(Author's note: I haven't played 40k, so please don't roast me for any setting errors.)
Cold.
That was the only sensation Medici felt as consciousness returned. It was as if his entire soul had been submerged in a frozen river, every cell crying out in stiff agony.
He forced his eyes open, or rather, tried to.
His heavy eyelids struggled for a moment before his blurred vision finally came into focus.
He was submerged in a pale blue liquid with a strange, sweet metallic smell. Soft tubes coiled around his body like he was some insect trapped in amber.
"Cough... cough cough!"
He bolted upright, and the nutrient solution streamed down his soaked hair. The icy liquid that had choked into his windpipe sent him into a violent coughing fit. His lungs burned, but somehow that pain made everything feel real.
Who am I?
Chaotic memories flooded in like a burst dam, savagely tearing through the barriers of his mind.
Two completely different lives collided and tangled together, threatening to split his skull open.
One set of memories belonged to an eighteen-year-old also named Medici. He'd lived in a utopian world called the Future Era.
Three hundred years ago, technology exploded, artificial intelligence birthed the "Singularity" system, and humanity entered a golden age of material abundance. Energy was virtually unlimited, production fully automated.
A person could live their entire life without working and still enjoy generous social welfare, living in climate-controlled apartments, sustained by AI-crafted nutrition solutions and personalized entertainment.
Officially, the world was still governed by human leaders, but the actual administrative work (resource allocation, city management, healthcare, cultural programming) had long been taken over by Singularity and its network of specialized AI subsystems.
It was a meticulously maintained, all-encompassing... gilded cage.
And the original owner of this body? Three days ago, he'd ended that enviable life with his own hands. The reason was laughably simple and tragically heavy:
Boredom.
After every material need was met, the spiritual world remained barren.
AI could analyze every known artistic principle and synthesize music, paintings, and stories perfectly calibrated to mass appeal. But it had no self, no genuine emotion or suffering.
What it created was, in the end, just an elaborate shell. A pervasive nihilism spread through society like a silent plague.
Every year, countless people chose to end their own lives because they felt "nothing matters anymore."
The original Medici was just the latest entry in that grim statistic.
"What an... idiot," Medici muttered, gripping the cold edge of the pod and hauling himself out. He collapsed onto the dry floor, gasping for air.
He wasn't sure if he was cursing the boy who'd given up so easily or lamenting the absurdity of fate itself.
Because the other set of memories belonged to someone from Earth in the year 2024, a game developer also named Medici.
His life had revolved around overtime, changing requirements, endless version iterations, and mourning his receding hairline.
His biggest dream had been to sleep in one day and make a game he truly cared about, one that could move people.
Now, in some twisted irony, that dream had come true.
He'd transmigrated into this world of material abundance where everyone could coast through life. He'd inherited a healthy eighteen-year-old body and the legacy of someone who'd killed himself out of... boredom.
"So... I worked myself to death and got shipped here to experience the ultimate retirement life?"
Medici gave a bitter smile.
He touched his face instinctively.
It felt warm, supple. He looked up at the wall, and the metallic surface instantly became mirror-clear, reflecting a young, handsome face identical to his previous life.
Except the eyes were different. They no longer held the emptiness and confusion from the original's memories.
Instead, they carried exhaustion, wariness, and a buried defiance shaped by years of harsh reality.
Just then, a calm, neutral, emotionless electronic voice echoed through the room, as if speaking directly into his mind:
"Citizen Medici, your vital signs have stabilized. Mental state assessed as 'communicative.'
According to the Singularity Era Social Welfare and Obligations Act, your legally mandated three-month unemployment grace period has expired.
For your mental and physical well-being and social integration, the system strongly recommends you join the 'Dawn Entertainment Revival Initiative' based on analysis of your behavioral preferences."
A soft light screen materialized in the air before him, displaying clear text and simple diagrams.
Medici frowned and read carefully.
This so-called Dawn Entertainment Revival Initiative was a large-scale cultural competition launched by the Culture Management AI "Muse."
Its goal was to encourage citizens to create works of art "capable of effectively triggering emotional responses."
The format was open: games, novels, music, film... anything went. Participants would receive basic material support and access to AI creative tools.
And the winner would receive a prize of... Medici counted the zeros... ten billion.
That amount of money could let him live out the rest of his days in this "paradise" however he pleased, all the way until the heat death of the universe.
Ten billion...
His heart betrayed him with a sharp thud.
In his past life, that sum was an unimaginable fortune, enough to fulfill every dream he'd ever had, including founding his own studio and making the games he'd always wanted without compromising to the market.
And here...
He shifted his gaze from the light screen and scanned the apartment that had belonged to the original Medici.
Clean, bright, climate-controlled, sterile.
Every object was arranged with machine precision, optimized for maximum efficiency. But it was also utterly devoid of warmth.
It felt like a high-end hospital room or, more accurately... an elegant tomb.
The air still seemed to carry traces of the original's crushing emptiness and despair from when he'd chosen to leave.
Bored? Nihilistic? Meaningless?
Medici's lips slowly curved into a complicated smile.
It held pity for the original, mockery for the absurdity of this world, and something else, a deep, visceral rebellion surging from the soul of someone who'd been ground down by hustle culture.
"Use entertainment... to fight back against nihilism?" he murmured, a spark igniting in his eyes. "Use games... to wake up these overgrown children spoiled rotten by AI?"
He thought of all those unfinished design documents piled up on his old computer.
He thought of the game moments that had made his blood boil, brought him to tears, or left him racking his brain in awe.
In this world where even "pain" and "challenge" needed to be simulated and revived, what he carried in his head wasn't just games.
It was a nuclear arsenal.
"Alright."
Medici took a deep breath, filling this young body's lungs with pure, faintly sweet air. He declared to the empty room and to himself:
"Then let me show you what the ninth art really is."
"Dawn Initiative, here I come."