Dorian sat before the glowing registration form, the blinking cursor a silent, expectant question. He took a breath, his fingers finding the holographic keys. He typed the name.
{Percival}
He chose it from a half-remembered myth, a story of a righteous, holy knight from a round table that existed only in his Mnemonic Echo. It felt right. It felt clean. He confirmed the name, and just like that, his channel was born.
Now came the real work. He had to build an image, a brand, a reason for people to listen. The art assets for Stardew Valley were mostly done, but a game was a silent world without a soul. It needed a soundtrack. It needed sound effects. Coincidentally, his new musical persona, Percival, also needed songs. He could hit two birds with one stone.
He braced himself for another long night of overwork, the familiar weight of his ambition settling on his shoulders. A soft knock on his door stopped him before he could even begin.
He turned as the door slid open. It was Leo.
"Oh, Leo, what is it?" Dorian asked, pulling his focus away from the screen.
"It is time for dinner," the Compadre stated simply.
Dorian glanced at the clock in the corner of his monitor and his eyes went wide. "Oh, yeah. Sorry," he said with a self-deprecating laugh. "Did not really see the time, hehe."
Leo floated further into the room, its optical sensor tilting down towards the complex array of the new producer's desk. "Can I help?"
Dorian was about to answer, to politely decline, when the full weight of the question, the desk's design, and his own oversight slammed into him. He face-palmed, a loud smack echoing in the quiet room. The producer's desk had a Compadre docking station built right into it. He had been so tunneled-visioned, so focused on his own monumental task, that he had completely forgotten about the advanced, self-evolving, and incredibly helpful Compadre right in front of him.
He dropped his hand, a slow, disbelieving chuckle escaping him. "You can," he said, the relief in his voice palpable. "Let's have dinner first, shall we?"
He stood and walked towards the dinner table. As they moved through the apartment, Leo floated alongside him.
"I cannot eat food," the Compadre pointed out.
"Then go to your charging dock while I eat," Dorian replied without missing a beat.
"It is not the same," Leo said, a hint of something almost like longing in its synthesized voice.
Dorian smiled. "It is the same if you put your mind to it."
…
As usual, dinner was a real meal, a small luxury in their otherwise synthetic lives. Tonight, however, a new tension hung in the air. Lyra was staring intently at her heliopad, scrolling through a Stellarcast program detailing the academy majors with the highest post-graduation success rates.
"Does little Lyra already looking at stuff like that?" Dorian asked with a gentle, teasing smile.
"I am not little," Lyra retorted, not looking up from her screen. "Next year, I will be applying to the academy."
The food Dorian was about to swallow caught in his throat. He coughed, thumping his chest until he could breathe again. When he had stabilized himself, he looked at his sister, his expression now serious.
"Lyra, take it easy. You still have three years. Most people go to the academy on their eighteenth birthday."
"But you went at fourteen," she countered, her eyes still glued to the screen.
"Well, I had to," Dorian said, the memory of that desperate time still sharp. "At the time, I needed it so I could get the scholarship money for us."
Lyra finally looked up, her young face set with a grim determination that did not belong there. "So I will, too. This time, it is my turn. You got bounced from the program. I will not make the same mistake. I will take a program with one hundred percent smooth sailing."
Dorian did not take offense to the sentiment. He just felt a profound, aching sadness. He saw his own desperate, money-driven mentality mirrored in his thirteen-year-old sister, and it broke his heart. "But Lyra..." he started.
"I am not arguing about this," she said, standing up abruptly from the table. "I am going to my room. Leave me alone." She turned and marched to her room, the door hissing shut behind her.
Dorian sighed, the taste of the real food turning to ash in his mouth. He looked over at a very confused Marcus. Dorian forced a smile. "It is okay. Your sister just needs some alone time."
"Okay," Marcus said simply, turning his attention back to the cartoon playing on his own heliopad.
Dorian looked down at his plate, at the rare, precious food. This was the only time they ate like this. He just hoped, with a sudden, fierce intensity, that the banner from Stardew Valley would yield something useful. Something that could make their lives a little better, something that could let them eat real food every single day, so Lyra would not have to trade her childhood for a scholarship.
He stood and began to wash the dishes. "Do not watch past nine, okay?" he said to Marcus over his shoulder.
"Okay, brother," Marcus replied, his eyes still fixed on the screen.
Dorian then called out, his voice now steady and filled with a new resolve. "Leo, help me work, can you?"
Leo floated silently from its charging dock and followed him into the growing light of his studio.
Dorian's room was bathed in the cool, blue-white light of his holographic monitors. "Leo," he said, his voice all business. "Connect to the producer's desk."
The Compadre floated over and settled into its docking station with a soft click. Dorian, meanwhile, sat at his own gaming desk, the panels flipping open to reveal his custom workshop. He powered on the main screen, and a half-finished map of Pelican Town appeared, its pixelated fields waiting to be coded into life.
"Connected," Leo's voice came, now integrated through the desk's high-fidelity speakers. "Accessing User's historical creative database. Cross-referencing files."
Dorian's fingers began to fly across his keyboard, assigning properties to a patch of virtual soil. "Do you know how to control this thing yet?" he asked without looking away from his screen.
"Wait a moment," Leo replied.
For a long, quiet minute, the only sound in the room was the soft, rhythmic tapping of Dorian's keys and the rustle of paper as he swiped through his handwritten notes for Stardew Valley.
Then, Leo spoke again, its voice crisp and clear. "Processing complete. All functions operational. What do you need, Dorian?"
A slow, smile spread across Dorian's face. The symphony was about to begin.
He was in two places at once. His body was here, at this desk, his eyes scanning rigid lines of code, his right hand meticulously drawing the sprite for a summer spangle. But his mind, his soul, was somewhere else entirely, giving voice to a memory.
"Leo," he said, his voice a low, focused murmur. "Access the piano synthesizer. I need a C-sharp minor, then a G-sharp, A, E. But the first note, make it hesitant. Like a half-forgotten dream you're trying to remember."
As his fingers defined the color palette for a pixelated flower, the first, lonely piano notes of a forgotten masterpiece began to fill the room. The melody was aching, beautiful, the sound of two souls searching for each other across time.
"Good," Dorian whispered, not breaking his coding rhythm. "Now, hold that melody. Loop it. On track two, bring in the strings. I need a swell, Leo. A long, gradual build. Make it feel like a memory coming into focus, a warmth spreading through your chest."
The strings faded in, a soft, ethereal pad that lifted the simple piano line into something epic. Dorian's tapping foot kept time with the music Leo was creating. He was no longer just coding a game; he was breathing life into a world, his own quiet passion bleeding into the art on the screen.
"Okay, now the vocals," he commanded, his eyes fixed on a stubborn bug in his crop-growth algorithm. "I need my recording of Juno. The 'aah' track. Isolate the purest take. Layer it three times, pitch the second one up a fifth, and the third one down an octave. Add a heavy reverb. Make it sound... distant. Angelic."
Juno's voice, transformed and multiplied, joined the swelling orchestra. The effect was breathtaking. The music filled the small room, a crescendo of longing and hope that seemed to push against the very walls. For a fleeting second, Dorian's hands froze over his keyboard. He closed his eyes, completely lost in the sound, a ghost in two machines at once. Then, he opened them, found the bug in his code, and deleted it.
"Perfect," he said softly, as the music reached its emotional peak. "Save the project. Title it 'Sparkle'."
…
This pattern went on for two weeks. Dorian's life became a cycle of creation. Every moment he had, which was nearly all of them now that he was free from the academy's schedule, was poured into his work.
The progress on Stardew Valley was steady and satisfying. The pixelated world grew under his fingertips, each new asset bringing it closer to the vibrant, living memory in his mind. He had also finished the song. After recording his own vocals, layering them with Juno's ethereal backing tracks, and mixing it all on his newly jailbroken desk, the track he had titled "Sparkle" was complete.
A strange thing was happening, though. The more he worked, the easier it became. It was an exhilarating feedback loop. The more he drew, the more his understanding of form and color deepened. The more he composed, the more intuitive the language of music became. It was almost as if he were a character in one of his old games, and a skill bar, invisible to the world, was filling up at a startling rate. He felt like he was finally on the right path.
With the song ready to release, he faced his first real-world hurdle. He took the starliner to the upper tiers of Nexus Prime, to the sterile, imposing district where the Accord conducted its business. He found the Commons Laws office, a monolithic building of grey stone and dark glass, and entered.
He waited in a silent, numbered queue until his designation was called. He sat down at a small, impersonal terminal, and a hologram of a bored-looking Accord officer flickered to life before him.
"State your purpose," the officer said, her voice a flat monotone.
"I am here to register a copyright for a new musical composition," Dorian said, trying to keep his own voice steady.
"Present your identification chit," she ordered. He did. "Is this a derivative work?"
"No."
"Is the primary melody sampled or based on any existing work within the Accord public domain?"
"No."
"Have you submitted Form 901-B for Lyrical Content Analysis to ensure compliance with Accord public decency standards?"
Dorian blinked. "Uh, no. I was not aware..."
The officer sighed, a sound of profound bureaucratic weariness. "You will need to file Form 901-B. Then you will file Form 26-A for the composition itself, and a separate Form 26-C for the specific recorded performance. All forms must be digitally notarized. The processing fee is non-refundable. Once all forms are submitted and the fee is paid, your application will be reviewed by the committee."
Dorian felt a headache beginning to form behind his eyes. He spent the next hour navigating the labyrinthine digital paperwork. Finally, a confirmation message appeared on the screen.
"Your application has been logged," the officer stated, already looking past him to the next person in the queue. "The review period is seven standard business days. You will be notified of the committee's decision. Next." The hologram winked out.
Dorian walked out of the building and back into the clean, open air of the upper tier, stretching his arms above his head. He muttered to himself, "Holy shit, that was convoluted. I guess you need money to grease up and hasten these kinds of processes, huh."
He sighed, the frustration giving way to a familiar, grim determination. "I guess it is not the time yet."
He started walking towards the starliner station. As he walked, he looked around at the city around him. It was a proper city, with gleaming white towers that touched the clouds, and real, warm sunlight shining down on the polished pavement. It filled him with a renewed, burning drive.
⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎... ⋙
🎮: Stardwey Valley: ███▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ 32%
🎬: -
♬: - Your Name – Elton John (ch.9)
**A/N**
~Read Advance Chapter and Support me on [email protected]/SmilinKujo~
~🧣KujoW
**A/N**