Leon Daniel Vas awoke to a light tremor of sound—not from the outside world, but from the quiet pulse of the system embedded in his mind.
SYSTEM: Multiplier Threshold Reevaluated
New Region Yield Bonus: +45%
Athena Protocol Global Penetration: 1.9% (Education Sector Only)
SP Gained Overnight: +26,144
Current Balance: 125,322 SP
He sat up slowly, letting the early Los Angeles light drift in through the blackout curtains. His body was still, but his mind was already in motion.
Athena had started as a whisper. But now it was a rumor that refused to die. The kind of thing people didn't talk about in public, but passed around in encrypted links, hushed comments, and backchannel DMs.
Leon stood and walked to the kitchen, brewing tea more for routine than caffeine. The ritual gave structure to his thinking, a cadence for the flood of incoming data.
Back at his workstation, he pulled up Athena's usage dashboard. Thousands of new connections overnight. A cluster of downloads from Brazil. A sharp increase in usage time in South Korea. Someone in Estonia had even tried rewriting the frontend code—and failed. Athena's design was sealed like a vault.
SYSTEM: Quantum Emulator Node Purchase Available
Cost: 130,000 SP
Current Balance: 125,322 SP
Purchase Denied — Insufficient SP
Leon narrowed his eyes at the display.
"Close," he murmured. "But not yet."
The Emulator Node would give him nearly triple the processing power and allow for massive-scale real-time simulations. He had plans for it, but plans required patience. For now, his resources were better spent on AthenaLite—the mobile-focused sibling of Athena, designed to slip past every firewall and reach the global majority that still accessed the web on low-end smartphones.
SYSTEM: AthenaLite Beta Build In Progress
Estimated Time to Completion: 4 Days
Leon initiated the adaptive language package—starting with Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, and Swahili. The wider AthenaLite reached, the stronger his global foothold became. Each new installation was another step toward mass literacy, affordable education, and eventually, political leverage.
He minimized the interface and pulled up the darknet forums again. Athena was now the subject of daily conversation threads. One teacher claimed her entire class had jumped a grade level in three weeks. Another, in Nairobi, posted a shaky video of students teaching each other through Athena modules—without any adult instruction.
"Who built this?""Is it government? Private sector? Military?""Too good to be free."
Leon ignored the noise. Let them speculate.
He turned his attention to what mattered next: reaction modeling.
Even without the Emulator Node, the system could still run basic trend predictions. He asked it to simulate the U.S. education policy response to a scenario where Athena's presence reached 5% penetration nationwide.
SYSTEM: Simulating Response Pathways...
Result: Increased regulatory scrutiny within 60 days
Predicted Actions: Investigations, legal challenges, code transparency demands
He nodded. The pressure would come—but not yet. He was still beneath the threshold. Still a rumor. That was his strongest defense.
On a separate monitor, local news feeds scrolled by. A few independent school districts had begun noticing Athena's effect on their test scores. No headlines. No interviews. Just internal memos and whispers.
"Performance spike in three Title I schools—unverified software suspected."
And in a faculty lounge at an East Coast university, a computer science professor clicked open Athena for the first time. He blinked.
"This shouldn't be free," he muttered to himself.
He forwarded the program to a colleague in D.C.—a minor advisor with ties to a Senate education subcommittee.
And just like that, the signal had been traced.
A faint one. Easily ignored.
But a signal all the same.
Leon shut the system down for the night, his tea long gone cold.
The game was still his.
But the board was starting to react.