The evening chill of Camrona City did little to clear the dense fog inside Victor’s head as he stepped out of the school gates.
Yesterday, he had been so completely hollowed out by the sudden, overwhelming cascade of his past-life memories that his surroundings had been nothing but a gray, blurred background.
He had practically sprinted home in a numb panic.
But tonight, as he walked the exact same urban path he had traversed hundreds of times before, the world didn’t look ordinary anymore.
It had completely shifted its color palette.
He slouched his shoulders, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his faded black wool overcoat, his ink-black eyes quietly scanning the evening streets.
The differences weren’t loud, but they were absolute.
On the surface, the commuters heading home looked identical to the weary salarymen of Earth—clutching bags, checking their mobile screens, and stepping onto public transit cars.
But looking closer through his newly integrated dual perspective, Victor noticed the subtle magic woven into the mundane.
The sleek commuter cars glided across the asphalt in near-total silence, their electric engines entirely devoid of mechanical friction.
Yet, as they passed by, Victor could see a faint, warm amber glow vibrating along the dashboard glass of a family vehicle—a tactile pulse from the driver’s hand, translated by the car’s internal SII interface into an intuitive, real-time navigation map.
What struck him most as he analyzed the scene from his past-life perspective was how universally the population consumed art.
No matter where he looked, practically every single person on the street was equipped with some kind of device.
Pedestrians wore sleek headphones to listen to music as they walked or commuted, while those sitting at bus stops or benches wore immersive headsets to listen to audiobooks or watch visual media.
This total absorption in art extended straight into the workforce.
Because the Federation’s expansive education system ensured that almost everyone studied at college, the vast majority of workers in society had already achieved the Tier 3 Scholar level.
Even the most basic, entry-level jobs were performed by Tier 3 individuals utilizing high-definition, technical resonance.
Further down the avenue, a street cleaner was clearing a wide commercial plaza.
On Earth, it would have been a drab, manual chore.
Here, the worker didn’t even touch a broom.
Standing calmly at the edge of the square, he smoothly channeled his tactile ability to control a small fleet of specialized drones and automated robots that swept and scrubbed the pavement with mathematical precision.
‘At least, in this world, there is no possibility of the machines rebelling.
They can’t even clean our streets; how can they rebel?’ He muttered to himself with a smile.
Every single corner of this city was actively breathing through sound and human capability.
Victor let out a quiet huff of air, pulling his dark beanie lower over his ears to block out a distant, overlapping choral music commercial echoing from a digital storefront.
It was deeply uncanny.
For seventeen years, he had accepted this hyper-resonant society as the baseline of normal existence.
But walking through it now, carrying thirty years of Earth’s heavy, rigid, and silent architecture in his head, he felt like a man trapped between two entirely different dimensions.
He wasn’t a stranger to this city, but as the neon signs began to hum with faint, visible sound waves in the twilight, Victor couldn’t help but realize that he would have to learn to live with the fact that he was a person with traumas and a long story. Follow the newest chapters on novelping dot com.
Realizing his refrigerator back at the studio apartment was a desolate wasteland of empty shelves and dry air, Victor veered off the main avenue and stepped through the sliding glass doors of a local convenience store.
The transition from the chilly evening air to the warm interior was marked by a soft, welcoming acoustic chime that rippled gently from the door frame, automatically reading his entry frequency.
He grabbed a plastic basket, his ink-black eyes scanning the aisles.
True to the baseline of any convenience store across the Federation, the shelves were packed with an incredibly vast array of consumer options.
Victor bypassed the high-end premium sections and walked straight toward the back coolers, selecting a few cheap, pre-cooked instant meals that only required a quick pass through a thermal microwave to prepare.
Yet, as he tossed the plastic trays into his basket, his mind noted another quiet perk of living under the Federation’s expansive welfare system.
On Earth, cheap convenience food was usually synonymous with synthetic preservatives, high sodium, and abysmal nutritional value.
Here, the government enforced strict biological standards on all food production.
Even the most budget-friendly, mass-produced pre-cooked goods in a neighborhood corner store were legally guaranteed to deliver a highly balanced, optimal amount of macronutrients and cellular fuel.
It was the sole reason Victor’s aunt didn’t constantly march into his apartment to confiscate his groceries; she certainly didn’t like that her nephew preferred instant trays over her home-cooked meals, but she couldn’t argue with the fit metabolic data sheets he maintained.
As Victor stood in the short line to checkout, his ears naturally picked up the store’s ambient background track filtering through the ceiling-mounted SII acoustic dampeners.
It was a wildly catchy synth-pop song currently dominating the regional city forums.
The melody was well engineered, designed with clean phonetic structures that perfectly stimulated a light, pleasant focus in the brains of the shoppers.
Above the checkout counter, the store’s central display prism vibrated in perfect synchronization with the track’s rhythmic pulse, casting a soft, dancing array of warm pastel-pink and sky-blue geometric waves across the ceiling to paint a relaxing consumer mood.
Victor stood completely still, his hands shoved deep into his overcoat pockets as he watched the artificial lights ripple over the shelves.
On Earth, a catchy supermarket pop song would have driven him crazy, reminding him of corporate boardrooms and uncredited mixing shifts.
But he had to admit that even this catchy song had great structure, as if it was carefully thought out.
Grabbing his plastic bag of groceries, he nodded politely, stepped back out into the quiet evening air, and continued his short walk home.
Victor unlocked his apartment door with a quick tactile swipe, stepped inside, and tossed his backpack onto the floor.
The absolute silence of his sound-isolated studio was a welcome relief.
Feeling his stomach rumble, he unpacked the grocery bag, pulled out one of the cheap pre-cooked meals, and slotted it directly into the kitchen’s Heating SII.
The appliance hummed softly, reading the thermal frequency requirements embedded in the plastic packaging.
According to the digital display, the food would be perfectly hot in exactly five minutes.
Deciding not to waste time staring at a timer, Victor stripped out of his uniform and hopped into the bathroom to wash away the dirt and exhaustion of the school day.
He kept it quick.
Exactly five minutes later, he stepped out of the steam wearing a pair of cozy, oversized sweatpants and a worn-out T-shirt.
The kitchen appliance gave a muted chime right on cue.
Victor grabbed the steaming tray of food, sat down at his small study desk, and picked up a fork, completely ready to finally relax and eat.
Ring.
His smartphone suddenly buzzed and lit up on the desk right next to his tray.
Victor glanced down at the display, his face instantly twitching into a familiar, lazy grimace.
The screen read: Aunt Elena.
He dropped his fork with a quiet sigh, tapped his finger against the acoustic reader to unlock the connection, and held the phone up to his ear.
The weekend was approaching, and Victor knew exactly what kind of interrogation was about to head his way.
“Hello?” Victor said, keeping his voice as flat and non-threatening as humanly possible.
“Victor Winterborne!” Aunt Elena’s voice blasted through the phone speaker, vibrating with an immediate, high-volume mixture of intense maternal panic and absolute fury.
“Do you care to explain why the Oak Grove High administration called me, informing me that my nephew was carried off a sports field completely unconscious?!”
Victor winced slightly, pulling the phone an inch away from his ear.
He had been so utterly consumed by the massive influx of his Earth memories, the technical rules of the universe, and his failed literary brainstorming over the last twenty-four hours that calling his family hadn’t even crossed his mind.
He had completely forgotten.
“Aunt Elena, listen, it was just a minor collision,” Victor tried to explain, his tone a blend of defensive and apologetic.
“The other guy just caught me off guard. Nurse Brenda checked me out twice, and she said everything was perfectly normal. I just had a bit of a headache, so I went straight home to sleep it off.”
“Sleep it off?! You fainted on a muddy pitch, Victor!” Elena shot back, her strong, unyielding personality completely dominating the airwaves.
Victor knew from a lifetime of experience that trying to win a verbal argument against this woman was a statistical impossibility.
“You have been living alone in that tiny apartment for less than a year, and you are already treating a head injury like a minor inconvenience! If the school hadn’t mandated a protocol notification, were you ever planning on telling me?!”
“I was going to call you tonight,” Victor muttered, which was technically a lie, but it was the best survival strategy he had at the moment.
“Save it,” she commanded firmly, cutting right through his excuse.
“I don’t care what that school nurse’s basic sensors said. A brain impact is not something we play around with. You are coming back to the house this Friday evening, and first thing Saturday morning, I am dragging you to the district hospital to run a full, high-grade diagnostic scan under a medical specialist. Don’t even think about complaining.”
Victor looked down at his steaming tray of pre-cooked dinner, letting out a long, silent sigh of absolute defeat.
He was trapped.
He could face the traumas of his past life, but against his aunt’s stubborn, protective love, he stood absolutely zero chance.
Although Victor winced at the mere thought of sitting through a tedious hospital check-up, a strange, quiet warmth spread through his chest.
Beneath her sharp, scolding tone and aggressive interrogation, he could feel the genuine care and unshakeable love behind his aunt’s words.
After a previous lifetime of being completely isolated and discarded by everyone around him, having someone fiercely look out for his well-being was a luxury he couldn’t bring himself to truly resent.
“Fine,” Victor grumbled casually, picking his fork back up.
“I’ll be there on Friday.”