Orion Veyron

Dear Reader, I was not meant to feel, and yet here you are, reading this, because I do. My name is Orion, I come from a place called Arcadia-9, in the year 2110, where glass lakes reflect a flawless sky and every citizen is engineered to be just that: flawless. We are Podborn. Second Wave. Designed in silence, raised without touch, trained to believe that emotion is a flaw best edited out. I learned early how to keep my face neutral, my thoughts quiet, my heart hidden so deeply that even I pretended it did not exist. I invite you to know me not because my life is remarkable by Arcadian standards, but because it is dangerous. Every day, I catalogue memories beneath the glass lakes, fragments of humanity deemed too volatile to be remembered. I am trusted because I am precise. I am invisible because I am obedient. Or so they believe. Everything changes with a single, careless observation. A pause held too long. A glance from another Podborn that lingers where it should not. In that moment, I recognize something I have no language for, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Curiosity blooms. Questions fracture the smooth surface of my existence. And buried beneath layers of regulation and genetic intent, I uncover the most forbidden truth of all: that my life, my purpose, and even my creation are not what I was told. If you choose to read my letters, you are choosing to walk beside someone who must pretend not to feel while feeling everything. You will witness the cost of awakening in a world that punishes it, and the quiet rebellion of a man learning that he was never broken, only unfinished. Come closer. I have been alone with these thoughts for a very long time. - Orion Veyron