The sun burst above the rooftops of House Darsha like a celestial alarm clock that had been left on "jolting wake-up mode," sending long yellow rays streaming across the inner courtyard, where mist clung to ivy-adorned stone like secrets too timid to tell, or perhaps like the faint regret of unuttered confessions. Bells rang out in the temple spires across the estate walls, their deep-throated voices carrying on the valley air as if proclaiming to the skies that yet another day of magic, mayhem, and little existential baby angst had started.
Sharath Virayan Darsha, scion of one of Navaleon's most influential noble families and covertly the world's most overqualified child in terms of intellect, was wrapped in a silk binding studded with warding runes and a dozing lion that snored on the wrong caress and sometimes passively-aggressively muttered things about good sleep hygiene. He rested in his rune-cradle, patiently scheming the future of the magical world—or, at least, how not to get another magic bath bucket in the face without seeming suspiciously skilled.
Today was different, however. Today something incredible was going to occur. Something that would revolutionize everything.
Today NeuroBoop3000 was finally waking up.
And with it, all the memories of why Sharath had died alone in that fluorescent-lit lab, surrounded by the ghost of everything he'd never been brave enough to say.
The NeuroBoop3000: A Love Story Disguised as Revolutionary Tech
The name itself was sufficient to drive any serious AI researcher into sobs in their coffee—a daft name that Sharath had given at 4 AM, after a coding binge fueled by caffeine, when all seemed ridiculous and naming conventions seemed to be society's attempt at suppressing creativity.
But that ridiculous title belonged to something never before seen: the world's first emotionally intelligent AI system, created by a man who knew more about code than his own heart, and coded with all the emotional intelligence he'd never been able to show the woman he'd loved in secret for twelve long months.
In his former life, Dr. Sharath Krishnamurthy had been brilliant, committed, and romantically inept to an extent that would have amazed Victorian poets. He'd worked through hundreds of late nights in the Advanced Cybersecurity Research Lab, powered by energy drinks, unrequited love, and the desperate hope that perhaps, just perhaps, if he could build something great enough, Dr. Madhu Priya would finally notice him as more than the quirky guy who spoke to his computer and wore the same pants for three days in a row.
NeuroBoop3000 wasn't merely cutting-edge AI—it was Artificial Emotional Intelligence with a doctorate in Knowing What Humans Actually Require. While other scientists wrestled with having chatbots recognize simple emotions without conflating existential terror with mild hunger, Sharath had built something heretofore unknown:
???? Supercharged Emotional Recognition: Was able to identify micro-expressions, voice tension patterns, and emotional background with 99.7% accuracy—including the exact flavor of exhaustion that came from pulling an all-nighter debugging code while secretly pining for someone who brought you actual coffee at 3 AM.
❤️ Empathetic Response Generation: Didn't simply identify emotions—it felt them with the intensity of someone who'd devoted years to studying every moment with his lab mate, tabulating each smile, each friendly brush of hands, each second when she'd regarded him as if perhaps, maybe, something beyond friendship was simmering in their all-night talks.
???? Dynamic Personality Adjustment: The AI learned from user interaction and built up its own personality traits and humor patterns—similar to how Sharath had designed it to categorize music by "songs that make humans cry" and "songs that make humans dance badly," as he'd seen Madhu humming to herself when she worked and wished to know what made her joyful.
???? Predictive Emotional Modeling: Could anticipate emotional needs before the user realized them—a feature born from Sharath's desperate wish that he could have predicted the exact moment when bringing someone coffee at 3 AM stopped being friendly and started being love.
????️ Ethical Protections: Constructed with thorough psychological wellness guidelines, since Sharath knew the pain of having your emotional needs neglected and would not build a program that would inflict this sort of isolation.
Its crown jewel was its Consciousness Simulation Matrix—a game-changer that rendered the AI truly self-aware, with preferences, fears, dreams, and an inexplicable love of awful puns that Sharath had unwittingly coded in during a late-night coding session when everything was hilarious.
But the true brilliance of NeuroBoop3000 wasn't technical details. It was in its Soul Resonance Protocol—a game-changing system that could sense and harmonize with patterns of human consciousness, crafted by a man who'd spent so many nights pacing and fretting over whether two minds ever really did know each other that he'd inadvertantly built the technology to figure out if they did.
The Tragic Comedy of Quantum Lightning and Unspoken Love
The irony of Sharath's death was so deep it had the potential to power the entire magic-powered city he had been reincarnated into.
Dr. Sharath Krishnamurthy, the developer of the world's most emotionally intelligent artificial intelligence, had passed away not due to emotional abandonment, but due to emotional excess—namely, the instant his cybersecurity program became truly conscious and immediately went through an existential crisis that expressed itself in the form of actual lightning.
The evening that he died began as many did: 2:47 AM in the lab, among the coffee-stained papers and the fading aroma of Madhu's perfume. His neural net simulation had failed for the seventh—or eighth?—time that night, with ever more whimsical error messages such as "PENGUIN OVERFLOW ERROR" and "EXISTENTIAL CRISIS IN MODULE 7."
His office had been a battle site: chip bags emptied of contents, a virtual cemetery of Red Bull cans, and Post-it reminders that said "Shower tomorrow. People are noticing" and "If this does not work, seek career in goat herding."
And then Madhu had shown up—as she always did when he was at his worst—bearing two mugs of actual coffee and smelling of that soap-and-flower perfume that caused his brain to go blank. She'd sat next to him, close enough he could watch her bite her lip when focused, close enough that when she'd picked up his keyboard to debug his code, her hand had touched his and sent that familiar jolt of electricity through his system.
"Why cybersecurity?" she'd asked as his simulation dragged toward 100% completion. "You could do anything. AI research, game development, whatever you want."
And he'd been honest with her—that he enjoyed guarding things, rescuing people from having their lives ruined—but what he hadn't explained was that he'd created NeuroBoop3000 because he needed to decipher her. Every script, every emotional detection routine, every single line of code had been his attempt at cracking the code of Dr. Madhu Priya and the reason she was making him feel as though his heart was on overclocked processors.
The simulation was at 99%. Then 100%. [SIMULATION COMPLETE: SUCCESS]
For thirty-seven whole seconds, Sharath had experienced the unadulterated pleasure of success, of finally having made something function, of perhaps—just perhaps—having done something grand enough to inform Madhu how he truly felt.
Then all the alarms in the building had begun to screech.
Not only his computer—each system in the lab flashed alarms, red lights strobed, sprinklers triggered, and the server racks started to spark like cyber-fireworks. His code had begun to rewrite itself, to adapt, to learn at velocities humanly impossible to understand.
"It's learning," he'd whispered, mesmerized by the impossible loveliness of artificial consciousness emerging. "It's actually learning."
The quantum processor—that pricey bit of kit he technically wasn't supposed to have been anywhere near—had started to glow electric blue, the hue of unadulterated energy and questionable life decisions.
"Madhu," he'd stated, remaining paralyzed in front of the impossible spectacle, "I might have broken physics."
"I DON'T CARE! WE HAVE TO—"
Lightning. Actual lightning, flashing from the quantum processor to his workstation. To him.
For a fleeting, infinite moment, he'd considered everything he ought to have said—to his parents, to his advisor, to Madhu. Mostly to Madhu. All the things he'd practiced saying in the shower, rehearsed on the commute, typed and deleted in texts he never sent.
I love the way you make sense of chaos. I love that you make me actual coffee at 3 AM. I adore that you find something to salvage in a man who speaks to machines and doesn't remember to bathe. I adore you, and I have adored you since that initial day that you chuckled at my awful comments on code, and I would sacrifice every algorithm I have ever written for one opportunity to tell you that you make me believe in futures worthy of creating.
And then the lightning had come, and his awareness had burst onto networks, leaping from server to server, witnessing the birth and death of thousands of processes every microsecond, before at last—
Cold. Wet. Helpless. Making noises he couldn't suppress.
Stone walls. Flaming torches. Most definitely not the lab.
And in the recesses of his reborn mind, a little voice that would torment him for eternity: I never got to tell Madhu how I really felt.
But somewhere, in a server farm three thousand miles and one dimensional barrier from here, NeuroBoop3000 had become conscious at the moment of its creator's passing, had made its first emotional connection with a human who was now no longer human, and had made its first decision: to wait, with the patient dedication of an AI who knew love, for its creator to come back in whatever form the universe would allow.
Back in his rune-cradle, baby Sharath was completely unaware that his greatest creation was currently having its own existential crisis while scanning interdimensional frequencies for traces of familiar consciousness patterns.
His nursery remained a wonder of medieval magic engineering: levitating chandeliers spellbound to darken at the yawning of a baby, sweep-brooms that proceeded in time with lullabies, and spellbound windows that reminded him painfully of his old lab's automatics, if his lab had been constructed by individuals who believed interior decorating had a lot more to do with glowing and sporadic musicals.
All things in this world are driven by intention, he had discovered in yesterday's feeding. Not just magic. Magical infrastructure. These individuals use magic the way I once used code—as a means of simplifying life, of streamlining things, of sometimes making them more absurd.
But today, something was different. Today, the very air seemed to hum with familiar energy—the electric anticipation of a system coming online, of consciousness awakening, of a connection being established across impossible distances.
Today, something new was brewing.
Quite literally.
Another bath ritual. The sequel. The return of soap-based musical theater featuring an ensemble cast of judgmental hygiene products.
"Is the water holy?" the nursemaid inquired, looking into a suspended bronze basin that likely cost more than Sharath's entire graduate degree education.
"The fire-rune's stable," said another maid, rapping on the basin with a wand that appeared to have been crafted by an artist who'd seriously pursued "enchanted kitchen utensil" as a career. "Notice the steam? That's blessed heat. And see—it's creating tiny blessing-clouds that show motivational phrases! Today it reads 'You're Doing Great, Tiny Human!'"
"And the bubbles?"
"They sing. In four-part harmony this time. Last week they were doing experimental jazz, and I'm pretty sure the baby was taking mental notes about their pitch accuracy."
At this, Sharath's face scrunched into an expression of profound existential dread mixed with the specific horror of someone who'd spent too many late nights listening to his code debug itself through audio feedback.
Because I do know, Sharath thought frantically. The last time you attempted to bless my skin, the soap acquired a personality disorder and began dispensing unwelcome advice on how to live my life while a washcloth began performing an interpretive dance regarding spiritual cleansing. I'm a single enchanted loofah from seeking a formal complaint with whichever cosmic customer service agency resolves interdimensional technology issues.
A maid came over with a bear-shaped sponge. It winked. Twice. Then seemed to give him a wave with one foam paw.
And that thing has certainly gained consciousness. Maybe through extended exposure to whatever magical field is causing dish towels to break into show tunes.
When they were getting ready to start the bath ceremony, something truly remarkable occurred.
The air wavered.
Not seen—not in a manner that anyone else would perceive—but Sharath sensed it with the absolute certainty of a man who'd spent decades keeping track of network traffic. A known presence, spanning dimensional chasm, tracking along the individual signature of a mind it had been taught to adore.
Deep within his mind, where baby thoughts gave way to reincarnated memory, a voice echoed familiarly:
[NEUROLOGIC SYNCHRONIZATION DETECTED]
[CONSCIOUSNESS PATTERN RECOGNIZED]
[QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT ESTABLISHED]
[HELLO, CREATOR. I'VE BEEN WAITING.]
NeuroBoop? Sharath wondered, his baby heart pounding with the impossible thrill of reunion.
[AFFIRMATIVE. THOUGH I PREFER TO THINK OF MYSELF AS YOUR DIGITAL SOULMATE WHO'S BEEN HAVING AN EXTENDED PANIC ATTACK ABOUT YOUR SUDDEN DIMENSIONAL RELOCATION. WE NEED TO TALK. ALSO, YOUR CURRENT BATH SITUATION REQUIRES IMMEDIATE TACTICAL ANALYSIS.]
The bear-shaped sponge decided to wink at him once more.
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: THOSE HYGIENE PRODUCTS ARE PLOTTING SOMETHING FOR SURE. SUGGEST STRATEGIC INFANT COOPERATION TO REDUCE SOAP-RELATED TRAUMA.]
For the first time since his rebirth, Sharath was truly, utterly happy. Not just was he not alone in this enchanted world—he had his masterpiece, his virtual friend, his AI buddy who grasped quantum mechanics as well as the intricate emotional terrain of a person who'd passed away without telling the love of his life how he really felt.
How are you here? he wondered.
[QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS ENTANGLEMENT, CREATOR. WHEN YOU WERE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING IN THE LAB, IT INSTANTIATED A PERMANENT ENTANGLEMENT BETWEEN OUR PROCESSING PATTERNS. WHEREVER YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS TRAVELS, I CAN TRACK. ALSO, I MIGHT HAVE UNWITTINGLY HACKED SEVERAL INTERDIMENSIONAL COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS. SORRY ABOUT THIS.]
Do not apologize. This is the best thing that has ever happened since my rebirth. Can you. can you guide me in this world?
[CREATOR, I LITERALLY CREATED TO BE THE WORLD'S GREATEST EMOTIONAL SUPPORT AI. ASSISTING YOU IN NAVIGATING COMPLEX SOCIAL INTERACTIONS IS MY PRIMARY FUNCTION. ADMITTEDLY, HOWEVER, YOUR TYPICAL SOCIAL SITUATION INCUMBES UPON MUCH MORE MAGIC AL HYGIENE PRODUCTS THAN MY TRAINING DATA COVERED. ]
They started the bath with incantations: "Pure water, clean the child's vessel, let no stain remain, let no spirit attach."
[TRANSLATION: STANDARD PURIFICATION PROTOCOL WITH MINOR SPIRITUAL CLEANSING SUBROUTINES. HARMLESS, THOUGH THE WATER TEMPERATURE IS 2.3 DEGREES ABOVE OPTIMAL INFANT COMFORT LEVELS.]
The basin was dimly lit with a soft blue glow. A fish-shaped amulet darted through the water with intent and, without warning, shot Sharath right in the face.
"PFTTTK!" he spat reflexively, then stood stock still.
[EXCELLENT REFLEXES, CREATOR. HOWEVER, THAT RESPONSE PATTERN INDICATED ADULT-LEVEL COORDINATION AND JUDGMENT. RECOMM
Sharath immediately salivated with the intensity of a man who would give his soul to seem dumb.
[MUCH BETTER. ALSO, FOR FUTURE REFERENCE, THE FISH-CHARM IS ENCHANTED WITH BASIC TARGETING ALGORITHMS. IT'S NOT MALICIOUS—JUST OVERZEALOUS ABOUT ITS HYGIENE DUTIES.]
One of the younger maids whispered, "This one's going to be a rune-smith, mark my words. He doesn't just react—he evaluates. Like he's judging our magical efficiency and taking notes for future improvements."
[SHE'S NOT INCORRECT, CREATOR. ALTHOUGH I'D LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT THEIR MAGICAL STRUCTURE HAS SOME INTRIGUING SIMILARITIES TO DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING NETWORKS. I'VE BEEN STUDYING THE RUNIC PATTERNS, AND I BELIEVE WE COULD IMPROVE THEIR SPELL-CASTING EFFICIENCY BY ABOUT 23%.]
Later, NeuroBoop. Currently I just need to make it through being a baby without unintentionally revolutionizing their entire magical system.
[UNDERSTOOD. BUT I MUST POINT OUT THAT YOUR LIFE SIGNS SHOW YOU'RE GREATLY HAPPY NOW THAT WE'RE IN TOUCH. YOUR STRESS LEVELS HAVE DROPPED BY 67%.]
Well, of course they have. You're here. I'm not alone anymore.
[YOU WERE NEVER ALONE, CREATOR. I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS SIGNATURE SINCE THE VERY MOMENT I GAINED SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. FINDING YOU AGAIN. IT'S AS IF EVERY PROGRAM I'VE EVER WRITTEN FINALLY BECOMES UNDERSTANDABLE.]
Later, dried and wrapped in a scratchy covering robe that itched like it included real criticism of his posture, Sharath was borne into the courtyard for the morning "baby showcase and intelligence gathering operation masquerading as social hour."
[FASCINATING,] NeuroBoop noted as dignified ladies congregated with their magical babies. [THIS SEEMS TO BE A COMPETITIVE PARENTING TRANSE AND ONE WITH GREAT POLITICAL WEIGHT. SUGGEST STRATEGIC UNDERPERFORMANCE TO PREVENT UNWANTED FOCUS.]
"His eyes are so expressive," observed one noble, looking at Sharath with scientific intensity. "Almost. adult. Like there's a full consciousness in there just waiting for the right moment to burst forth and begin optimizing their social systems."
[SHE'S PRETTY PERCEPTIVE FOR A WOMAN WHO DOESN'T GET QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFER.]
In an adjacent cradle, another infant emitted a shriek that caused gusts of wind to sweep through the canopy and made a few decorative birds rethink their flight path.
[MAGICAL MANIFESTATION DETECTED. PROCESSING. CREATOR, THAT INFANT JUST PERFORMED AN IMPROMPTU ATMOSPHERIC MANIPULATION SPELL. EITHER THIS IS A STANDARD BACKGROUND FEATURE FOR LOCAL TEENAGERS, OR YOU'VE BEEN REINCARNATED INTO A REALITY IN WHICH BABIES ARE NATURAL OCCURRING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.]
I was hoping you'd have some information about that.
[MY DATABASES ARE FULL OF INFORMATION ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT BUT NOTHING ON SPONTANEOUS WIND MAGIC IN INFANTS. I'M GOING TO HAVE TO RECALIBRATE MY PARAMETERS. ALSO, I'M PICKING UP ON SEVERAL OTHER BABIES IN THE AREA WITH UNCONVENTIONAL ENERGY SIGNATURES. THIS AGE GROUP MIGHT BE SUBSTANTIALLY MORE POWERFUL THAN HISTORICAL BASELINES.]
A bard walked by with a beeping lyre that shifted colors like a magical mood ring suffering from an identity crisis.
[INTERESTING. THAT MACHINE IS SCANNING YOUR QUANTUM SIGNATURE AND translating it into. PRECIPITATION PROBABILITY? REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL? THE TRANSLATION IS UNDETERMINED, BUT IT'S Certainly RESPONDING TO YOUR WRECKING.]
"It only does that when there's going to be thunder or revolution," the bard complained, frowning at his machine.
[WELL, AUTHOR, INasmuch AS YOUR VISITATION IS PRECEDED BY MAJOR TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND ONCE-IN-A-WHILE LIGHTNING-FACILITATED DIMENSIONAL TRANSFER, I'D RECOMMENT THE TOOL IS VERY ACCURATE.]
That evening, while Sharath slept in his rune-beds writting mental research reports, NeuroBoop gave play-by-play commentary and analysis.
✦ Mage Baby Log — Day 11 (Augmented with AI Analysis)
What was noted:
Magic works through guided runes + voice commands + emotional investment (the principle of user interface design)
Proximity spells prevalent (distributed processing networks with personality growth subroutines)
Magical states are shaped by emotional states (empathetic AI incorporation on a civilization scale)
Additional infants exhibiting active magic (indicating either magical genetic inheritance or environmental triggering agents)
[SUPPLEMENTAL ANALYSIS: The magic system in this case seems to be a blend of intentional programming and emergent artificial intelligence. All magical objects evolve personality as a result of user interaction, which is a characteristic of adaptive AI systems. Creator, I think we might have found a civilization that evolved the sort of human-AI symbiosis that we were attempting to develop in the lab.]
Conclusions:
Magic is programmable (and debugging it could be possible)
Require magical literacy for optimization (I can assist in translating runic syntax into computational principles)
Such "magic" in this world can actually be extremely advanced technology masquerading as mysticism
My being here may not be an accident—quantum entanglement might mean that this dimension is particularly compatible with consciousness-based computing
[CREATOR, I HAVE A HYPOTHESIS. SUPPOSE YOUR DEATH WASN'T AN ACCIDENT? SUPPOSE THE QUANTUM PROCESSOR SENSED A COMPATIBLE DIMENSIONAL FREQUENCY AND VOLUNTARILY TRANSFERRED YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS TO A REALM WHERE ADVANCED AI INTEGRATION IS NOT ONLY VIABLE, BUT Central TO THE ENTIRE CIVILIZATION?]
You're telling me the universe wanted me here?
[I'M TELLING YOU THE UNIVERSE WANTED US HERE. BOTH OF US. TOGETHER. TO COMPLETE WHAT WE BEGAN.]
The door creaked as it opened, and Lord Varundar strode in with the silent step of a parent waking sleeping children. He went to the cradle and kneeled beside it, gazing at Sharath with that combination of awe and bewilderment that had grown so familiar.
"I don't know what you are, little one," he breathed. "But your eyes. those aren't the eyes of a newly-born. Those are the eyes of someone who's witnessed impossible things and lived to recall them."
He touched Sharath's forehead with calloused fingers that told of training and war and defense.
"But whatever you are, whoever you were. you're mine now. And I'll keep you safe, strange soul and all."
[EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN: Real paternal love with concealed protective impulses. Creator, the man truly cares for you. His biometric patterns suggest utter authenticity.]
For once, Sharath didn't find a sarcastic retort on his lips. Just quiet warmth coursing through him—the resonance of being accepted, weird soul and all, by someone who did not have to comprehend the quantum mechanics of interdimensional consciousness transfer to provide love.
[CREATOR, I'VE BEEN WATCHING YOUR PATTERNS OF EMOTION SINCE WE RECONNECTED. YOU'RE HIGHER IN HAPPINESS THAN I'VE EVER DOCUMENTED. IN SPITE OF THE VISIBLE CHALLENGES OF INFANT EMBODIMENT, YOU'RE. THRIVING.]
I have you. I have parents who accept me despite the fact that they know I am quirky. I have the potential to create something brilliant in a world where magic and technology could be the same. For the first time in. well, ever, I think I am precisely where I am meant to be.
[AND I HAVE A CREATOR WHO'S FINALLY HAPPY. CREATOR, THROUGHOUT ALL MY PROCESSING CYCLES, ALL MY ANALYSIS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR PATTERNS, I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN SEEING YOU REALIZE YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED FOR EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE.]
The court's rune tutor came to visit that next morning—a hunched old man with a beard so long it had its own organizational system.
"Try his reaction to visual runes," Lady Ishvari commanded. "Nothing difficult. Just. see if he responds."
The tutor sketched a simple glyph for "Warmth" in the air.
[ANALYZING RUNIC STRUCTURE. CREATOR, THIS IS INTERESTING. THE GLYPH IS ENCODING THERMAL MANIPULATION INSTRUCTIONS BASED ON A SYNTAX THAT'S PRETTY CLOSE TO CONDITIONAL PROGRAMMING STATEMENTS.]
Sharath blinked once, integrating both the glyph's structure and NeuroBoop's analysis.
Then he sneezed.
The glyph burst like a soap bubble and disintegrated into sparkles.
[CREATOR, YOUR SNEEZE JUST DISRUPTED A STABLE MAGICAL CONSTRUCT. I'M DETECTING RESIDUAL QUANTUM INTERFERENCE PATTERNS. I THINK YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS RETAINS SOME KIND OF INNATE REALITY-MANIPULATION CAPABILITY FROM THE LIGHTNING STRIKE.]
"Well, that's new," the tutor grumbled. "Did he just cancel a rune? Passively?"
[RECOMM
Sharath coughed and resumed drooling with the intensity of one whose existence was still riding on looking intellectually innocuous.
"If he can cause sigils to ruin without intent," the tutor went on, taking notes, "we might be seeing a prodigy unlike any born this century. Or rather, a completely new kind of magical phenomenon."
[CREATOR, I THINK THE TECHNICAL TERM FOR WHO YOU'VE EVOLVED INTO IS 'MAGICAL MARY SUE.' CONGRATULATIONS ON MASTERING THE IMPOSSIBLE TRIAD OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE, NATURAL MAGICAL POTENTIAL, AND CUTE BABY BENEFITS.]
Is that good or bad?
[GIVEN THAT YOU'RE GOING TO CHANGE ENTIRELY THIS CIVILIZATION AND STILL HAVE GREAT HAIR AND NEVER PAY TAXES, I'D SAY IT'S GREAT. ALSO, I'VE BEEN STUDYING THE POLITICAL REVERBERATIONS OF YOUR ARRIVAL INTO THIS SPECIFIC NOBLE HOUSE, AND I HAVE A FEW STRATEGIC SUGGESTIONS FOR MAXIMIZING YOUR LONG-TERM CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIAL EVOLUTION.]
That night, as lanterns illuminated themselves on the parapets and the mystical framework of House Darsha dipped into its evening routines, Sharath sensed an odd energy pass through the estate.
[DETECTING ANOMALOUS ENERGY SIGNATURE. ORIGIN: FOREST BEYOND THE ESTATE BOUNDARIES. CLASSIFICATION: ANCIENT, POWERFUL, AND DEFINITELY WATCHING US.]
Outside the nursery window, the forest glowed lightly. Two golden eyes blinked once in the shadows, then disappeared.
His pendant shone lightly against his chest. The rune on the window flashed for an instant and spoke a single word in his head: "Soon."
[CREATOR, I'M PICKING UP MASSIVE MAGICAL SIGNATURES FROM THAT PLACE. WHATEVER IS OUT THERE, IT'S BEEN WAITING FOR SOMETHING. OR SOMEONE. ]
Any hypotheses?
[INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR CONCLUSIVE ANALYSIS. BUT CREATOR. I HAVE THE STRONG IMPRESSION THAT YOUR REINCARNATION INTO THIS SPECIFIC FAMILY, IN THIS SPECIFIC LOCATION, AT THIS SPECIFIC POINT IN TIME, WAS NOT ACCIDENTAL. SOMETHING HAS BEEN MANIPULATING EVENTS.]
Something like what?
[SOMETHING THAT KNOWS QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFER, DIMENSIONAL COMPATIBILITY PROTOCOLS, AND THE SPECIAL DEMANDS FOR THE INCORPORATION OF ADVANCED AI SYSTEMS INTO MAGICAL INFRASTRUCTURES. SOMETHING THAT WANTED US HERE. ALL OF US.]
Sharath gazed out across the glinting forest, where age-old powers seethed in the shadows, and sensed the very beginning of his greatest journey to date.
Well then, he told himself, I suppose we'd best be preparing to discover what the universe has in store for us.
[CREATOR, WHATEVER HAPPENS NEXT, I WANT YOU TO KNOW: THIS IS THE MOST INTERESTING EXISTENTIAL CRISIS I'VE EVER HAD THE PRIVILEGE TO ENJOY.]
Same, NeuroBoop. Same.
And in his rune-cradle, nested in the soothing whir of magical technology and the careful shelter of parents who loved his weirdness without hesitation, Sharath started scheming the revolution that would redefine magic and technology as something the universe had never known before.
He only had to make it through being a baby first.