The monitor's blue glare etched deep shadows into the hollows of his eyes as Sey's fingers danced across the keyboard in a blur of desperate precision. Lines of code streamed across three screens, each character a heartbeat in the digital symphony he'd been composing for seventy-two hours straight. The stale coffee in his mug had long since cooled, forgotten beside a graveyard of energy drink cans.
"Just one more function," he muttered, his voice raw from disuse. "One more bridge between the digital and the physical."
At twenty-seven, Sey had achieved what most programmers only dreamed of. He'd dropped out of MIT at nineteen, built and sold three startups, and his net worth hovered in the mid-nine figures. But money had never been the point. The challenge was everything. The elegant solution to an impossible problem—that was the high he chased.
And this problem? This was the ultimate challenge.
The concept was simple in theory, impossible in practice: a system that could scan any physical object, deconstruct it to its quantum blueprint, and reconstruct it elsewhere. Copy and paste. Not data, but reality itself. The military applications alone were worth billions. The scientific implications? Revolutionary.
But Sey didn't care about those. He cared about the puzzle.
His prototype software, "Clipboard," hummed on the screen before him. The quantum scanner sat on his desk—a cobbled-together monstrosity of repurposed MRI components and custom-fabricated quantum tunneling diodes. It looked like something that might explode, which it had, twice. The third version seemed stable.
"Initializing quantum lattice mapping," Sey whispered, his finger hovering over the enter key.
"Let's see if this works."
The target object was simple: a copper penny, minted in 1985, sitting in the scanner's chamber. If the system worked, a perfect copy should materialize in the output chamber three feet away. Sey pressed enter.
The lights flickered. The scanner whirred to life, emitting a high-pitched whine that made his teeth ache. On screen, the progress bar crawled forward: 1%, 5%, 12%—
Then the world erupted in white light.
–––
Pain was his first sensation. Not the sharp, clinical pain of a lab accident, but a deep, throbbing ache that seemed to pulse through every fiber of his being. His chest felt like it had been crushed, then poorly reconstructed. Breathing was an act of will.
"Your Highness! Your Highness, can you hear me?"
The voice was wrong. Too formal, too worried, and speaking a language that shouldn't exist anymore. Yet Sey understood it perfectly, the meaning flowing into his mind like water into a cup.
He forced his eyes open.
The ceiling above him was vaulted stone, carved with crude representations of wheat sheafs and what looked like a badly drawn dragon. Candlelight flickered across the rough masonry. The air smelled of tallow, old sweat, and something coppery—blood.
Memories that weren't his flooded his consciousness.
Prince Seymour of Verdant. Third son of King Aldric, the so-called "Lion of the North." A sickly boy of sixteen, born with a weak heart that had finally given out during a hunting trip. The memories were fuzzy, incomplete, like a corrupted download. But the emotions came through clearly: resentment at being the spare to the spare, bitterness at a body that betrayed him, and a deep, gnawing despair at the state of his father's kingdom.
"Your Highness! Thank the Seven!" A weathered face swam into view—an old man in roughspun robes, a healer's staff leaning against the wall beside him. "We thought we'd lost you. Your heart... it stopped for nearly a minute."
Sey—no, Seymour now—tried to speak. His throat was dry as parchment. "Water," he croaked.
The healer, whose name was Corvus according to the memories, hurried to comply. As Seymour drank from the crude wooden cup, he took stock of his situation.
The room was modest for a prince: a simple bed, a chest for clothes, a writing desk with ink and quill. Through the single window, he could see a gray sky promising rain. The stones of the walls were dark with moisture and age.
And in the corner of his vision, something flickered.
It looked like a translucent window, floating in space. Semi-transparent text glowed with a familiar blue-white light:
ClipboardOS v0.9.7 - Emergency Backup Initialized
Host Status: Stable (Secondary Consciousness Detected)
Energy Reserves: 0.3%
Active Process: None
Last Command: COPY_OBJECT[copper_penny_1985] - FAILED (Catastrophic Energy Surge)
Seymour's breath caught. The system. It had come with him. Or rather, its blueprint had been imprinted on his soul during the accident, reconstructed by whatever cosmic force governed reincarnation. The flood of impossible memories suddenly made sense—he hadn't just died. His consciousness, merged with the ClipboardOS code, had been pasted into this new body.
A slow, predatory smile spread across his lips. The healer stepped back, alarmed.
"Your Highness? Are you... are you quite well?"
"Corvus," Seymour said, his voice still rough but gaining strength. "Tell me. What is the state of the kingdom? No flattery. No courtly evasions. The truth."
The old healer's face crumpled. "It... it is not my place, Your Highness."
"You kept my heart beating when it wanted to stop. That gives you the place. Speak."
Corvus glanced at the door, as if fearing listeners. "The granaries are nearly empty, my lord. The northern barons have stopped paying tribute, saying the crown cannot protect their lands from the Winter Wolves. The treasury... the treasury is depleted. Your father borrowed heavily from the Merchant Princes of the Sapphire Coast to fund the last campaign, and they grow impatient for repayment."
He lowered his voice further. "And there is talk... talk that Duke Morgrave of the Iron Hills marches his banners. He claims the throne is weak, that your brother Crown Prince Dalton is a fool who spends more on wine than weapons. They say Morgrave will declare himself king before the snows fall."
Seymour absorbed this, his programmer's mind already sorting information into categories: IMMEDIATE_THREATS, RESOURCE_DEFICITS, POLITICAL_VULNERABILITIES. The memories provided context. Verdant had been a middling kingdom fifty years ago, but decades of poor harvests, military defeats, and inept leadership had reduced it to a hollow shell. King Aldric was old and sick, his mind lost in past glories. Crown Prince Dalton was a drunken lout. Second Prince Willem had joined the Church of the Eternal Light and forsaken all political ambition.
That left Seymour, the sickly third son, worthless in everyone's eyes.
"How long?" Seymour asked. "How long until the kingdom collapses?"
Corvus's hands trembled. "Six months. Perhaps a year, if the harvest is good and the wolves are merciful. But the people... they starve already in the outer villages. The city is filled with refugees. Despair hangs in the air like plague smoke."
Perfect, Seymour thought. Not the suffering—he wasn't a monster. But the opportunity. A system on the verge of collapse had no redundancies, no safety nets. It was fragile, but that fragility meant it could be rebuilt from the ground up without resistance from entrenched interests. If he'd been born the crown prince in a stable kingdom, any attempt to change the system would face institutional inertia. But here? Here, the old system was already dying.
"Leave me," Seymour said. "I need to rest."
When Corvus was gone, Seymour swung his legs over the side of the bed. His body felt weak, but functional. The heart—this Seymour's heart—seemed to be holding steady. He stood, wobbled, then steadied himself against the wall.
First, he needed to test the system.
The translucent window flickered as he focused on it. A thought, like moving a mouse cursor, brought up a new menu:
Available Commands:
- SCAN (Analyze target object/area)
- COPY (Duplicate target to clipboard)
- PASTE (Reconstruct copied target)
- DELETE (Erase target - high energy cost)
- MERGE (Combine multiple copies)
Energy reserves: 0.3%.
That was... not good. The accident must have drained almost everything. He needed to understand how energy was generated in this system. A mental query brought up a help file:
Energy Acquisition:
- Passive absorption: 0.01% per hour (ambient magical fields)
- Direct conversion: Variable (absorb magical items/essence)
- Biological harvesting: HIGHLY INEFFICIENT (not recommended)
Ambient magical fields. So this world had magic, and the system could feed on it. At that rate, it would take thirty hours to gain even 1% energy. But what could he do with 0.3%?
The scan function cost 0.1% per cubic meter. Copying cost depended on complexity. A simple object might be 0.5%. Pasting was similar.
He looked around the room for something to test. His eyes fell on the quill on his desk. A simple object. He focused on it, thinking SCAN, and the window responded:
Scanning...Object: Goose feather quill
Material composition: Keratin (94%), residual oils (3%), carbon deposits (2%), iron oxide (1%)
Structural integrity: Adequate
Complexity Rating: Trivial
Copy Cost: 0.1% energy
Seymour blinked. Only 0.1% for a quill? That was cheaper than he expected. Maybe organic materials were simpler to replicate than complex alloys or magical artifacts.
He hesitated. With only 0.3% energy, using 0.1% was a significant expenditure. But he needed to know if this worked. If the system was truly functional, or if this was some delusion brought on by oxygen deprivation.
COPY, he thought.
The energy counter ticked down: 0.3% → 0.2%
A new entry appeared in a clipboard panel:
Clipboard Slot 1: Goose feather quill (1 copy)
Now for the real test. He walked to the desk, picked up the original quill, and moved it to the far side. Then he focused on the empty spot where it had lain and thought: PASTE.
0.2% → 0.1%
For a moment, nothing happened. Then light flickered—a brief, quantum flutter that made his eyes water. And lying on the desk, identical down to the last barb on the feather, was a second quill.
Seymour picked it up. It felt real. He dipped it in the inkwell and scratched a line on paper. It wrote perfectly. He compared it to the original under the candlelight. No difference. Even the microscopic wear patterns were identical.
A slow, genuine smile spread across his face. This changed everything.
But he needed energy. More energy. He couldn't build a kingdom with 0.1% reserves and a quill.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. "Your Highness? Prince Dalton requests your presence in the great hall. He says... he says to bring your hunting trophies, if you have any."
The voice was young, nervous. A servant boy.
Seymour's new memories provided context. Dalton, the crown prince, was hosting a feast for the few remaining loyal nobles. It was a farce—a display of wealth they didn't have, for an audience that was already planning their exits. And Dalton wanted his sickly brother there as a prop, a reminder of the royal family's frailty.
The old Seymour would have made excuses, feigned illness. But this Seymour saw opportunity.
"Tell my brother I will attend," he called out. "And have a bath prepared. I need to look presentable."
As the servant's footsteps retreated, Seymour's mind was already working. The great hall would have nobles. Nobles had rings, jewelry, magical trinkets. If he could get close enough to scan them, maybe he could find a source of energy.
But first, he needed to address his wardrobe. He opened the chest—threadbare tunics, patched leggings, a single formal doublet that had seen better days. The royal family of Verdant was so poor that even the princes dressed like minor gentry.
Then his eyes fell on the quill again.
An idea formed.
He spent the next hour in feverish experimentation. The scan function could analyze material composition. The copy function duplicated objects perfectly. But what if he combined them?
He scanned a silver candlestick from the room (0.1% energy—now at 0%). The system showed its composition: 92% silver, 7% copper, 1% trace impurities. But he couldn't copy or paste without energy.
Frustration mounted. Then he noticed something in the scan data. The system didn't just copy the object—it understood it. The molecular structure, the crystalline lattice of the metal, every imperfection and alloy point.
He thought about his doublet. The one decent piece of clothing he owned. He scanned it (0.1%—but the system refused, showing ENERGY INSUFFICIENT). Right. He was at zero. He needed to wait.
His eyes went back to the quill. The two quills, now lying side by side.
A slow smile spread across his face. The system had copied the quill when he had energy. The copy was perfect. But the original quill was still there. He hadn't destroyed it or consumed it.
Wealth wasn't just about creation. It was about replication. About turning one into many.
He walked to the window. Below, the castle courtyard sprawled out, muddy and disorganized. Refugees huddled against the walls, their faces hollow with hunger. Guards in mismatched armor stood at the gates, looking more like brigands than soldiers. And beyond the castle walls, the city of Verdant sprawled in decaying splendor—once-grand buildings now crumbling, streets choked with refuse, people moving like ghosts through a kingdom that had forgotten how to hope.
This was his starting point. Not a powerful mage. Not a legendary hero. A dying prince in a dying kingdom with a system that could copy anything, but had no energy to do it.
But Sey had built empires from less. In his previous life, he'd started with a laptop in a coffee shop. Here, he had a castle, a title, and a magical system that defied the laws of reality.
The feast would be his first real test. He would observe, learn, and most importantly, find a way to acquire energy. There were no magical USB ports to plug into, but there had to be sources. Magical artifacts, enchanted weapons, potions—this was a world of knights and wizards, according to the memories.
Magic was real here. It was just a matter of finding a way to harvest it.
He looked down at his hands—younger, paler than he remembered. The body of a sixteen-year-old noble, weak from a lifetime of illness but now housing a consciousness that had built and destroyed corporations before breakfast.
"Prince Seymour," he whispered to himself, testing the name. "No. That won't do."
In his old life, he'd been Sey. Just Sey. The single name of someone who'd transcended the need for family labels.
"Sey," he said again, and it felt right. "I am Sey."
The window flickered in his vision:
Identity Updated: SEY
User Profile: Reincarnated Consciousness (Merged with ClipboardOS)
Affiliation: Verdant Kingdom (Prince)
Status: ACTIVE
Good. Even the system accepted it.
A knock came at the door—servants with the bath. As they prepared his tub, Sey sat at the desk, looking at the two identical quills.
The math was simple. One quill was worth nothing. Two quills were worth twice as much as one. A hundred quills could be sold to scribes. A thousand quills could supply the entire kingdom's bureaucracy.
And if he could copy quills, he could copy grain. He could copy weapons. He could copy soldiers.
The energy problem was temporary. A constraint to be solved, not a permanent barrier. Every system had exploits, and Sey was the best exploit hunter who'd ever lived.
Tonight, at the feast, he would begin his true hunt. Not for boar or deer, but for information, for resources, for the first drops of magical energy that would become the flood that rebuilt a kingdom.
As the servants filled his bath with steaming water, Sey smiled at his reflection in the polished metal mirror. The face looking back was young, almost too young, with sharp features and eyes that held a weight they shouldn't.
The eyes of a man who had died and been reborn with the power to copy reality itself.
"Let's see what we can build," he murmured, "we already died once."
The kingdom of Verdant was dying. But Sey had just been reborn.
And he had never been very good at letting projects stay dead.