Over the following year, the world changed more quickly than most people had expected.
The Awakening Serum was no longer treated as an impossible miracle that only governments and the extremely wealthy could access. Conjora's lottery system had helped reduce some of the anger surrounding the serum, especially once ordinary people began seeing monthly winners receive awakenings without paying anything at all.
There was still frustration, of course.
The serum remained expensive, production was limited, and there were always more applicants than available doses, but the existence of a legal path had changed the way people looked at it. Instead of believing that power had simply become another privilege reserved for the wealthy, many now saw it as something they might eventually have a chance to receive.
Other countries noticed the difference.
