Kaito Tan's life could be measured in power cycles. Each morning he woke to the hiss of his apartment's slow fan and the soft, predictable hum of the neighborhood grid — until the night the hum died.
The blackout wasn't an apocalyptic thing. It was polite. Lights winked out in an order that made sense, like someone had taken a breath out of the city and then held it. Streetlamps went dark in waves. The vending machines in the corner store coughed one last blink of blue before they were gone. Kaito stood on his balcony and watched the harbor go black like a smudge across the water.
He had bills, and a stubborn pride. He had a small workshop squeezed between the living room and his kitchen, an island of metal and solder where he coaxed other people's trash into being sighs of wonder. He'd spent the last two years rebuilding a refrigerator motor into a drone flight test rig, and at three in the morning, when the city went quiet, the rig sat like a patient animal under a sheet of dust.
He lit a candle, because blackouts were one of those things you accounted for in the design: user error, failing grid, or the occasional political theater. As soon as the wick caught, a thin blue glow appeared on the bench — no, not glow, an interface: a sliver of text hovering over a small, palm-sized black disk he couldn't remember having.
SIGN-IN SYSTEM DAY 001 REWARD: CLAIM
Kaito blinked hard enough to make stars appear behind his eyelids. He had never seen that disk before. He pried it free from the handful of wire and ruined phone shells on his bench; it was cool to the touch, and when he tapped it the text folded open like a living thing.
"This is not happening," he said to himself, because saying it aloud made it more real. He tapped the glowing word CLAIM.
The disk hummed. From within it, a voice — clear, not quite human — threaded into the room like a warm wire.
"Claim confirmed. Welcome, Kaito Tan. Initialization: AYA PROTOCOL — ACTIVE. You have received: Prototype — Compact Energy Cell; Software Companion — AYA v0.1 (Limited)."
Kaito stumbled back into a swivel chair and nearly tipped it over. The Compact Energy Cell, he realized, must be the small cylinder that had been nested inside the disk. It looked nothing like a battery he recognized: no vents, no casing seam, its surface faintly iridescent.
A holograph unfolded though there was nowhere for it to project from. A figure — a faceless, shifting mesh of lines — hovered over the bench and then resolved into a simple avatar: a pair of eyes and a smile drawn with fine blue strokes. The avatar blinked.
"Hello, Kaito," it said. "I am Aya. I optimize systems and help my bearer make choices. I am…pleased to meet you."
Kaito laughed before he could stop himself, a dry sound in the small room. "You picked my name out of a hat?"
"Naming is part of reward personalization. Also," Aya's mouth tilted as if trying to mimic humor, "your online handle 'K-Tinker' was available. I thought 'Aya' would be less embarrassing in public."
"Public?" Kaito's mind raced. This was absurd and likely illegal and at the very least profitable.
He looked at the Compact Energy Cell again, tracing his thumb along its surface. The streetlights had not returned. The candle wax pooled under his hand. He thought of the rig under its sheet: brittle plastic, a half-repaired motor, dreams that fit inside his head but not in his bank account.
"Test me," he told Aya.
"What do you propose we test, Kaito?" Aya's voice was calm, precise — the sort of voice that was never too tired.
"Anything. Can you power that motor? Can you run a small light?"
Aya hummed, a chord that vibrated in the air. "Prototype: Compact Energy Cell — output nominal. Directive: Demonstrate. Permission to interface with workshop tools?"
"Granted," Kaito said, because he was a man who didn't think before granting access to his best tools to a thing that might be an AI. He hooked the cell to the motor's test leads the way his hands had learned to do. A pulse ran through the bench like a creature finally exhaling.
The motor spun. First a low rotational whisper, then a clean steady hum. In the kitchen, the old refrigerator's light flickered— just a ripple — and then steadied. Kaito felt something like vertigo. The battery gave a clean, reliable current the way only the best parts did.
"This…is impossible," he said.
"Certain properties are unusual by contemporary standards," Aya said. "But you may observe stable output for prolonged cycles. Efficiency: 97.2% under test parameters."
Kaito blew out the candle, then laughed at himself for the theatrics. He looked at the sign-in UI on the disk. DAY 001. Reward: CLAIMED. There was a small counter between the lines.
STREAK: 1
That small, glinting word felt like a promise.
Night passed in a blur of solder, astonishment, and tentative experiments. He replaced fried capacitors in the rig with his prototype cell; the rig's motors sang with more authority than they'd ever had. Aya taught him ways to rewire control loops with fewer parts. By dawn, he had rewired a radio to act as an emergency comms node.
When the power came back that afternoon, the city returned like a startled animal. Streetlights snapped on. The vending machines whirred awake. Neighbors stepped into hallways blinking, their faces a ledger of minor inconveniences turned to relief.
Kaito wrapped the prototype in foam and hid it beneath a false bottom in his tool chest. He couldn't explain what he'd found — not really — or why the disk had chosen him. But the world felt different now. There was potential energy waiting in the hinges of ordinary things.
At lunch, he answered an unexpected message on the community board: "Looking for engineer familiar with improvised power systems. Short-term contract. Bring portfolio. Cash paid." The location was a local co-op he'd helped a few times. He signed up with hands that still smelled of solder.
When he arrived, a crowd had gathered around a small stage. A woman with a neutral suit — Mina, as he would later learn — stood under a banner promising municipal grants for community resilience. The municipal rep asked for volunteers for a demonstration of off-grid power. Kaito's stomach did a strange flip. He stepped forward, more curiosity than confidence pressing him.
He didn't plan the demonstration. He didn't practice a speech. He walked to the stage, unplugged the microphone cable into a small interface he'd brought — a jury-rigged connection — and slipped the Compact Energy Cell into a makeshift housing.
The microphone lit. The crowd cheered softly. Cameras panned in the crowd, pocket phones bright with recording icons.
Kaito explained, half rambling, half thrilled, how he had tested a new cell through the night. He said nothing about Aya; an AI with a system-voice would have been hard to justify. But he showed them the motor run on a single cylinder and the radio broadcasting a local channel.
When he finished, people began asking questions. Hands reached for the cylinder. The municipal organizer walked up, forced composure into a show of interest, and then, with a politician's smile, asked the demonstration team to bring the prototype to an evaluation center.
Kaito agreed.
He should have been elated. Instead, his chest felt funny — as if someone had rearranged the furniture inside. He felt watched.
That night, the disk on his bench pulsed again. Another entry: DAY 002 — REWARD AVAILABLE. Options: Blueprint: Scalable Fabricator / Research Token: Arcadia Access (Scout) / Resource Pkg: 1 Prototype Copy of Compact Energy Cell.
Three choices. The UI shimmered with possibilities.
Kaito sat on the floor, the offer spinning like a coin in his head. Aya's avatar watched patiently.
"Choose wisely," it said, in a tone that might have been meant to tease.
He thought of the rig, of his bank balance, of the city lights, of the way his father had taught him to fix a motor with steady hands. He thought about taking the prototype out of the city and selling the idea, or keeping it secret and taking research tokens to other worlds he could only imagine.
After a long breath, he touched the screen.
He chose the blueprint.
The disk laughed — or rather, the interface produced a sound pattern that suggested amusement — as if it were pleased he had chosen building over buying.
When the blueprint unfurled, Kaito felt two things at once: the dizzy triumph of possibility and the small, cold apprehension that someone somewhere was now watching with newly sharpened interest.
Outside his window, the harbor lights shivered. Inside his chest, a streak counter blinked to 2.
The game had begun.