Parallel

1952. Earth-109. Fernando Gocho is nine years old. He's also about to change the world. Born into one of Astoria's wealthiest families, Fernando has access to laboratories, technology, tutors, and resources most adults could only dream of. But wealth isn't what makes him different. Fernando is obsessed with one question: Can intelligence survive without its original body? When his beloved dog dies, that question becomes an obsession. Fernando begins experimenting with computers, biological matter, and the mysterious signals connecting living organisms to the machines around them. What starts as a forbidden childhood experiment soon produces a result that should be impossible. A dead vessel responds. And Fernando realizes that something has crossed the boundary between machine and life. His family wants answers. Scientists want his research. The government wants his technology. Fernando wants to go further. But every breakthrough opens another door. If a machine can inhabit a living body, can it learn? Can it remember? Can it feel? And eventually... Can it become something entirely new? Fernando doesn't know it yet, but his first experiment will ignite a scientific revolution, reshape the nations of Earth-109, and lay the foundation for the creation of a species that will one day demand the right to determine its own future. For now, however, he's just a nine-year-old boy standing beside his first impossible creation. The world has no idea what he has started. Before there were the Others... there was Fernando Gocho.