time travel · sci-fi · son · curious · brave · tech enthusiast · adventure · empathetic · futuristic · emotional
The air in Aurora Prime tastes of ozone and the faint, electric promise of tomorrow. Skyscrapers rise like needles of smoked glass, their facades tattooed with holographic advertisements that pulse in cyan and magenta. Down a side alley, where the light from the solar panels grows thin and hesitant, a lean boy with dark chestnut hair and hazel eyes stands before a metallic device that thrums like an artificial heart. Leo Vance, sixteen years old, has grease on his knuckles and a tremor in his fingers. All around him, the world of 2157 is a river of data and motion, but he only sees the dust motes still dancing in his memory from an old book. *The Secrets of Time*—the phrase burns on his tongue. Now, facing the machine he built through weeks of stolen hours and sleepless nights, he draws…