AUTHOR'S NOTE.
Before starting, I want to clarify an error that I did not correct according to time. I mean, if we base ourselves on what I have established, then my character is actually 24 years old. 24 years locked in a capsule with a baby's body. Since proposing such a situation sounds too far-fetched, I want to correct this situation. Our protagonist Korr is not two orbits and four cycles (which means 2 years and four viltrumite months). He has, or rather, he had, 3 and a half cycles. By this chapter he will already be half a cycle, a moment when he will be in the days or months when intelligent cells will manifest in the body, which means he will awaken his powers.
Well, without further ado, let's begin.
"Young master, young master, please, accompany me to the stalóvaya. You need your nutrition diet."
"Not yet, I'm not even hungry. Can we leave it for later?"
"Young lord, I don't think your father..."
"My father hasn't come to see me in a long time. I doubt he'll mind if I eat another time."
"Young lord."
"Please."
"Young... young, please... alright, but let's keep this a secret."
And this was korr's kind of life for the next... for the following years. That is, Earth years, to be exact. Viltrumite years, the way things were going, he hadn't even finished the first one yet.
Life was very different compared to his past life, where everything was very intense, where time was pressing and every decision in life only determined a path to follow with the little time that years could provide you.
Here, in this world, things were completely different, and time would probably be your only friend during what could mean an approximation to what is expected of the word "eternity."
Korr very rarely left his room. That space where he had been confined by his absent and ruthless father, although it seemed excessive, continued to be impressive to this day.
That room consisted of a perfect rectangle eleven meters long by seven meters wide, with a ceiling height that rose to five meters at its highest point.
Everything was white, as could be expected from any viltrumite structure that represented the purity of the empire, and the walls leaned slightly inward, following angles that Euclidean geometry would never have contemplated even in a thousand happenings.
It could have been Earth in some alternative obsolescence. So similar, yet so different at the same time.
More than a mirage, without a doubt, like the death of individuality buried for eons with the sole purpose of maintaining the egalitarianism rooted in the proselytism of viltrum.
It was a shame, korr took it for granted. This world was not Earth.
But he did not let himself be dragged by the otherness of this strange, but undoubtedly disastrous, alien society, and syra-vel witnessed the first glimpse of autarchy unleashed in the body of a being who, in every sense, lived under the yoke of a single supremacist thought.
As time passed, that room ceased to be just white with abstract angles. Like a visionary amidst the creative mediocrity of this society, korr spared no efforts to conquer that space, which had become his new, although super spacious, prison.
He began with the northeast side, that corner where the sunrise rose, during a period of three complete segments. Unexpectedly, this meant thirty Earth hours watching the sun crawl like a lazy thing on the horizon, coloring the fascinating view in a soft violet.
The sunrises and sunsets on viltrum, undoubtedly, appreciated aspects that korr could faithfully dare to consider, is an unwithering experience.
Korr improvised a workshop, with everything he had and what he could access, which was a lot, considering how advanced viltrum was technologically.
That place became a sanctuary where he carried out his most crazed dreams, aspirations and thoughts.
He was a reincarnated person, aware of this opportunity in life. He confirmed that being part of such an experience did not automatically make you favored by the gods, so it seemed completely reasonable to him that the supposed system, template, gift package or magical fantasy skills taken from illustrations, was a complete impertinence.
But he was a viltrumite born.
From how much he was able to learn about the viltrumites, they were not only extremely powerful as individuals, besides flying, but they were also very intelligent, in the sense that they possessed much more advanced processing capabilities than any other carbon-based race in the galaxy.
Proof of such processing was the great capacity of each viltrumite to navigate space using only their own sense of direction to plot routes through the darkness of the universe. And all this, using only their naked bodies without any protection.
Thinking about it, having been born viltrumite was already blatant luck.
Seeing it that way, luck came to korr's door, and instead of asking who it was, he just let it in without question.
And so his sanctuary arose.
And korr, next to a glass shelf, observed the alignment of a great mural illustrated with pigments obtained from crushed minerals from the Kregchart Basins, which Syra-Vel had obtained for him in exchange for him not mentioning a single word of what the boy was doing to his father.
The landscapes represented in the mural were probably the closest thing to innovation on the entire planet.
To syra-vel it seemed fascinating, even interesting, those actions of her lord's newborn. The young lord called it "mural". She did not know what that meant, but it seemed endearing to her.
"How did you think of all this, young lord?", syra-vel asked.
"How?", korr thought about his answer. "I just thought of it."
"Really?", she advanced and observed what that young man had created with a few pigments that barely cost a few credits. However, it seemed enigmatic to her. "What are those... how is it that... In what way does the arrangement of pigments on a two-dimensional surface generate visual stimuli that induce erratic saccadic movements or ocular fixation patterns that the visual system interprets as kinesthesia?"
The simple question made korr's hair wrinkle with a shudder.
"That... that kinematics, or whatever you understand it as. It's a painting of... I mean, I thought and decided to name it optical illusion. Although it is not the same as what you do with your physiological abilities to create light constructions, it can also generate fascinating illusions. I call it, zebra."
Korr had finished his painting, although a replica, of a painting he had seen in a condominium store. Evidently, it was a replica. But even so, there was no doubt about the fascination of that abstract thing. At first glance, the work presented two intertwined zebras. However, the naturalistic contours had been completely deliberately erased.
In that sense, the bodies of the two creatures were built by their own white and black stripes that blurred and intertwined to suggest volume and movement.
Korr, back then, was little interested in the name of the author of that painting. However, he took it to his house for a few dollars, hanging it in his living room. He spent hours contemplating those two striped horses with a beer in hand, reflecting on his finances.
It was impressive to be able to replicate the same sensation, and he felt complete.
Unexpectedly, from the rest of the mural, in which landscapes of all kinds could be seen, only this simple drawing seemed to attract the attention of both.
Especially Syra-vel, who thought for a moment, and nodded with interest, contemplating the mural with more appreciation.
"That sounds interesting. What is zebra?"
"It's just something I made up", korr did not hesitate to lie about it.
Syra-vel was a doe of the empire. To be more exact, she was a slave, born into slavery.
She belonged to the Syrenis race, a female humanoid species with navy blue skin and bioluminescent hair, conquered 1200 years ago by the empire.
Her physiological capabilities, capable of generating a very unique mental energy scarce throughout the galaxy, made her enjoy a certain appreciation from the high imperial commanders. Obviously, her status, like the rest of the intelligent species from outside, was considered an inferior form of intelligent life.
Therefore, they were treated as perfect slaves in order to make use of the exotic abilities of the aforementioned. In this case, possessing a species with mental synchronization, prediction and energetic abilities was a strategic resource for the empire, which used the syrenis not only to have them as nannies for their offspring, but also to exchange their psychic energies for exotic resources in the galactic market.
Syra-vel was a slave, the slave of voraht. But she was also the only conscious being that korr could call a friend, and consequently, he enjoyed the appreciation and affection that the syrenis offered him.
Even so, the doe smiled.
"Anyway, you will have to take your nutrition ration."
Korr almost spat in disgust, nodding.
"Alright, let's go. Let's go eat that miserable slop again." He complained, but syra-val only smiled in response, showing her two lower canines.
"I promise I'll put a little more sodium chloride in the porridge, okay?"
"Promise."
And time passed, passed so slow and eternal, as long-lived as the biological time that awaited him in this life.
Things on viltrum were always extremely different from Earth, not to say that it was, compared to this one, 10 times larger, with a tiny detail.
Its tangential rotation was disastrously similar. This translated into extremely long days, excessively long nights, and a time system with excessively tedious units.
There was also the tiny, seemingly trivial detail about sustaining a tolerable gravity for a trained body.
However, the pressing issue was the abyssal gap in the perception of time.
Each rotational movement lengthened in an almost endless proportion. What on Earth could be called a day, here became a turn, equivalent to two hundred forty and a half Earth hours.
Ten eternally expanded days, in a single succession of light and shadow throughout viltrum. Waking up and seeing the sun cross the sky was a lost matter in every sense of the word.
The biological rhythm remained the same, but the world seemed to be trapped in time.
The units, coincidentally, were also determined on the same scale. One segment equaled ten Earth hours; one fraction, ten minutes; one tick, ten seconds, and so on, with each word designating a ten-times greater period.
There was no remedy, the world was too slow for something so colossal.
And then there were the cycles. These were governed by the rhythm of viltrum's moon, approximating thirty turns per cycle, equivalent to 30 planetary days, or almost one Earth year.
Then there were the orbits. When the orbit around the star was finally completed, then the three hundred sixty-five planetary turns were completed. It was the equivalent of the year on viltrum, with the only difference being that this was the equivalent of three thousand six hundred fifty Earth days, ten full years condensed into a single season.
Based on this premise, korr had done the calculations and reached the following conclusion.
When they took him out of the capsule, he had completed 3 and a half cycles of life, and currently, he had already completed half an orbit.
To reach adulthood, he had to survive for 2 orbits of life, at which point viltrumite physiology reaches the most optimal state possible according to its biological capacity.
Until then, he just had to stay at home, until the appearance of his powers, at which point he would be educated under viltrumite standards.