Year: 3024
The world didn't end.
It evolved—and in doing so, it forgot how to live.
From the rooftop of the two-hundredth floor, I watched humanity drift through its greatest achievement and its greatest failure. Earth had not grown larger in size, but denser—layer upon layer of steel, glass, and artificial skies stacked toward the heavens. Humans no longer belonged to the ground. They lived in the air, colonized the Moon, and floated through space in massive orbital cities.
This was the future our ancestors once dreamed of.
Now, it felt hollow.
A hover-train sliced through the clouds like a silver needle, humming softly as it stitched one floating district to another. Far below, autonomous vehicles flooded the streets in perfect synchronization. No horns. No chaos. No people.
The sidewalks were empty.
Humans didn't walk anymore.
They reclined in Aero-Chairs—sleek levitating pods that carried them from one dopamine feed to the next. Work, pleasure, communication, even intimacy… everything happened without movement. Looking at them, you'd think legs were a design flaw evolution forgot to delete.
But I still used mine.
The wind lashed against my body as I stood at the edge of the rooftop, my heavy fabric jacket snapping violently. In an era of Smart-Skin clothing—garments that changed texture, color, and temperature with a thought—my clothes looked primitive.
They were old.
They were uncomfortable.
They were real.
My name is Veer.
I am eighteen years old, though age itself is becoming obsolete. In this era, people replace organs like spare parts, trade flesh for circuitry, and stretch their lifespans to two or three centuries. They don't live longer—they just refuse to die.
They consume tasteless nutrient slurry.
They avoid physical touch.
They've stopped procreating naturally.
Even the air they breathe is filtered, sterilized, stripped of smell and flavor.
I was born into this world—but I was not built for it.
My father made sure of that.
A high-ranking scientist. A genius revered by the system and hated by those who understood what he truly worked on. His name carried enough weight to earn him awards… and enough secrets to earn him death threats.
He raised me differently.
Not as a citizen of the future—
—but as a relic of the past.
"The lift is here," I muttered.
I glanced at my wrist. An analog-style watch—ancient by modern standards—ticked softly. No holograms. No neural sync. Just gears and time.
The air in front of me shimmered.
At first, it looked like heat distortion. Then came the sound—a faint hum, like trillions of microscopic voices vibrating in perfect harmony. Nanoscopic particles began to assemble, invisible dust locking together with mathematical precision.
Within seconds, a pearlescent white capsule materialized out of thin air.
The lift.
Its door slid open with a pressurized hiss.
I stepped inside.
The interior was minimalistic, almost oppressive. The floor was obsidian glass—dark enough to reflect my own silhouette. As the lift descended, the glass turned transparent.
The city rushed upward toward me.
Neon towers. Artificial forests glowing under synthetic suns. Endless layers of metal and light. And everywhere—robots. They walked, cleaned, repaired, guarded.
They were the real citizens now.
The humans who commanded them rarely left their beds.
The lift slowed.
The world vanished.
I arrived home.
Or rather—a fortress pretending to be one.
My watch pulsed once against my wrist. A silent authorization signal. The walls responded immediately. Exotic alloy plates—harvested from a planet humanity had stripped bare—shifted and groaned as the entrance opened.
An energy barrier flared briefly.
This place could survive a Neutralization Bomb.
I walked past the holographic displays, ignoring the AI's polite greetings. None of it mattered.
I went straight to the corner of the room.
My treasure.
A worn cardboard box filled with yellowed, decaying paper.
Ancient manga.
To the modern world, it was trash—obsolete data better suited for recycling. To me, it was proof that humans once felt things deeply enough to draw them by hand.
I sat on my bed. A simple mattress. Firm. Honest. The room's sensors immediately tried to optimize it for my posture.
I overrode the command.
From the box, I pulled out something even rarer.
A cassette.
An artifact from the Transition Era.
The faded label read:
THE LEGEND OF GOD
I slid it into the reader.
The room's AI stuttered.
Lights flickered as ancient code clashed violently with modern systems. The holographic projectors activated—but instead of a film, a message filled the air, bleeding violet light across the walls.
"Do you wish to enter a world that science forgot?"
I scoffed.
"What kind of drama is this?" I muttered. "People back then really loved exaggeration."
I expected fiction.
I expected fantasy.
I expected a story.
I did not expect the air itself to vibrate.
A low frequency pulsed through the room—one my watch couldn't block. The walls trembled. The energy barrier flickered.
For the first time, my fortress felt fragile.
Something ancient had awakened.
Something that didn't belong in this era.
The transition had begun.