His gaze drifted to the cityscape, a glittering tapestry woven from steel and glass. Each skyscraper housed thousands, millions, maybe billions of lives. Lives brimming with purpose, passion, pain, joy. Lives that felt impossibly distant.
"Sir?" the AI prompted, its voice tinged with concern. "Would you like to schedule a meeting with Dr. Chen? He's finished analyzing the neural feedback from the latest prototype."
Omnia sighed. Dr. Chen, brilliant but painfully earnest, believed Omnia's chip held the key to unlocking humanity's potential. Omnia knew better.
"Cancel it," he murmured, rubbing his temple.
"Understood, sir. Anything else?"
"Just... remind me to pick up milk."
A flicker of amusement crossed the AI's digital face. "Milk? Sir, your dietary needs are entirely synthetic. Your nutrition module—"
"I know, I know. Just... remind me."
Silence descended, thick and suffocating. Omnia stared at the cityscape, a million stories unfolding beneath him, none of them his.
"Sir?"
"Leave me alone," Omnia whispered, the words catching in his throat.
"Very well, sir. Goodnight."
Omnia slumped back, staring at the holographic interface. Knowledge. Power. Everything.
And yet, he felt utterly empty.
* * *
The interface pulsed again. Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor. The neural chip could recreate every note with perfect fidelity, but the music felt hollow, stripped of the raw humanity that had once given it life. I dismissed it with a thought, returning to the silence.
My wrist-com flickered. "Happy birthday, darling," Mom's AI-generated message played out. She hadn't recorded a personal message in years, too busy managing the corporation's European division to spare five minutes. The AI captured her mannerisms perfectly—another technological marvel that left me feeling nothing.
Later that evening, as the city's light pollution painted the sky in perpetual twilight, I stood in Dad's old office. The room remained unchanged since the accident six months ago, the last conversation we had replaying in my mind.
"You're bored because you've never earned anything," Dad had sneered, the disappointment evident in his eyes. "All that knowledge at your fingertips, and you've never created anything of value."
Those words haunted me more than the subsequent explosion that had claimed his life during a failed quantum computing experiment.
Leaning against the mahogany desk, I gazed at the faded blueprints scattered across it. Each one a testament to his ambition, his unwavering belief in the power of technology. He was a visionary, driven by a hunger for progress. I, on the other hand, felt adrift, lost in a sea of possibilities.
* * *
The research facility hummed, a symphony of whirring machinery and hushed whispers. Project Chronos. Everyone knew it was a gamble, pushing the boundaries of physics, flirting with forces beyond our comprehension. But I, Omnia Vorne, heir to the Vorne Corporation, thrived on gambles.
"Are you sure about this, sir?" Dr. Chen's voice trembled, a stark contrast to the sterile efficiency of the lab.
"Relax, Chen," I smirked, adjusting the collar of my lab coat. "What's the worst that could happen? Another failed experiment? Another Tuesday."
I stepped into the quantum chamber, its blue glow bathing me in an ethereal light.
"Sir, the energy readings—"
A wave of nausea washed over me. Reality seemed to warp, the lab dissolving into a kaleidoscope of colors.
"Shut it down!" someone screamed, their voice distorted, echoing through the chamber.
Panic surged, but I felt strangely calm.
Finally, I thought, a problem I can't buy my way out of.
A cascade of quantum particles erupted, swirling around me, dancing like stars being born and dying.
* * *
The nausea intensified, morphing into a bone-deep ache. My vision blurred, replaced by a swirling vortex of colors.
"Shut it down!" Dr. Chen's voice echoed, distorted, distant.
Panic finally snagged me, claws digging into my chest. I tried to speak, but my throat felt like sandpaper.
Then, darkness.
.............................................................................
A woman's voice, soft and melodic, drifted through the haze.
"Omnia, my sweet boy. Welcome to the world."
Warmth enveloped me, a comforting pressure against my cheek. I opened my eyes, blinking against the dim light filtering through heavy drapes.
A woman smiled down at me, her eyes filled with a tenderness I'd rarely encountered. Her features were sharp, regal, yet softened by the gentle curve of her lips.
"What a beautiful baby," a gruff voice rumbled.
A tall figure loomed over me, casting a shadow across the bed. His face, etched with lines of age and battle, softened as he gazed at me.
"He's perfect, isn't he?" the woman murmured, brushing a stray lock of hair from my forehead.
"Strong," the man agreed, his gaze lingering on my tiny fist.
"Indeed," the woman chuckled. "Strong, just like his father."
"What shall we name him, my queen?"
The woman looked down at me, somehow knowing I would be different from my brothers.
"Omnia," she whispered.
"We shall call him Omnia."
* * *
A wave of nausea overwhelmed me—not the baby kind, the kind that comes from your brain being hijacked by a quantum-entangled chip self-assembling in your skull. Knowledge, memories, skills, all of it flooding back, re-writing my new reality.
The quantum accident had done more than transfer his consciousness. The chip, composed of quantum-entangled particles, had been caught in the temporal displacement field. Now it was reforming itself using the abundant iron and trace minerals in his infant brain, creating organic neural pathways that mimicked its original function. The process was excruciating, but his newborn screams masked the true cause of his distress.
I tried to scream, to protest, but only a choked wail escaped my tiny lungs.
A baby's lungs are a prison. I scream, but they hear only hunger.
"A baby's lungs are a prison," I thought, my adult mind crystal clear even as my infant vocal cords produced only wails. "I scream, but they hear only hunger."
Warmth enveloped me, a comforting pressure against my cheek as the midwife, smelling of goat cheese and lavender, wrapped me in rough-spun wool. Through blurry eyes, I saw him, towering over me: King Moniel II.
Moniel. The Stone King. The name bounced around inside my head, jarring against the endless torrent of data streaming through me.
He had a face forged in battles, a mane of salt-and-pepper hair, a voice that boomed through the stone chamber. He surveyed me with eyes as cold and grey as a winter storm, searching, perhaps, for some sign of his heir's worthiness.
"His name is Omnia," the King declared, his voice resonating off the vaulted ceiling. "May he embody all the world's possibilities."
If you only knew. I concentrated, desperately trying to maintain control over the avalanche of information coursing through my reborn brain. Positions of the midwife's hands, the texture of the rough blanket, the intricate carvings adorning the room's walls - all burned into my new, rapidly developing memory. He gazed at me, expecting some primal cry of triumph, or maybe just a drool-soaked gurgle. What he didn't know was that I was already calculating the weaknesses of his fortress, strategizing how to outmaneuver his enemies, dreaming of a future where knowledge was power, not just brutal force.
* * *
The hardest part wasn't the physical helplessness—it was the forced silence. My adult mind remained intact, enhanced by the organically recreated neural interface that had become part of my brain structure. The quantum particles had restructured themselves at the cellular level, creating a biological version of my future technology. But my infant body remained stubbornly limited by its natural development.
Attempts at speech produced only babbles. My coordination, despite perfect mental understanding of motor functions, was confined by undeveloped muscles and neural pathways. When I finally managed to crawl toward a scribe's dropped parchment, eager to begin documenting my knowledge, my nursemaid scooped me up with a chuckle.
"Always curious, this one," she cooed, carrying me past the chapel's stained-glass window. The image of Saint Augustine of Valeria, patron saint of patience, seemed to mock me daily with its serene expression. Patience, the saint seemed to say. Your time will come.
The neural interface, now more organic than mechanical, continued its integration. During my frequent naps—my infant body requiring far more rest than my adult mind desired—I could access the vast knowledge base, reviewing everything from metallurgy to music theory. The quantum particles had created something unprecedented: a biological computer perfectly merged with human brain tissue. I dreamt of the day I could use it.
The day I could speak.
The day I could command.
* * *
By age two, Omnia had enough motor control to begin small experiments. His first project was deceptively simple: a rattle, but one designed with precise mathematical principles. He hollowed out a piece of wood himself, much to his nursemaid's horror, and filled it with carefully selected pebbles of specific sizes.
The courtiers tittered, "The prince has a carpenter's soul!" They missed entirely the complex calculations behind the simple toy. I watched from beneath my brow furrowed in concentration as my hand moved with practiced ease. Each pebble fell in a specific sequence, creating a pattern both rhythmic and intellectual. A crude instrument, yes, but the fundamental principles were the same.
The weight distribution, meticulously calculated, wouldn't just strengthen little fingers; it would hone coordination, accuracy. Almost a training tool for the more complex instruments I dreamt of. Instruments that would bring back the harmonies of my former world. My fingers tightened around the rattle, sending another cascade of pebbles tumbling. The sound wasn't much, just a clatter of stone against wood. But to me, it was a symphony waiting to be composed.
Queen Lysandra, however, saw more. Her gaze lingered on my tiny hands, the way they adjusted the hollow chamber's dimensions with careful measurements. She watched me test different pebble combinations, noticing the patterns, the calculations hidden beneath the seemingly simple act.
One evening, as I methodically tapped out a rhythm that would one day be recognized as Mozart's Symphony No. 40, she knelt beside me.
"You see things others don't, don't you?" she whispered, her eyes sharp with intelligence.
I met her gaze, seeing for the first time a potential ally. My infant face broke into a smile, but behind it, my enhanced mind was already calculating. The neural interface had given me knowledge spanning centuries—now I just needed time, resources, and the right supporters to begin reshaping this medieval world.