his grandfather, since it was not yet his turn to leave for the city to study and he had time to spare.
Violeta, his older sister, seemed to manage life with little effort. She spent most of her time in downtown Atlas, finishing her higher education. Most of the work his mother did went toward paying Violeta's studies, and very little was left for them. Just enough for the basics, which was already more than enough.
Graça was proud of her children, but something in Equador's chest wanted to change the way things worked. His mother was growing older and more tired, and he always feared the day she would no longer be able to work as much as she did.
All that pressure increased the anxiety and frustration that fueled the same desire to grow up that Equador had felt since childhood.
After his father left, his grandfather became his greatest companion.
His grandfather's name was Pedro. He lived in the back room of the small basement where they stayed. He always wore linen shirts open at the chest, applied far too much cologne, and had the habit of wearing a large watch and dark sunglasses even inside the house. A very vain old man, who sat on the sofa like someone who still ruled the world, even though he barely went out into it anymore.
The old man loved that the house had become a boarding house. He constantly told stories of his days traveling across Brazil as an industrial truck driver. Much of his effort to dress well was meant to impress the guests, who always laughed and gave him attention whenever they came and went.
Much of Equador's adolescence was spent beside his grandfather, and from him he absorbed everything he could about what it meant to be an adult man.
And the years passed. They played dominoes together. Took their medicines together. Watched soap operas while drinking an obligatory little coffee, without sugar, which Equador hated at first but eventually got used to.
His grandfather had studied engines and mechanics and had worked in the construction of the city during the early days of Atlas's industrial development. Because of that, he taught Equador how to use tools and fix nearly everything that broke in the boarding house.
Unlike his mother, who was rarely home, his grandfather always noticed when Equador began to feel unwell. One look was enough.
"Did you take your medicine? Sit down for a bit, it'll pass," he would say, even before Equador mentioned feeling sick.
But time passed, and it was the grandfather who began to fail. He forgot schedules. Needed help walking. And Equador helped him without hesitation, working tirelessly to care for him until the end.
One night, his grandfather said:
"You're growing. You're going to live great stories you can't even imagine in the life that's coming for you. You'll win. And you'll remember that I told you so."
Equador nodded. Something in those words sounded like a message he had been searching for his entire life and had finally found—an invisible inheritance, impossible to lose.
His grandfather died on an ordinary morning. And his empty room became the office of Equador's dreams. Everything continued. Time moved quickly, submerging memories and absences beneath distant dreams and hopes.
After his grandfather's death, Equador began working more. He studied at night. Made plans on the computer while the house slept. He believed that if it worked out, he could leave that place and reach his dream of becoming the man he had always wanted to be.
For some time now, there had been more space for him to work within the boarding house complex. So he decided to work twice as hard to create a project that would open the doors to his dreams.
He was building, alone, a small online store. He learned everything through the internet. Planned every detail in silence. And chose the launch day carefully: his birthday, at the end of the year.
Believing that this time, things would finally work out.
But they would not happen as planned—even though, in the end, everything would somehow turn out right.