Gil Nothos, a Gunnossian man who looked to be in the prime of his forties but was, in fact, one hundred and seventy-three years old, sat at a grand piano. The stage was bathed in a warm, golden light, and before him sat the highest echelons of the Accord elite, a sea of decorated uniforms and expensive gowns. His four-fingered hands, a mix of pale flesh and gleaming chrome, moved over the keys with a practiced, flawless precision. He played, and then he stopped.
A thunderous applause drummed through the magnificent hall. Gil did not even react. He stood, gave a shallow, automatic bow, and walked off the stage. At this point in his long life, it was all just motions. He had lost his muse decades ago.
He moved through the glittering after-party, nodding politely at sycophants and accepting hollow compliments from generals whose understanding of music was limited to military marches. At some point, when the superficiality became too much to bear, he simply slipped away.
"The ship is ready, Maestro," his manager, a portly human in a sharp suit, said as they met near a back exit.
They walked out into the cool night air of the capital planet, where Gil's personal starship, a sleek, obsidian vessel, waited for him. "That," Gil said, his voice a low, tired baritone, "was the most bullshit interaction I have ever had to endure in one hundred and fifty years of my career."
The manager laughed. "It was the General's birthday party, Gil."
Gil looked down at his four-fingered palm, flexing the cybernetically enhanced digits. "Bring me my heliopad. I need to call my granddaughter."
The manager smiled and handed the device to him.
Time passed as the ship ascended into the silent black of space. On the heliopad's screen, a cute little baby with wisps of white Gunnossian hair gurgled happily.
"I think that is enough for today, Dad," his son's voice came through the speaker. "Coria needs her sleep."
"Nonsense," Gil huffed. "Back in my day, I only got one hour of sleep a day. We Gunnossians do not need sleep in the first place."
His son let out an awkward laugh. "Well, the Accord has been releasing some new medical discoveries about our race. It says it is still better for babies under five to have regular sleep cycles."
Gil reluctantly ended the call. He looked out the viewport at the star-strewn darkness. "Does the hyperlane always this busy these days?"
"Well," the manager said, "the General's birthday attracted a lot of people. Some of the regular folks all flocked to his parade. It seems it will take quite a while."
Gil sighed, a sound of profound boredom. He tapped on the Stellarcast app, scrolling through some of the channels he used to fill his empty hours. After scrolling through countless videos of flashy, overproduced content, his thumb paused. It was a video from an amateur singer. He tapped on the channel. Percival. It seemed he had only uploaded this one song.
He looked out the window again. There were still a couple of ships left in the queue ahead of them. He looked back at the thumbnail, at the simple, shadowed figure at a piano. He tapped the video.
"At least it cannot be that bad," he murmured to himself.
The video played. The boy's awkward introduction made Gil raise a single, perfectly sculpted white eyebrow. "This boy," he murmured, his voice laced with the weariness of a hundred and fifty years of performances. "He has no conviction in his own song."
Then, the boy in the video said, "Hope you enjoy."
Gil allowed himself a small, bitter smile. Hope. The one thing he did not have anymore.
Then, the music started.
Just a holo-piano. Four simple chords to start. Gil's professional ear identified it instantly. A I-V-vi-IV progression. It was rudimentary. Amateurish. It sounded like a boy in a practice room, fumbling through the most basic of pop chord structures. Then, the boy's voice came in. It was young, a bit reedy, with no real power behind it. And the lyrics... frankly, he found them cloying. "It's a little bit funny?" It was not funny; it was a direct, almost embarrassingly sincere declaration. It was sentimental, on-the-nose stuff. The lyricist, whoever he was, was laying it on thick.
His immediate, professional reaction was that this was a piece of commercial fluff. Saccharine. Designed for teenagers who did not know any better. He was ready to dismiss it, to swipe away and find something, anything, more intellectually stimulating.
But then the boy finished, his performance earnest but flawed. "Anyway, if you are interested, you can go to Echoflow to hear the full song."
Gil paused, his finger hovering over the screen. Curiosity, the last flickering ember of his artistic soul, got the better of him. Why would this amateur bother with a full studio version? He tapped the Echoflow link.
The song began again. The same simple piano, the same reedy voice. But it was different. This version had... weight. The recording was clean, the piano had a depth and resonance the live version lacked. It was a subtle difference, but a significant one. He kept listening.
Then... the strings.
They faded in under the second verse, a soft, tasteful swell that was not in the live performance. That was the moment Gil's professional ear perked up. That was where the craft revealed itself. The orchestration was what saved the song from itself. It was elegant. It was understated. It gave the boy's simple, almost childish melody a weight, a legitimacy, that it did not earn on its own. The arrangement put a tuxedo on a farmhand.
It was a clever production trick, a sign of a mind that understood not just melody, but texture and arrangement. It was the work of a producer, not just a songwriter. Gil listened to the entire track, a grudging, professional respect building within him.
When it finished, he did something he had not done in a long time. He went back to the Stellarcast video and played the raw, live performance again. He watched the shadowed boy, listened to his flawed, heartfelt delivery, and this time, a slight, genuine smile touched the lips of the jaded maestro.
…
The next morning, Dorian was deep in a comfortable sleep when Leo's familiar, gentle nudging began.
"Dorian. Wake up."
"Five more minutes," he mumbled into his pillow.
Leo paused. Its optical sensor flickered, processing. Then it spoke again, its voice laced with a new, calculated curiosity. "Are you not curious about the results of your song?"
Dorian's eyes shot open in the darkness of his room. The cringe, the sheer, undiluted horror of his awkward performance, came flooding back. He grabbed his pillow, curled into a ball, and wrapped it tightly around his head. "Aaaagghhh! Why did I not edit out that part!"
He began to talk to himself, his voice a muffled, frantic ramble into the pillow. "'Let's be authentic,' my ass. Now you have to face the consequences. Be good first, then be authentic. Who do I think I am? 'Hope you enjoy'? As if some amateur kid with a stolen piano sound could make something good. The lighting was all wrong, I looked like a ghost. And Percival? What kind of name is Percival? It sounds like a character from a bad historical drama."
"Dorian," Leo's voice tried to cut in.
"And the way I cracked my knuckles!" he continued, ignoring the Compadre. "Like some kind of thug trying to act cool before a street fight. It was a disaster. A complete and total disaster. I should just delete the channel. Delete the song. Move to the Outer Rims and become a moisture farmer."
"DORIAN." Leo's voice was louder now, but Dorian kept rambling into his pillow.
The Compadre went silent for a moment. Then it spoke again, its voice a perfect, clear recitation. "It is amazing. I am your first commenter. I cannot wait for more songs."
Dorian stopped. He remained curled up, his face hidden by the pillow.
"I cannot say that I was not blown away," Leo continued, reading another comment in its flat, robotic tone. "A good thing it is on Echoflow. I am definitely putting this on my everyday playlist."
A red blush began to creep up Dorian's neck. He could feel the heat on his own skin.
"Is this a new genre? It feels... real. I have never heard anything like it."
"This song made me cry. Thank you, Percival."
"Enough!" Dorian finally shouted, his voice muffled. He sat up, his face beet red, the pillow still clutched to his chest like a shield. "You cannot just access the net willy-nilly like that!"
Leo tilted its spherical body. "I can. Your code is sufficient to avoid alarming the Accord network. Also, I do not know whose willy or nilly you are referring to."
Dorian threw the pillow onto the floor in a flurry of embarrassment. "Okay, just leave me alone, will you? Go wake up Lyra and Marcus. I will make breakfast."
Dorian paced his small room, trying to compose himself, to stop the spiral of overthinking before it could begin. He was about to reach for his heliopad, to face the firing squad of public opinion, but his hand froze halfway.
"No, no, I cannot," he whispered to himself. "Let's have breakfast first. What if I read something on there that is so hurtful it makes me want to vomit?" He paused, a new, more horrifying thought occurring to him. "But then again, should I read it before I eat, so I cannot vomit anything out?"
He stopped, the sheer absurdity of his own logic hitting him. He slapped his cheeks, a sharp, stinging sound in the quiet room. "Whatever. System."
The familiar panel shimmered into existence. The Resonance count was 15,900.
"Weird," Dorian muttered. "It is not adding that much, huh." For all the terror and cringe, he had expected more.
Then he saw it. A new menu item had appeared on the simple interface, a tab glowing with a soft, musical note icon. It was labeled Songs.
His curiosity overpowering his anxiety, he reached out and tapped the new menu. The panel shifted, displaying a single entry: [Your Song]. Beside it was a pulsating, blue button that read Collect.
He hesitated for only a second before tapping it.
The moment his finger made contact, the number on his screen exploded. It was not a count; it was a torrent. The digits blurred, spinning upwards with an impossible speed, a flood of pure, raw data pouring into his system. The number that was once a meager 15,900 skyrocketed, finally locking into place with a soft, final ding.
Resonance: 1,876,608
Dorian's jaw went slack. He stared at the number, his brain refusing to process it. Then, a single, explosive shout ripped from his throat. "HOLY SHIT! IT'S ALMOST TWO MILLION!"
The door to his room burst open. Lyra, Marcus, and Leo rushed in, their faces a mask of alarm. "What? What happened?" Lyra demanded.
Dorian scrambled to dismiss the panel, his heart hammering in his chest. "Nothing! Nothing!" he said, his voice a little too high. "Go to the dinner table. I will catch up."
Lyra and Marcus, still half-asleep, exchanged a confused look, then slumped back out of the room. Leo, however, remained. The Compadre floated slowly towards Dorian, its optical sensor flickering as it processed the scene.
"Dorian," it began, its tone analytical. "Are you becoming dumber since you dropped out of the academy?"
Dorian blinked. "What?"
"The viewer count on your Stellarcast video is currently one hundred and ninety-seven thousand," Leo stated. "If you believe that number is one million, nine hundred and seventy thousand, it is possible there is a critical error in your optical processing or mathematical reasoning faculties."
Dorian stared at Leo, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face as he held in his anger. "How about a full reboot on your OS?" he said, his voice dangerously sweet. "It seems there is a critical error in your behavioral code."
Leo's sensor flashed. It floated backwards a few feet, then zipped out of the room. "No need, Master Dorian!" it called out from the hallway.
…
All in all, the first week of Percival's debut was not a galaxy-shaking event. It was a quiet success. The video on Stellarcast slowly accumulated views, and the song found a small but passionate audience on Echoflow.
Dorian, with a newfound, sober clarity, understood this. His Mnemonic Echo provided the art, but it also provided the context. The arena had changed. This was not Earth in the 1970s, and he was not Elton John. A simple, heartfelt piano ballad, no matter how beautiful, was not going to instantly conquer a galaxy raised on the aggressive, synthesized beats of Accord-approved pop. It was a start, a successful one, but it was not a revolution. Not yet.
He could not focus on that, either. The massive, beautiful number sitting in his System's account was a constant, tantalizing reminder of his true predicament. He had nearly two million Resonance points, a fortune of emotional energy, but he could not use a single one. The System had been clear: only games could create Gacha banners.
His primary focus had to be the game.
He pushed the music, the comments, and the view counts to the back of his mind. All of it was secondary. The song had been a successful test, a proof of concept. Now, the real work began.
He returned to the glowing, pixelated world of Stardew Valley, his focus more intense than ever. The end of the year was creeping in, a silent, unspoken deadline in his mind. He needed to finish this. He needed to unlock the Gacha. He needed a way out. The song had given him the resources. Now, the game had to give him the power.
⋘ 𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂.. .⋙
🎮: Stardwey Valley: ███████▒▒▒ 74%
🎬: -
♬: - Your Name – Elton John (ch.9)
⋘ 𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂.. .⋙
Gunnose: The Gunnose (singular: Gunnossian) are a humanoid species and one of the original founding races of the Stellar Accord. Renowned for their formidable intellect, logical minds, and a deep cultural affinity for cybernetic enhancement, the Gunnose are often considered the primary architects of the Accord's technological and bureaucratic supremacy.
Appearance: At a glance, Gunnose are strikingly human-like, typically with slender builds and sharp, intelligent features. Their most prominent features are their universally white hair (ranging from pure snow white to pale silver) and solid white eyes (irises can range from pure white to a pale, icy silver, often making it difficult for other species to read their gaze). They possess four-digit hands (three fingers and one opposable thumb), which has led to Gunnossian technology, from datapads to weapon grips, having a unique ergonomic design.
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